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Election Day

Paul Lamb

    An easy day, a boring day. An off-year, strictly local election, so no one expected throngs of voters at the door. Nothing frenzied like in the general election. There would likely be a lot of downtime, and the volunteers had been encouraged to maybe bring a book.
    And mostly it was that way. A handful of people were waiting when the polls opened at 7:00, eager to do their civic duty before heading to work. First voters of the day, met by volunteers equally eager to do what they’d trained for. They were effortlessly cycled through the stations on their way to the exit where they’d pick up their “I Voted” sticker. (“You’re not fully dressed today without one,” Will would say when he worked that station.) And with that good start, everyone expected the rest of the day to go as smoothly.
    Sure, there was downtime when no one was waiting to be checked in, no one remained cycling through the stations. When the empty gym felt as enormous as the hours before them and maybe someone would think to bring music to listen to next time. It was in these moments that Shelly would scroll through her phone and Jackie would do her yoga and Will would look wistfully at the basketball hoops, supposing that taking a few shots was surely against some election day rule. And then a voter or two would appear, and they’d pop back into their roles. Find them in the database and confirm name and address, get their correct ballot, escort them to the voting machine, explain the screens, invite them to wear a sticker (“Best dressed person in the room now,” Will would say) before they passed through the door back to what everyone reported was a lovely day outside.
    Or clutches of voters would show up. The pre-work crowd finished but too early for the lunch-time crowd, so a little unexpected. A sudden press of people all entitled to the same help for casting their votes. Mostly old folk though an occasional mother with her own clutch of toddlers. Voters in suits or dresses. In sweats. Couples. Whole families on an outing. And in these rushes the station assignments became fluid as one or another step in the process grew congested. “We’re all multitasking today,” said Elaine, who’d worked a dozen elections and was this polling site’s boss for the day, filling in wherever needed. And Will would say “I’m getting my cardio workout” as he hustled to escort people to the voting machines and explain the screens they would see. And Jackie would say “I’ll float,” and she would dart to whatever task needed doing. Small talk with the voters as they waited their turns. Occasional attempts to steer conversation to the issues on the ballot, but the volunteers would parry these, and the voters seemed to understand. Little hiccups when a voter wasn’t in the database or had moved or had a name change or had come to the wrong polling site. The occasional oddball question like who made the voting machines or why was something not on the ballot or even what is a primary? The first-time voters, mostly young people with cautious smiles, keen to exercise their new right, so the volunteers would explain a little more patiently, a little more completely. But they’d trained for all of it, and everyone was pleasant; the process worked, and votes were cast.
    Soon the press would pass, and the gymnasium would grow silent again. Jackie would return to her yoga and Shelly to her phone or to tidying the check-in table, for she was not comfortable with the unstructured moments. Elaine would return to her table at the back where she could oversee everything. Will to pondering how two volleyballs had gotten stuck so high in the rafters and how could they ever come down? A good time for a restroom break or to grab a snack. A half hour for lunch, taken in turns. Formal changes in station assignments every hour, though they all remained flexible. Voters coming and going. Busy one moment, idle the next. Snatches of conversations, getting to know each other as much as the day needed. The feeling among them was non-partisan, almost pure, as they performed their own civic duty. This one fine thing they could do to be good citizens. Exhausting sometimes, but also fun.
    In the morning, 7:00 p.m. had seemed so impossibly far away, but then, when they were nearly there, they all wondered where the hours had gone.
    “Only seventeen minutes to go,” said Shelly, tidy in this too. Someone would go outside to stand at the end of the line when 7:00 came, having the unenviable job of turning away anyone who showed up late, but no one expected there to be a line. No one expected any more voters that evening.
    No one expected the last two voters that evening.
    With only ten minutes left in the official day, and Shelly already beginning to pack up a few items, everyone else idle and glassy eyed from fatigue and euphoria, a man entered the gym, followed by a woman. He looked angry, his brow furrowed and a frown tattooed on his face. She looked haggard, wary, as though she had just worked a twelve-hour shift at the polls herself.
    “How’s this work?” growled the man. The woman remained behind him, clutching her purse.
    Jackie was on the front desk then, as ready to help these last voters as she had been when the day was new. Will watched from his station at the exit. Elaine looked up from her table at the back, sensing, somehow, a shift in tone.
    “I just need a photo ID from each of you.”
    “Driver’s license?”
    “That works best. I need to see it and have you verify your address.”
    The man tugged his wallet from his back pocket. “Gimme your license,” he said over his shoulder. The woman silently reached into her purse, removed her wallet, and struggled to slide her license from the window that held it. “C’mon, c’mon,” the man said, and then he turned and snatched it from her hand.
    Elaine rose from her table and took a few steps closer to the front. Shelly stopped packing and turned her attention as well. Will watched from the exit.
    The man thrust both cards toward Jackie, who set the woman’s aside and scanned the man’s to find him in the database. He was listed, and Jackie repeated the standard questions about name and address she’d asked all day. The man grunted his responses, sufficient for verification. She returned his license and retrieved his ballot then handed it to Shelly to escort him to the voting machine.
    “Please come with me,” she said.
    “Gimme my wife’s too. I’m voting for her.”
    Elaine stepped in.
    “She must cast her own ballot, sir.”
    “Cast her own ballot?” Did he find the notion laughable? Was that what the tone in his voice suggested? Or was he losing patience with people who didn’t understand how he ran his household? He tried again, forcing a smile to his face.
    “It’s okay. She’s my wife. I’ll vote for her. Just give me her ballot.”
    “We can’t do that,” said Elaine. “She has to cast her own ballot.”
    The man eyed Elaine, gauging her authority in the moment and her power to execute it. Jackie and Shelly remained silent. Will moved toward the group.
    “What you don’t understand,” the man began, restraining his fury with a threadbare patience, speaking as he might to a child, “is that this is how we do things in my household. I can’t trust her to vote the way I’ve told her, so I’m going to do it.”
    “I can’t tell you how to live your life,” Elaine said flatly, the power in her hands whether this man knew it or not. “But I can tell you how we do things at this polling station, and your wife will cast her own vote.”
    The official end of the day had come and gone. No other voters had appeared. They ought to be packing up and going home. But two more votes needed to be cast, and that would still happen when this standoff came to an end.
    Jackie broke the tension. She picked up the wife’s license and scanned it then spoke to her. “Can you verify your name and address for me please?”
    The woman looked up from the floor, surprised to be spoken to, and then looked at her husband. After a moment, he grunted “Go ahead,” and so she gave her answers. Jackie retrieved her ballot and rose from her chair. “If you’ll please come with me,” she said to the woman. “I’ll take you over to the voting machine and explain how to use it.”
    “Vote the way I told you, Dummy,” the man called after her.
    They huddled after the two had left. The system worked. The sanctity held. But an ugliness hung in the air, nonetheless. They sat silently for a time, the eagerness to pack up and leave set aside.
    “I’ll file a report about it,” Elaine eventually said. “Not much else I can do.”
    “I hope things weren’t bad for her when they got home.”
    “Probably no worse than most days in the poor woman’s life is my guess.”
    “We all raised our hands this morning,” Elaine said, “and swore to uphold the laws of the state. We did that. We did our jobs. This was just a blip.”

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