Memorializing Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day weekend, a milestone weekend where we begin about a 90-day reflection upon all of those who have served our country in the military to protect us, our families, and everything associated with American life.

Memorial Day is that unofficial transition to summer.

It's also the time, in every even year during my 11-year tenure as a local election official, that I declared, "Game On!"  With a June candidate filing deadline, an August state primary, and the November general election, the Memorial Day weekend also was the unofficial transition from baking plans to ensuring we had contingency plans.

Memorial Day weekend was that last restful weekend before, in some years, Christmas.

Memorial Day is a different transition point here.  ElectionDiary was created in 2012, a presidential year to give behind the scenes views on election administration.  That's just as vital in 2016.

I have a different role and a different perspective, and one I'll try to link with my experiences.  I still would prefer to have election administrators serve as guest bloggers, but the best way to move that idea along is to be visible here.

ElectionDiary was never political in a traditional sense, as in having any view of the outcome of any election.  But the blog has chronicled the equivalent of office politics that are encountered when administering elections. 

I'm now convinced more than ever in getting to know so many of my peers over the years, that behind nearly every highly regarded election administrator, known for running elections efficiently and fairly, is a story of an entity trying to inflict some seemingly unjust amount of influence on the administration of elections. 

That adds a wrinkle of stress to election administrators.  Fact is, such a wrinkle probably is felt by nearly every public-facing government agency.  Those are topics, I guess, for other blogs--DMVDiary, PublicHealthDiary, AirportDiary, or the like.

My hunch, though, is this is more intense with elections.

I've often had an imaginary conversation about this with my father, always someone who cut through things.  My father, a veteran, passed away in May of the last presidential year and received a military 21-gun salute at his funeral.

"Elections involve politicians," imaginary dad lecture would go.  "Why wouldn't you think they were political?"

Election Administrators are professionals who are more worried about ensuring voters are registered and have access to vote than anything else.  Typically, the only reason election administrators know who is on the ballot is because the names were proofread, literally, 10 times.

So to repeat the initial mission of the blog more than four years ago (and the blog has had more than 110,000 unique visits in that time just living in little ol' Kansas), the stories here will be about elections behind the scene, what happens on the "other" 364 days we don't have elections.  Guest bloggers are invited from administrators and election geeks in the field.  I won't enlist vendors per se, but, perhaps, thought leaders representing the vendor community.

These stories--the SHARING of best practices--will be the hope from guest bloggers and my posts along the way.  ElectionDiary won't be for news.  Electionline.org and @HHHElections handles that very well.

 But, it's Memorial Day, "Game On!" in elections, and time for updates to the diary.  As my friend at @HHHElections would say, "Stay tuned."