Ballots

The poll opened at nine o’clock, an hour later than promised in The Tidal Times, because Anwen Brannigan had lost the key to the Legion Hall, where voting was to happen.

“Mislaid,” she said. “Not lost. And now I have it.”

Anwen had been odd-jobbing and cleaning at the hall for a couple of years, since her brood had grown and fled for more promising climes. She tended to keep her own hours, and the fact that a mayor and council were to be decided (well, a mayor, with the also-rans becoming council by default) had not altered them.

She had addressed the complaint from Annabelle Bell-Atkinson, who was the first—and only, so far—one in line, that she had kept people waiting and disrupted their day. Anwen said, “There’s nobody else here.” And pointed about her at the absence of citizens waiting to vote. “I mean other than you, and those two [the geeks.] Anyway, I’ve got some dusting to do.”

Annabelle asked, “Where are the ballot boxes?”

“Boxes?” Anwen said. “Where do you think we are, the United Nations? The box is where I put it.” She pointed to the porch and an upturned cardboard item that had held cauliflowers for Gilbert’s Groceries and had a scissored slot in the top. “You put your ballot in there.” She added, “Gilbert supplied it free. Civic duty and all that.”

“Where are the ballots?”

“On their way, apparently.” She nodded toward a fast-approaching Silas Cotswold, who was on a health kick and thus on his bicycle, carrying a shoulder bag.

“Dusting,” Anwen said, and she disappeared inside.

“Had a flat,” Silas said as he dismounted. “Bloody cheap offshore products.”

“Which nevertheless you bought,” Annabelle noted. “As you did your computers and printers. Perhaps you could start a ‘buy-Canadian’ campaign. Make Canada great again.”

“Again?”

Henry and Harvey started humming “O Canada.”

Annabelle said, “Shut up.”

“I’ll get us set up.” Silas parked his bike against the Legion wall. Inside, he dragged a six-foot folding table to the centre of the floor and placed a chair behind it with the cardboard ballot box, courtesy of Gilbert, on top.

“For the scrutineer,” he remarked at the chair.

“Who would be …?”

“Me.” Aila Hanif had misjudged the time on her morning run and was a bit out of breath. “He”—indicating Silas—“thought that we needed an objective overseer.”

Silas placed the ballots in a heap. He had printed the candidates’ names alphabetically and had tried to create a square beside them for the X or check mark. His tech skills still required some refining and the squares had come up less than square. “They’ll do,” he said. “Just tell the voters to try to stay inside the lines.”

Silas had a list of registered voters that MLA Jethro Wallace had obtained for him, which he laid beside the cauliflower box. The list was at least five years old and caused a problem when it was clear that Randolph Champion’s name was missing.

That was because his lot had been in the Inlet only three years, and had never bothered to register. When this was pointed out to Randolph, and the suggestion made that as he was not a voter, it would be difficult for him to be mayor or to vote for himself or anyone else, he ranted and invoked the BC Human Rights Commission and various discriminatory legislative bodies that he could complain to.

He made such a noise about it that Silas simply added his name to the voters list and hoped fervently that Randolph would not become mayor. The fact that being among the four losers meant he would be on council anyway, Silas could deal with later, or someone else could.

While Aila got her breath back and waited with a sentry-at-the-gate demeanour to do her scrutineering and counting duty, Silas got the geeks to check off voters on arrival.

Sheila Martin complained that it was not really a secret ballot because there was no closed booth where voters could mark the thing. Silas, who was beginning to regret ever starting the process, murmured, “Bureaucrat,” and received a wintry look, but smiled and had a geek find another cardboard box, cut open one end, and place it on a side table. “There you go,” he said. “Just stick your head in there.”

When no one was left in line to vote, Aila finished checking and approving the count. She handed the result to Silas, remarking, “Much easier than Kabul.”

“Must be a real bugger there, then.” He waved the paper at the remaining citizens. “And the winner—and our new, I mean first, mayor is …”

“Hold on!”

Anwen Brannigan appeared from the inner door, broom and dustpan in hand, and waving the latter. “Just hold on.”

Silas glared, signalled to her to go away, and returned to his announcement. “The first mayor of Spinner’s Inlet is …”

“I haven’t bloody voted!” Anwen’s broom was now at the present-arms position. Good job it wasn’t a gun, Samson Spinner thought, as he watched things develop.

“Voting is closed.” Silas tapped his wristwatch. “Twelve hours. You’ve had plenty of time to vote, like everyone else. The first mayor of Spinner’s Inlet is …”

“My arse!” Anwen marched to the table, grabbed the sheet of paper from Silas’s hand, folded it, and thrust it into her apron pocket. “The poll opened late, so it should close late. You arrived after I did and I was already late. Through no fault of mine,” she added, although that could have been open to challenge. In fact, one of the geeks, fastidious for detail, was about to indulge himself by doing that, until Anwen shifted her broom position slightly and fixed a look on him.

“My democratic rights are being denied. I didn’t raise seven kids in this community without a sniff of social assistance,” here she pinned Randolph Champion to the spot with a telling glare, “to be told I’m denied a voice in its future. One vote can make a difference.”

She smiled, sort of, at Silas, and commanded, “Give me a ballot—and then count them again.”

He did, and she was right. Her vote tipped the scales and prevented a tie and a vote-off for the position of mayor of Spinner’s Inlet.

With the result, Anwen received a warm hug from Sheila Martin, a thin and insincere smile from Annabelle Bell-Atkinson, and some ineffectual fist-shaking and grunting from the geeks.