Democratic Diva

10 Feb 2008 07:21 pm
Posted by: Krista

We’ve said it before, this is an exciting time in politics. No matter who wins the Democratic nominee, I’m proud of the intelligent and savvy candidates we’ve seen over the last year. Yep, it’s a proud time for us Democrats, especially compared to our opposition - McCain and Muckety Muckabee (you can have a lot of fun with Huckabee’s name).

Now that I’ve gotten the proud bit over, here’s a bit about my experience on Super Tuesday.

Grandparents

My grandparents had a snafu with their voter registration cards and had to go to their polling place to vote.

I picked my grandparents up around 10:30 on the 5th, and we headed to Central Arizona College. Getting my grandmother to the building was a bit of a hassle because it was too far for her to walk. Luckily, we had her wheelchair in the car.

My grandfather checked in just fine, but my grandmother’s name wasn’t on the list. The pollworkers told us this was about the eighth time a registered voter didn’t appear, which meant grandma had to fill out a provisional ballot. I wheeled her over to a table to start the paperwork.

Meanwhile, grandpa was confused because he’d never been to a poll before and wasn’t sure what to do (he registered to vote for the first time in 2004 and had only cast early ballots before). So, I ran over to help him fill out his ballot before returning to help grandma. Such a hassle! We finally got that straightened out, and grandma got her ballot.

Grandma joked about not letting me help because I might switch her vote from Clinton to Obama, but she couldn’t see the darned thing to fill out the tiny little circle and couldn’t do it without me. I helped her fill in the Clinton bubble. I wish they’d voted for Obama, but they both voted for Clinton. My grandma says “men have ruled for long enough; it’s a woman’s turn.” Personally, I think she’d really like to live long enough to see a woman President.

The entire trip took less than 30 minutes, so that was good.

Disenfranchised Independents

Next, I ran over to one of the polling places in Casa Grande to collect signatures. There were a lot of petitions for Democratic candidates, so someone had set up a table. This confused people into thinking they had to sign in at the petition table and that we were there to help. That was fine with us, and we helped a lot of people get to their polling places. There were also a couple of Obama supporters holding up signs and helping us with petitions. I think they got to know some of the candidates and volunteers really well by the end of the day.

The most frustrating part about helping people was turning away the independents who wanted their voices to be heard. I understand the reason behind it, but we’re the party of the people and don’t want to turn anyone away. I’d like to see our rules for voting change - so independents can choose the primary they vote in and people can register to vote on the day of an election. But that’s just my two buck chuck.

Barack the Vote.

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