Election Day
I have spoken previously about the dilemma I faced with regards to my final project at the community mental health center where I have been interning for eleven months now. In September, after a casual poll revealed that barely a third of the 70 participants on our Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team were registered to vote or had ever voted previously, I decided to organize a combination voter registration drive and transport to the polls on Election Day. Yesterday, from about 10:30 until 3:00, I traversed what felt like the entirety of Washtenaw County getting people back and forth to their polling stations in the county minivan. Despite my cynicism about the American political process in general, I am hard-pressed to avoid using words like neat-o and sweeeeeeeeeet! to describe what it was like to hear the excitement from a marginalized, disenfranchised community about this year’s presidential election. Many people who were middle-aged or older had never even voted before but chose to do so during this election specifically. I’m guessing that’s less about my efforts than it is about the historical aspect of the election in general, but it’s still awesome. Like a tofu pup.
Overall, yesterday’s trip to the polls with various ramshackle groups of individuals with severe mental illnesses was fun. I am always struck by the reactions these individuals receive when they venture into new spaces that do not make accommodations for their disabilities, where people scrutinize them for signs of craziness and instinctively pull their children closer. To that end, I find it greatly amusing when people’s visible discomfiture interacting with any person who appears “homeless” or “mentally ill” or a “drug abuser”, even if the individual is behaving in a socially appropriate manner, leads them to get up and change seats, inch away, pretend they can’t hear the person speaking, or avoid the person entirely by crossing the street or keeping a ten-foot radius between them. Even more amusing is when the person, impervious to such social cues, continues to prolong the interaction by moving closer, talking louder, or outrightly remarking on what they perceive as this rude behavior.
At one elementary school on Ann Arbor’s northeast side where I took three people to vote, a gentleman I’ll call Pete caused quite a stir. First of all, when I picked Pete up, he was visibly ill due to withdrawals from eating all of his benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety meds like clonazepam) yesterday morning–about four days’ worth of dosing. He still wanted to vote, however, and went back inside to get “a light jacket” as he told me…despite the fact that Michigan has recently been experiencing a veritable heat wave and it was almost 70 degrees outside. Imagine the spectacle as we rolled up to the polling station: one woman dressed entirely in black, her eyebrows painted on blue; another woman toting her cane and dialysis bag; and Pete, wearing a long overcoat with a fur collar and one of those deerstalker hats with the flaps sticking straight out rather than pulled down around his ears. Because these three individuals happen to be somewhat low-functioning and had never voted before, I decided to go into the station with them just to make sure they weren’t derailed somehow from the task at hand.
I instructed each of them to tell the poll worker that they needed a special accommodation so they wouldn’t have to wait in line. Pete, cutting a dashing figure with his 5′4″ frame and furry accoutrements–not to mention the unseasonably warm dress of his oversized coat with a Salvation Army price tag on one of the sleeves–strode directly up to the table where the poll workers were sitting (garnering stares from the people already in queue) and announced in his booming voice, which resonated throughout the gym: “I NEED HELP. I NEED SPECIAL HELP VOTING.”
The poll worker, a mousy College Republican type, stuttered, “Oh, ah-huh, um, well, do you–do you have a disability?”
“YES, I HAVE A DISABILITY.” (Aside, to woman in line next to him.) “I HAVE PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA, AND MY BACK HURTS.” To demonstrate that his back did hurt, he put his hands on his hips and sort of leaned forward as if to stretch, bending his knees.
“That’s me, too,” hollered Ruth, the woman with the cane and dialysis bag, who had just entered the gym following a trip to the bathroom. “I have a disability.”
The poll worker, perhaps sensing that the best thing to do was to get us out of there as soon as possible, gave Pete and Ruth cards to fill out. More shenanigans followed as Pete didn’t understand where to sign his name and debated aloud with himself whether he should write his full name or just his first and last. He eventually settled on just the first and last following at least a three-minute conversation with the poll worker that his vote would still count. Then Pete, after taking the ballot, tried to enter an already-occupied booth. Another poll worker steered him away and said he would have to wait his turn. Pete then attempted to sit down on the gym floor, cross-legged, and fill out his ballot. Again the poll worker informed him he could not do that either and would have to wait for a booth. He sighed and exclaimed, “THIS IS TAKING FOREVER.” Then, to me, from across the gym, “HEY ANNAH! I’M GOING TO VOTE FOR McCAIN, AND I’M GOING TO HATE EVERY MINUTE OF IT!”
I really thought we’d be swiftly ejected from the premises, because there’s been a lot of confusion over what you can and cannot say in a polling place, that you can’t wear election paraphernalia or tell people who to vote for, etc. Fortunately, the poll worker seemed to grasp that kicking Pete out at that point would cause even more of a ruckus–perhaps she sensed I would immediately be calling the ACLU should she attempt to do so–and he was informed gently that he could not mention either candidate’s name until we were outside and within 100 feet of the entrance.
Despite my better judgment and our agency’s policy about helping our consumers avoid caffeine, I took Pete, Ruth and Helen to a local restaurant chain offering free small coffees to anyone wearing an “I Voted” sticker. Pete had somehow managed to get ahold of five stickers and subsequently tried to get five coffees, which were denied. “OH WELL,” he said, walking back to the car with his ear flaps sticking out, “I ALREADY DRANK A POT THIS MORNING.”
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November 6th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Wow, what a party!
Mental illness + democratic process = hilarious!
if thats not what you were going for, I’m sorry
… I couldn’t stop laughing.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
sweeeeeeeeeet!
November 6th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Great (true) story! Good writing. Reminds me of something John Irving would write!
Very funny and yet there’s a seriousness to it. Loved it!
November 18th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
You might find this incredibly out-of-line, but have you ever had a chance to read Tard-Blog.com? It’s written by a special education teacher, and some of her entries are so funny I could piss myself.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:45 am
this is fantastic. all-in-all, how do you balance your cynicism with stuff like this?