It was dusk on Election Day and I was reaching a state of exhilaration. Exhausted, dehydrated, I had been running on adrenaline for the past 36 hours and now I was literally running through a low-income housing project in Ocala, Florida.
We’d been through there a few days before, knocking on doors, urging citizens to vote, letting them know the location of their polling station, talking about how elections – especially this election – can make a real difference in their lives and the lives of the their children. We’d encountered skepticism, unsurprisingly. We’d been targeting lists of people who were registered to vote, but had not voted in recent years. In some apartment complexes, that meant finding many bad addresses; people had moved on. In these low-income projects, people were still here, in the same apartments where they’d lived the last time they’d voted and nothing had changed for them.
My shirt was pasted to my skin with sweat as I bounded in and out of buildings, up and down stairs, finding few people at home. That made sense. People in this complex work long hours for low wages. On my first trip through, many folks I’d visited with had promised to turn out and vote early, before they had to report for work. Indeed, there had been a full parking lot and a long line when the polling station at the Central Christian Church opened at 7 a.m. Some of the people I’d spoken to checked in with our volunteer outside the poll and had their name crossed off his list. Others had either not voted or missed our volunteer. Now I worried about Doug, who’d volunteered for the late shift checking off names. Doug was a friendly young guy, but he’s a large, white Florida cracker and he stood outside the polling station calling out to voters, “Hey, you wanna come over here and give me your name? I got this list?.” African-American and Latino voters in particular did NOT want to give Doug their name. I tried explaining to him that, while I appreciated his volunteering to check folks’ names off the list, his approach to people might be bit softer. Whatever the reason, their names were not on the list and it was my job to track them down.
Besides the presidential race, the voters of Marion County were electing a sheriff. The incumbent was Democrat Ed Dean, an attorney appointed to clean up the department after the previous sheriff had embezzled a half million in county funds. Sheriff Dean was opposed by Republican Robert Douglas, a member of the department in charge of a group of officers known as the “Midnight Marauders,” who had a reputation for unrestrained use of muscle, especially in the black and Latino neighborhoods. It didn’t look good for Dean. Douglas posters outnumbered Dean’s by a margin of eight to one and two days before the vote, Mr. Douglas organized a mile-long line of supporters to stand and wave at a major intersection.
Also on the ballot was a constitutional amendment, asking whether the state’s minimum wage should be raised to $6.15 an hour and then indexed to inflation. Between that and the sheriff’s race, it would be difficult to craft issues with more direct bearing on the lives of the people in these apartments, so I checked my watch and hurried on.
The front page of the Election Day edition of the Ocala Star-Banner carried a story about people, presumably Republicans, who had been calling lists of Democrats in Ocala with this message: “This is the Florida Democratic Committee. Don’t be fooled by election tricks this year. Get out and vote at this polling station.” Then it gave the wrong precinct address. There was, I admit, evil genius to the scheme. What had I been doing for the past week, but urging people to vote and giving them their polling station address? Either people were gullible and followed the bogus directions to the wrong place or they were skeptical and disbelieved all information, the good as well as the bad. Of course, they could just check the location of their polling station themselves. But that required either a trip to the supervisor of elections office, a call to that office (and the lines had been tied up for the past week) or one could check online, if one had a computer and an internet connection, which few people in this apartment complex have.
Now it was after six, less than an hour until the polls closed, any chance I had to make a difference would soon evaporate. The cell phone in my pocket rang; it was my colleague Matt, asking if I was “ready to do your good deed for the day.” Matt had been working the phones and he had just spoken to Julio Cruz, who lived a few blocks from where I was standing. Mr. Cruz wanted to vote, but needed help. Would I help him vote?
I hopped in the rental car and found Mr. Cruz’s neat white trailer at the back of a dark trailer park. He was standing in front, in a neat guyabero and spectacles. He eased into the car and we set out for the poll. Mr. Cruz was born in Puerto Rico, 81 years ago come January. He’s lived stateside for 61 years, first in Hartford, Connecticut and now Ocala. A retired truck driver, he never learned to read English. We drove to the poll, which was ready to close. Only a few voters remained. I read the ballot to Mr. Cruz and he made his choices.
Election Day didn’t turn out as I wanted, but Ocala precinct 0004, where I ran through the low-income housing, set a record for voter turnout. One thousand, sixty-seven people passed through the polling station on Tuesday. Florida passed its minimum wage amendment and Ed Dean, the good sheriff of Marion County was retained, by a margin of three points. If that’s what I can get, I’ll take it.
