x-posted from
My Left Wing
I wonder how many other Dems are having this much trouble registering to vote in Los Angeles. If I had a suspicious mind, I might wonder if there was a purge shaping up around here.
Here's how my franchise is slipping through my fingers here in Downtown LA, in the Artist District (where we like our guns and vote Dem and pretend to be on the brink of fame and sex).
First I went to
LA Votes web site, which belongs the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's office, the responsible agency for registering voters in LA County.
Making the mistake of making an assumption, I thought that surely by now it would be possible to check registration online. If anyone has a look at the web site, I'd appreciate your letting me know if you find a mention of how to determine whether one is registered. In any event it's worth having a look at if you want some tips on keeping lots of voters too bogged down to register. Just go and poke around.
There is this section in their FAQ, titled Questions About Voter Registration, but that's not much help. This sort of inaccessibility amazes me. You probably have to pay way extra to get a site as confusing as that one.
There's this reassuring item buried in the Voter Registration Page:
.... calling the Registrar of Voters' general information telephone numbers: (562) 466-1310 or (800) 481-VOTE, 24 hours a day...
It doesn't mention registration status as a possibility, but at least it's a 24-hour number. I tried it.
Some man's voice recorded voice informed me that:
You have reached the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. The office is now closed. To obtain polling place or other election information, you may go to our web site at lavote.net. Internet access is available at all public libraries.
[The actual sound of a phone being hanged up, a little hard]
Then a bubbly female voice chimed in with:
4662260 and a registration form will be mailed to...YOU!
It's worth the call just to hear the inflection of that to ... YOU! It was the voice of a USC cheerleader played through some MIT geek's masturbation robot's emulator.
So much for the 24/7.
I sent a slightly pissed off email to their office:
Greetings:
My name is Brian Beker, and I registered to vote when I obtained my California Driver License last summer. I have never received any voter information packet, and from what I could find online, which was only something at DMV, it appears that I am NOT REGISTERED.
In addition to there being no online way to check, the phone number that you say on your web site is available 24/7, has only a recording saying that the office is closed. Is that some intra-office humor that we voters aren't in on?
So I am curious - is there a way to confirm my voting status, or are certain classes of citizens simply being purged by this process of determining one's status impossible?
Elections in this country are a mess, and your web site and online services do NOTHING to help. They are designed to confuse. I have an Ivy League Master's degree and find your site dense and unnavigable. I tip my hat to how well our Governor is learning his lessons from Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell.
Please advise immediately - how do I confirm my registration status?
Yours,
Brian Beker
Phone number (as if any of you would ever call back...)
But someone did indeed call back. She identified herself as Miss Gilliam of the HQ of the RR/CC office in Norwalk, California.
Miss Gilliam was polite and cheerful-sounding. This I was impressed by, especially at about 3:30 on a Friday afternoon this close to a hot election.
The first thing she said was, "I'm glad you emailed us. It's really the only way we have of getting back to people."
So now you need picture ID and a connection?
She said she'd have to look me up and asked me for a DOB and a previous address. I gave her the stuff, and she said, "Here you are."
She looked it up and down and said that it didn't look like there was any problem, that she ought to be able to take care of it right away. Could she just put me on hold for a moment?
While waiting I thought, Wow, these people are really getting it together. I was surprised. And I was feeling a little bad about the tone of my email.
Miss Gilliam got back on the line and told me that she was sorry but that I would have to go to a post office, get a new registration form and get it postmarked before midnight on Monday.
For some obscure reason, I am a little paranoid about elections in this country. I admit that I find it hard not to get agitated when talking about it. So I found myself asking Miss Gilliam to identify herself more fully.
"Miss Gilliam."
"That's it? One name? Like Madonna?"
"That's right."
I asked her why before she put me on hold and was all cheery and pleasant-sounding it had looked to her like she was going to be able to correct the registration right there and then, but when she came back she said she couldn't.
"If you'd like me to give you wrong information and tell you that you're registered, I'll be happy to do that."
I asked her if she understood how this might sound to a Democratic voter in view of everything that happened in 2000 and 2004.
She said she didn't know anything about that.
When I repeated the question about what had changed while I was holding, she cut me off with another hold and in a minute another woman got on the line.
She readily identified herself as Deborah Wright, Executive Liaison at the Norwalk Headquarters.
I asked her if it was W-r-i-g-h-t, more to make sure it wasn't R-i-g-h-t than anything else.
"Deborah, like in the Bible, W-r-i-g-h-t," she said.
We went through it again. She said well that's all right, just go to the post office and fill out a new form.
I told her I had just been in a car accident and was injured. Gashed leg and cracked bone. Not in the mood to go to the post office, and not understanding why, if she was seeing me on the screen there she could not simply effect the change.
"Just can't. Your registration is expired."
"But I just registered over the summer at the DMV when I got my license."
"Oh, well - that happens all the time. They never sent it to us."
"They never sent it to you. Are you sure?"
"We don't have it. It never got here."
"And at your office people's forms are never lost, or misplaced, or misfiled, or forgotten, or accidentally thrown away?"
"Well, of course they are. Absolutely. It happens all the time. We're humans. And humans make mistakes."
Ms. Wright offered as the best thing she could do to mail me a registration form. She would put it in the mail today - Friday, late afternoon - and I should have it on Monday. Then all I would have to do would be to take it to the PO and get it postmarked before midnight.
I thought we had just gone through the post office thing. And why wait for a form until the mailman arrives in the mid-afternoon to fill out a form that will be available at the post office when I go there to get the postmark anyway?
She said it was the best she could do.
Well, I asked her, in only slightly more agitated tones, if she understood why this all might sound odd to a Democratic voter these days.
"OH PLEASE! LET'S NOT GET STARTED ON THAT!" she cut in.
I got started on that. She just held out and told me nothing like that was going on here. In fact, she said, I would be welcome to come after the elections and inspect the records.
I asked her if they kept records of the problems individual voters had with their registrations. She said sure, they keep all sorts of stuff. Was she going to fill out paperwork on our little conversation, on this voter's case?
She wouldn't discuss it further. I asked her if it meant anything at all to a woman in her position that a Democrat would find some of this at the very least puzzling, especially considering our r-slime governor.
She leaped on this: "OH? SO YOU THINK WE REPORT TO THE GOVERNOR? WE DON"T REPORT TO THE GOVERNOR."
"No, you report to the Secretary of State."
"We do not either. We don't have anything to do with the Secretary of State."
"You don't - to whom, then do you report."
Sorry I can't read my notes on this one, and Ms. Wright's office is closed now, but she named some bureaucratic-sounding office.
I thought I had made a fundamental mistake of some kind, and was feeling embarrassed. Even stunned. Had I just made a colossal fool of myself? Surely Executive Liaison Ms. Wright knew which way was up in her own food chain. She took advantage of my being momentarily winded to tell me that the form was in the mail, and bye.
Funny, two of the counties neighboring Los Angeles County, Riverside and Orange, are among the most gamed districts in America. For the love of Mike, this is the land of Pombo, Lewis, Cunningham, Calvert. You'd have to be listening to the 72 Virgins of Paradise cooing Me So Horny before you'd find a ring of whores with greater gusto for the death of the common good.
This is where even the filth at the head of the Orange County r-slime are calling for the withdrawal for the challenger to a Dem seat, essentially for getting caught for this nauseating little piece of rigging. They can make as much noise about their being as honest as the day is long as they want; the damage might already be done.
What was she talking about?
I checked the California Secretary of State's site. That flat-footed face of his popped up wearing the pompous, moist-lipped grin of the gladhanding weasel. For someone the registration folks didn't have anything to do with, there sure is a lot of voting stuff on his home page. But it was too sickening to be faced with McPherson's governmentally-graven image. I felt a warm draught of stale beer, body odor and the stench of one of Arnold's Cohiba's come at me from the screen. I reconsidered writing a paranormal diary for another site, but had to wipe that dick's head off the screen before I vomited, and with my attention span I stuck with this one.
Hmmmm, I wondered, is Ms. Wright correct in insisting that there is no connection between her and the coven above?
Who wouldn't check here for the final word on anything?
Okay, I got someone on the line at the Secretary of State's office and asked whether there was or was not any bureaucratic or other official connection between the LA RR/CC's office and the SoS.
The guy said, "That's an extremely interesting question. Let me see if I can find someone who can help you."
Reconnection. Another guy picks up. "Hm," he said. "Hm, hm, hm. LA. Voting registration.... Actually, that one I'm not sure about. You better speak to someone in the press secretary's office."
I imagined one of those shots in the movies where the camera travels through the conduits, following the wires up and around corners as some difficult connection is made. A woman in the press office answered. I asked her.
"That's really something that the press secretary should talk to you about," she said.
"About whether you're connected with voter registration in LA County? There must be someone in the building who would know."
"I know. Right? Sorry. What's your number? I'll call her on her cell and get her to call you right back."
Sure, Yeah, right. 4:37. On a Friday. Some guy not on her assistant's database asking questions about voter registration. She'd really be feeling the pressure to return that call the very same minute. Yup.
So, for today, that was that. I don't know what to think. I know I registered. I checked the right little box and filled out the registration form at the DMV. I did it. That either got lost by the DMV or the RR/CC. Either way, no bloody excuses. I'm getting sick and tired, and I want the privilege of waiting in line for seven hours on November 7 just like everyone else around here.
And anyway, as Ms. Wright said about losing registration forms, "Absolutely. It happens all the time."
I guess it does. But - whose?
Whose get lost, Deborah, like in the Bible?