vote baby vote

Music: Lehrer News Hour

Today I spent four hours training to help others vote. Tomorrow I will be the guy who looks you up in a database and makes sure that you have a valid ID to vote. I will be the guy who does this for 1200-2000 mostly mid-aged to elderly people at a retirement center in northwest Austin.

Now, understand that if you live in Texas a valid ID can be anything short of a note from your mother written in crayon; no photo ID is required here, and it was stressed that an expired concealed weapon permit is, in fact, valid ID.

If you are not in the database (which is culled mostly from tax records), and you still insist on voting, you can do so via "provisional vote." The paper work for doing a provisional vote takes about a half hour; in most cases, your provisional vote will not count. The very idea that such an option exists, in my humble opinion, is awesome.

Training today began with a power-point blitz by a woman who reminded me of Leslie Hall: she had a long hair, a poof at the top, and she had glued two sparkle-gems at the corner of each of her eyes. When she blinked, it sparkled like Christmas (she wore a red shirt and green pants, so, the comparison was overdetermined). When I entered the training room she demanded that I take my coffee outside (which I did, sheepishly). At first I thought she was going to treat us all like idiots. She turned out to be hilarious and, by the end of her talk, I thought about how much I would like her as a neighbor (what endeared me was a joke she made about the "ladies purse" as the black hole of postmodernity; drop something in it and it goes to another dimension). I also felt like an idiot after her presentation: along with two others, I was "new." The rest of the folks at training today were repeat volunteers. They were also in their 70s.

Regardless, at the end of the fourth hour I think I had a general idea of what I'm supposed to do: don't fuck up. Fucking up can throw an entire election, and we were warned "poll watchers" are predicted to be high this year because the races are so high-stakes. There are a myriad of ways that I can fuck up, and they all have to do with the 2002 hanging-chad recount.

PEOPLE, IF YOU KNEW HOW COMPLICATED THIS STUFF WAS YOU'D TIP YOUR POLL WORKERS. I'm serious: the rules, regulations, and policies that we have to follow for voting are absolutely insane. The paperwork is never-ending; the "worst-case-scenario scripts" are never ending. I have a new respect for the poll workers. They are truly gracious souls. They may be in their 70s, but they are amazing.

I just took a pill to sleep, as I have to awake at 4:30 a.m. The polls open at 7:00 a.m., and close at 7:00 p.m. (voting continues, however, until the line ends as it existed at 7:00 p.m.). I am not used to 14 hour days, and I just know I'm going to be super-pooped at the end of election day. But I'm excited to be a part of the process, even though I'm about as cynical as they come.

Voting is a good thing. A very, very good thing. Hence the Deee-Lite reference: