The Vote

You are in your bedroom sitting cross-legged on your bed, reclining back against the headboard. Spread out before you are the facts of your life, in the form of every document your mother and father passed on to you when you moved out, and so many you’ve collected since. The accordion filer you keep them in lies limp, paper bellows collapsed, at the foot of the bed. 

In your hand, you hold your pre-vote screening checklist. It unspools along the page, a little checkbox with a drop shadow next to each item. 

• Birth certificate (in notarized duplicate)

• Social security card (in notarized duplicate)

• Government issued ID

• IRS Tax Returns (one each previous 10 years)

• Criminal record proving non-criminality (lifetime, up to date to the month)

• Family voting status (three generations previous from your own)

• Personal voting history (all elections, up to the last 10, you qualified for)

• Rental / Homeowner history 

• Religious test results

• U.S. History test results

• Literacy test results

The list goes on from there. You check each item off as you file them back into the filer, which expands millimeter by millimeter as you slide them in. Tomorrow you take your tests, and from there you’ll be eligible for your pre-vote screening. 

You finish filing away the papers and review your VRAT—Voting Rights Assessment Test—flashcards, made from a massive book that reminds you of the SAT prep books you remember from high school, until you turn off your bedside lamp and tuck yourself in. Facts about U.S. history swirl in your head until your mind goes blank and you drift off into a fitful slumber.

You’re staring down a featureless hallway in an office building whose only distinguishing feature is an utter lack of character. The walls are an off-white, the doors are an off-white, and the molding around the doorframes is an off-beige. The doors are spaced out such that they diminish noticeably in size at each interval, reminding of those perspective drawings that you practiced in middle school art class. 

The directions that the clerk at the front desk gave you have slipped away. Your watch tells you that you only have eight minutes to be in your seat for the VRAT or you risk your right to vote being revoked this election cycle. You turn on a dime and race back down the stairwell to the bottom floor of the building. 

The clerk—nothing but a glorified receptionist, you think to yourself as you read her name tag that says RHONDA // VRAT CLERK—repeats her directions to you with an air of impatience. 

“Take the stairs to the fifth floor—”

“I think you said fourth floor last time?” you say. 

“Why on earth would I have said fourth floor,” she says, “when your testing room—” and here she looks down at her computer terminal and traces her fingertip down the screen until she presumably reaches your name and then looks at you over the rim of her glasses, “—is on the fifth floor?” 

You say nothing. She goes on. 

“Stairs to the fifth floor, about two thirds of the way down the hall you’ll see room 503B, it’s the next one after that.” 

“So room 504B?” you ask. “Or 503C?” 

“No,” she says. “616A.” 

You blink in disbelief. You squeeze your eyelids closed and pinch the bridge of your nose. You summon your last remaining reserves of self-restraint to stop yourself asking why. “Thanks,” you mutter, before turning and stalking back off to the stairwell. 

It isn’t until she reminds you that there are only three minutes left until the test starts that you turn the stalk into a mad dash, bursting into the stairwell and hurtling yourself up the stairs three at a time. 

At the fifth floor landing you barrel through the door and start down the hall, watching a series of room numbers that look like they came out of the random number generator that comes up with license plate numbers. 

You run right past 503B and skid to a stop, nearly going head over heels before regaining your balance. The next room has no room number, only a piece of duct tape across the door that says UNLISTED ROOM NUMBER. 

You tear open the door and the exam proctor is standing in the front of the room, watching the seconds tick by on a giant LCD timer above the door. The numbers tick down to zero and a heavy-duty latch automatically bars the door shut just as it closes behind you. The timer resets itself to one hour and starts counting down again. 

You take a seat and pick up your pencil and begin to fill out the test. The literacy section comes first. Future perfect continuous tense be damned, you think to yourself about one of the questions that’s left you among the voteless in previous elections. But your flash cards prove effective with each question, and you breeze through the obscure conjugations and archaic definitions with ease. 

Christian theology comes next. What a joke. You aren’t a Christian, your mother’s not a Christian, and her mother wasn’t either. No one is anymore. No wonder they put it on the test, you think. Perfect way to trip people up. 

After that, United States history. Piece of cake, as long as you know what revisionist history answers the test is looking for. The flash cards prove themselves effective again. 

You sit on your hands and look around while you wait for the big red LCD timer to run down to zero again. There are two types of people around you. Those that studied and are nearly done, who already knew what answers they would need to provide. And then those who were flying by the seat of their pants, taking the test for the first time and flabbergasted by what was on it. 

