Disenfranchised on Election Day

Most readers of this space are familiar with voting irregularities in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, and many Americans pledged to keep a close eye out for any such irregularities in 2008. To this end, I registered last week to be a poll observer on the web page for the City Clerk on the City of Madison's web page.

After waiting a week and receiving no response, I registered to volunteer again as an observer yesterday (Monday, November 3) for the polling station nearest my home. I received an email confirmation:

Date/Time: 11/04/2008 (2:00 PM - 4:00 PM)
Location: xxx High School
To cancel this registration, click the following link:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/isevents/registration_cancel.cfm

That is the email in its entirety.

I was concerned about this lack of information but figured that things would shake things out in the end. Now I realize that I should have phoned election officials immediately since things did not seem entirely on the level.

I arrived at the polling location at 1:00 to do my civic duty and cast a vote of my own. I also inquired about where I should go to attend the orientation session for observer training. Cue shifty eyes, suspicious looks. The women at the voter check-in station I spoke with appeared uneasy as they said they didn't know what I was talking about. They didn't know who I should talk to, or where I should go. They turned to a woman sitting near them wearing a large yellow button that read OBSERVER.

"You're an observer, right?" the registration woman asked.

A somber nod. "I am an observer," she replied but declined further comment.

I gave a curt nod of my own. I could see I was being railroaded. Ramrodded. Blackballed, blacklisted. Call it what you want. I was being disenfranchised.

That's when I began some informal polling of my own. The results are staggering. Consider Table 1.1 below:

Table 1.1 - Voter to Volunteer Ratio

Clearly the odds were stacked overwhelmingly in favor of the pollsters. As a voter, I was in the clear minority.

But it doesn't end there. Consider Table 1.2:

Table 1.2 - Pollster Activities

The operation was working like a well-oiled machine. As I kept two people busy checking me in, that left over two dozen others at the ready, some watching me very closely. Too closely perhaps. Big Brother is watching?

For all the talk about coming together as a country I could still sense a deep divide in the faces of these people, allegedly from my own community. Table 1.3 shows my perception of how my attempts to help were received:

Table 1.3 - Pollster Attitudes

Perhaps the following two tables are the most damning to the system. Not only were the pollsters primarily female, but analyze these numbers:

Table 1.4 - Poll Worker Age

Table 1.5 - Poll Worker Race/Ethnicity

This election was supposed to be about change, about new beginnings, but now I see the rhetoric was just hot air. As long as the elections are rigged so only retirement-age white women get to volunteer at the polls in overwhelming numbers, nothing is going to change. How many young white men are going to be denied their right to volunteer on election day? How many will be turned away from polling places?

This experience has shaken me to the core and has shredded my last bit of hope in democracy. I'm moving to Canada where everything is perfect.