Clareified

Okay, remember my lickity split, no fuss no muss voting experience? Yeah, well that feels a long ways away. After I voted, I hopped on my bike and cycled over to East Coco Beach to assist my mom in changing the world. (I had explained that I could not in good conscience assist her if she planned to vote for four more years of Bush. She hastily assured me that she was not voting for the old man even though does still think Obama is a Muslim.) Anyway, I got there around 11 a.m. and my mom and I walked toward her polling place. We got about two blocks away when I could already see the line. This was GREAT, but it sucked. I heard a woman behind me say “hey girl!” I turned around and it was a girl I went to babysitter’s with when I was a wee lad. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Not much. Whatchoo doing around here?”
“Taking my mom to vote. Did you already vote?”
“Nah, I got a couple of cases.”
“Uh…oh…um…ok…cya.”
“Cya.”
The line to vote in District 68 was insane.
People were reading books, sitting along the walls. Kids were playing tag. At some point someone started singing we shall overcome. And then someone changed the words to “We shall overcome…today!” I got chills. But that might have been from the lack of blood circulation due to standing for ever.
As we approached the school, there was a volunteer handing out Yvette Clarke flyers. You all know what I think of this poseur who got her seat due to nepotism and name recognition because of her mother, but dingus couldn’t figure out how to graduate from college. Anyway, as the woman handed out the flyers (the line was that long, that she could openly campaign on the voting line, but still comport with being way away from the polling place.) she said “vote for Yvette Clarke.” And every time she said it, I would say “NEVER!”
So it went like this:
“Vote for Yvette Clarke”
“NEVER!”
“Vote for Yvette Clarke”
“NEVER!”
As she got closer and closer to where I was in line, the people around me had started to laugh.
I told my mom she better keep the volunteer away from me cause I was gonna say it to her face.
My mom then replied, you know I emailed Yvette Clarke a couple of times last month and she never responded. I’m going to ask her about it.
Now, while I was prepared to laugh in the volunteer’s face when she tried to hand me a flyer, I wanted to spare her the wrath of my mother.
“Mom, she’s not responsible for Yvette Clark’s email.”
“Not her,” my mom said, “I’m going to ask Yvette Clarke.”
“Mom, Yvette Clark’s not going to be sitting around outside the polling place.”
My mother lifted up her arm and pointed.
“Oh, crap. It’s Yvette Clark!”
Sure enough, there was my college dropout Congresswoman making her way up the line.
Now, as faithful readers of Clareified know, I have a wee little habit of choking in the face of elected figures. I choked when I met Barack Obama. I choked when I met Hillary Clinton. I choked when I met Rudy Giuliani, Bill Clinton and Al Gore before them. Me = world class choker. But this was just Yvette Clark. Yvette Clark with no college diploma. I WILL NOT BE COWED.
She came up to us with her volunteer and stretched out her hand:
“Hi, I’m Yvette Clark.”
“Dawn Summers.” I said glaring. Tell her you’re going to primary her ass in 2010. Do it, Dawn. Do it. DO IT.
“Excuse me, I’m Joyce Summers. I sent your office two emails and you never responded,” my mother said stepping between me and my future nemesis.
“Really? What address did you send it to?”
“The one on your flyer.”
“Oh, that’s the campaign address, you email me at my official .gov address and we’ll get back to you right away…what was your name again?”
“Joyce Summers.”
“Ok, Mrs. Summers. I will look for your email…is that your daughter?”
“Yes,” my mother said looking at me.
“She is a beautiful young lady. Good to see the two of you out to vote today. Obama and I thank you for your support.”
My mother smiled. Yvette Clarke moved on to the people behind us.
About ten minutes later, I firmly said “I will never vote for you!”
I don’t think she heard me though.
At some point, the line just stopped moving.
I walked up to the front of the line to see a uniformed man blocking the doors and a mob of people clustered against the front entrance.
I’ll spare you the details, but what I gathered was this. As I mentioned before, NYC crams multiple districts in one polling place. At PS 6, they had like six districts. Some of the districts were empty, others were overflowing, so the polling people tried to call people in by districts — but since there was just one long line, the people would get pissed when they saw the polling folks escorting people from the back and middle of the line right into the polling place, while they had to wait. So eventually, they stopped letting them through.
“It’s not fair” was chanted. And then the guard dude got all “well, then no one goes in.”
The people started yelling at him and he was yelling back. And then HE SHUT THE DOOR.
That was that.
I was all “heelllll, no!”
I remembered CNN was telling people to call them if there were problems, so I asked Alceste to text me the number and I called them.
A polling volunteer lady started banging on the door and made the guard open it up, by the time I got through the CNN phone tree, she had convinced him to let people in again.
My mother went up to her and said that she had been on the line for two hours (ha ha) and she was a senior citizen with medical problems, so the polling lady let her through and she voted.
We left a little after that, but the line was still blocks long.
What a sight.
PICS from in and around the ECB. via Ugarles I tried to post my pictures, but the new card reader thing I bought totally sucks and doesn’t work.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.