The percentage of qualified citizens who actually turned out to vote was under 50% before the Voting Rights Act of 2038. You know this because it’s actually a question on the history portion of the VRAT. You also know that the Voting Rights Act established the Federal Voting Commission and stripped the states of all of their rights to administer elections and vested that power in the federal government—the Executive Branch, specifically. Now, with the draconian procedures required to secure your right to vote, turnout is less than 10%. Excellent news when you’re an unpopular politician supported by a radical minority. 

A loud beep signals the end of the testing session. Most people in the room, the first time voters, aren’t even halfway through the sheaf of papers in front of them. Everyone files toward the front of the room and carefully lays their test down on the desk of the proctor, whose name tag reads TED // VRAT PROCTOR. 

You return to work to finish the day. You took the test during your lunch break, and are eleven minutes getting back to your desk. Your boss stops by in the afternoon to exchange pleasantries and remind you that your pay will be docked for the eleven minutes, and you’ll receive a low-level Class III write-up in your file. Nothing to worry about, all good as long as it doesn’t happen again, so on and so on.

Two weeks later, on yet another lunch break and facing yet another docking of pay and Class III reprimand in your file, you arrive back at the same characterless office building for your Pre-Vote Assessment and Screening interview with your cardboard filer in tow. It’s accordion sides are expanded near to their limit, full of the facts of your life. 

You are expecting to learn that your test results were exemplary, and that your files are all in order, and you have been granted the preliminary right to vote, pending a final approval by the Voting Commission. And, of course, provided you commit no crimes and violate none of the civic responsibilities set out by the Commission. 

You have no reason to expect any other outcome. You’re laces are straight, your files are in order, you aced the test. Yet you can still feel an apprehension slowing filling the pit of your stomach as you approach the building, threatening to begin filling your throat as you pull open the door and RHONDA // VRAT CLERK appraises you with an apathetic stare. 

“Yes?” she says. 

“Hi, how are you,” you say. She stares. Why do you even try. “I’m here for my scheduled PVAS.” 

“Name?” 

You tell her. 

“Appointment time?” 

“Does it not tell you on there?” 

She sighs, and looks up from her screen over the rim of her glasses with the same withering stare you remember from your last encounter. “Appointment time?” 

“12:15.” 

“That’s not what it says here,” she says. 

You open your filer and pull out a certified mail envelope. You remove the letter from it, unfold it, and scan it for your appointment time. “Yeah, 12:15 according to my letter.” 

“Not what it says here,” RHONDA // VRAT CLERK says. “Sorry.” 

“What does it say there?” you ask. 

“I’m not allowed to give out information.” 

“It’s my information,” you say. “It’s about me.” 

“Doesn’t matter.” 

“How could an error like this happen? Why would my certified letter from the Commission themselves say something different than what’s on that computer?” 

“Don’t know.” 

You blink and squeeze your eyelids shut for a second and get a sense of deja vu as you pinch the bridge of your nose. You’ve been here before. “Do you think you could check again?” 

“Sure,” she says, unexpectedly but humorlessly. She draws the word out, and it sounds like the shore of a beach. “Name?” 

“I just told you my—” you catch yourself, and then tell her your name.

“And what time did you say your appointment was?” 

“12:15.” 

“Okay, that matches up with what my computer’s saying.” Your mouth gapes, but RHONDA // VRAT CLERK continues as if the entire exchange previous to this moment hadn’t taken place. “You’re going to go up to the ninth floor, and then when you leave the stairwell you take a right, then a right, and go into the third door on your left. Then you’ll take a right, a left, and your assessment interview will be in the fourth room on the right as soon as you turn the corner.” 

“Do you think you can write that down for me?” 

“Can’t,” she says. “Security reasons.” 

“Okay, can you repeat it for me one more time then?” you say, fishing in your jacket pocket for a pen. 

“Sure,” she says, drawing the word out again. “But you can’t write it down either. I’ll have to have security throw you out if you try.” 

The bridge of your nose is getting a workout today. You pinch it again and take a deep breath with your eyes closed. “Okay, I’m ready,” you say, bracing yourself for the directions. 

When she finishes reciting them, you look down at your watch and see that you have almost exactly thirteen minutes to reach the interview. Should be plenty of time. 

All the way up the stairwell to the ninth floor you repeat the directions to yourself, hoping that if you recite them over and over from the current step you can remember them. You step into the ninth floor hallway and find that it looks exactly like the fifth and the fourth floor hallways. This isn’t going to be easy. 

“Okay, take a right,” you mutter to yourself, and start down the featureless corridor. An intersection looms and you take another right, and find the third door on the left. It’s labeled Assessments Corridor. A good sign. Your watch says you have a little under eight minutes. Should be plenty of time. 