The Government We Deserve
It was dusk on Election Day and I was reaching a state of exhilaration. Exhausted, dehydrated, I had been running on adrenaline for the past 36 hours and now I was literally running through a low-income housing project in Ocala, Florida.
We’d been through there a few days before, knocking on doors, urging citizens to vote, letting them know the location of their polling station, talking about how elections – especially this election – can make a real difference in their lives and the lives of the their children. We’d encountered skepticism, unsurprisingly. We’d been targeting lists of people who were registered to vote, but had not voted in recent years. In some apartment complexes, that meant finding many bad addresses; people had moved on. In these low-income projects, people were still here, in the same apartments where they’d lived the last time they’d voted and nothing had changed for them.
My shirt was pasted to my skin with sweat as I bounded in and out of buildings, up and down stairs, finding few people at home. That made sense. People in this complex work long hours for low wages. On my first trip through, many folks I’d visited with had promised to turn out and vote early, before they had to report for work. Indeed, there had been a full parking lot and a long line when the polling station at the Central Christian Church opened at 7 a.m. Some of the people I’d spoken to checked in with our volunteer outside the poll and had their name crossed off his list. Others had either not voted or missed our volunteer. Now I worried about Doug, who’d volunteered for the late shift checking off names. Doug was a friendly young guy, but he’s a large, white Florida cracker and he stood outside the polling station calling out to voters, “Hey, you wanna come over here and give me your name? I got this list?.” African-American and Latino voters in particular did NOT want to give Doug their name. I tried explaining to him that, while I appreciated his volunteering to check folks’ names off the list, his approach to people might be bit softer. Whatever the reason, their names were not on the list and it was my job to track them down.
Besides the presidential race, the voters of Marion County were electing a sheriff. The incumbent was Democrat Ed Dean, an attorney appointed to clean up the department after the previous sheriff had embezzled a half million in county funds. Sheriff Dean was opposed by Republican Robert Douglas, a member of the department in charge of a group of officers known as the “Midnight Marauders,” who had a reputation for unrestrained use of muscle, especially in the black and Latino neighborhoods. It didn’t look good for Dean. Douglas posters outnumbered Dean’s by a margin of eight to one and two days before the vote, Mr. Douglas organized a mile-long line of supporters to stand and wave at a major intersection.
Also on the ballot was a constitutional amendment, asking whether the state’s minimum wage should be raised to $6.15 an hour and then indexed to inflation. Between that and the sheriff’s race, it would be difficult to craft issues with more direct bearing on the lives of the people in these apartments, so I checked my watch and hurried on.
The front page of the Election Day edition of the Ocala Star-Banner carried a story about people, presumably Republicans, who had been calling lists of Democrats in Ocala with this message: “This is the Florida Democratic Committee. Don’t be fooled by election tricks this year. Get out and vote at this polling station.” Then it gave the wrong precinct address. There was, I admit, evil genius to the scheme. What had I been doing for the past week, but urging people to vote and giving them their polling station address? Either people were gullible and followed the bogus directions to the wrong place or they were skeptical and disbelieved all information, the good as well as the bad. Of course, they could just check the location of their polling station themselves. But that required either a trip to the supervisor of elections office, a call to that office (and the lines had been tied up for the past week) or one could check online, if one had a computer and an internet connection, which few people in this apartment complex have.
Now it was after six, less than an hour until the polls closed, any chance I had to make a difference would soon evaporate. The cell phone in my pocket rang; it was my colleague Matt, asking if I was “ready to do your good deed for the day.” Matt had been working the phones and he had just spoken to Julio Cruz, who lived a few blocks from where I was standing. Mr. Cruz wanted to vote, but needed help. Would I help him vote?
I hopped in the rental car and found Mr. Cruz’s neat white trailer at the back of a dark trailer park. He was standing in front, in a neat guyabero and spectacles. He eased into the car and we set out for the poll. Mr. Cruz was born in Puerto Rico, 81 years ago come January. He’s lived stateside for 61 years, first in Hartford, Connecticut and now Ocala. A retired truck driver, he never learned to read English. We drove to the poll, which was ready to close. Only a few voters remained. I read the ballot to Mr. Cruz and he made his choices.
Election Day didn’t turn out as I wanted, but Ocala precinct 0004, where I ran through the low-income housing, set a record for voter turnout. One thousand, sixty-seven people passed through the polling station on Tuesday. Florida passed its minimum wage amendment and Ed Dean, the good sheriff of Marion County was retained, by a margin of three points. If that’s what I can get, I’ll take it.
(c) Mark Floegel, 2004