Even though I've lived here quite a while, today was the first time I voted in Florida.I usually ignore local races or even statewide elections since I don’t consider myself a head-over-heels lover of the democratic process. I tend to be pessimistic towards most candidates and for most races I tend to think that voting would simply be choosing between the lesser of two evils.
In 2004, I voted for John Kerry, but that was in Louisiana where I was living at the time.
I was in Florida and favored Gore in 2000, but really wasn’t inspired by Lieberman. I just saw him as untrustworthy. (It turns out I was right…look at him now…sucking up to the Republicans, the traitor!)
I meant to register, but I totally forgot, and the next thing I knew, it was too late. I’d become jaded and it cost me my right to vote.
When the shit hit the fan over the following weeks after Election Day, I kicked myself several times thinking that with the count so close here in Florida, I should have voted. This was one of those rare circumstances which really hit home. If you combine my “woulda-been” vote with the hundreds of others lost due to the controversies, it may have been a very different outcome.
For all prior elections I was in Rhode Island.
So by this morning I was well prepared to cast my all important Democratic vote in my mostly-Republican town. I couldn’t help but feel that there may actually be something to what the conspiracy mongers are spewing regarding election fraud.
Here’s a little rundown of some of my strange (or perhaps imagined) experiences today:
• I get to the polling place, a local Presbyterian church, at 6:45am. As expected, there’s a line already queuing up, about 60 people. Everyone in line is white. Not one minority. Well, it is Lake Mary after all, but everyone? I just found that weird.
• After the polls open at 7, the line moves along. Once inside the church, I glance around. I look past the altar and see this obnoxiously gigantic cross hanging on the wall. (Well, it is a church after all) But not used to seeing these things much these days (thankfully, who wants to look at an execution device all the time?) I shuddered and made a slight face. One of the polling officials takes notice and I see him frown at me. I think later: Will he have my vote withheld because I'm not a Christian?
• I get to the incredibly fragile looking old lady who is manning the huge rosters filled with registered voters names and addresses. I hand her my driver’s license and mention the address on the license is the old one, the current is what’s in her book. She takes a minute or two to process this and glances over her shoulder at one of the other polling officials. She proceeds. Sure, why give me a hard time, they’re just gonna rip up my ballot anyway and burn it with the other heathen “votes”.
• I bring my paper ballot over to an empty little cheap plastic standing carrel, jostle it a bit, taking note of its flimsiness and smile, mumbling, “How chinsy”, under my breath. Another election guy (the place is crawlin’ with ‘em) hears me and also frowns at me. I just know he’s saying to me in his head…”How dare you mock the County’s voting tools, you Godless house-hopper! At least they’re not butterfly ballots, fatboy!” Chance number 3 my vote won’t count.
• After I mark my choice for President/Vice President, I want to consult the sample ballot that I have pre-completed for all the other candidates and amendment decisions, so I reach into my pocket to retrieve that and unfold it on the desk surface. The little plastic partitions don’t hide much and the nearby polling guy kinda cocks his head to see what I’m doing, still glaring at me with his scowl. That’s it, I think, I may well be just wasting my time. Surely now to these conservative old volunteers I’m a worthless Christ-hating fatso smartass, disrespectful of the property of the government, probably doesn’t even live where he says he does and is now, no doubt, cheating on his ballot. I imagine I can already smell the smoke my soon-to-be-torched ballot sheet will be making.
• But then, to my surprise, when I get to the scanner where you put your ballot sheet in, a smiling African-American poll lady is there to greet me. I put my sheet in the machine, it sucks it in, and then, ejects it back out. I look at her and say, “Oh oh, it came back out…” She gives me the most discrete of nods and instructs me to go ahead and put it back in. This time it stays in. But thanks to her, I think we know that I escaped the wrath of the other poll workers and maybe, just maybe, my vote counted not just once, but twice.
Take that would-be Republican vote thieves!