Count On Your Vote Not Counting (part 2)

Count On Your Vote Not Counting (part 2)
18th
December

Posted by Tom Senkus on Dec 18, 2008 in

The room was fluorescent white and and industrial strength grey. Two people stood at opposite sides of a ballot machine that was loaded by the Technician. The Helper seemed to do nothing but write in red pencil and carry on hopelessly awkward conversation. Lining the wall were nearly identical boxes of votes--your votes--stacked like Democratic Ammunition on catering carts. Conversation was underscored

by a constant swip, swip, swip--"ISA and B! Not C, Buh-eee!" No one looked happy.

A man named Bob was designated as my trainer to become a "Helper" (keep fucking hamburger jokes to yourself). He described my job in a shorter description than manual had--we simply had to notate any invalid ballots using a red pencil with symbols that meant "Overvote" (two or more candidates were selected per position), "Found In Precinct XXXX" (wrong area), and other variations. They were then placed in a separate envelope to be evaluated by an ominous red door labeled "Sage Room". Besides grabbing boxes with a precinct number and slapping a colored sticker to indicate who had counted the votes, the $11.83/hr was within tasting range!

That was a burrito, chips, salsa, and a Negro Modelo an hour!

Within 10 minutes, the length of time it was necessary to learn the job plus kinks, I was completely bored. "That's it?" I asked.

"That's it," Bob replied

A half-hour later, Bob was sent to his fifteen-minute break and was relieved by my new trainer named Harold.

Harold wore black plastic pants and a sweat shirt that was so devoid of meaning that the writing on the front had faded from sheer banality. To describe him is to take the aforementioned Hans and cross him with Richard Pryor's Mudbone character, gently topped off with a dyed black-pencil mustache. After a brief exchange, I observed Harold. Harold was an idiot. I imagined his life, set in the poorer districts of the city--his spawn looking at their father with contempt, he rattling off advice that they would only adhere on a surface level--and even that, they were unsure of the reasoning behind.

Harold, I repeat, was an idiot. His command of the red pencil after receiving an order from the Tech was lousy. "Overvote," said a pregnant girl with a small head/big body complex from in-breeding. "Huh, wha' choo say," he said. She patiently repeated her answer, stifling her anger like a lit cigar, simultaneously loading more ballots to make his life more miserable. "Overvote--write 'OV' on it," she said, feeling the eyes of the observers on her.

That's right. I've neglected to tell ya'll about the observers. Outside of the room They stood about 10 feet away, with their yellow lanyards and laminated badges, through a plate-glass window like expectant fathers waiting for their child. They wore "Visitor" badges. One woman had a large pile of yellow hair and elaborate make-up. She came to see and be seen. Other observers had binoculars around their necks that they would periodically scope out our work. They were not the beautiful people. In fact, no one but myself would even be remotely deemed attractive. The teeming underclass, the Morlocks, the castdown, the ugly.

Harold wrote 'OV' hastily (under my eye as well), and put it in the counted ballot pile. Before he could catch his own mistake, another set of ballots came out and more instructions: "ISA and B," said the misshapen girl, realizing that Harold couldn't even be bothered to look beyond his thick glasses and his own ignorance to see a cheat-sheet a foot from where he was positioned. He wrote it down and started to give me directions.

"Now, you see, you write the precinct numbah he-ah," pointing to the top of the page while writing, "and you write, ISAB, uh, here."

"Got it," I replied. I looked around when there was a brief lull that didnt' require Harold to show me anything. At the pace of Harold and Misshapen Girl, as well as the other 5 stations, I had noticed that it would take a round-the-clock effort just to eliminate those boxes. And not even that, more ballots were being wheeled in by vicious Russian young men by the hour! It was an absurd scene, with all the antiquated machines creating a loud din of "swip, swip, swip, swip, swi---'OVERVOTE'," and minor conversational banter.

When an hour of "training" was up, I was assigned to a thin, sun-tanned man named Bud. I was a Helper. We worked swiftly and all of the job training was so ridiculous to the actual effort that I sank into a trance state. We worked for hours, exchanging conversation about banalities. I even lied about going to college--"What do you major in?" Bud asked. "Ummm, English with a minor in journalism." Bud sucked on the piece of information like a licorice losenge. That sparked more conversation about literature--I read, he simply hasn't had the time. Bud alluded to his homosexuality by dropping words like "significant other" and "partner", and then showing me a picture of his dog Ruby. Cute dog--

But, oh no! I had accidentally shuffled an OV in with all the good ballots! Before I could dig it out, more votes came my way to organize into a box and another command!!! "ISA and B," cooed Bud. Bud hadn't noticed, but I had. Did any of the observers see? None, except for the Huge Hair Lady and she was staring off into the distance...

So, there went one vote. Oops.

And this happened many times. Double Oops.

Funny enough, many voters who'd waited in the November cold to cast their ballot into the Democra Sea actually were write-in's. Obama votes were in abundance, but smaller districts had the trouble of not electing "Micky Mouse {sic}", "Notorious BIG", or the ever-ubiquitous "Tupac". It was laughable to see that a Water and Soil Commissioner might be beat out by a dead pop-culture figure.