Texas French New Wave Voting

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Texas French New Wave Voting

To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

- Louis L'Amour (www.lifequoteslib.com/authors/louis_l_amour)

Voting in Texas remains a lonely experience.

The new state requirement for an identification card with a photograph in order to vote was regarded by many as a solution to illegal voting by wild hordes of Those People. Others opposed the requirement as an attempt by meanies to suppress poor but honest Tom Joad just struggling day-to-day to scratch a living out of his new wide-screen television.

In the event, neither Tom Joad nor many other folks voted on state constitutional amendments last week. Perhaps Tom was too busy listening to the fat boys on A.M. radio to drive his Model A Ford to the polls (why do we call them polls?) while carrying his Texas driving license with his photograph on it.

Texas citizens who wish to withdraw from the noise and busy-ness and demands of job, family, and society for a day of solitude need not resort to a monastic retreat; they can volunteer to serve as election judges or poll watchers. As a polling official one can meditate upon the mysteries of the Rosary, read Keats’ Endymion, knit sweaters for the grandchildren, or write another chapter of that still unfinished book, all in perfect peace and quiet. The only sounds will be the air-conditioning cycling on and off and perhaps a fellow official making a fresh pot of coffee. Even the Desert Fathers would envy voting officials in Texas their solitude.

Similarly, a Texan who wants only a few minutes alone can do so by voting.

Imagine voting in Texas as a scene from an art-house movie – sorry, film; “movie” is so plebeian – in grainy black-and-white: the wind sighs across a desolate landscape as the camera pans slowly from empty prairie to an apparently abandoned town. Cue the tumbleweeds. Close-up of an unpainted, sun-weathered wooden front. Offscreen, footsteps are heard on the gravel. Since the auteur is influenced by French New Wave, this goes on for a long, long time. This is, like, y’know, art, and, like, stuff. Film, not movie. Finally, the unseen steps pause, and a hand reaches for the doorknob. After a long pause the hand pushes the door open. The rusty hinges squeak, and old spider webs, long still, are disturbed by the moving air. The camera, assuming the point-of-view of the still-unseen owner of the hand, moves into a room whose darkness is intermittently broken by shafts of light from the windows. This could be symbolic of the protagonist’s internal conflict between good and evil, or it could reflect the fact that the filmmaker has seen High Noon too many times. To the viewer’s right, shadows resolve themselves into people sitting silently in chairs. Do they symbolize Death (think Ingmar Bergman)? Do they symbolize Redemption-with-a-capital-R? Do they symbolize the bourgeoisie? Do they symbolize bureaucratic / hierarchic obscurantism as in Franz Kafka’s Das Schloss? Does their silence symbolize existential despair? No, they’re the election officials, and their brief silence reflects only their surprise that a Texan showed up to vote.

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