Democracy and Senior Citizens

Tuesday I had my first voting experience working as a poll-worker. It was not the efficient machine-like system of democratic expression I had expected but more of a slow-motion geriatric comedy of errors. Hearing aid problems here, senior moments of forgetfulness there, and the distinct scent of the elderly was everywhere. But for all that, the people in our precincts were lucky to have these old poll-workers, and I was lucky to have been put with this group. There are not many people with whom I could spend 15 straight hours but I thoroughly enjoyed almost every minute with them.

Our Poll Manager was Sue, she had been the chief nurse of a 400-bed mobile army hospital (four times the size of a MASH unit) in the National Guard for 20+ years and now works at the King's English bookstore. She was very calm throughout, making sure some of the more excitable old folks kept their cool and that we all had plenty of breaks. She even initiated a little pool, we all were betting on how many voters we'd have by the end of the day...sadly I took third.

Rex was our technician, a very very nice old Greek man. He has diabetes and so had toes and parts of both feet removed. Walking was not easy for him, but he was always quick to jump up whenever anyone was having trouble understanding how to work the voting machines. When he wasn't helping in that way he would sit by the doors on his big wooden stool, thank people for voting, and tell them about all the free Starbucks coffee, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and Ben and Jerry's ice cream they could get for voting. He would typically say 'Don't forget your free coffee, doughnuts, or ice cream.' This lead about half the people to turn around on the spot and say 'Where!?' Twice we had two people collide because the one in front turned around abruptly to look for the free food while the person immediately behind did not.

Rachel was our Provisional Judge, and the youngest worker....probably in her late 40s. She was given the nickname Deep Throat because she would get updates of election results on her phone and quietly relay them to us without letting the voters hear. (We were supposed to maintain complete political neutrality and not discuss politics in any way.)

Jeanne was the funny one in the group, a fifty-something year old English-major who came in wearing her daughters turquoise converse sneakers. She lead us all in a big cheer for each and every first-time voter who came in. She could always be counted on to know exactly how much time we had left...'six hours and 37 minutes!' When I was being too quiet she would say 'Alright Jennifer, let's turn the heat back on you...tell us why you're at BYU, or tell us about Philsophy.'

Anne was an almost-seventy year old English major with a fabulous vocabulary and a fiery competitiveness. She initiated a second contest, to see who could guess the time that we'd hit 500 voters. She beat me by 4 minutes and was tickled about it. At one point, when it was getting down to the wire, we had a man come in who had to vote on a provisional ballot. She was worried that I would count him in our tally and had he counted, I would have won, so she began saying 'He doesn't count, he's not in our books he's on provisional so his vote doesn't count!'. She made no attempt to keep her voice down and the man was looking concerned until Poll-Manager Sue went over to assure him that his vote would in-fact count.

Sue #2 was a 68 year-old originally from Montpeilier, Idaho who was sort of a math guru. When Poll-Manager Sue announced our original total numer of voters contest, Sue #2 spent almost an hour counting and calculating numbers to reach her guess. Unforunately her magical math did not give her the winning guess. Towards the end of the night as the number of voters dwindled to almost nothing, the rule of political neutrality went out the window. All of my left-leaning cowokers were letting Palin jokes fly and talking about moving to Canada or Mexico if the election didn't go their way. Sue #2 found all of this to be absolutely hilarious and would giggle to the point of tears. The sight of 68 year-old crying and shaking with laughter, on top of all the wittiness of the others made for lots of laughing all around.

Then there was Bill and Ruth, a married couple in their eighties, both with hearing aids, and seated on either side of me. Ruth graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music as an Organist and Bill is a former Physics professor at the University of Utah. Ruth was the grandma of the group, she brought homemade cookies, homegrown pear tomatoes, carrots, and nuts to sustain all of us. Bill is not a proponent of String Theory (the only physics topic I knew enough about to discuss with him) and does not understand things like music and sewing machines, he understands semi-conductors and likes them for their usefulness. Our only error in reconciling the books came when I took my ten minute afternoon break. When I got back and we checked our books against the machines we were off by one. Bill and Ruth started arguing about where the mistake was but eventually Ruth and I found the error and fixed it. Then she said, "You can't even leave us alone for ten minutes without everything getting messed up!" This gave me a completely exaggerated sense of importance.... like an indispensable cog in the machinery of democracy.

We had a good crew and at the end of our fifteen hour-day I was sorry to leave their company. But, they had stopped their almost intravenous intake of coffee and were all quickly losing steam so they each gave me a hug, I felt like I had gained eight new grandparents, and we all hurried home to watch the numbers come in. Senior citizens may not be the most efficient folks, but they take their title of 'citizen' seriously. It's not easy for an 80 year-old to work from 5:30am to 9:00pm, no matter how much coffee they've got. Things like hearing aids, canes, sight problems, unsteady hands, and even poor memories don't make it any easier. But their age group seems to be the one that answers the call of civic duty. This 'slow-motion geriatric comedy of errors' was what allowed approximately 643 people to vote, and probably millions more across the country.