Election Day from Poland

My political involvement has come an incredibly long way from the 10 year old girl who visited the polls with her mom on Election Day to pass out flyers for a family friend running for county commissioner.

This has made Fall 2012 incredibly interesting.  For the first time, I'm participating as an outsider.  Yes, I voted and watched the debates and posted newsclips on Facebook, but for the grand scheme of things I'm far outside the realm of influence. 

Mailed in over a month ago

 
There were no rallys to attend, no phone calls to make, no doors to knock, no signs to assemble, nor hands to shake.

Luckily, before I left I managed to make a few phone calls and attend a small rally in Detroit.

What has my life looked like during the elections?

Instead of a political operative, I've been utilized by the Polish community as a teacher of the political system.  For a country with direct popular vote, the electoral college is unnecessarily complicated and useless.  Over the past few days, I've talked to high school students, university students, and normal Polish people about how elections work.

Attempting to remove my opinion from such an emotionally charge election has been incredibly difficult, but I've survived!  It's been really interesting to compare the Polish elections with American elections.

At the American Corner, we held a mock election.  There was a "debate" between the two candidates and then everyone used pretend ballots to vote.  Romney won 11-5 with 2 votes for Jill Stein of the conversation night.

I helped count the votes.  Here "Romney" joined us for a victory speech.

After the conversation club festivities ended, I was interviewed by Radio Gdansk for my opinion on the race.  He asked who I thought would win.  My answer was Obama, but a Romney victory wouldn't surprise me at all!

As for Election Day, I spent about two hours explaining the "Road to the White House" to Polish high school students.  I took them through the whole shebang: primaries, conventions, debates, endorsements, Election Day, the Electoral College, and inauguration.

They thought it was strange that so many celebrities endorsed presidential candidates and that a candidate could lose the popular vote and still become president.

Had the students guess which celebrities endorsed which candidate...they were surprisingly good at it.

Question and answer session

As for the rest of the day?  I ate McDonalds because Election Day is not a day for healthy food...and stayed up pretty much all night to watch election results live.

This leads to a day as normal in Poland...where I'm operating on 4 terrible hours of sleep between 9-11 pm and 8-10 am.  Thank God for copious amount of caffeine and sugar.  I taught two classes today, made easy by group discussion of a U.S. diplomat's visit on Monday and election results from yesterday.  Much discussion about the difference between statehood and territorial status thanks to Puerto Rico's vote yesterday.

Although not pleased with the results for the presidency, there were some incredibly heartening examples of conservative principles winning out in my home state and across the country with the GOP strengthening its majority in the house and very pro-union propositions being kept out of the Michigan Constitution.

 Having survived four debates at 3 am, I'm incredibly happy for this whole ordeal to be over.  Except, while watching the election coverage yesterday someone mentioned 2016. 

Regardless of the outcome, my head and heart need a break for the campaigning.