I’d heard that there were often long lines at polling places in Nashville, but I’d also heard there had been record turn-out in early voting. I was sure the latter would cancel out the former and there would be no "long lines". I was so very, very wrong. This being my first time voting in Tennessee I was anxious to see the differences between my new state and my "home" state of California, sure that Tennessee would be just as good and rewarding an experience. Silly me.
I got up earlier than usual and headed out to the elementary school hoping that I would arrive in that magical time between all the early risers get-there-when-the-polls-open people and the I’m-late-to-work-hurry-this-up! crowd. No such luck. A parking lot filled-to-overflowing with cars disabused me of that fantasy immediately. But perhaps most of the cars belongs to faculty and staff, I thought as I pulled into the marked fire lane behind (and in front) of several other parked cars. One could hope, right?
I grabbed my little passport/money bag currently standing in for my wallet, which had my Voter Card (Tennessee actually has voter cards, how cute is that!! I’ve never seen one before!) and my sample ballet all marked up with my choices and jumped out of the car. It never occurred to me to bring along a book. After all, I wasn’t going in to read, I was going to vote. Besides, the line couldn’t be that long.
I stepped through the doors and saw a line filing out of the gym and down the hall. "Well this doesn’t look too bad," I thought. "they must have the gym full of voting booths, so this should go fast. Maybe I’ll even have time to get a chai from Starbucks on my way into work." Oh, how naive I was.
I cheerily looked at the bulletin boards and read all the posters on the walls, nostalgically remembering the good parts my elementary school days; dreamily thinking back to my favorite teachers, favorite lunch boxes and fun times with friends. I conveniently ignored the nagging memories of years of torture at the hands of school bullies, the relentless lampooning and ridiculing I received from many of my classmates nearly every year as the new kid in yet another school and the fact that I was so incredibly and obliviously weird that I deserved all the mockery I got. That’s the beauty of being an adult standing in a voting line at an elementary school you never attended. You can be nostalgic for a past that never actually existed.
Slowly our line moved forward, as one person after another disappeared through the jaws of the gym doors, swallowed in the bowels of the school. Every once in a while someone came out the opposite door, so I knew there was hope I would not be forever lost in there. Eventually, like Jonah, I’d be spit back out into the halls of Nashville’s little school and allowed to resume my real life.
I got to the door, fully expecting to be met by a long table full of smiling faces, ready to scratch my name off a list and give me my little punch card and send me off to a booth to vote. Instead, I was met by a sight that left me rather confused, and a little frightened.
Straight in front of me was a short table behind which sat two stern-looking women dressed in tight beige suits. To my left was the long table I expected to first encounter, with large, hand-written signs bunching the alphabet into four distinct groups. Each had a line. The longest one, of course, was the one behind the grouping that included my last name. Beyond that was another line. — Is that all Tennesseans do when they vote?? Just stand in line till someone tells them they can go home? — That line started near the middle of the room, went all the way to the wall, made a u-turn, going behind the Table of the Stern Women in front of me, snaked down and behind the Alphabet Table and finally came to an end shortly before the door at the other end of the room from where I now stood; the door I’d seen a few people make their escape from moments earlier. All the way at the back, against the stage, was the goal, and the reason for all this line-forming madness: four voting "booths" — large tri-fold looking things with a person standing in front of the center section of each booth, facing the rest of the room.
I felt like a kid who’d just entered the inside line of the Indiana Jones Ride at Disneyland for the very first time, thinking she was already at the ride only to discover there’s another 45-minutes worth of waiting yet to go. Except I didn’t have all the fun stuff of the Indie-Jones ride to look at. So much for my Starbucks run. And why hadn’t I thought to bring my book? Oh, yeah, because I thought I was coming to this place to vote, not stand in line and read a book.
When the woman on the left side of the Table of Stern Women became free, I started to walk over to her, as the man in front of me was now signing some piece of paper for her partner in sternness. This first, left-side woman took in the whole sight of me in one of those up-and-down glances and firmly shook her head, saying, "you must stay in that line." She then smiled sweetly to the man behind me and said, "yes, you may come up."
What the…?? Was I not wearing the correct apparel for voting day in Tennessee? I wasn’t told there was a dress code. I instinctively looked down at myself. No, I was coordinated; even looked kind of pretty I thought. Okay, green and purple isn’t always the most conventional look, but they were muted colors and didn’t clash or anything. Was it because I’m fat? Or a woman? Is that line only for skinny men? The last person in that line was a heavy-set graying man, so perhaps it was my gender more than my weight. The skinny man from behind me finished his business with my rejecter and she happily waved a thin, pretty woman from behind me forward. Now I was getting irritated. Was this Tennessee’s version of voter screening? Was I wearing some sort of invisible sign that said, "skip me, I’m originally from California!"
