Boyleing Points - "Poll Fault"

Boyleing Points

Poll Fault

By Kevin Boyle

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Yeah, yeah, we live in a free country. It’s so free the election ballot has a 6 point font no one can read and you can’t do a write-in vote without being paraded around by poll workers in search of somebody who allegedly knows more than others.

We get cash from machines but we can’t use ATM-style machines for voting. Makes you wonder just how corrupt the Board of Elections must be. How much patronage goes on there that we still use the equivalent of stone tablets to vote?

I hope no one else tried voting for me (I will not run and if elected I will not serve). Friends might have assumed I was running again as I did when I challenged Anthony Weiner in 2010, the pre Carlos Danger Weiner. I do the write-in so I can put it on my resume (former candidate for Congress) and to see if I can beat that other popular write-in candidate, Mickey Mouse. Mickey and I were tied in the race against Weiner. Seriously. He is the number one protest vote candidate. Beating Mickey is no easy task. Donald Duck doesn’t come close, though the final vote might show him beating Joe Lhota.

This time around, the scanner seemed repulsed that I put my own name in for Mayor as it rejected my write-in three times on three different machines.

One poll worker came over to help. And then the fun started. He looked at my name on the write-in and says for all in the gym to hear: what are you doing that for?! It’s like the pharmacist who yells out, is this your Viagra? Or, your hemorrhoid prescription is ready!

And then another guy shouts, the scanner won’t read his name! Then yet another chimes in, if he wants to vote for himself he has to fill out an affidavit. Don’t do that, a lady says, they’ll never count it.

So there I was trying to sneak in my name and now everybody in the gym knows I’m trying to get on the ballot. I was gonna start campaigning but was afraid I’d be arrested for electioneering.

My privacy was shot. My ballot was waved through the air by several of the poll workers as they looked for a supervisor.

My friendly poll worker asked again, what are you voting for yourself for?!

I was about to stand on a soap box and do a speech about the right to vote and the right to vote for whomever but I would have had to ask everyone working there to turn up their hearing aids. And, really, I didn’t have much to say, I just wanted to go home. I signed my affidavit saying yes, I wanted to vote this way.

I think a protest vote is an honorable way to exercise your civic duty. I mean, even if you wanted to.… You can’t make a mockery out of voting when voting makes a mockery of you.