So we all know voting is about as useless as donating to public television, but we do it anyway — if not for the collectible tote bag or the “I voted today!” sticker, then because we’re thrilled to do stuff that real adults do.
Maybe that’s just me. But engaging in my 18-plus fantasies this past Tuesday was anything but super and not even half as easy as placing a phony phone call to PBS. On the contrary, my recent voting experience took me across two different cities, two modes of public transportation, three voting centers and a variety of four-letter words.
My first stop was the local polling center in Allston, where I found five tables accompanied by five lines. I got in the first.
“Street?” They asked.
“Harvard Avenue.” Digging, digging, digging.
“Nope, you want the next table over.” Back in line.
Same question again, then: “Address?”
“243.” More digging. Getting warmer. . .
“Apartment?” Are different apartments in the same building really going to be at different tables?
“Eleventy-seven.”
“Favorite color?”
“Taupe.”
“Sub-Saharan African country that has yet to sustain a successful military coup?”
“Cameroon.”
“Oh, you want the next table over.” Back in line. Finally, table three was able to give me this helpful piece of advice: “You can’t vote here.”
“What do you mean I can’t vote here?” I cried. “I’m 18.” Want proof? I’ll buy you some porn!
“What address did you register at?” I don’t know. What school taught you to end a sentence in a preposition? For shame.
It’s amazing that college students manage to vote with the frequency they do. Over the past four years, I’ve had at least five different addresses as I’ve upgraded from a silverfish-infested dorm to a rat-infested apartment to a hipster-infested bungalow. And, while I consider myself pretty extraordinary, I don’t think this is one area in which I’m much different from my peers.
Finally, I took a wild guess and headed to a polling center in Boston, where an hour later I found myself waiting in line again only to find that once again my name wasn’t on this list. Sure, when it’s my turn for jury duty, the government can find me under a rock, but when it comes time to vote, I’ve suddenly managed to pull an Osama. Too bad bin Laden never landed jury duty.
Eventually, I wound up at a third polling center several miles from my current residence. Once again, my name was nowhere to be found.
“Look,” I said, “I registered to vote, and I know one vote makes absolutely no difference, and I know this is just a primary, and I know I can barely tell Hillary’s views from Obama’s anyway, but for some reason I really want to vote.”
At this point I was pulled into a special room, where I stood with a man on a cell phone, who said he was calling some kind of Kafka-esque “voting headquarters.”
As I peered out from my little room, I saw a girl come up to the desk with the same problem as I had. As she was directed to my room, the girl had a brilliant idea.
“Maybe it’s under my old mailing address, and not my actual address?”
Of course! If we throw mailing addresses into the mix, that adds, well, one more address for me to try. From that year I was hiding from the mob.
I snuck out of the love shack and cut to the front of the line.
“Excuse me, can you check to see if I live at P.O. Box 140?”
“Here you are,” the poll worker said. But there’s always a “but.” “But you’re an inactive voter.”
I vote early, but I thought voting often was illegal. She handed me a pile of convoluted forms to fill out, one of which included the following Madlibs:
“Your name appears as an inactive voter at BLANK since BLANK. . . If you have moved within BLANK, please list your old address BLANK. . . I assert my right under G. L. c. 51 § 1. . .”
I’m fairly sure literacy tests were deemed unconstitutional back in the Jim Crow days. Fortunately cheating never was. So after I copied my answers from the smart girl, I was finally handed a ballot.
Then I realized how grossly unprepared I was to be voting: “Vote for not more than 35,” instructed the ballot. I consider myself to be politically well informed. I probably know enough to vote for 17, maybe 18 ward committee members, but 35? Come on.
Fortunately, there were exactly 35 candidates, so I was able to vote for them all. That made me very happy. It was either that or the fumes from the permanent marker after filling in nearly 40 boxes. Or perhaps it was fatigue from spending three hours trekking all over Boston. Maybe, just maybe, it was the happiness of participating in the democratic process.
In any case, I hope my vote for “Ninguna Preferencia” sends a strong signal to those fat cats in Washington: The Hispanic vote must be heard!
Justin Hook, a junior in the College of Communication and College of Arts and Science, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at jbhook@bu.edu.
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