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Wisconsin, the Ukraine and Iraq

In November, I had what turned out to a life-changing experience. It was one of those events that I thought would be interesting and, in addition, it changed the way I think about things. I spent 5 days in Wisconsin as a roving attorney watching the polls and assisting the Republican pollwatchers. Since my return, I have promised various people all the details but have not been able to get them down on paper. Recounting the facts of the days there doesn't begin to do justice to what I learned.

We have heard the platitudes. Democracy matters. Individual votes count. 2000 showed us how close it can be.

Much of the trip was as I expected. I arrived early and got preliminary training in Wisconsin election law. By the time I was done I had accumulated a couple hundred pages of manuals, statutes and cases, all of which I read and basically learned and only a fraction of which was helpful. In between studying, we helped the local Republican headquarters get out the vote. Wisconsin had been heavily campaigned by both parties and by the weekend before the election, no one wanted to see any more doorknockers or talk to any more telephoners. I was worried. No one in the neighborhoods seemed to care and the preparation I was doing seemed so focussed on minutiae.

Much of election day was spent arguing with our attorney counterparts from the Democratic party. They, too, had manuals and statutes and cases, much of which was the same but there were parts that differed when our interpretation of statutes differed. We also discovered midmorning that there was a significant difference in opinion on the applicability of federal Help America Vote statutes to elections governed by state law. That was a difference that, while intellectually interesting and essentially important, could not be resolved on the ground standing around a polling place. The disputes led to angry words, frayed nerves and a lot of paperwork.

Here's the life-changing part: The disputes did not stop people from voting. Nothing stopped people from voting. What was most amazing about this election is how important the average American thinks it is to vote. They may have been tired of the electioneering. they may have been sick of polls, campaign speeches and talking heads but the election mattered.

Lines began forming a half hour before the polls opened. They were a block long in most of the polling places when the doors opened. Wisconsin has same day registration. You can walk into the polls with certain identification and register and vote the same day. The parties and the non-partisan pollwatchers argued endlessly about what was good enough identification. In the polls I watched, the voters just wanted to vote. Faced with a problem, many -- more than I ever would have guessed -- just went back to their car, went home, and came back in an hour or more or less with proper identification, sometimes rummaging through who knows how much paper to find a lease that showed they had moved into the precinct.

Two Latina women, apparently voting for the first time, ran into a glitch where their address did not appear on any polling roster. One was pregnant and the other ill. They spent three hours going from polling place to polling place. Unaware that their circumstances would have justified moving to the head of the line, they stood on line for 30-60 minutes at each place. Finally, someone (in the wrong polling place) determined the right polling place and gave me the telephone number of the "official" who could authorize it if these women did not appear on those rolls. I drove behind them, escorted them through a crowd -- every polling place had a crowd -- and delivered them into the hands of the Republican attorney staffing that polling place. He could explain the situation to the election officials. When I checked back later, they had voted. Democratic pollwatchers, apparently unaware I was the "enemy," were exuberant.

Polls closed at 8. If you were in line at 8, you got to vote. At 8:30 pm, I was back at headquarters calling all the stationary attorneys to make sure all was closing down smoothly. Someone came and sat down across from me, a desperate look on his face. I hung up. A precinct about 10 miles south had a huge line and watchers that had to leave. Off we went.

I checked in at the precinct. They had shut the doors at 8 and the line wrapped around as if there was a Disneyland ride at the end. A good ride too. This was no "It's a Small World". I grabbed a chair. It took 3 hours. People stood in line for three hours, standing, waiting, never complaining, determined to get their vote in, even if the close of polls meant that somewhere, outside our doors, someone was already declaring winners.

That determination of the individual voter dented my consciousness. Those people who are tired of the doorknockers, who don't sit around writing blog entries or even letters to the editor, who think the blowhards on TV are just that, are willing to stand on line for hours and jump through extra hoops to make sure they can vote.

I saw that commitment to democracy again in the Ukraine a month later. Yes, there were lawsuits and pressure from world leaders. What I saw that convinced me that a fair vote would happen were the people standing in the square night after night, in the bitter Ukraine cold, making it clear that they would not be denied their vote.

I stayed up late last night watching the beginning of the Iraqi election. At first, turnout was low. One polling place had no one in the first hour. Then they started to come, until the polling places all had lines. I saw people arrive despite physical infirmaties. I saw voters exit jubilant. I heard one man in good but not perfect English tell a reporter that he didn't care if al-Zarqawi threatened to behead his family. It was worth it.

I think he is right. Democracy is worth it. Bush may sound like he has lost touch with reality when he says that freedom is what it's all about but I have gone around the bend with him. I think the vote can't be overhyped. Voting is what it's about. Voting is how the individual becomes part of the democratic whole. It's more than a tool, it's a goal. Every time a society has a free and fair election we are doing good. Bring on the platitudes.

Posted by Justene Adamec at January 29, 2005 03:00 PM | TrackBack