by Deb Spilko

 

On the day of the 2008 general election, I was a campaign greeter at the two polls located at St. Paul's Social Center on West 16th Street in the Erie Pa. neighborhood known as Little Italy.

 

There were a number of incidents that caused me concern and I want to share them here.

 

I held off on publishing this, because I didnt want to embarass St. Paul's, which is a poor parish that does a lot of good work in its neighborhood.  The major issue there was resolved, so I feel okay about talking about all that transpired that day.

 

I was there on behalf of Cindy Purvis, Democratic candidate for State Senate. I wore an Obama pin on my cap so that people—especially new voters—might get the idea that the two candidates were on the same side.

 

Basically, I was there to put a friendly face on the campaign, and I said “Hi!” to voters and often made small talk.

 

Because there were so many new voters, I also spent some time answering questions and/or actually assisting people.

 

The St. Paul ’s voting site serves two predominately Democratic districts, so there was not much antagonism among people. The poll workers at St. Paul's  gave out lollipops to voters and their kids.

ARCHITECTURAL INACCESSIBLITY

There was a woman who had brought her elderly father, who was in a wheelchair. This was their first time voting. There was a ramp, but there was a problem when they got inside. Several stairs stood in the way of getting up to the polling place. There was a stair lift on the side of the stairs but I couldn’t get it to work. I ran upstairs to ask how to operate it, and several poll workers told me it doesn’t work. I said, “How is a man in a wheelchair supposed to go up the stairs?” They told me to look for the maintenance man. I went all over the center hollering, “I’m looking for the maintenance man!” In the basement, down a darkened hall, I heard a disembodied voice. “That’s me!” He came out and said “It doesn’t work.” “I said well, that’s just great. How’s this guy supposed to vote?” “It hasn’t worked for a while,” he told me. I said "this isn’t right. "

 

I went upstairs and told the lady that the lift doesn’t work. “Oh God.” she said, obviously distressed. “They said it would be so easy.”

 

One of the poll workers said “We used to have curbside paper ballots, but now it’s all by machine.”

 

Earlier in the week I had read that 80% of Pennsylvania counties had no emergency ballots. A judge had ordered them, but I am not aware that they were available at this place. 

 

The man in the wheelchair finally ended up having to walk up the stairs, which he did with much pain and difficulty. I told the woman that I would be out front if she needed assistance. She seemed relieved, at the offer. I checked on them a few times, as it seemed like what with the assistance sheets and such it was taking forever. I told her about absentee ballots, which she didn’t know about. She gave me her address so I could send her one.

 

When the guy went to make the painful walk back down the stairs, I asked the maintenance man to stand in front of him, in case he fell. 

 

A little while later, the center’s maintenance guy came out and talked to me about the broken lift. “The center has no money,” he said. “Ever since the casino came in, we don’t have people coming in.” He said St. Paul's used to have a lively bingo income, but now it was really weak.

 

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Late afternoon and a young mother came along with her baby in one of those long, somewhat heavy strollers. She wasn't able to get that up the stairs by herself so I helped her carry it up the stairs. I waited close by in the polling place so I could help her take the stroller back downstairs. While I was waiting for her someone from the west side poll watchers came over and told me in a nasty way “You have to leave.” I thought he was referring to the small Obama button pin that I had forgotten to remove when I entered the polling place. “Oops!” I said rolling it up into my hat. “Sorry, I forgot to take it off.”  

 

“No, that’s not it,” he said. “You can’t just hang around.” Several of the poll workers from that side started on me about that.

 

“If you already voted you need to leave,” said one. “You can’t just stand around!” said another.  

 

“I’m helping her,” I said, pointing to the mother with the stroller.

 

 “That doesn’t matter,” said the judge on that side. “You can’t just hang around!”

 

“You have an inaccessible polling place!” I said. “What is she supposed to do?”

 

The poll workers working on the east side of the center said “She is allowed to stay if she is helping.”

 

I was pretty annoyed by now, and I turned to the poll workers on the west side, and said, “And you can’t just make up rules either.”

 

They left me alone after that.

 

They knew that I had been assisting people throughout the day—especially new voters—and the charge that I was just “hanging around” was pretty unfair.

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Local filmmaker Christian Lestat Bussiere showed up around 5PM to interview local rapper Hectic about his experience with voting. He does the Spotlight TV site. As he was wrapping up the piece with Hectic, I told Christian that a van carrying a passenger in a wheelchair had just pulled into the parking lot, and that passenger was not going to be able to get the wheelchair up the stairs. “You should catch this all on video,” I suggested.

 

He turned the camera on me and started asking me questions, so I narrated a lot of what was going on.

