Eyewitness to voter suppression!

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 3rd, 2004

We arrived at Henry W. Longfellow Elementary at about noon. The voting booths were set up in the gymnasium, as always. A couple elderly, white-haired gentlemen chatted outside the doors to the gym. Inside, there was no waiting. The atmosphere was calm, serene; poll workers chatted idly among themselves. There were two separate banks of cafeteria tables set up, one for each district (or precinct?) and we went to the wrong one initially. When we got to the correct one, we realized why– the “M through Z” sign was obscured by one of the poll workers seated in front of it. She was a woman, maybe in her late 50s, African-American, wearing a pink velour jumpsuit. When we finally cleared up the confusion, we complained (in a joking manner) that she was the reason that we were confused! She laughed. (She immediately knew we were kidding!) We even accused her– loudly– of voter suppression! We all laughed heartily and she mock protested, “Don’t let the TV cameras catch me!” All of us had a good laugh at that one. We produced passports– even though ID was never required. We all swapped info about which kind of ID we had, and why we had it. Amid the jocularity, a guy wearing a badge that read “Poll Challenger” walked up and asked us our names. He skittered away and riffled briefly through a box of index cards. We procured our slips of paper and proceeded to vote. The whole process took maybe three minutes. Placid democracy taking place in the ‘burbs of Southern New Jersey.

“But I don’t vote… because I don’t really think it makes a big difference. I think the owners of the country do what they want to do anyway. No matter who is in office. …they know they really own everything, they make the decisions, they control people’s lives, and they’re not going to change that. You try getting the power away from them now. I mean, you can never really do that.”

–George Carlin

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