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spidraI have voted in every election since I became eligible to vote. EVERY election. No matter whether it was just one initiative on the ballot, I dutifully showed up to my polling place and let 'em have a piece of my mind. Or ballot, anyway. I've never voted absentee before because I enjoy the experience of going to my local polling place. And I think it's important for people (especially little kids) to see that - people going to cast their votes.
In July, it became apparent to me that my landlord was going to act in illegal ways in order to make my life difficult and encourage me to terminate my tenancy. Not having the fortitude to duke it out in court and deal with the high levels of stress his actions would encourage, I started looking for another place to live. One place I was going to move fell through at the last minute so I had to make a snap decision about where to live. In August, I moved to Richmond. That didn't work out well for me and I knew I would have to move again.
Meanwhile, the election was coming up. I was still registered at my old address. Then my parents offered to help me come up with a downpayment on a house. So we looked and looked. It was very difficult to find anything cheap enough so that I could manage the monthly payment and upkeep all by myself on my peanut salary. I knew I had to get out of my living situation but I didn't know whether I would be renting an house and founding a household or whether I would be buying a house. Meanwhile the days left to register to vote were ticking away.
Then we found a place in Berkeley that it looked like we could make work for me (with enough renters). We made an offer, it was in escrow, but could I register there? I made enquiries but it seemed sketchy so I didn't. I could register at work and at least I'd be registered in the same city but now that I was going to be a homeowner I wanted more than ever to be able to vote for my local city councilperson. I looked into absentee voting. But when I looked at the form, it required you to sign an affidavit that you lived there. Under penalty of perjury. Now, I take that stuff really seriously. So I didn't register to vote absentee.
I figured I was going to have to turn up at my old polling place and vote in person even though Alameda County had those may-they-be-damned Diebold electronic voting machines. I called the Registrar of Voters to confirm that I was registered at my old address. I was. I was toying with the idea of voting absentee in person (which you could do by going to the Registrar of Voters office) but my car has been having trouble and I'm moving this Saturday and I just couldn't get it together to make a trip to downtown Oakland during business hours.
I got up early so that I could vote before work. There was quite a line. I saw my name on the precinct list posted on the door (and was horrified to see that the Registrar posts your phone number up there for the entire world to see). So far so good. I requested a paper ballot. That's when I found out that the paper ballots were counted as "Provisional". I know about provisional ballots. Most of them aren't counted. Nowhere in the literature I had read about requesting a paper ballot did they say that the ballot would be counted provisionally. I wavered. I asked the young poll worker (so young I wasn't even sure she was of age to vote) how many people had requested paper ballots. She and another voter voting on paper said quite a few had. So I hoped that this election would be different. Then the poll worker asked if I had a pen. You needed pen to fill out the paper ballot (I had expected punch ballots). This was also something that was not well-advertised. Luckily, I had a pen. A number of other voters who wanted to vote on paper didn't, though, and had to wait until someone with a pen was finished.
I sat down and filled the ballot out. Then I noticed the provisional envelope into which I was to stuff it. Although it didn't have the warning about perjury on it, it did have some stuff you had to fill out about address, phone, etc. I wavered about whether I should fill it out with my old address (consistent with the precinct) or my new address (now that I' own the house). The form asked for address and your old address but it was clear that the old address part was to be filled out only if that was the reason your vote was provisional. Though I knew no one would likely catch it if I just wrote my old address (in the precinct) down, the annoyingly honest side of me worried about what would happen if anyone checked that out. So I wrote the address of the house I've just bought in the current address bit and the address of my old rental house in the old address bit.
The envelope also had a section to be filled out by the precinct officer. When I finished voting, I asked the young poll worker who I was supposed to turn my ballot in to. She gestured towards the ballot box and said I was to stuff it in there. I pointed out that there was a section of the envelope to be filled out by the precinct officer (this section included checking off the reason why a provisional paper ballot was requested). She said that that part would be filled out later.
Now, I really should have stopped and talked to the head poll worker. I'm so goddamned tractable. I'm so used to taking the words of anyone in authority. Even though the "authority" in this case was a young girl who was clearly working the poll for the first time. (I was a poll worker in the 1996 election. I went to orientation, took notes and everything. It was still really confusing and that should have made me realize even more that this young girl probably didn't know exactly what she was talking about.) I should have asked the head poll worker and have been sure of exactly what I was doing. But I didn't. I pushed the envelope into the ballot box.
