The Voting Zone
Consider, if you will
Picture a man. Black suit, thin black tie, arms folded, standing in a room where all the color has drained out of the furniture. He looks like he knows something you don’t. He doesn’t. He just read the same grocery receipt you did.
You are about to travel to a land that lies somewhere between what we’ve been told is impossible and what we simply never got around to trying. It is a place of shadow and substance, of campaign promises and, stranger still, promises kept. A place where a tank of gas and a dozen eggs do not require a co-signer.
Keep your eyes on the road. The sign at the next exit reads: The Voting Zone.
Wednesday morning, 6:00 a.m.
Meet Mr. and Mrs. Average American. Ages: somewhere between tired and retired. Occupation: paying for things. They went to bed Tuesday night, November 3rd, expecting to wake up to the usual. A recount, a lawsuit, and a man on cable television pointing at a map of Ohio.
Instead, they woke up to something no almanac predicted. The Republicans had lost the Senate. They had lost the House. And the Democrats who won were not the usual crop of careful people with careful hair. They were newly elected Progressives who had been paying attention to New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani won an election by talking about two radical subjects: what things cost and getting things done.
Now here is where our story takes its sharpest turn. These new members of Congress arrived in Washington and did the one thing nobody in that town had prepared for. They did what they said they would do.
Witnesses report lobbyists wandering K Street in a daze, holding checks nobody would cash. One veteran pundit was found staring into a camera, whispering, “But where is the gridlock?”
Exhibits A, B, and C: Imagine a New Way to Live
Exhibit A: the gas pump and the grocery aisle. Congress passed a law aimed at the price of getting to the store and the price of what’s in it. Mr. Average pulled up to the pump and watched the numbers stop spinning before his coffee got cold. Mrs. Average bought eggs without first checking her credit score. She reports feeling dizzy, but in a good way.
Exhibit B: the billionaire tax. For the first time in 100 years, the wealthiest people in America were asked to chip in at a rate their own housekeepers would recognize. The suffering was immediate. One man was forced to cancel the small yacht that follows his big yacht. Thoughts and prayers were offered. He is expected to pull through.
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Exhibit C: Social Security. Americans over 65 opened their mail to learn that the benefits they paid into for 45 years would no longer be taxed on the way back out. Across America, grandparents were seen doing math twice, certain there had been an error. There was no error. There was simply a little more room at the end of the month.
No aliens landed. No one fell through a hole in the bedroom wall. The country did not collapse. The stock market, a nervous creature by nature, looked around, shrugged, and went back to work.
For the viewer already writing a letter
Some of you are reaching for a pen right now. Good. Write the letter. Tell me how price controls empty the shelves. Tell me the billionaires will pack up and move to Monaco. Tell me somebody must pay for all this, and that somebody is always us.
Those are fair arguments, and I would rather hear them out loud than not at all. But answer one question first. What is your plan for the couple standing in the pharmacy line, deciding between the prescription and the pantry? If your plan is better than mine, I will vote for it. If you don’t have one, you have been living in a stranger episode than I have.
And if you are too disgusted with both parties to bother, I have news. Somebody is going to pick your Congress for you. They are not disgusted. They are organized.
The twist
Every good episode has one, and here is ours. Nothing supernatural happened.
There was no magic, no time machine, no talking doll. In a typical midterm election, roughly half of the Americans who could vote stay home. In this story, they didn’t. The 24-year-old voted with his grandmother’s prescriptions in mind. The grandmother voted with his rent in mind. Neighbors who agree on almost nothing agreed on this much: your future is tied to mine, so I had better show up for it.
That is the whole special effect. A pen, a ballot, and a few minutes of your Tuesday.
Do not mistake the jokes for a light subject. For a good many of our neighbors, “vote like your life depends on it” is not a slogan. It is the price of a prescription, the rent on the first, and a Social Security check that either stretches to the 30th or doesn’t. Those things get decided by whoever shows up. Staying home is a vote too. It is a vote for whatever the other fellow wanted.
So, consider this tale submitted, not as science fiction, but as a rough draft. Whether it stays on the shelf next to the flying saucers or moves over to the history section depends on a decision made by ordinary people in an ordinary voting booth. People like you, and your friends, and family.
The man in the black suit unfolds his arms. He has somewhere to be on November 3rd.
So do you. Bring somebody with you.
Mark is a filmmaker, basketball official, and California Bay Area resident who remains cautiously optimistic and fully registered.