Finally the man in front of me finished signing his name and I stepped up to Right-side Stern Woman. She asked me for my voting card, which I’d been holding in my hand. As I handed it to her she sighed a little, saying it was so good to have someone who actually had their card with them, not to mention had it out and ready. Finally! I thought. Finally I’ve done something right this morning. Right-side Stern Woman jerked her head to the left and said, "if you don’t bring your card, you gotta see her instead." Ah, so I was passed over because I had my Voter Registration Card. Note to self: next time don’t bring the dang voter card; you’ll get to the front of the line faster.
I was given a little white piece of paper to sign, which I did. I looked expectantly at Right-Side Stern Woman, who glanced down, and with exasperation creeping back into her voice, scolded, "you have to write your name and address on there too, ma’am." Oh. Okay. But why do you need that when its right here on my voter card, which I so faithfully brought, and so painfully paid for in more wait-time in the Long Line? "It has to be on that paper." I was no longer her favorite voter now, that much was clear. So I quickly wrote my name and address and handed it back to her. But she was too busy putting on lipstick and staring over at her partner’s book.
"Um, excuse me," I interrupted. "Here it is."
She looked up at me with a startled look on her face, as if she wasn’t expecting anyone to be there. "Oh no, dear. You keep that. You can go over there now and stand in that line." She vaguely pointed in the direction of the long Alphabet Table, her mind already back to that foggy, "happy" place it was when I interrupted her lipstick application.
I sighed heavily and walked over to the long table, getting behind four people who were behind me in the initial line, before the "no voter card" line had bumped them up nearer to the front. Every other alpha grouping had no line. Mine was the only one; and it was at least 8 people deep. I watched the other workers at the table as they mindlessly picked their teeth or stared into space, Ben Stein’s voice echoing through my mind, "Bueller… Bueller… "
As I stood there waiting, I quietly cursed my great-great-great-great-great grandparents for only changing the first letter of our last name from "A" to "E", rather than something more exotic, and rare, like "Q" or "Z". I remembered a woman back in California who’d betrayed me and who I still don’t like, and detested her all the more because her married name starts with "Z".
Finally, my turn arrived and I signed my name in the indicated box and moved on to the "final" line. By the time I got there, it really was to the back door. I looked at the clock and it had already taken nearly a half hour to get this far. How long would it take to get the rest of the way around the gym and back to the middle, where I’d finally be allowed to vote? The thought was too depressing to contemplate.
I thought back through the 20 years I voted in California, from my first experience at a polling place out of someone’s two-car garage (don’t laugh; they got 12 curtained voting booths in there. There were tons of people and I only waited about 5 minutes), to the last time — an early morning stop at a bowling alley lobby.
In California the process is so simple, so easy. I’d walk up to my polling place, maybe wait in my particular alphabetical line 5-10 minutes at the very most, show my driver’s license to a person who’d check me off the list and hand me my little punch card. I’d walk into the little booth, punch card and sample ballot in hand, close the curtain, stick my little card in the the proper slot and start poking out chads. Once I was done I’d double check my work, pull my card out, check for "hanging chads" and step out of the booth. I’d hand my little punch card to another pollster person, who would pull off the perforated stub at the end, so I had physical tangible proof of my ballot and its number, and, as I watched, they would drop it in the ballot box, all safe and sound from any tampering. Then they’d hand me my "I voted" sticker and send me on my way with a smile and a wave. It was all so painless, even fun. And they were all so friendly and happy.
Not like here, in this cold gym in a Nashville elementary school, with cranky, stern, disapproving workers and long, long lines. I was trapped, and I knew it. They had my name and my signature. I was crossed off the list of invitees. If my hatred-bordering-on-phobia of long lines got the best of me and I bolted out the door, any door I could find, I would not be allowed back into the line-party once I collected myself. This was it. I either stick it out to the end, or forfeit my right to vote. I finally looked down at the paper Right-side Stern Woman had handed me to write my name and address on and sign, hoping perhaps it was a hall-pass, which held my place in line should I need to escape it for any reason. It wasn’t. The paper’s heading read, "Application to Vote".
