Gustoferson

Mods, let me know if this belongs in the "i voted, have you?" thread. I first was going to put it there but decided it was sufficiently different to be separate as most of those were more of one or two line yes or nos.


I'm a US Citizen, didn't vote, and am not going to! Muahahahahaha.

Ok actually the evil laugh is back on me. I didn't vote because I can't. I registered to vote over a year ago right around the time of last year's city council elections. There is always a non-partisan student group on campus that does voter registration drives. They've been doing them for years, and chances are that half of the people in this county have registered that way the first time at least. So anyway, I registered there but haven't voted yet in an election because the only one i was registered for before was for city council. I know i should've voted but I was unimformed, newly registered, and they all hate us students anyway.

So flash forward to 2004. I decided against using the early voting option we have here, even though i walked by it every day on the way to class. I figured I wasn't 100% on who I was voting for, especially in state-specific stuff, so I would respect the idea that there is a campaign season that ends on November 2nd, and I wanted all that time to hear people out and decide what to do. A few times I got annoyed at people three times a day trying to hand my literature and trying to direct me to the voting booths when i wasn't ready, but it was fairly easy to brush them off. So this morning I decide to wake up at 9:30, which ended up being 10, to walk down the street and vote in my first election! Woo-boy, I was ready, had done my research, and wanted to get it done before lines got too bad. And I was happy the local district voting was literally half a block away. So I go, get the literature from the democrats standing at the edge of the "no soliciting past this line" space, glance through it, and read the last articles in the local papers about everything. I'm ready. And on top of that, I hit it with virtually no line!!! Hell yeah, I'll be in and out and have voted in my first election, and an important one on top of that. Who cares that North Carolina isn't supposed to be a swing state, I'm still going to get my vote heard.

And then, disasterstruck.

I walk up to the people at the table, tell them my name, and its nowhere to be found on their roll. Doublecheck? Still not there. I can see it for myself too, my name is nowhere to be found. Ok, i think, small setback, but they know how to deal with this sort of thing. Sure enough, they direct me over to one lady who's been working with people like this all morning. She takes me into another room, thoughtfully full of refreshments at that, and calls the main district with all the master lists to ask them to look for me. One problem, she can't get through. She tries another number, nothing, and again, either busy or no answer. This goes on for a good half hour. I decide to doublecheck my memory of where I registered and call back home to find out if I in fact registered as there as my address. Can't get through at first, but manage to get ahold of my dad who is, at that moment, in line to vote. Perfect, he says he'll be able to check when he gets up there as he's been in line for an hour and a half, but is only 15 minutes away now. He'll call back and either let me know if they were able to check for him, or at least find out a phone number for the Stokes County Board of Elections I can call to check (my attempts at using 411 ended up giving me a phone number in the wrong area code nowhere near my county). So in the meantime, the nice volunteer at the election station is still trying desperately to get through, and another has joined me with a similar problem, though he has more specifics on what happened (it seemed the person who helped him register never filled out the fields she said she would, and so they sent back the registration and it was too late by that time to register in time).

Eventually BAM, she's through and talking to the people at the central precinct for Orange County. She gives them all my information, full name, address current and past ones, birthday, the whole package. Nothing. I get on the phone and explain where I registered, but still nothing. She says that she checked by address, by name, and by birthday to triplecheck, and has no record of me anywhere. She also checked the list of those with incomplete registrations or ones with errors on them but still nothing. To the Orange County Board of Elections, I Do Not Exist.

Ok, wow, didn't see this one coming. Figured it had to be a clerical mistake, figured I'd have to drive halfway around the county but somewhere at some voting location i'd be there, a little weary, but ready to vote. But no, no way i can vote in Orange County this year. North Carolina doesn't have provisional voting either unless its just a moving error with wrong address or something else, they still need some record of prior registration.

Alright, so I start rooting against my memory now. Despite what I told everyone at the time, including my parents, I must've put down my home address. Yeah, thats it, I'll get the call from my dad, jump in the car, skip all my classes for the day to vote, and drive a couple hours home to wait in an hour line, vote, and drive back to Chapel Hill. It'll be a long day, but it'll be a story at least to tell later. So I get impatient and call my dad back and he answers after about half a ring. He already had the phone in his hand ready to call me, he's in.

And he doesn't have good news. After he checked in at the station (the only one in my hometown), he asked them to check for me. It was simple really, seeing as we have the same last name and all, but they found nothing. They even doublechecked with him looking over the shoulder to see for himself, but no registration whatsoever for me in Stokes County.

And just like that, my right to vote in this election disappears.

Now I don't want to be too over the top only blaming other people, there were things I could've done long before now but didn't seem necessary. If I had voted in that first city election last year, I would've realized then I wasn't actually registered. I could've gone anytime in the past year to the Board of Elections and confirmed it. But instead I didn't even once, even with a passing though, consider that there might be any problem. Most people on campus registers this way, and I know many people who did early voting and had no problems. But somewhere in the shuffle a form must've fallen by the wayside, and obviously never made it to the board of elections, and my dumb ass never did a damn fool thing to doublecheck it.

Now with no provisional voting to help me, there's no way for me to vote in today's election, and the only thing I can do is reregister in the future for the next elections, and hand deliver that summabitch to whomever is supposed to get them eventually. I know people who for this election were in one of the main groups doing voter registration. They had a huge tent set up on the lower quad like the do on occasion, with permits from the university, and i walked up there after spanish class one day and decided to do what I had meant to do for a while. They are a reputable group, no questions of any shady dealings have ever been openly raised about them, and they do a great service to the community by making sure students are eligible to vote, but damned if I can't trust them any more.

And by the way, if NC unexpectedly becomes a tight race tonight, I'm raising hell.

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...And then I found $5!