I woke up excited and nervous. While I didn’t have any trouble voting in the previous few elections, my husband was turned away both times due to ongoing address issues; he submitted an address change on three separate occasions, but none were ever recorded anywhere official. This time around, we had proper voter ID’s in hand when we took the short walk to our local precinct in St. Petersburg, the Dwight H. Jones Neighborhood Center, which is located in the heart of a city-operated low- and mid-income housing community and across the street from two many-storied assisted living facilities.
The line was short, primarily made up of minorities, and everyone was in good spirits. We all seemed to be on the same boat — not a McCain supporter to be found – and all of us agreed that change was in the air.
My hubbie and I made it to the first pollworker table together and both of us had pollworker-related problems almost at once. I signed “LPolk” next to my name and knew I’d made a mistake as soon as the woman compared it to my license signature, which read “Leilani Polk.” The woman damn near had a heart attack when she saw what I’d done and spent the next few minutes anxiously hemming and hawing.
“I’ll just write out my first name,” I said lamely, but just as I scrawled an “L,” she snatched the book away from me, freaked out a little more, then firmly lectured me on the laws and how she could get in trouble and did I know that my signature had to look exactly as it did on my license? But then she talked herself down, admitting that she was the only one who’d see both sigs and after I pleaded with her to let me vote, she relented and let me through.
Phil’s pollworker couldn’t find his name in her book. When she asked if he’d moved recently and he answered yes, she started to tear off a provisional ballot. This was just as they’d found my name in the book. “Woah, Woah, woah, hold on there a minute — my wife moved at the same time and she’s in there,” he told his pollworker. That’s when he found out she wasn’t even looking at the right name. His last name is “Bardi”; she mistakenly looked up “Baron.” Once she had the right name, we were set and we both voted successfully.