You open the door inward and it immediately bumps up against something, opening only about as wide as a soccer ball. Only after sucking in your stomach and blowing out all of your breath are you able to squeeze through, dragging your filer through the narrow gap behind you. On the other side of the door, a metal door stopper with a rubber cap is installed in the middle of the floor. This is what stops the door opening all the way. 

Another corridor. More doors. Right, left, third door on the right. You knock on the door and there’s no response. Three minutes and counting. You knock again, and again there’s no response. The knob turns freely when you try it, but when you push the door open it stops just like the other one. With your head craned inside of the narrow opening, you can see another door stopper installed in the floor. 

At a desk inside the plushly appointed office, all wood grain and leather and green lamp shades, sits a man who doesn’t look up from the papers in front of him as you struggle to get through the door. He says your name, and then looks at his watch. 

“Two minutes early,” he says. “Hmmph.” 

At this point, you’re wedged in between the door and the door frame, trying to squeeze yourself through. The man looks between you and his watch as you struggle. 

“Do you think, ah, ugh, a little, uhhh, a little help maybe?” 

“No,” he says, “I can’t do that.” 

“Let me guess,” you say. “Security reasons.” 

“No,” he says. “I simply don’t wish to touch...you.” 

Your hip bone slips through the door with a jolt and you lose your balance and go sprawling on the floor. Your filer pops open and your files fan out across the high-pile Turkish rug. You scramble to pick them up and sit down in the baroque high-backed armchairs opposite the massive wooden desk that’s equally unnecessarily detailed with scrollwork and inlay. 

“Nice office.” You lean back in the chair, taking in the man and reading his name tag: JOHNATHON // PVAS ASSESSOR.

“Nice filer,” he says. “Please pass me your documents. I assume they’re in sequential order according to the official Commission checklist?” 

“Yes, everything is here and in order,” you say. “I wanted this to be as easy as possible.” 

He stares at you with skepticism. “Voting is a privilege,” he says. “You are not simply entitled to it. It’s not a matter of making things easy. It’s a matter of meeting the requirements and strict adherence to the process. The process is not designed to be easy. It is designed to be effective.” 

“I know, I just thought, as long as we have to do it, we should make it as easy on each other as possible, right?” 

“No.” 

JOHNATHON // PVAS ASSESSOR begins paging through your documents, checking them against his own checklist. A pregnant silence mounts in the room. He stops from time to time, looking at you over the rim of his glasses when he pauses. When he arrives at the signed and notarized affidavit that all of the information in your packet is true, he reaches into a desk drawer to retrieve a magnifying glass. A small bead of sweat extrudes itself from your forehead and runs down the side of your face as he inspects your signature and that of the notary. 

Again, that feeling of nervousness in the pit of your stomach that no amount of preparation and double-triple-quadruple-checking could have prevented. 

Again the look above the rim of the glasses. 

“Surprisingly enough, this all appears to be in order,” he says. You realize you’ve been holding your breath for a long time and release it all at once in a relieved sigh. “It is not an easy process, and you’ve done impeccably well here,” he says. A note of disappointment in his voice. “You’ve also passed your tests.” That it feels like a weight has come off of your shoulders at this statement would be an understatement. 

JOHNATHON // PVAS ASSESSOR returns the magnifying glass to its home and removes a rubber stamp from the same drawer and stamps his official assessor checklist with it. With a fountain pen he signs it, adding a flourish under the signature, and uses a binder clip to secure the entire package together. 

“You now have the right to vote,” he says, handing the sheaf of papers back to you. “Congratulations. Please leave my office.” 

“Thank you, wow, what a—”

He cuts you off with a finger pointed straight at the door without even looking up from the papers on his desk that he has returned to.  

It is four in the morning and you cannot sleep. You sit up in bed and swing your feet out from under the comforter into your slippers. You pad across the floor to the desk, remove the documents of the facts of your life from your filer, and cross-check them against the rubber-stamped checklist to make sure they’re all still there. Satisfied, you add another tally to a small post-it note stuck to the top left corner of the desk. This is the seventy-seventh time you’ve checked your documents. 

You lay back down and stare at the ceiling until your alarm goes off an hour later. Thankful for something to do other than lie in bed with an ever-tightening stomach and anxious thoughts about voting later that day, you shower, get ready for work, and face the day. 

As the first person in the office, you start a pot of coffee and eat a banana while it brews. Co-workers begin to file in, thanking you for making the coffee and choosing from the danishes and fruit that the office provides. 

As the morning drags on, you’re unable to focus on any of the meetings or spreadsheets or emails you should be focusing on. All you can think about is making it to your voting appointment later that day, obsessively watching the minutes tick by after lunch, convinced you’re going to screw up somehow and miss your three-thirty appointment. 