Oh, man. Now I knew I was screwed. I thought that’s what I had done when I registered to vote, but it seems in Tennessee, you must not only register, but apply. What if they turned me down, denied my application, said I wasn’t "voter material"? All this waiting would be for nothing! The room began to spin. I started to feel weak and everything dimmed for a moment. I don’t know if it was the application to vote idea, my phobia of long lines finally kicking in or the fact that I hadn’t yet had breakfast, but I suddenly didn’t feel so good.
Slowly, ever so sloooowly, the line moved forward as one by one people got up to the funky-looking, tri-fold voter "booths". All the booths opened away from the line, so that as each voter stood in their booth, their faces, heads and shoulders were clearly visible. As I watched, I got more and more worried that this "new fangled" computerized voting was going to be the death of me; or at least of my voting record. Every person that stepped up to one of those things frowned and squinted their way through their selections. Some faces registered nothing more than a frown, while others seemed awash in confusion; still others went through a symphony of expressions, none of them good. But the ones that worried me the most were those that looked like they were seeing ghosts. Oh, my! The longer I stood there, the more I longed for the comfort of my old punch card. Hanging chad or no, at least I could physically see and touch the voting marks I was making.
After forty-five minutes, yes 45 minutes, of standing in the Snaking Line, I was finally at the front. An austere-looking older gentleman handed me a large, laminated card with colorful instructions on how to operate the new fangled voting machine. It did little to calm my nerves, despite its big pictures and cheerful colors. As I stared at the big letters, I felt like I was reading a foreign language. Suddenly nothing I read made any sense and I was more convinced than ever that my vote would be lost in some cyber black hole especially created to swallow the votes of California-transplants. I continued to stare at the card, transfixed by both its colorfulness and my own fear.
Mr. Austere sudden yelled out, "ONE!" It startled me so badly my feet literally left the floor and I dropped the card. It clattered to the floor, much to the disapproval of Mr. Austere and making much more noise than a laminated card ought, which drew the attention of the rest of the gym. Thankfully I was rescued from the clutches of all the censorious stares by a kindly older gentleman — finally a compassionate face! — who led me over to Booth One and briefly showed me what to do, commending me as we went for bringing my marked up sample ballot with me. "That’ll make it easier and faster," he nodded in encouragement.
Mr. Compassionate stepped away and left me alone with the large California-transplant vote-eating machine. I stared it down for a moment, giving it my best "you won’t beat me" look and hoping as I did that it was convincing enough to keep the machine in line. I was surrounded by plastic. At least I think it was plastic. It looked like plastic. In front of me a large computer touch-screen invited me to begin my voting experience. To my left and right were the "wings" which I suppose were created to give the screens some stability and privacy. They looked as if they could also serve as stands for me to put my sample ballot on. However, the whole ensemble appeared so precarious I was afraid to touch anything other than the screen, for fear of knocking the whole thing to the ground. I quietly got to work pressing the proper boxes for my candidates and amendment votes, squinting and scowling with the rest of my fellow voters.
My fellow voters! Perhaps I’d manage to make the transition from California voter to Tennessee voter after all. I’d survived the Stern Sisters, the Alphabet Line and the longest snakiest line to vote I’d ever encountered. All I had left to do was press confirm and I would be done. I paged through all my votes twice to be sure I hadn’t hit the screen in the wrong place somewhere. Finally, still unconvinced but feeling pressed for time, I pressed confirm and a red light flashed. And everything went away.
Mr. Compassionate came up and said, "you did it! You done?" His voice wasn’t as compassionate as before; more like anticipatory. Yeah, I think I did. I think I am. "Well, good job." There was a pause. Then he added, "You can go now." I was still staring at the blank screen, thinking, it all just… went away…. where did it go? I really wanted something tangible in that moment, something in my hands that confirmed I really had voted, it wasn’t just a dream, and my votes really were going to be counted, could be counted. Somewhere. But Mr. Not-So-Compassionate-Anymore was not-so-gently pushing me toward the door so the next Tennessee Voter could touch the screens of politics.
I wandered in a daze toward the door. No one smiled or cheered or waved as I left. I had to "give" myself an "I Voted" sticker, picking one off the sticker page left carelessly sitting on a chair by the door. I walked out into the drizzling rain, an hour and a half after arriving at that little elementary school, feeling not so much like a fellow voter as I did a cow who’d been chided and poked and pushed through a maze and now stood in a rainy, empty field of hay.
I treated myself to Starbucks after all. When I pulled into the drive-way at the West End Starbucks drive-through I was met with… another line. Like the dutiful, trained cow I now am, I queued up and waited.