I almost immediately had regrets. The stub had a phone number you could call 28 days after the election to determine whether your provisional vote had been counted. I wondered whether my change of address was going to make them not count my vote. I wondered whether it was going to be like previous elections and that tons of people's votes wouldn't be counted just because they were considered "provisional".
Here were my choices this election:
Re-register immediately after I moved in August and be registered in Richmond, a city I had no intention of living in come November.
Re-register with my work address and be able to vote in Berkeley but unable to vote in the election for city council for the district I would now be owning a house and paying property taxes in.
Fill out an absentee ballot and perjure myself by signing an affidavit that I still lived at the address I used to live at.
Travel to downtown Oakland during business hours (and ask time off work to do this) to request a paper ballot at the Registrar of Voters and possibly be confronted with the perjury thing again as well as it being a "provisional" paper ballot.
Show up at my old polling place and vote on a crooked electronic voting machine.
Show up at my old polling place and vote provisional paper ballot.
These were not good choices. I'm an American citizen. I'm honest. I've always been involved in the voting process. And just because I happened to be moving during this time, I was robbed of my best least-prone-to-fraud choice for voting this election - voting absentee.
It wasn't all bad, though. I was extremely gratified to see people lined up out the door to vote in one of Berkeley's poorest precincts. People came to vote with their friends. A mother brought her young daughter so she could witness it. It was a social affair. An older African-American man behind me in line greeted people warmly, striking up conversation. He told me about overhearing some young kids asking each other what the line was about (our polling place is at a school). One kid said "I think they're standing in line for food." Another kid replied "No, they're standing in line to vote for KERRY!" Heh.
In July, it became apparent to me that my landlord was going to act in illegal ways in order to make my life difficult and encourage me to terminate my tenancy. Not having the fortitude to duke it out in court and deal with the high levels of stress his actions would encourage, I started looking for another place to live. One place I was going to move fell through at the last minute so I had to make a snap decision about where to live. In August, I moved to Richmond. That didn't work out well for me and I knew I would have to move again.
Meanwhile, the election was coming up. I was still registered at my old address. Then my parents offered to help me come up with a downpayment on a house. So we looked and looked. It was very difficult to find anything cheap enough so that I could manage the monthly payment and upkeep all by myself on my peanut salary. I knew I had to get out of my living situation but I didn't know whether I would be renting an house and founding a household or whether I would be buying a house. Meanwhile the days left to register to vote were ticking away.
Then we found a place in Berkeley that it looked like we could make work for me (with enough renters). We made an offer, it was in escrow, but could I register there? I made enquiries but it seemed sketchy so I didn't. I could register at work and at least I'd be registered in the same city but now that I was going to be a homeowner I wanted more than ever to be able to vote for my local city councilperson. I looked into absentee voting. But when I looked at the form, it required you to sign an affidavit that you lived there. Under penalty of perjury. Now, I take that stuff really seriously. So I didn't register to vote absentee.
I figured I was going to have to turn up at my old polling place and vote in person even though Alameda County had those may-they-be-damned Diebold electronic voting machines. I called the Registrar of Voters to confirm that I was registered at my old address. I was. I was toying with the idea of voting absentee in person (which you could do by going to the Registrar of Voters office) but my car has been having trouble and I'm moving this Saturday and I just couldn't get it together to make a trip to downtown Oakland during business hours.
I got up early so that I could vote before work. There was quite a line. I saw my name on the precinct list posted on the door (and was horrified to see that the Registrar posts your phone number up there for the entire world to see). So far so good. I requested a paper ballot. That's when I found out that the paper ballots were counted as "Provisional". I know about provisional ballots. Most of them aren't counted. Nowhere in the literature I had read about requesting a paper ballot did they say that the ballot would be counted provisionally. I wavered. I asked the young poll worker (so young I wasn't even sure she was of age to vote) how many people had requested paper ballots. She and another voter voting on paper said quite a few had. So I hoped that this election would be different. Then the poll worker asked if I had a pen. You needed pen to fill out the paper ballot (I had expected punch ballots). This was also something that was not well-advertised. Luckily, I had a pen. A number of other voters who wanted to vote on paper didn't, though, and had to wait until someone with a pen was finished.
