Though I have no chipper “I Just Voted!” sticker to ward off campaign volunteers like a vampire garlic necklace, I am proud to say that at 2:15 p.m. I became Captain Elementary’s 985th voter of the day.
(My polling place is a grade school unfortunately named after a Mr. Ralph Captain. Every time I get my voter card in the mail, I read, “POLLING PLACE: CAPTAIN ELEMENTARY,” and think of a superhero with “2 + 2 = 4″ written on his chest who saves people from putting their hands on hot stoves and walking into traffic.)
Unsurprisingly, my polling place was like a circus in a tornado. No one tried to disenfranchise me, except in the sense that felons are not eligible to vote and I almost had to choke a poll worker to death with my registration card. In every other election I can remember, I have arrived in the school auditorium to find it essentially empty of everyone except staff; this time, a throng of concerned citizens had packed the place, and having lines to stand in for the first time I found myself standing in the wrong ones twice. Perhaps because past elections have been relative jaunts through democracy, I don’t remember ever having had to stand in a line to get a piece of paper so I could stand in line to get a piece of paper so I could stand in line to answer thee these Questions Three to get a ballot. When I skipped directly to the ballot getting line, the little old woman at the card table looked up at me like it was the tenth time I’d done this today (which was as good as true, since every voter had doubtless had the same face to her since about 10:00 this morning) clenched her teeth until they audibly scraped and said, “You have to stand over there and get the paper.”
“Oops!” I said. “Sorry!”
I think my cheerful participation in democracy pissed her off. When I walked over to the Mystery Paper Line, she shouted, “I don’t know how you got in here, but the line starts over there,” and pointed to a group of people who were not standing anywhere near us, but rather in a long queue stretching behind all of the card tables and looping all the way around the room.
My hand to God. “I don’t know how you got in here.”
My cheer dissipated, all I could do is shake my head and testily reply, “I came through the only door the room has,” and join the line at the other side of the hall. By the time I got back to her, she chirped “Hi!” with no sign that she had ever seen me before in her life. The sign-in sheet with my name on it stuck to the one in front of it, leading to a moment or two of hilarity. Next to me, a woman was learning that she did not exist.
“We have your son at that address,” said the worker, “and we have a Jennifer at that same address. You’re not in the book. Harry, she’s not in the book.”
“Jennifer is my daughter,” said the woman. “We just moved.”
“Hmm. Well, we have your son and daughter. Hmm. Have you changed addresses?”
“Other than when we moved?”
I let that little one-act play end without me in the audience.
I will be watching the results tonight with unblinking fascination. After 2000, I thought (and may have written here; hafta look that one up) that people would lose their minds in 2004; turnout was not going to be a problem. A year or two ago, I’d have said the exact opposite: people have short attention spans, the terror war has changed everything, nobody gives a damn. Looks like I was right the first time.
A friend of mine, discussing the long lines this afternoon, posited that “nobody stands in line for an hour to say, ‘Good job, Mr. President.’” I’m not so sure. While I do think a lot of those linewarmers were muttering, “…show that sumbitch a ‘Mission Accomplished’… rat bastard… tax cut this, fratboy…” and so on, just as many were probably twitching around the eyes and grumbling, “…got to be stopped… United States of France letting gay couples abort babies… pass this global test, m*ther******…” as they waited patiently to make their anguished voices heard. The only certain loser tonight is America’s blood pressure.