Election Day
Today was the first time I cast a ballot in person.
Instead of sitting with a pen and an absentee ballot in front of my laptop, I got up early (although not too early, and not until after a few false starts and half-asleep dreams of lines around the block). I grabbed a book, and my iPod, and at the last minute, my camera.
I walked over to the elementary school I usually pass on my way to the grocery store, ducked past volunteers handing out leaflets for their candidates, and joined the line snaking out the front door. I stood behind two women, one of whom walked up and down to soothe her fussy toddler.
I had pulled out my book to read, but I couldn’t concentrate on the words. I shoved my practice ballot (Ward 6, torn out of the Helpful Guide to Voting in DC booklet that came to our house a few weeks ago) between the pages to mark my place, and pulled out my camera to take photos.
(Carmen, this one is for you & Oliver!)
The line was moving quickly - quicker still when a woman came out and announced that those with last names starting with K through Z could make a second line closer to the front. We moved inside the gymnasium and continued moving slowly towards a long table in the back of the room. The table was covered in binders with lists of names, pencils, pens, and papers. Eight volunteers sat in chairs facing us - seven of them elderly, seven of them old, all of them women. Signs displayed bold letters and instructions to give our last name and address.
When I reached the front of my line, I obediently began spelling my last name to the woman I’d reached, but a few letters into it she gestured impatiently. “P, I don’t have P, she has P.”
So I took a step to my left, and waited patiently while a woman with nails the color of foreign fruit fiddled with the plastic tabs holding her binder together. Finally she secured the tabs in metal clasps, found my name, and handed me a pen to sign. In return, I received a small square of colored paper and directions to wait in another line.
I found the tail end of the line spilling over into a hallway. On the walls were posters from student elections, urging me to “Vote London for President!” or “Monica for Treasurer!” I imagined the ten-year-olds who’d made the signs at home with their parents, watching the results come in, most of them allowed to stay up late to see if the first candidate who looked like them would become president.
Then I realized the line was going on without me, and hurried back into the gym to hand over my colored square for a ballot. I was then handed a very large Official Privacy Folder (which struck me as somehow absurd, as though it had come from a clown’s prop box) and directed to fill out my ballot at one of a number of rickety round tables, partitioned into four “booths” by flimsy walls.
DO NOT LEAN ON VOTING BOOTH, instructed a large red sign as I struggled to extract my bookmark slash practice ballot from my book without losing my place. I needed no reminder to vote for Obama, but my cheat sheet was important to tell between the six candidates running for Shadow Senator of DC.*
I connected the broken arrows of the candidates I was voting for, placed my ballot carefully back in my Official Privacy Folder, and walked back to the front of the room towards a set of squat, stumpy machines that looked like small robots who had gotten lost from a 1970s sci fi film. At the direction of the first male poll worker I’d seen, I fed my ballot into one of their gaping maws. As I handed the man my Official Privacy Folder, he beamed at me and said, “Good job!”
My very last stop was the table sitting by the exit. “Can I get a sticker?” I asked the woman manning the station.
“Girl, you can have TWO for waiting in that line!” she replied, tearing off two “I Voted” stickers from her roll.
I tucked them into the bottomless kangaroo pocket of my sweatshirt, and smiled all the way home. When I traded my jeans and sweatshirt for work clothes, I carefully affixed one of the stickers to my collar. “I Voted.”
It’s the first time I’ve gotten a sticker. First time I’ve actually gone to the polls. It should be silly, grown adults walking around with stickers all day. But it’s not. It’s pride. It’s patriotism. It’s all those enormous concepts that make you stick out your chest and tear up a little.
I Voted.
*For non-DC residents: this is the reason DC license plates say “Taxation without Representation”. We don’t get real congresspeople, only shadow ones who can lobby but not vote.
Instead of sitting with a pen and an absentee ballot in front of my laptop, I got up early (although not too early, and not until after a few false starts and half-asleep dreams of lines around the block). I grabbed a book, and my iPod, and at the last minute, my camera.
I walked over to the elementary school I usually pass on my way to the grocery store, ducked past volunteers handing out leaflets for their candidates, and joined the line snaking out the front door. I stood behind two women, one of whom walked up and down to soothe her fussy toddler.
I had pulled out my book to read, but I couldn’t concentrate on the words. I shoved my practice ballot (Ward 6, torn out of the Helpful Guide to Voting in DC booklet that came to our house a few weeks ago) between the pages to mark my place, and pulled out my camera to take photos.
(Carmen, this one is for you & Oliver!)
The line was moving quickly - quicker still when a woman came out and announced that those with last names starting with K through Z could make a second line closer to the front. We moved inside the gymnasium and continued moving slowly towards a long table in the back of the room. The table was covered in binders with lists of names, pencils, pens, and papers. Eight volunteers sat in chairs facing us - seven of them elderly, seven of them old, all of them women. Signs displayed bold letters and instructions to give our last name and address.
When I reached the front of my line, I obediently began spelling my last name to the woman I’d reached, but a few letters into it she gestured impatiently. “P, I don’t have P, she has P.”
So I took a step to my left, and waited patiently while a woman with nails the color of foreign fruit fiddled with the plastic tabs holding her binder together. Finally she secured the tabs in metal clasps, found my name, and handed me a pen to sign. In return, I received a small square of colored paper and directions to wait in another line.
I found the tail end of the line spilling over into a hallway. On the walls were posters from student elections, urging me to “Vote London for President!” or “Monica for Treasurer!” I imagined the ten-year-olds who’d made the signs at home with their parents, watching the results come in, most of them allowed to stay up late to see if the first candidate who looked like them would become president.
Then I realized the line was going on without me, and hurried back into the gym to hand over my colored square for a ballot. I was then handed a very large Official Privacy Folder (which struck me as somehow absurd, as though it had come from a clown’s prop box) and directed to fill out my ballot at one of a number of rickety round tables, partitioned into four “booths” by flimsy walls.
DO NOT LEAN ON VOTING BOOTH, instructed a large red sign as I struggled to extract my bookmark slash practice ballot from my book without losing my place. I needed no reminder to vote for Obama, but my cheat sheet was important to tell between the six candidates running for Shadow Senator of DC.*
I connected the broken arrows of the candidates I was voting for, placed my ballot carefully back in my Official Privacy Folder, and walked back to the front of the room towards a set of squat, stumpy machines that looked like small robots who had gotten lost from a 1970s sci fi film. At the direction of the first male poll worker I’d seen, I fed my ballot into one of their gaping maws. As I handed the man my Official Privacy Folder, he beamed at me and said, “Good job!”
My very last stop was the table sitting by the exit. “Can I get a sticker?” I asked the woman manning the station.
“Girl, you can have TWO for waiting in that line!” she replied, tearing off two “I Voted” stickers from her roll.
I tucked them into the bottomless kangaroo pocket of my sweatshirt, and smiled all the way home. When I traded my jeans and sweatshirt for work clothes, I carefully affixed one of the stickers to my collar. “I Voted.”
It’s the first time I’ve gotten a sticker. First time I’ve actually gone to the polls. It should be silly, grown adults walking around with stickers all day. But it’s not. It’s pride. It’s patriotism. It’s all those enormous concepts that make you stick out your chest and tear up a little.
I Voted.
*For non-DC residents: this is the reason DC license plates say “Taxation without Representation”. We don’t get real congresspeople, only shadow ones who can lobby but not vote.