Elections from Abroad.

This was the second presidential election where we voted via absentee ballot.  The first election, four years ago, I remember being struck by how much everyone wanted to talk to us about it.  Americans don't just walk up to someone they barely know on the street and ask them who they are going to vote for and why.  It's not that we don't talk politics, it's usually just a more personal conversation amongst friends or family, not something you'd walk up and ask a stranger about.

Also, I remember that the biggest topic of conversation was whether or not it would be Hillary or Obama, no one even mentioned a republican candidate or cared.  Then after the primaries were decided, it was all about "when Obama was president" not if.  It was interesting to look at my own country's elections from an outsider's perspective.

Since then, I have talked to other expats who have lived here a lot longer than we have.  One mother told me about what it was like to have her American children at a local school when Bush was president and the Americans were in Iraq.  One word sums it up, "difficult."  Her children were chastised for being Americans and they had to try hard to fit in fast, even going so far as to renounce their own nationality amongst friends to fit in.  I can't imagine what that would be like, and I'm glad that we arrived at a time when our country was not so hated, it was hard enough as it was.

For this election, I was mostly aware how blissfully ignorant we were about the candidates.  And I say this in this way because I did not see a single election ad for a single candidate during the entire campaign.  The only commentary that filtered in was through Facebook friends and various rants or raves about this debate or that.  And that's easy enough to skim past and skip over in my Facebook feed, so I didn't pay any attention to that.

As a side note, I think it's kind of funny when people on Facebook get upset about what others are posting.  Just don't read it.  We can't control what other people are posting, but we can control what we choose to read.  And there are certain Facebook friends that when I see their name, I proceed with caution. Ahem, you know who you are.  But they are entitled to express their opinion and I am entitled to skip past it if I want.

But I digress.  Where was I?  Oh yes.  Blissfully ignorant with election coverage.  It was so bad, in fact, that I sat down to fill out my ballot before John was leaving for a trip to the States with the idea that he could mail it for me.  But when I tried to "quick fill it in," I couldn't.  I had absolutely no idea who to vote for or why and it occurred to me that this was a rare gift.  A rare gift to search out the topics that were important to me and research prospective candidates positions about them.  I used a website (www.ontheissues.org) -- a website dedicated to collecting nonpartisan information about various candidates for almost every possible candidate.

I dedicated the next day to this task and it took me almost all day in front of the computer, reading and researching.  I went right down to the state offices, and it got a little interesting when it got to the positions for "water council board" something or other.  I tried, but couldn't find a darn thing out about any of it other than a random faxed application if even that.  Seriously, if there is no public information out there about a candidate, don't make us vote for it.  (I left those blank.)

I won't say who I voted for, but I will say that the result surprised me.  And what I took away from watching our election, was how lucky we are to have such a thoughtfully planned system of government.  Our founding fathers gave us a system that did not allow any single governing body too much power.  That's ingenious (if only these various arms of the government could actually get along and work together, we'd be in business).  But after watching my adopted country struggle for more than a year without a government in place, or watching some of the crazy violence unfold in countries with political unrest, like Egypt, I feel lucky once again to be an American.      

Our european friends here still want to talk about the election, and the most common question is "are you happy with the result?" To which I answer some variation of "our country has a lot of challenges right now with everything from the economy to immigration to international relations, and no matter who is in office, they have a lot of work to do."  And I would say the same thing no matter which candidate was elected.