My plan all day while serving voters at my local poll site was to end the day at the victory party for the candidates I had petitioned for. There was no victory for them according to the scanner tapes at my site. I walked all the way over to the bar for their party, wondering if they knew their results.
I was a bit frazzled, too, not only because I woke up at 3:30 a.m. to be able to walk my dog and still get ready to be at the poll site at 5 a.m., but also because a scanner repair woman had just scolded me for taking away someone’s right to vote.
The voter’s ballot got stuck in the scanner. She came back to me. I voided her ballot and gave her a new ballot. I asked the technician if the voter was supposed to wait from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. for her crumpled ballot to come out of the scanner. The technician was insistent, but she had audience of other poll workers, so I moved on to signing in other voters and carrying on with the election.
On the technician’s way out of the site, she smiled and said something about how we were cool. Um, no, ma’am. You accused me of taking away someone’s right to vote 17 hours into my day after I’ve watched everyone else here deny affidavit ballots to anyone who legally should have been offered one.
Tossing back a drink and talking about the election sounded like a good idea. Right until I got to the party.
The bar looked a thousand times brighter than I had imagined. And the group way too small. There’s no way I could slide in and go unnoticed. In my head, this would be super casual.
I walked from corner to corner, overthinking my options. In the end, I decided to head home, walk my dog, and go to bed.
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