No supporters were campaigning at the Village Clubhouse when I visited at lunch. It was a Republican polling place, and the precinct chair told me voting had been steady all day, but like Christina’s observation, it clearly wasn’t hopping like the Democratic polling places.
I had the opposite experience from Christina’s friend, however, when it came to helpful people.
As I was leaving the Village Clubhouse, one of the Republican volunteers asked me if I was headed to Stonewall Jackson, that precinct’s Democratic polling place. She gestured to a Hispanic man who was walking toward the door with a limp, and told me he had walked four or five blocks to the clubhouse to vote, and since he was at the wrong polling place, he would have to walk from Caruth Haven and Southwestern all the way to Stonewall, at Matilda and Mockingbird, in order to vote. So I offered to give him a ride.
On the way there, the man, whose name was Federico, struggled to tell me that he had had a stroke, which explained why his right leg and arm were limp, and why he couldn’t communicate well. I had a hard time communicating with him, too, because I speak very little Spanish. Once we arrived at Stonewall and got to the voting area, four different people — two volunteers, and two people who were simply there to vote — worked together to communicate to Federico what he needed to do, what was on the ballot and how to mark it, and how to turn it in to the voter scantron machine.
It took quite a bit of patience on everyone’s part, including the people who were standing in line waiting their turn, but no one exhaled loud sighs or tapped their feet impatiently. It seemed as if everyone in the room wanted to make sure that this man had the opportunity to do something that obviously took more time and effort for him than for anyone else in the room — vote.
Gotta love democracy.
