My Adventures in Voting

[kleenexwoman]

I registered to vote around the beginning of October, a few days before the Michigan deadline. I had been putting off mailing the actual registration form because I hate mailing shit, which was a terrible idea. So when I saw a bunch of kids standing around on the quad, registering people, I took the chance to be lazy.

"Hey!" I said. "What's up, fellow Americans?"

"You voting for McCain?" asked the dude with the clipboard.

"Obama!" I said proudly.

The dude holding the clipboard exchanged a funny look with the girl next to him. "That's okay," he said, "we'll register you anyway."

So I happily filled out my information (registered in Mt. Pleasant, thinking it would be easier to do so) and gave it to them, having departed with a little "10/6/08" button (the deadline for registration), thinking that they would turn in the forms like they said they would.

Today, I went to my Non-Western Literature prof's office to tell her that I might not be in her class that day. "I gotta vote," I said, "and it might take a while, and and and..."

"You're excused!" she said. "Go vote!"

"Awesome," I said, and I went to the U.C. for a pre-voting lunch of tacos. After having satiated my hunger, I went outside and noticed a car festooned with Obama stickers and a "FREE RIDES FOR VOTERS!" sign. "Yo," I said, "is there room?"

The guy driving helped my find my precinct, which was a little elementary school three blocks from campus. He waved when he dropped me off. "Happy voting!" he said, and I strolled into the school with that wish in my heart. I would be happy to vote.

The line was divided into two: A-L (very long) and M-Z (very short). Everyone in it was approximately college-aged. Being a W, I got hustled right to the check-in table. The check-in lady paged through the W's three times before she admitted that she could not find my name.

"Maybe it was Weisserman with a U?" she asked hopefully.

Eventually, I got moved over to a side table, where a professional and harried-looking lady called the county clerk's office. "She said she definitely registered," she said. "You're sure? Mmm-hmm?" She covered the phone with her hand. "Where did you register, hon?"

"There were some people on the quad handing out forms," I said. "I just..."

"Oh," she said, "the McCain people?" She frowned. "We've been getting a lot of that today." Ten minutes passed. They checked databases. They checked the actual forms people had brought in. Finally, she closed the phone. "I'm sorry, hon," she said. "We can't find it."

I cried. Seriously, I cried. I walked out of the elementary school and sat on a bench and sniffled like a baby who's just had the most delicious American-made candy in the world stolen from it. "I feel disenfranchised!" I howled. "I have been tricked! My voice will not be heard!" I'm pretty sure it was heard, because people were giving me weird looks, but I cried anyway.

Finally, the Obamamobile pulled up in front of the school, and I got in and explained the situation to the driver. "We've got to get this put right," he said firmly. "I'm taking you back to the U.C.; Chad will know what to do." Heh heh. Chad.

Chad was the Students for Obama manager on duty. The group had set up temporary headquarters in the Fireside Room of the U.C., where they were busy talking confused voters through the voting process. I explained the situation.

"You're probably still registered in your hometown if you registered last election," he said. "Where is that? Can you get a ride back?" It was 2 PM. Home was 2 hours away. I ran to check the ride board, but nobody had posted any suggestion of a ride at 2 PM on Election Tuesday.

"Okay," he said, "here's what you can do. Go back to the polling place, and ask for a provisional ballot."

"Wha?" I asked intelligently.

"It's also called a 'contested ballot,'" added a girl who'd been clicking away on her laptop on the other side of the room. "It's for people whose registration may have been lost or called into question. They're kind of like emergency measures--if it's a close race, they pull them out and go through and see which ones are valid."

I figured that was better than nothing, and ran to give it another try.

"Going back for seconds?" chirped the Obamamobile driver.

"Provisional ballot!" I said. "I can do it!"

"Great! That's the spirit." We passed an ICTC bus, which had "FREE RIDES FOR VOTERS!" signs in the window. "You know," he added, "if they don't let you fill one in, we do have lawyers. Lots of lawyers. Very good ones."

"Uh," I said, "awesome."

The harried lady looked surprised to see me. "Oh, hon. I could tell it just about broke your heart that you couldn't vote, and I'm so sorry, but we already checked..."

"Provisional ballot?" I asked.

"Oh, sure. You know, we haven't done a lot of those today--most people just leave." She stood over me and explained the process. "You're sure you turned in a registration? And you aren't registered in another precinct in the town?" I nodded. "And do you have any I.D. that shows your address as being in Mt. Pleasant?"

The only thing I had with my address on it was my driver's license, which still had my mom's old address on it--she'd moved, and I hadn't gotten the replacement license in the mail yet. "I could go back to my apartment and find some mail addressed to me," I offered.

"No, that's okay." She checked some boxes on the form, and then gave me a ballot. "Fill this out and put in in a privacy sleeve, then give it back to me. You can't put it through the tabulator." She pointed to some boxes on the side of the room that were making cheerful beeps as ballots slid through their slitted maws. "This probably won't be counted," she said, "not unless we find your registration or the county clerk decides it's legit."

"But there's a chance, right?" I asked.

"A chance," she said. "Do you still want to go through with it?"

"Of course," I said, and went to fill it out.

I voted for Obama, of course, and filling out the little arrow felt fantastic. I voted almost straight Democrat for the state representatives and other positions, except for a few Greens--I'd been up late last night looking up candidates on the Michigan League of Women Voter's site, and was pretty confident in my choices. I definitely did not vote for Dave Camp. I didn't vote for the local positions because I didn't know the candidates, and I wasn't going to be in Mt. Pleasant much longer anyway. [ETA: I also voted yes on 1 and 2, propositions to legalize medical marijuana and allow more stem cell research in Michigan.]

It didn't take very long, and I put it in the privacy sleeve and gave it back to her. She told me to fold it into an envelope while she looked away, and then she gave me a little "You've voted!" form with her information on it. "If it's accepted," she said, "it will be counted within six days, and you'll get a voter registration card in the mail within thirty."

I nodded. "And you said the county clerk might actually accept it?"

"I am the county clerk," she said. "And yes, we review all the forms." She put the sealed envelope into a larger one and smiled at me. "I just want to say, I appreciate your dedication to doing this."

"Heh," I said. "Thanks. Um, can I have a sticker?"

She gave me a sticker, and I walked out of the school much happier than I'd been. I decided to walk back to campus. It was a really, really nice day.