I took the oath and put on my “Election Judge” sticker for the third time last week. ‘Twas quite a departure from a year ago: as opposed to the nearly 2,100 voters passing through my precinct then, we had merely 85 (including five absentee ballots!) yesterday. The only offices on the ballot were city council and school board, but still…a disappointing turn-out.
Sitting at the polling place for 141/2 hours did, however, give me an opportunity to converse quite a bit with my fellow election judges. What an eye-opener! I found out many things:
- Health care is just fine in the U.S. – if you can afford it – so we should stop trying to make it so “socialist.” Especially because there was this one person from Poland who said that their universal health care was OK most of the time, but he knew a woman who died from breast cancer because she had to wait a month for a mammogram.
- ACORN has been changing elections with their wicked ways.
- The “Big Bang” theory is ridiculous. God created the Universe.
- If you fill a write-in vote with a nonexistent candidate then your entire ballot should be discarded.
- The Internet is funded entirely by pornography.
- The United States is a Christian nation, blessed specifically by God in the Bible.
- People in the U.S. don’t care about life any more because of the millions and millions of babies we kill every year with abortions.
Needless to say, I live in a very Conservative, Catholic, mostly-Right RepublicanT city. Savage, MN, if you must know. Not many Democratic candidates get votes here; even Barack only got 41% vs. McCain’s 57% last year. I should be inured to it. But the hopeless romantic in me keeps expecting people to wise up.
Now granted, I was by far the youngest election judge; let’s just say that MTV started the year I graduated high school. We had one judge who was perhaps in her mid-50s – and was the only other Democrat in the room – one who just retired, and the other three were age 79 or older. But the old adage about age bringing wisdom certainly didn’t seem to apply.
Although we also found several pleasant, non-political things to talk about throughout the day, it seemed – to this Progressive – that often their goal was to affirm the wackiest of the wacky right-wing memes in order to cause me maximum irritation. If so, they succeeded, but I kept my turmoil internal. For the most part.
Recognizing the futility of trying to combat a (long) lifetime of religious and closet-racist dogma, I silently gritted my teeth and went to my happy place whilst the senior simpletons spluttered senselessly. Only once did I emerge from my self-imposed conversational exile, and that was when the rabble started bemoaning how the minions of ACORN had destroyed the validity of our elections. After I had set the record straight – no conspiracy, a few bad eggs, ACORN itself reported the wrongdoing, evildoers apprehended, no fraudulent votes ever cast, procedures changed, etc., etc. – there was a quiet response of, “Oh, really?” and the subject was dropped. One tiny bit of recompense for my suffering.
It still stuns me when I come face to face with this, this…willful ignorance. I don’t know everything, nor do I play an actor who does on TV. But I do endeavor to read a bit, listen a bit, stay open-minded, explore the issues, and – call it naive – expect that people act in the best interests of others. Crazy, right?