It took me three and a half fucking hours to vote today, jammed into a sweaty, stinky gymnasium with around 300 angry and anxious people. And worst of all, we were surrounded by 27 voting machines, but since someone in charge decided they only needed 4 creaky old laptops operated by hunt-n-peckers to check in the people for those machines (a process that, when smooth, seemed to take an average of 5 minutes per person), those machines were empty most of the time. Yes, folks, Colorado was Ohio this year.
I've voted every election here, my whole life. There has never been a single time, not once, that I waited more than 15 minutes in my old precinct, and that's with half-blind old ladies poring over good old paper books. Help America Vote act? Ha -- with help like that, who needs a kick in the teeth? Why did they "fix" something that, at least here, had been working fine?
We started out this morning bright and early to head to a local bookstore, where we had been told for weeks that we would be voting. When we arrived there, a handwritten note on the door informed us that there was a misprint and we weren't able to vote there. We went to the next closest polling place, the Botanic Gardens. After reaching the line and finding that people at the front had been waiting 2 1/2 hours already, we decided we'd better get to work and take a late lunch.
After rushing through a bunch of meetings and running out on my poor visiting artist, I picked up my husband and we tried to vote. Drove by the botanic gardens and found it was just as bad, and decided to head up near our neighborhood, over in the barrio, thinking it would be less crowded. (Remember, one hour for lunch, that's all we technically had.) The first community center had about an hour and a half wait, and we settled in with our lunch and began kvetching with the folks in line. After about 20 minutes, someone came in and said that the community center a few blocks away had no lines.
So, we jumped ship and sped over to the other community center. No lines? Hah. By that point, we figured we'd just stay put, how bad could it be?
Well, apparently we were one of the good ones, at least from the rumors that raged like cranky wildfire throughout the weary lines. We all started out with a sense of humor, joking and playing with sedition by discussing issues in line. No ipods or cell phones allowed, you have to talk to each other, you'll go nuts otherwise, so at least you get to know some neighbors. Of course, after the machines went down, and people started noticing the lines moving at wildly different speeds (so that the person who just came in could easily pass you up), our joking turned to bitter comments and reached full-scale, seething rage by the time we haltingly neared the front of the line.
Voting shouldn't be painful, and it shouldn't be prohibitive. I feel absolutely disenfranchised, and thanks to how hard they made it for us to vote, I'm writing this at 2:30 in the morning, having JUST gotten home because I still had to go back to work and hang the show. Neither one of us could afford to miss work, but voting is THAT IMPORTANT. What's horrible is that I don't even have faith that my vote was counted, and I know that in my Democratic city countless voters had to give up, couldn't wait that long, while voters in the rest of this red state breezed through, and measures that seemed guaranteed to pass failed. (And of course, the Republicans fought a last-minute court case that the Democrats brought to try to extend the polls in Denver for two hours to make up for the machines being down for even longer, altogether.)
BUT STILL, I VOTED, AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY STICKER! (Well....maybe not all I got, but it's hard to feel excited even after such a hideous ordeal.) I'm pissed off, but dammit, I voted, as traumatic as it was.
And yes, I'm cynical enough to think this is all on purpose, this is meant to discourage us from voting, this is ineptitude by design. Because it just isn't possible to believe that computers, which are plentiful, were more difficult to have on hand than voting machines, which are not. Because it isn't possible to believe that anyone could believe that 4 computers to 27 voting machines was a logical or even reasonable ratio. And because, sadly, I am a realist. The people in power have nothing to gain from us voting, they know how we feel about them. Why not make it hard, and the poor people will turn away, and the old people, and the people with kids, and the people with lives. Because you have to be damned committed to democracy to stand for 3 1/2 hours in a gymnasium hot enough to make you want to faint, with no water and with no timetable for your release.
Sign me up for the revolution, too. But I'm still going to vote, just in case.
2 comments:
I just don't understand why more of the good Democrats of Colorado (esp. Denver) don't vote by mail/absentee.... I got to fill it out in my boxers eating ice cream this year!
2 reasons:
1. Last time, the absentee ballots weren't counted. There have been problems in many areas of the country with absentee ballots, including here, in the past.
2. I used to LOVE voting! It has never taken me more than 10 minutes in the past, and all of the little old ladies in the neighborhood hang out and gossip. It was the only time of the year that I really feel like part of a neighborhood! That all changed this year, when they changed our precincts to 55 voting stations, none of which were in our neighborhood proper, anyway.
I'll probably have to vote absentee next year, even though I don't trust it. But then again, what can we trust anymore with our voting system? The majority of problems haven't ever been addressed, and the last two presidential elections were a sham.
The ice cream sounds good, though.
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