Election 2012

POLL WATCING 2012

The past several days around here have been drop dead gorgeous.  Sunny, blue skies, warm.  The kind of days when you just look around you and say, “I can’t believe this is November and the days are still so beautiful.  How lucky am I!

Well, at least the last couple of days were like that.  But not today, Election Day.  Today when I got up, it was cold and windy.  It was now winter, as it is supported to be.  Bone chilling and unpleasant.  And what made it worse was the fact that I had volunteered to watch the polls for the entire day, from 7AM to 8PM.  It was so beautiful when I had volunteered two weeks ago.  At that time, I thought, wouldn’t it be a fun day to talk to my neighbors all day?  To run on the mouth about politics and my point of view with all of my like-minded friends.  To see democracy at work. To be proud to be an American.  To do my small part to give people a voice.

All of those lofty ideas are so motivating when all is right with the world.  But when it goes from 60F to 42F in 24 hours, all those lofty ideas suck.  Who cares about the integrity of the democratic process?  Why did I volunteer to spend the whole damn day in the cold, greeting people who do not want to be bothered by pesty poll watchers?

When you are a poll watcher, you really have to find things to keep yourself entertained so that the day doesn’t seem any longer than it already is.  For the first hour, my partner and I complained about the injustice of how far away we had to be from the voting polls.  The 100 feet boundary should start from the voting polls, not the building, we complained to each other repeatedly.  We were too far away.  No one could see us and we just had to make sure we were able to make eye contact with each and every voter.  

So my partner ran home and got his measuring tape and came back and measured the distance. And just as you probably expected, the barrier was placed at 110 feet.  We knew it.  They were trying to keep us away from the voters.  So we moved our table ten feet closer and felt smug that justice had been remedied.  

Then we spent the next hour talking about the ridiculous clowns who were watching the table for the other side.  “Look at that idiot, would you. He’s nothing but a loud mouth”, my poll partner told me. The loud mouth knew everyone in town and shouted to every voter who tried to get in and out inconspicuously.  “Hey Joe,” he would shout in a volume that would startle a lion, “Don’t forget to vote for Mitt, that is unless you want to live like a communist.”  And then he would laugh a big belly laugh and look right at us with an obnoxious grin on his stupid face.

Then we talked about everything we think we needed to do to make America just right and that included only our way of thinking. And then there was the discussion on why everyone just couldn’t see things our way and why were they such idiots.  Why couldn’t they see the truth? And then we sort of ran out of everything we needed to say since we were now three hours in to the day and we had just meet and the only thing we had in common was our politics.  

So my partner went home to get a few more warm layers and I was left to manage the table all by myself.  The responsibility would not have been too bad had it not been for the wind and our brochures which flew all over the place.  And then trying to pick up a piece of paper with mittens is a challenge in and of itself.  But I managed because I did not want to do anything to damage the environment.  I am not a litterer.  I care and take care of the world.

So now, I am sitting on my cold metal folding chair, minding my own business and beginning to dread the thought of sitting on this cold, hard chair tonight at 6PM when my back is sore and it is dark and windier and colder and even more miserable.  My thoughts are distracted by a large SUV which pulls into the handicapped parking stop right in front of me.  I watch with interest because it is the only thing to watch at the moment.  

The door flings open.  A large, beaten up purse is thrown to the ground.  An aluminum walker comes out next, handled by fingers that look like sausages. Then out comes one large, beefy, bare leg with a cankle and a plastic, grey Kmart shoe and then the other beefy leg comes out.  And then the rest of the body begins to slide off the front seat.  I now get up from my chair and go over with the intent to help this person.  This person, like all of the other people with handicaps who have come by today to vote, receives my unconditional admiration. They could have stayed home and felt sorry for themselves what with their disabilities but no, they came out at great cost and effort to themselves and voted.  And every person who struggled to get themselves in to the polling station won my admiration; this woman was no exception.

“May I help you? Do you need any assistance”, I ask her in my most pleasant voice?

“Let me ask you something” she says right away, as she is struggling to get her skirt loosened from her seat belt.  Her upper thigh is exposed to me. “Democrat or Republican?” she asked gruffly.

“Democrat”, I tell her.

“Then no, I don’t want any help from you. Get away.”  She turns her back to me.

I am taken aback, “No”, I tell her, “I am not here to get you to vote.  I just thought you needed some help.  May I get your purse for you?”

“NO. I don’t want any help from your type. Get away I said”.  I step back in disbelief and now damaged pride.

“Let me ask you something”, she says in a mean spirited tone, “Why you are voting for that idiot.  What’s wrong with you?”

Now, I am angry with her and I want to kick her in her ass but I don’t. “I feel hopeful with Obama.  I think he’s a great leader,” I tell her with pride and to annoy her.

“Hopeful”, she mockingly repeats.  She looks at me as if that is the stupidest thing she has ever heard. “I hope he doesn’t get reelected.  He gets in again; we are all in trouble, you too.  You’re in trouble.  We are all going to be committed to one bedroom apartments where we will be left to die.”  She speaks with a tone of authority, similar to the tones used by the nuns who educated me years ago.   A tone that would not tolerate any challenge.  But now I was annoyed with her.

“I think you have a few facts that are off a little bit.  Someone has been giving you wrong information,” I tell her smugly.

“No I don’t”.  She says and offers no more explanation than that. She walks away with gait that is slow but very dismissive.  She has heard enough from me.

I have an urge to yell something hurtful and ridiculous, something to make her feel stupid and small,  but decided to quit now because neither of us were going to sway the other.

She wanders in to the building and I think to myself, “I wish I knew this woman’s name, I would send it to that death panel.”