One vote, one issue
What will yours stand for?

by Terri Mauro

We hear a lot lately, in this election season, about Issues. Where the candidates stand on the Issues. How the public isn’t paying enough attention to the Issues. We’re given debates and news supplements and endless political roundtables on CNN to try to enlighten us on all the Issues. Theoretically, we are to learn about all the Issues and then vote for the candidate with whom we most agree on most of those important points. This is what they taught us in civics class, anyway.

But more and more, I find people and pundits telling me that my vote will mean only One Thing. Forget all the issues--even if I agree with a candidate on almost everything, I must vote against him because of that One Thing. According to the Catholic authorities in my diocese--from the Bishop to the know-it-alls who write letter after letter to the diocesan newspaper--that One Thing is abortion. It is the Issue to end all Issues. To vote for a pro-choice candidate is to be pro-death, to be a bad Catholic, and to cause scandal. A vote for Bush is a vote for the unborn, pure and simple.

And yet--how can we be sure that our votes will be interpreted that way by others? Perhaps we’re not to care, because the point is to get a pro-life candidate in the White House. But what if some pundit interprets a mass block of Catholic Democrats voting Republican as a massive Catholic discomfort with the notion of a Jewish vice president? Surely, with all the mea culpas being issued by the Vatican these days for papal misjudgement during the Holocaust, we’d hardly want to be seen as a voting block dedicated to keeping a Jew out of the White House. But if we’re to vote in lockstep on One Issue and One Issue only--slighting all other issues, no matter how important--how can we be sure we’re sending the message we want to send? Maybe we’ll be interpreted as Catholics for Capital Punishment, or Catholics Against Gun Control. Is there a Pundit’s Conference somewhere where this sort of thing can be coordinated?

On a more local level, we have in the New Jersey Senate race a billionaire businessman vs. a shallow-pocketed public servant. Surprisingly, the rich guy’s a Democrat, and the guy speaking against big money campaigns is the Republican. And though the Democrat has been outspoken in championing liberal causes, and has used his own personal big bucks to articulate a very specific agenda, the local media has been very specific in saying that we’re not to listen to any of that. Forget those Issues! Those Issues--education, health care, welfare--those Issues don’t count. The only Issue that counts here is money, and we’ve gotta vote against the guy who’s got it. The theory, as articulated in one newspaper’s endorsement of the Republican candidate, is that electing Mr. Moneybags will send a message that Senate seats can be bought, and then political organizations will only look for billionaires to be their candidates, and poor people with good ideas will be locked out. So even if we agree with every point of the Democrat’s agenda, even if we’ve never voted other than Democratic, even if we’re excited to see someone who’s not beholden to special interests, we Must vote for the Republican, or we’ll send a Bad Message.

But isn’t ignoring the issues to send a Message a Bad Message right there? When did a vote stop being just a vote, and start being a Statement? Is a vote for Nader a vote for Nader, or a vote against Gore, or a vote against the alleged two-party system, or a vote thrown in the trash bin? Perhaps we should just stop putting names on the ballot altogether, and just list the One Issue that everybody agrees the election’s about anyway. Like we could even get a consensus on that.

'Riting + 'Rithmetic
Two R's combine.

by Terri Mauro

The new trend in education, at least here in Northern N.J., where the standardized tests strike fear in the heart of administrators, is writing. Writing about everything. Writing about reading, yes, but also writing about science, writing about math, writing about writing. It’s not enough simply to learn something--you must also be able to write about how you did it.

And on the face of it, that’s not a bad thing. Goodness knows, the state of writing amongst adults today is not good. My former boss was always stunned at her assistants’ inability to write a simple business letter. Copy-editors on e-mail lists I’ve belonged to could not believe how unable alleged college graduates were to string together a proper sentence. The newspaper where I now work receives press releases and letters to the editor from the general public, and they do give one pause. So the idea of teaching children from a young age to explain themselves in a clear and rational way has some allure.

But man, it makes it hard on the kids with language delays and disabilities. My daughter can’t explain how she does anything. She couldn’t tell you how she ties her shoes. The thought of putting things she can’t put into verbal words into written words fills her with dread. And it was bad enough when we were just talking about book reports and reading comprehension.

