Election Day, June 2014

Tuesday, I awoke at my usual time, about 4:30 am, and realized that I should not be going back to sleep, for I was due at the polling station at 5:45 in order to set up the touchscreen voting machine and to meet the other workers at my precinct.  The Precinct Inspector was a pleasant Vietnamese woman named Grace, the Assistant Precinct Inspector was a woman whose name escaped my mind the moment after she introduced herself to me, who was also a Vietnamese immigrant; there were two men, one who was about my age or a little older, who had a son in high school, and a retired man who very proudly informed me that he had a son who attended Columbia University for undergraduate and either medical school or law school.

This older man's name was Augusto (or something like that), and he exhibited all the pride that comes from a lack of self-knowledge, especially as one ages and loses mental capacities that once may have been quite superior (though being a doctor from South America would not have been a high recommendation to me for his practice).  It was sad and frustrating at the same.  He had taken it upon himself to assume the job of looking up voters' addresses and names in the street index, which was arranged alphabetically by street name, then in numerical order of the address.  Seemed quite simple enough to me, and I figured that it was not his eyesight that limited his ability to look up names and addresses quickly, but rather the molasses flow of his mind.

As the day waxed, few voters turned up with long draughts between.  We sat and most of us chatted with one another, about family, mostly.  I learned how Grace's family had slowly immigrated, each entering group gaining citizenship and, in turn, sponsoring additional family members to join them. I think I was in the same entering generation of immigrants as her niece, who is my age. Grace told me how, as immigrants, her generation, as parents, had focused their energy on teaching their children English, and not their native tongue, thus producing a generation (mine) that feels the loss of the intergenerational connection that language provides in families of immigrants.

When I asked if Augusto would allow Tim, who sat next to him, to take the job of looking up street addresses, his reaction was defensive and rather pitiful in its expression of pride. He said that if I wanted him to leave and go home, he could do that (I was sooo tempted!). He refused to take into consideration the fact that voters were waiting, thankfully patiently, for him to look up their addresses after having it reiterated for him a number of times not less than two. At the end of the evening, he was in a hurry to leave, and would not lend a hand in counting and totaling the ballots. I turned my attention to the touchscreen voting machine and limited it to the task of having the machine tabulate the number of votes cast (zero) and the respective number of votes each candidate received (zero, of course). Augusto left before the ballots were all counted. The last thing he did do was to go outside and pick up the yellow “Vote Here” signs from the street entrance to the building. After he left, Tim tried to make due with the required signatures on various documents, though without the fifth signature, I'm not sure id the ballots cast at our voting station were actually counted. I don't know enough about the electoral process in California to be able to tell whether voting was a waste of the time of all of those voters in our precinct because of one angry aged man whose pride meant more to him than any social benefit he may have provided by “serving” as a poll worker. In my not-so-humble opinion, he should not receive his stipend (although it's not much, under $100) because he essentially reneged on his duties.

As I left the parking lot of the church where the voting materials drop-off took place, Grace called to me and invited me to have lunch or dinner with her (and the Assistant Precinct Inspector) sometime. Indeed, that would be nice. Might even invite Tim, who was not unpleasant at all, either, to work with.

I told Peter when I saw him later that I hope never to become belligerent in old age. If my faculties begin to wane, I just hope to do it gracefully and not pin my ego on my intellectual prowess, which can only go down. He agreed that that would be a damn shame.