Stories from the Suffrage
By 
I have no idea what is going to happen tonight and neither does anyone else. Could be a range from barely saving American democracy for another four years to the complete destruction of American democracy. Guess we will see. If it’s the latter, well, the country will get what it evidently asked for.
But since we could use something a bit lighter to discuss, who has interesting stories of casting ballots?
I have two.
The first came from about 2006 in Albuquerque. At this point, you still have to sign the big ballot book physically. As it turned out, my name was #420 in the precinct. The hippie girl doing the volunteer work was like “Oh wow, you’re #420!!!!” I wanted to change my registration to Republican right there. Fucking hippies. Jesus Christ.
The second and more interesting came in what must have been the 2012 general or maybe the 2014 primaries. At this time, I was living in a pretty poor and diverse neighborhood in Providence. My starting salary at my institution was not great, having started just before the salary compression issue meant that everyone hired right after me was making way more. In fact, I was the lowest paid tenure track member of my department until I got tenure. And then of course I had student debt to service, etc. So I needed a really cheap place to live. Well, I went to vote. The poll workers at my station were an older Black lady and a young tattooed hipster southeast Asian woman, probably Cambodian given the demographics of that area. Again, still had to do the signature in the big book (Do any of you still do that? I voted in person today because early voting in RI is not easy and it was all electronic now.) I scribbled down my half-assed signature. The older Black lady looked at it, turned to the Cambodian girl and said, “See this signature? This is a rich white man’s signature.” I just about choked. I mean, what could I say. I wasn’t rich, but I surely was privileged and couldn’t imagine anyone challenging my signature for any reason. A classic example of white privilege. I got called out, it was a good lesson. And a good election day story.