‘It’s a Thrill to Get Someone Started’

A surge in naturalizations during the past two years may produce a record local crop of first-time voters, both new citizens and young people. Many are likely to feel intimidated by the check-in, punch cards and other unfamiliar aspects of the voting process. FLAVIA VASQUEZ has spend decades as a poll tender, helping to familiarize citizens with voting. She spoke with TRIN YARBOROUGH.

One thing almost every poll worker loves is showing somebody how to vote, especially a first-time voter. It doesn’t matter whether they’re a new citizen or maybe a native-born American who just never voted before. It’s a kind of thrill to get someone started out as a full American citizen.

Oh, occasionally some poll worker might act grumpy. I’m 75 years old and I’ve been a poll worker since I first became a citizen myself in 1964, and I remember one old lady who worked the polls with me who would bawl out voters if they did something wrong. So one day I told her she couldn’t talk that way, and you know what she said? That everybody knew her from the neighborhood and were used to her, so they didn’t mind. But that kind of person doesn’t belong working at the polls. You can’t talk down to people. For one reason, they might not come back and vote again.

I came here from Mexico in 1927 when I was 6, and although when I graduated from high school I filed my intention to become a U.S. citizen, I waited too darned long before I actually did it. I was in my mid-40s and I went back to night school just to be sure I could pass the citizenship test. Right after I was sworn in, a lady from our neighborhood registered me as a voter and put me to work helping her at the polls in the very next election.

We had big paper ballots then that had to be counted by hand, and after the polls closed we cometimes stayed up counting all night. When the government switched to voting machines about 1968, we used to drag around this voting machine on loan from the county so we could teach people how to use it. The biggest turnout we ever had was in the 1968 primary when Sen. Robert Kennedy was running for president, just before he was assassinated.

Nowadays, with about 500 voters in our precinct, only about 100 turn out. It’s depressing. I hear a lot of talk that there might be a big wave of new voters this year, and all I can say is, I hope so!

The county registrar’s office holds poll worker meetings before elections to teach any changes. There’s not too much new this time. But the same kinds of problems tend to come up every year. First, people come to the wrong place to vote instead of to the address on the ballot they get in the mail. We have them call the registrar to get their right polling place. Then, people move and don’t re-register--we let them vote if they put down their old address and didn’t move too long ago. And there are people who swear they’ve registered but we don’t have it in our records--they can get really upset. There’s a system where they can vote and put their ballot in a special envelope on which they swear they are citizens who did register, and on which the poll worker writes and signs an explanation of what happened.

We used to have more language problems, but now we have booklets that explain some of the issues in the major languages used in that precinct, although the ballot is always all in English. Many more polls are accessible now for people with disabilities, but if someone can’t come in we go out to them with a little lap cushion and they vote sitting in their car or wheelchair and put their ballot in a sealed envelope that we put in the box for them.Occasionally someone will mark their ballot wrong and want to change it. When that happens we can void the first ballot and give them a new one.

We’re allowed to go into a voting booth with someone if they ask us first to show them how to use the machine, or help fill out their ballot if they have poor eyesight or another health problem. Every time we do that, we have to record it. It’s best if voters take in their marked-up sample ballot when they vote, with their minds already made up, instead of standing in there reading the propositions for the very first time. I know one voter who won’t admit her vision is going bad and who stays in the booth 15-20 minutes. But we don’t hurry people.

Primaries are more complicated than the general election, because you have to be sure to give each voter the ballot for his specific party. It’s too late then for people to change their party registration. I remember during the primary when Robert Kennedy ran that a lot of voters wanted to switch to Democratic. All the nuns from St. Mary’s vote in my precinct, and one tried to get me to give her a Democratic ballot instead of a Republican one, but I had to insist: “Sorry, Sister, I just can’t do it.”

I want every voter to know this: Don’t let anyone intimidate you. Take the time you need. If you have a problem, ask for help. And if one poll worker doesn’t help, ask another.

Lots of people have lost faith in government now. They say voting doesn’t change anything, that voting won’t make any real difference. Well, sometimes it won’t, but many times it does. If you don’t tell the government through your vote what you want, how are they gonna know? How are politicians going to change if you don’t make them?