You’ve taken the rest of the day after one o’clock—for which you’ll be docked, of course—in order to make it to your polling place the recommended two hours before your appointment time.

You’re staring at the tiny digital clock on your computer monitor as it ticks over from 12:59 to 1:00. You gather your things and leave the office, waving to a few co-workers who know where you’re going. They wish you luck. 

Outside, you hail a cab but as soon as it turns down Broadway the driver groans. You lean your head out the window to see the traffic, and it stretches as far as you can see. 

“Hope you didn’t have anywhere you needed to be,” the driver says. 

You look at your watch. “I do actually.” 

“By the looks of this you’d be better off walking,” the driver says. 

You realize he’s probably right. The polling place is twenty minutes by car. How long if you run? You lean out the window again, and pull yourself up so you’re seated on the bottom edge of the window and you can see down the street. A sea of cars blockades Broadway as far as you can see, none of them moving even an inch. People are beginning to turn their cars off and get out of them. 

With a split-second decision, you throw whatever cash you have at the driver, hoping it’s enough, and bolt out of the back of the cab. The sidewalk is getting more and more crowded with angry drivers by the minute, but you run down it, clutching the strap of your briefcase that contains your filer. 

The sidewalk is packed now and you can feel a sense of panic beginning to take shape. The sidewalk is getting more and more packed. You turn off of Broadway to escape the crowd, but you have to run three blocks before the traffic and sidewalk crowd starts to thin out. You turn north again, back on track for the Federal Building. You look down at your watch and see that an hour has gone by since you left the office, and the seconds ticking by on the digital face make you feel like your chances of voting are crumbling away slowly with every second. 

When you finally stop short in front of the Federal building, you start up the steps but a security guard waves you off without a word, pointing to a massive line snaking down the stairs and down the block and around the corner. 

“My appointment—” 

The guard stops you short with a scowl and another forceful gesture at the line. You dash down the stairs and run to the back of the line, which mercifully doesn’t extend that far around the corner. 

You stand in line and watch your chances continue to crumble, second by second on your digital watch. You watch the minutes tick over to 2:45. If you don’t get through security and into the building and to your voting booth in less than 45 minutes, all your hard work to get approved to vote is going straight down the drain. 

The line moves faster than you expected, and within 15 minutes you’re inside the building and your briefcase and filer are being inspected by a ham-fisted security guard. Letting your documents out of your own keeping for even a few minutes raises your pulse, but he’s soon satisfied you’ve not secreted any weapons among them. He waves you through. 

Past the security checkpoint you’re met with another line. 3:07. 23 minutes. This is a shorter line, but seems to be moving slower. You shift your weight from foot to foot, unable to stand still like a toddler who has to pee. A potent mix of anticipation and anxiety and excitement race through your mind and body, and you cannot stand still, shifting your weight from foot to foot and turning side to side like a toddler who has to pee. 

At the window, you don’t even bother to read the VRAT clerks nametag before shoving your papers in front of her. He checks them in what feels to you to be a painfully slow fashion, looking up at you once over the rim of his glasses. When he finishes, he hands them back along with a small card with a barcode on it. 

“Booth 758,” he says. “Put this in the slot next to the door handle of the booth.” He looks at his watch. “Better hurry. You have less than 10 minutes by my watch.” He gives you a wry smile. You ignore it. 

You run through two heavy oak doors into a room that looks like it could hold a football arena inside of it. Inside are rows and rows and rows of voting booths. Tall and narrow, similar to phone booths, each one has a card reader next to the door. 

You race to the seventh row and run down it, watching the numbers count up until you reach the fifty eighth booth in that row. You made it. It dawns on you just how sweaty, exhausted and rumpled you look and feel. 

The card reader beeps and lights up a small green light when you swipe your card through it. You made it. By only a couple of minutes according to your watch. You push the door open and step into the booth. 

It is completely soundproof, and the sounds of the room outside disappear completely as the door unfolds and seals itself behind you. In front of you is a small table with a slot in it where you will deposit the ballot that sits on the table. 

You fill it out. It takes only seconds. You’ve known for months who you were going to vote for. You put it in the slot. Another little green light glows next to the slot. A curious grinding noise, one that reminds you of a noise you hear back at work from time to time but can’t quite place, emits from underneath the table. You stumble out of the booth and out of the building and back onto the street, wandering in a daze before you catch a taxi back home.  

Weeks later, you receive a package in the mail from the Federal Voting Commission. It contains a hat. It’s striped with red and white, and has blue stars on the underside of the bill, with the words Certified Voter embroidered in gold across the crown. The box contains packing material that reminds you of shredded paper that looks a lot like what you see in the recycling bins at the office when files are being purged and shredded.

Cover photo courtesy of Jens Alfke via Creative Commons.