Woman Hollerin': The Democratic Process First Hand

I mentioned firsts in my last post, but I’ve actually worked on both my first and my second elections already. I hope the November election draws more people, because it’s embarrassing to have three or six people pounce on every voter. That’s three if the voter made it to the right polling place and can walk right in and vote and six if the citizen has come to the wrong place and needs help finding the right one. Help for the lost voter is as close as a PalmPilot in the hands of the presiding judge, but all the workers are there because we like to be helpful. We are probably a little overwhelming for the lost voters.

Turnout in the March primary statewide was low – under 10 percent – so I guess we did ok with about 40 voting in person and 40 voting early in the Democratic Party primary from two city precincts. Of course, the Republican judges and clerks were busier.

The runoff for Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and senator compelled far fewer people to visit the polling place at the public library Tuesday. Although the Republicans had a hotly contested race against the incumbent county administrative judge, even the their pollworkers found themselves with a lot of time to stare out the window.

The down time between voters was probably the best opportunity for dialogue between the mainstream parties that I’ve witnessed since I moved to Guadalupe County. Five or six of us, half working for the Republicans and half for the Democrats, are cooped up in a room together from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. Everyone believes that everyone else cares about the democratic process, or we wouldn’t be getting up way too early and sitting here for way too long. It would be hard to write the other guys off as uncaring fools or to avoid looking them in the eye, like people did to us when we worked at the Democratic Party booth at the county fair.

Here at the polls we talked. We disagreed. We shared cookies from Amy’s and Cathy’s. We learned from each other. We laughed. We even agreed that it might happen that all of us were working there at the public library for the Republicans and the Democrats, but we could end up voting for Kinky Friedman. We laughed again … really loud.

All of us shut up when the voters trickled in, so we wouldn’t influence their decisions. After a couple of awkward moments at our table during the primary, we made sure to mention that we were accepting ballots in the Democratic primary. We had a lovely, large sign that the county election office asked us to remove from the street. It said, “Texas Democrats Vote here,” and people were calling the office asking where the Republicans were supposed to vote. Even when we put our sign up at the end of our table, Republicans still weren’t always sure where to go.

For the run-off last week we put the “Vote here” sign out with the arrow pointing into the street rather than at the library. That would have confused people, I imagine, but a civic-minded voter asked if he could turn it around for us. So, the 95 percent of registered voters who chose not to participate in the run-off can’t claim misdirection as their excuse. The sign was pointing at the polling place for almost the entire day.

We pollworkers spent a lot of our down time brainstorming ways to get out the vote. I’ve heard several great ideas. Of course, one was to make the campaigns, and government itself, seem relevant to the voters. In lieu of that, one of my friends thinks people should have voting parties that reward voters with good food for making the effort to get to the polls. My precinct captain has a resolution going to the state convention to institute a Federal income tax credit for voters. That sounds really good today (as long as doesn’t take a lot more paperwork!).

The Kinky Petition at ChiroJava, already had more than 150 signatures when I asked on Thursday, but Friedman needs 45,540 by May 11 to get on the ballot. If you’re one of the registered voters who didn’t vote in the primary, you can still do your civic duty by signing the petition. Who would have thought that not voting might be more virtuous than voting? I’m sure that’s what you all had in mind when you made the decision not to vote in March.

Right?