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So, besides the friends and family and good health that I am naturally thankful for, I ask myself, what ELSE am I thankful for? Seriously? Canadians. For several years now, I have had very positive experiences with Canadians – as friends, neighbors, and generally helpful people. Having camped near some Canadians, they have provided high quality booze, henna tattooing, instructions (to campmates, not me) on Vodka Snorting, stories of long tractor-trailer travels through the Northern Lands, gracious offers of glass recycling, Newfie jokes, and friendship. I’m always glad to see my Canadian friends, and am continuously impressed by their generosity. This is the background that leads into a story from this summer, when I was traveling about the western U.S.

Sam, a friend and I were walking through a casino in Nevada after a week of desert camping when we heard behind us someone muttering (in a Canadian accent) something to the extent about how dirty and desert-weary we appeared. This is not really true, since we had showered, rested, and ate regular food at this point, but sometimes people can still spot things like that. We whirled around to face the accuser, to find a pleasant looking fellow and his friend smiling broadly.

“HEY!” The friendly guy said. “Want some Canadian socks?”

DO I!!!  Sam and our friend pointed at me, and the guy thrust a pair of socks in my hands and walked away. Both teased me about how impressed I am with Canadians, but upon further inspection, these are some of the highest quality socks I’ve ever owned. Sam may argue the point, as he salivates over Smartwool socks, but as a person with simple needs, these socks are excellent. Besides the attractive Canadian Maple Leaf at the top, they are made of a high quality cotton, double-stitched at the toe, and with extra padding along the sole. What a great idea! They have already proved themselves as excellent for staying comfortable through lots of walking and standing, especially in cold weather (you can see they’ve been used quite a bit the last couple months). So, that’s what I’m thankful for. Kind Canadians handing me socks in casinos.

If there was one major difference in voting here than in St. Louis, it was the lack of crazy long lines. This is most certainly due to Colorado’s policy of providing multiple sites and multiple days for early voting. Missouri, however, continues to only allow mail-in and regular poll voting. When we voted in Missouri in the last presidential election, Sam and I waited well over an hour to cast our votes. There wasn’t any particular problem with the machines, ballots or poll workers, but the sheer number of voters crammed into one location for one day made it long and annoying.

In Colorado, there’s a two week period where you can vote prior to the election. There tend to be 4-10 voting sites per county and you can vote at any of the locations within your county, between the hours of 8am and 5:30pm (hours differ slightly by county). Despite urging from multiple friends to take advantage of this, I had much more time available on voting day itself, and held off voting until this morning. And it paid off! 30% or so of registered Colorado voters had voted early, (67% in one county) making my trip to the booth smooth and simple. I took longer to fill out the ballot with its dozen amendments than I did waiting in line. Across the county, poll workers were complaining of being bored, because there weren’t that many voters trickling in today. (Turnout overall is still expected to be high, just distributed through early, mail-in and traditional voting). Compare this to reports from St. Louis:

“Problems persist at Velda City city hall tonight, where more than 200 people still waited to cast a ballot as night fell and the closing of polls neared. The wait: still about 5 hours.” – STLtoday.com

Even the exact polling place I used to vote at had long lines. A friend emailed me:

“We waited four hours in line to vote this morning! We arrived just before 6:00. The polling place didn’t actually open until 6:30. And then there were not enough election workers in place to move things along.”

I’m not so much feeling voter outrage as thinking that I’ve observed an easy solution to this. Missouri (and the rest of the non-early-voting country) would be much happier with early voting. It makes it easier on poll workers, on voters who can’t get time off on voting day easily, on people with unusual work schedules, on voters who like to vote early, and even people like me who stubbornly insist on voting the old-fashioned day-of way.  Demand more voting days, MO.