this ain't livin'

Informed

So, I swung by the local Democratic Headquarters today on my way to the post office, to get the address of the rumored website where I could log on to check my absentee ballot status (it’s here, by the way). And I was just going to include the link in my sites of interest tomorrow, except that I want to talk, for a moment, about my experience in the Democratic Headquarters, because it was profoundly unpleasant and negative, and I figure that writing about it will help to cleanse me.

I don’t know if being condescending, patronizing, and rude to voters seeking information is just the new hip thing, but I found my treatment to be supremely offensive, and even counterproductive. I felt like I was being marginalized for my age and physical appearance, that I was written off as someone who is stupid and not worthy of attention, and I found it profoundly alienating. If this is how the Coast Democrats are treating young voters, and how Democrats in general are treating young voters, it’s no wonder young people don’t vote.

My experience started out just fine. I strolled in, asked the lady behind the desk about the website, and she told me that she didn’t know, but that another person in the office did, if I was willing to wait for him to get off the phone. I was, so I stayed and chatted with her about phone banking, and thought that she wasn’t very knowledgeable, and maybe not the best choice of a desk person because of that, but she was nice and that made up for a lot. Really, she was. Really really nice. I mean it.

So then, the guy came out from the back, and I explained what I was looking for. And he duly found the site, and said I could sit down and use their computer, and they were using some kind of funky browser than I am not used to, so he was snarky about that, acting like I was totally illiterate, and that wasn’t very cool, but hey, computer users can be touchy about brand loyalty.

When I finished, he told Nice Lady that if people asked in the future, she could send them to the site or just look them up in their database to see if they had voted yet. And I said something along the lines of “oh, you won’t find me, I’m not a registered Democrat.”

And then, my friends, shit turned bad. He’d already been kind of giving me the brushoff, but then, he said, can you believe it “why aren’t you a Democrat? Is it because you don’t want to participate in the electoral process?”

I declined to respond, and he asked what I was registered as, and I said “non partisan,” and he said “there’s no such thing,” and I thought he was making a joke, like, hah hah, it’s impossible to be non partisan, but he pushed me and said “what’s on your voter registration card,” and I said “NP,” because that’s what it says, and he said “that’s Natural Law. You don’t even know what party you’re registered in.”

Uhm, can I just say, for the record, that this was an INCREDIBLY OFFENSIVE thing to say. I realize that some people do, in fact, fill out forms wrong, but to suggest that I didn’t know what party I was registered in, with this very snide tone of voice? Not necessary.

I said “no, I am not in the Natural Law Party, I am registered non partisan. Every primary, I get a letter asking me to select a ballot or use the non partisan ballot.”

And the guy got all insistent, and up in my face, and really, really, really rude, and insisted on looking me up in their system (which, it turns out, is a database of all registered voters), and there I was, marked with a “decline to state,” since apparently they have changed the code to “decline to state” from “non partisan,” which is what it was when I registered to vote. Oh, my bad, I’m not hip to the codes.

And then he went on this whole riff about why I should register Democrat, and blah blah blah, and I said that I had fundamental ideological disagreements with the Democrats, and I thanked him for the information, and left.

And then fumed until I got home to write this. The thing was, walking into the office and talking with Nice Lady, I actually thought about volunteering on election day, helping with get out the vote stuff, maybe phone banking local voters. Because voting is important to me, and I want to make sure that people vote. I also want to make sure that people get the information they need. And my experience was so unpleasant that I came out of it thinking “screw these people, and screw the Democrats.”

I don’t think that’s the kind of message they should be sending. I think that it pays to be polite and helpful to people seeking information. And, I have to say, I’m tempted to go to the Republican office with a request for the same information, to see what kind of treatment I get there.

Tags: fort bragg, politics