http://my.hsj.org http://my.hsj.org en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Sat, 25 May 2013 16:16:28 GMT 15 By Kelvin Tran
My phone alarm is ringing at four in the morning. I drag myself out of my warm, cozy bed into the nippy air to turn it off. I take a look outside at the still dark sky through the window I was not smart enough to close, and think to myself, “Geez, I must be crazy to wake up this early.” It’s November 10th, 2005, the Special Election day the polls open up to the public to vote on the Propositions made up by our governor, Governor Arnold Schwarzennegar, a man whose name is so long and difficult for me to spell, I have to look it up on the internet to spell it correctly. I’ve woken up at four in the morning (4:13am truthfully, I slept for thirteen more minutes) for two things: one, to make myself some breakfast, lunch and dinner (it's not provided), and two, to print out the directions to the polling place where I’m suppose to work at. Now if I was smarter, I would’ve done all this the night before, but hey, I’m not that bright. I’m going to be working at the polls from 6am and leaving at 9pm if I'm lucky. I wolf down my food in thirty minutes while changing into my clothes and printing the directions out (that’s right, I spent an hour making eggs and sandwiches). By the time I left the house it was 5:30am. I got on the road and drove toward my polling place. I arrived at the school at 5:50am, after getting lost periodically (you’d be surprised at how dark 5:30 in the morning is in winter), earlier than the Inspector and clerks and just in time to help them unload their paperwork (the machines were set up the night before). I soon introduced myself and found out my colleagues-for-the-day’s names. Our Inspector was an elderly gentleman, Oliver or Ollie (I forget, hey, I'm human), his brother-in-law Charles, a nice Hispanic lady, Lupea, an elderly Filipino gentleman, Saturntino and a fellow high school volunteer Vinh. We soon got along quite well and were finished with everything by around 7am. Now we waited. From around seven to twelve, and twelve to three, it was slow at our location (I heard it was different at other places); only about thirty or forty or so people came by to vote. During this time we all traded stories, talked and joked around with each other. Time does fly when you’re situated with nice, social people. Things began to liven up a bit. More people came by and by four we had a line going. Since we had a few people we could each be assigned to a separate job. Lupea was taking down names and addresses of people who voted; I was crossing out the names and addresses on the voting roster; Saturntino, or Tino as we called him, was assigning and crossing out numbers; and Charles and Vinh both worked the card machine and voting machines. Ollie was left to oversee all the work and make sure everything was okay. However, around 4:20pm, the field inspector Chris Clark came by and asked me to move to Ocala Middle School and help out the three people there. So I obliged, and after getting lost again, came there to meet my new colleagues, Rita, Mark and Mr. Inspector (I didn’t get his name). I continued to work there until eight at night. During the whole time there, you could say it was lively and I was able to meet some very colorful people (some very loud and rude enough to tell people how to vote). By eight, Rita, Mark and I cleaned up and put away the machines while our inspector oversaw the work (he said he had some sort of injury that prohibits lifting of any kind). By 8:30, our field inspector came by to check up on us, but ended up staying to help our inspector clean up the paper work. It was around 9:30pm when I was able to head home, do homework and go to sleep. I’m expecting my check in the mail in several weeks and hoping to getting some thing extra for the trouble of moving (not that I’m greedy, mind you). ]]> Wed, 30 Nov 2005 22:38:00 GMT