The View from Mechanicsburg, Penn.

MECHANICSBURG, Penn.—The incessant ringing of the telephone jolted me upright in bed this morning. Groggily, I stumbled to the telephone and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is a reminder that Tuesday is election day. Please vote for [insert your favorite presidential candidate here]…”

I hung up.

The mechanical, pre-recorded voice on the other end of the line reminded me why robocalls are one of the worst inventions of modern campaigning. I would much prefer to read about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the newspaper or watch Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY)’s television commercials. I received three pieces of mail yesterday from Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), and that doesn’t include the DVD that the campaign sent to my Mom (“or Current Resident”).

Then I remember that it will all culminate on Tuesday, April 22.

I will head to the polls at six a.m. to swear in the judge of elections and to open Cumberland County’s new electronic voting machines. As the 23-year-old Democratic Inspector of Elections, I serve as one of three officials elected to manage and monitor the elections process in my precinct.

Who could have predicted that Pennsylvania would become a battleground state in the primary? Voters here are used to playing a large role in November every four years. For the leading contender in the presidential contest to make a whistle-stop train tour from Philadelphia to Harrisburg three days before the Commonwealth’s closed primary, however, is unprecedented. For Clinton and Obama to appear at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg a week before the election speaks volumes about what makes this election different.

A list of the most Republican areas in Pennsylvania, printed in the Harrisburg Patriot-News a couple of years ago, said that the Mechanicsburg area was almost 90 percent Republican. In the race for an open seat in the 88th State House district, there are seven Republicans on the ballot and only one Democrat. This is the part of Pennsylvania where Republicans have long counted to balance out heavily Democratic Philadelphia.

Down on the farm where I used to work picking strawberries and driving a rickety blue truck, my former co-workers seemed unusually enthusiastic about the upcoming election.

Scott Lesh, who graduated with me from Mechanicsburg Area Senior High School in 2002 and hopes to become a high school teacher or college professor, asked me if I planned to attend the Obama rally in Harrisburg on tonight. Then we chatted about the recent resignation of a county commissioner and the heated legislative race.

Jogging home, I noticed several yard signs promoting local legislative and state row office candidates, but none for presidential candidates. The only Obama sign I saw was the one my brother had placed in one our upstairs windows.

The candidates have failed, so far, to visibly transform Mechanicsburg into a symbol of the battle for Pennsylvania. Although both remaining Democratic candidates came to Mechanicsburg last week, and Chelsea Clinton appeared at a local Little League field, talk of the presidential race is quiet. People here have more pressing concerns on their minds.

The co-owner of the local farm where I used to work seemed much more worried about rising prices on fertilizer and gasoline than on the outcome of Tuesday’s primary. The politics of Washington, D.C. can seem awfully far away to a struggling farmer or to a student facing mountainous school loans.

On Wednesday, the presidential candidates will move on to North Carolina, where they will bombard residents of Charlotte, Durham and Asheville, with glossy brochures and carefully cropped photos of the candidates with members of the target demographic.

Like many others in the U.S., local residents here in Mechanicsburg will go back to the strawberry fields, to their offices and to their desks, worried about whether the Iraq War will ever end and whether they will be able to afford to fill up their tanks next week.

And Pennsylvanians will have to set our alarm clocks again—we will miss the automated presidential wakeup calls. Not used to having our votes matter in presidential primaries, we will kind of miss the attention.