Now, she can’t even have math as a safe haven. She got an A in math last year, when all she had to do was memorize math facts and work problems. It was a blissfully word-free place in the day. But now we’re in 3rd grade, where you have to work problems and then write a paragraph about how you did it. Well, who the heck knows how they do math? Am I the only one who coasted through school learning how math works but not why? Is she? In the end, does it matter? And if it’s so important, why can’t the textbook even state it very clearly? I’m paging through looking for the answers she’s supposed to be writing, and it’s about as clear as trigonometry.

Since she’s still classified as special-ed though in a regular-ed classroom, I could probably ask for a modification and exempt her from the writing requirement for subjects like math. I’m particularly tempted because I know the only reason they’re making a big deal of all this writing is because the 4th-grade standardized test is full of it, and although most educators I’ve talked to think the test is exactly that--full of it--they have to teach to it or risk looking like they haven’t taught anything. But I’ve been trying so hard to give her a non-modified year, and working at home to keep her caught up with what’s going on in the classroom, that I hate to fall back now. If she gets all the pure math questions on a test right, and misses all the writing questions, she can still get a passing grade. We’re working toward that.

Ironic, I guess, that although I’m a writer by trade, I can’t teach my child to write. But I don’t think I ever could have written very convincingly about math. I was always too good at faking it to really deeply understand what I was doing. I’m glad I’m not in 3rd grade now, that’s for sure.

They're smokin'
Cell phones keep getting hotter.

by Terri Mauro

They’re hot, they’re cool, they’re irritating. They make the user look trendy and with-it, and make non-users whine about selfishness and pollution and space violations. They’re easy to carry around, and are handy for passing the time. They may be bad for your health, but once you get used to them, it’s hard to go without. Are cell phones the new cigarettes?

Problems at the polls
Antiquated systems vex voters.

by Terri Mauro

So how did you vote?

No, no, I’m not asking about your party affiliation, or which of the two boring white guys you chose, or whether your vote was properly recorded. I’m just asking--how did you vote? By machine, by hole-punch, by No. 2 pencil, by Magic Marker? High tech or low? Confusing or no?

It apparently takes a hotly contested, no-clear-winner presidential race such as this one to point up the fact that our voting system could not get any weirder if it was designed by Tim Burton. You’d think, by now, after 200-plus years of electing leaders, we’d have come up with something at least a little bit streamlined. You’d think, in our obsessively computerized society, we’d have come up with something at least a little bit sophisticated. You’d think, in a country where nearly every pocket contains a cell phone, a pager, or a PDA, we’d have come up with something at least a little bit snappy. You’d think, in a country where even intelligent-seeming adults admit they can’t program their VCRs, we’d have come up with something at least a little bit simplified.

And of course, you’d be wrong. Across the country, in schools and churchs and VFW halls, Americans meet to exercise their democratic rights and find themselves facing some of the most backward systems still alive in our nation. We wouldn’t buy a TV as dated as some of this stuff, but we’ll elect a leader with it. Here in our town in northern New Jersey, we use those big ol’ voting machines: you go in a booth, push down knobs for each candidate you select, then pull back a lever and--voila!--the curtain opens and your vote is counted. Or so they say. There’s no scrap of paper or completed ballot to slip in a box to prove you were even there. Who knows whether this stuff works or not?

Many places--including, fatefully, Palm Beach County, Florida--go by the push-a-pin-through-a-computer-card method. Besides, apparently, inducing confusion as to exactly which hole to punch, they also leave little flaps of paper on the computer cards that may or may not close as they go through the vote-reading machine, causing the vote not to be counted. Let that be a lesson, all those who punch your vote--kindly stand in the voting booth, regardless of the line of waiting people, and pick off all those little shreds clinging to the back of the card. You may be disenfranchised otherwise.

I understand that other folks still vote by actually making marks with a writing implement on a piece of paper, which must then presumably by read by the highly accurate and foolproof method of somebody saying “One for Bush, one for Gore, one for Bush...” like this was some sort of super-mega-episode of “Survivor.” Good luck getting one of these guys to snuff out his torch and leave the island, though. We couldn’t have an uglier contest than this one if we’d had Richard vs. Richard.

Unsure shots
Should parents care what their kids are being pumped full of?

by Terri Mauro