 

Some of the poll workers frantically tried to get the lift to work, but it just sat there, useless. She may not have been able to use it anyway, as her body was swollen from health problems. Four people tried to help her up the stairs, but she had enough trouble even standing up, and sort of collapsed back into her wheelchair after a couple of agonizing minutes. I took Christian in to talk to one of the judges, and the poll workers became panicked and told us to leave, saying we couldn't film inside the voting place.

 

Many phone calls to the voters’ registration office for help, but being Election Day the phones tended to be very busy. They finally got someone to bring a paper ballot down.

 

“All it took was a few phone calls,” said the aide, who was probably trying to downplay how disturbing the situation was.

 

Mike Dunsmore--a roamer for the judge of elections-- came over and talked with Christian and me. He just wanted to know what happened, and wanted to make sure no election laws were violated. He also wanted to explain to the poll workers what Christian was doing with the videotape, as they were fairly upset by it. One frightened poll worker told me, "We could be fined or imprisoned."

 

Christian later said he had been going around to various polling places with the idea of documenting possible problems. “But I never imagined that one of those problems would be an inaccessible polling place."

 

VOTING MACHINE INSTRUCTIONS

On one of my visits into the polling place, I heard the woman offering machine instructions say, “Is the red light flashing? Then push it.” This was not prefaced with something like “When you have reviewed your selections, and are ready to cast your vote, push the red light.” When I was in there again, I heard her offer exactly the same sequence.

It seems to me that if there is anything that requires a scripted instruction, it is for this action. 

 

LANGUAGE PROBLEMS

A number of the new voters were Spanish-speaking, and one of the poll workers told me these new voters were disappointed and frustrated to find that the machines and verbal instructions were done only in English. They often registered using Spanish language applications, so it is reasonable that they would expect that the voting machines would allow them to vote in that language.

 

Wonder why they couldn’t accommodate this; after all, ATMs routinely ask if you want to conduct transactions in English or Spanish. Some, like PNC Bank, offer multiple languages.

 

Navigating through the electronic voting machine can be intimidating enough, but it would make me anxious if I had to do it in a second language.

 

One woman could not speak any English, so after I determined she spoke Spanish I offered to help her to vote.

 

I had to fill out an assistance form, and then I was allowed behind the machine with her.

 

I can speak Spanish on what is called a basic conversation level, but that does not mean I am fluent. I hadn’t conversed in that language for over six months, it is not that easy to just jump into the language without practice. I had to ask her to slow down when speaking with me, and a couple words escaped me. And the referendum question found me totally over my head. I explained it as best I could, but it was paraphrased. This is hardly an ideal way to introduce someone to vote, and it certainly carries some risks of incorrect voting choices.

 

Although she was better off with my clumsy Spanish than if she had had nobody helping her, I don’t think it is right that she couldn’t do it on her own.

 

I told the poll workers that if they needed my help (such as it was) with getting Spanish speaking voters through the process, that I would be out front all day and would be glad to help.

 

MOVING

There was one guy who had just moved into the Little Italy neighborhood, and but his address change hadn’t gone through, so he had to go to Pfeiffer Burligh at 12^th & Holland . He had no car, and it’s about a two mile walk. The judge on the west side of the polling place told him he had to vote where he was registered, that he could go there to vote or not vote at all. He came out and talked to me, and couldn’t figure out what had happened.  A string of obscenities came out and his girlfriend told him to stop it. I said I could understand why he would be angry, and apologized for the problem. “I’m more hurt than angry,” he told me. I told him Pfeiffer Burleigh wouldn’t be that far, and someone from Obama HQ nearby could give them a ride back home. He told me had done hard manual labor all day and just was not up for it. I had not brought change or I would have offered him bus fare, I didn’t bring my cell phone or I could have called to give him a ride. And if Pennsylvania had mail-in ballots, maybe this could have been avoided entirely. So I just sat helplessly watching him walk away without voting.  

 

LINES

A guy named Buck from the Obama campaign stopped by. I think he said he was something called a line-watcher. I asked him what that was. He said he was stopping by the various polling places to see if the lines were long and if so to try to keep people from walking away. The lines were actually not too bad at this polling place. Buck said he was from Rochester , and a registered Republican. I asked, "So why does a Republican from Rochester get involved in the Obama campaign?"

"I'd be financially better off with a Republicans," he said. "But the anger. The divisiveness." He winced hard.

 

 

VIEW VIDEO

View the video by clicking here

or copy and paste:    http://videothevote.org/video/1388/   

 

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FOLLOW-UP

In March of this year I contacted Mr. Doug Smith, Erie County Clerk of Elections, regarding whether or not the accessibility situation at St Paul's had been corrected. He sounded a bit upset that this was the first he had heard of the incident.

He also seemed surprised that there were no paper ballots at the site. 

In early May, Mr. Smith informed me that the lift at St. Paul's has now been fixed.

I'm happy that that situation was resolved, but I have to wonder, as Mr. Smith did, why such a bad situation was not reported. I also wonder how many other bad voting situations go unreported.