I sat down and filled the ballot out. Then I noticed the provisional envelope into which I was to stuff it. Although it didn't have the warning about perjury on it, it did have some stuff you had to fill out about address, phone, etc. I wavered about whether I should fill it out with my old address (consistent with the precinct) or my new address (now that I' own the house). The form asked for address and your old address but it was clear that the old address part was to be filled out only if that was the reason your vote was provisional. Though I knew no one would likely catch it if I just wrote my old address (in the precinct) down, the annoyingly honest side of me worried about what would happen if anyone checked that out. So I wrote the address of the house I've just bought in the current address bit and the address of my old rental house in the old address bit.
The envelope also had a section to be filled out by the precinct officer. When I finished voting, I asked the young poll worker who I was supposed to turn my ballot in to. She gestured towards the ballot box and said I was to stuff it in there. I pointed out that there was a section of the envelope to be filled out by the precinct officer (this section included checking off the reason why a provisional paper ballot was requested). She said that that part would be filled out later.
Now, I really should have stopped and talked to the head poll worker. I'm so goddamned tractable. I'm so used to taking the words of anyone in authority. Even though the "authority" in this case was a young girl who was clearly working the poll for the first time. (I was a poll worker in the 1996 election. I went to orientation, took notes and everything. It was still really confusing and that should have made me realize even more that this young girl probably didn't know exactly what she was talking about.) I should have asked the head poll worker and have been sure of exactly what I was doing. But I didn't. I pushed the envelope into the ballot box.
I almost immediately had regrets. The stub had a phone number you could call 28 days after the election to determine whether your provisional vote had been counted. I wondered whether my change of address was going to make them not count my vote. I wondered whether it was going to be like previous elections and that tons of people's votes wouldn't be counted just because they were considered "provisional".
Here were my choices this election:
Re-register immediately after I moved in August and be registered in Richmond, a city I had no intention of living in come November.
Re-register with my work address and be able to vote in Berkeley but unable to vote in the election for city council for the district I would now be owning a house and paying property taxes in.
Fill out an absentee ballot and perjure myself by signing an affidavit that I still lived at the address I used to live at.
Travel to downtown Oakland during business hours (and ask time off work to do this) to request a paper ballot at the Registrar of Voters and possibly be confronted with the perjury thing again as well as it being a "provisional" paper ballot.
Show up at my old polling place and vote on a crooked electronic voting machine.
Show up at my old polling place and vote provisional paper ballot.
These were not good choices. I'm an American citizen. I'm honest. I've always been involved in the voting process. And just because I happened to be moving during this time, I was robbed of my best least-prone-to-fraud choice for voting this election - voting absentee.
It wasn't all bad, though. I was extremely gratified to see people lined up out the door to vote in one of Berkeley's poorest precincts. People came to vote with their friends. A mother brought her young daughter so she could witness it. It was a social affair. An older African-American man behind me in line greeted people warmly, striking up conversation. He told me about overhearing some young kids asking each other what the line was about (our polling place is at a school). One kid said "I think they're standing in line for food." Another kid replied "No, they're standing in line to vote for KERRY!" Heh.
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Provisional ... bah, humbug ...
Date: 2004-11-04 05:19 pm (UTC)Yeah, you were in a confusing situation, and clueless poll workers don't help. Even though I made it clear that I was voting paper because I didn't trust the Diebold machine, I was told that I had to fill out all of the front of the provisional envelope, including new and old address, or it wouldn't be counted. So, I put my 2-years-defunct San Mateo addy.
I don't know if the poll workers are supposed to make any markings on the ballot. It think it goes to the county registrar's office to determine if it should be counted ... but I haven't looked this up.
Oh, and I do plan on calling in 26-27 days to find out ... and my next call will be to EFF (who recommended that people in decertified counties request paper ballots at the polls) if the results aren't happiness making.
Re: Provisional ... bah, humbug ...
Date: 2004-11-10 12:35 am (UTC)The EFF is on my list of non-profits I need to donate to in this interregnum.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-10 12:01 am (UTC)