SALT LAKE CITY — Armed with bleach wipes, medical gloves and their own pens to sign the rolls, my 60-something parents were preparing to vote in Ohio’s primary election Tuesday morning.
I called them Monday morning to talk them down from what I thought would be the riskiest activity I’d imagined they’d ever done: voting in a public polling station during the global coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re going to get there as early as we can so there will be less people in front of us germing up the place,” my 62-year-old mother Carolyn Parrott said. That meant being first in line when voting stations open at 6:30 a.m. at the Berean Baptist Church where they vote in rural Ohio.
Along with Ohio, three other states — Illinois, Florida and Arizona — were each scheduled to vote in the presidential primary on Tuesday.
It wasn’t just a presidential candidate hopefuls my parents would be selecting, they said. Ohioans would also be nominating candidates for Congress, state legislature, Ohio Supreme Court and a handful of local offices. There was an abundance of civic responsibility to fulfill.
But none of this satiated my concerns.
Fifty Ohioans had already tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday, a steep increase from 37 cases this weekend, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Even though my folks said they will get to the polls early, they expect to see 20 to 50 people there, which meant their chance for contamination is still pretty high, I imagine. But then fate — or good governance — intervened.
On Monday afternoon, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, like me, didn’t want vulnerable folks like my parents showing up to vote Tuesday and requested to postpone in-person voting until June 2. My worries returned after a Franklin County judge denied the request about 12 hours before polling stations would open. But late Monday evening, the polls were ordered closed by Ohio’s health director Dr. Amy Acton.
Would you want your two sons and your daughter-in-law voting? I asked.
A pause.
“Yes. And I’d want them to take the same precautions we are taking,” mom said.
Dad wasn’t so sure.
“It depends on how they’re going to vote,” he joked.
But why were my parents so willing to risk it? Didn’t they want to enjoy retirement for a couple more decades? Didn’t they want to be around for my younger brother and I? Didn’t they want to spoil future grandkids?
Dad, a registered Republican who said he wasn’t going to vote for the party’s presidential front-runner, still wanted to vote for state and federal lawmakers. My mother, the yin to my father’s yang for the last 40 years, would cast a ballot for either of the two leading Democratic candidates.
Because Vice President Joe Biden was 25 points ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a recent poll — a clear winner seemingly already determined — it appeared to a concerned son that my parents’ vote wouldn’t matter anyway. But, it did.
“It’s important for everyone to vote. America is notoriously lazy about voting, and I feel this primary is very important,” mom responded after I asked her why getting an “I Voted” sticker mattered if she was at high risk of getting COVID-19 and its fatal consequences.
Mom said she wasn’t going to leave the nomination of officials who would govern her in the hands of someone else.
For dad, a 64-year-old retired science teacher, the equation was much simpler. Voting was an act of civic duty. He hadn’t even thought of not voting.
They had promised to wash their hands and not stand close to anyone. Social distancing in a very social setting. Still, I was relieved when Dr. Acton decided to shut close Ohio’s in-person voting for Tuesday.
Ohio began taking precautionary steps weeks ago. My grandmother lives in a retirement community in Columbus that is normally turned into a polling station. To protect the residents, the polling station was moved and each of the retirees was given an application for absentee voting and a bus was scheduled to pick the rest up on March 17.
In her last few visits to my grandmother, my mother’s temperature was taken before she was allowed in the building. Dad was no longer allowed to visit his mother, but could drop off food.
At least grandma wouldn’t be traveling to vote, my mother said. At least we could agree on grandma.
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me that I’d grown up to be just like my parents.