Part 1: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Part 2: http://www.dailykos.com/...
I had the cab let me out at the building where I had my first appointment. (US Senators have offices in one of three buildings...Dirksen, Hart, and Russell, joined by a confusing maze of hallways. Bring bread crumbs.)
I encountered my first challenge as soon as I walked in the door... the security gate. It was the same set up they have in airports. Filled with three-ring binders, my "office on wheels" was too heavy for me to lift onto the x-ray belt. Not a problem...the guy behind me obliging helped me lift it and turn it in the one orientation that would go through the little tunnel. And someone on the other side helped me set it back down on the floor.
I smoothed out my jacket and brushed back my hair after the tussle with my office on wheels. There! I was ready!
My first appointment was at 9:30. The senator’s aide came out to the office lobby, welcomed me graciously, and showed me into a nearby meeting room. I explained my mission, presented my notebook, and walked her through its contents. She assured me that her senator was very concerned about this issue. I assured her that I was aware of his record. Since her senator had cosponsored a bill with more bipartisan support than most, I also made a pitch for another bipartisan effort, since I’m convinced that this particular issue cannot be successfully addressed unilaterally. She said she wasn’t sure exactly which legislation would be introduced in the next session, but that legislation would most certainly be introduced, and that her senator was indeed dedicated to bipartisan cooperation on this issue. I explained that the information I had compiled was targeted primarily for aides with little knowledge of the issue, and I thought she might find it too introductory to be useful to her personally. I asked that she please try to pass it on to someone who was new to the issue...an intern, a student, or a staff newbie. She assured me that she would. This appointment lasted for about 15 minutes.
I had over an hour free until my next appointment, which I used to visit a few other offices. I had a list of the senators from states A-G for whom I had prepared binders, and, between appointments, I let it be my guide. I would consult the building directory to find one of the A-G senators with whom I did not have an appointment and head to their office. I started out trying to keep track of which offices I visited; I still have a checklist somewhere, but over the course of two days, I was not always diligent in this effort. I prioritized the offices where I had been invited to stop by any time.
My 11:00 appointment was with the senator’s general counsel. Once again, I explained my mission, presented my notebook, and walked him through it. He explained that he was relatively new on the job and knew little about this issue. He seemed to think it was an important issue, and quite happy...maybe even relieved...to have someone hand him a binder full of introductory material. He was not familiar with the story in his home state, either. It’s a great story, one with a happy ending for everyone but the vendors. I gave him the short version and encouraged him to read some of the news articles that covered the events in more detail. All in all, we talked for almost an hour.
My next appointment was at noon, with Dianne Feinstein’s legislative aide. It was in the Hart building and I was not. I raced through the maze of tunnels, dragging my office on wheels. Thankfully, it was now much lighter than when I had struggled in with it that morning. I arrived somewhat winded and somewhat on time. Again I was welcomed graciously and ushered into to a small meeting room. That’s where I got The Big News...Feinstein was going to be the new chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which is responsible for federal elections. She was planning to put together a subcommittee on election reform. I was not as thrilled about this as you might think, being well aware of the meaning of "relegated to committee." I gathered that the subcommittee was likely to consider many aspects of election reform, not just making sure that every vote is counted accurately. Potentially a good thing in the long run, but I wasn’t so sure how it might affect efforts to pass verified voting legislation in the short run.
Later it seemed clear that Feinstein’s plans were already common knowledge around the Senate; this might explain why so many aides were willing to meet with me, even though I did not represent any group and, except for Dole, was not one of their constituents. I am pretty sure it explains the relief I detected in the new general counsel who had been my 11:00 appointment. It is probably also the reason that the interest in electronic voting machines had increased markedly since my brief visit to the Senate last spring. Whatever her subcommittee ultimately achieves or doesn’t achieve, Feinstein’s plans seemed to have finally put elections integrity on everyone’s radar.
My appointment with Feinstein’s aide lasted about half an hour, leaving me plenty of time to get to my next appointment, which was at 1:00 PM in the same building. Since it was lunchtime, I decided to take a break. I found my way to the Senate gift shop, grabbed a soda and a package of peanut butter crackers, and rolled my office on wheels out the nearest exit. I found a spot on some steps and enjoyed the fall weather for a few minutes while I polished off my little snack. Then I headed back inside, this time able to lift my office on wheels to the x-ray belt on my own.
This was my last appointment of the day and the only one that seemed perfunctory. It lasted about 10 minutes and the aide didn’t really seem all that interested. Her senator has a decent record on the issue, so my first guess was that she didn’t get the message that I wasn’t a constituent and had no particular political clout, or she would not have scheduled an appointment with me in the first place. If so, that was okay with me; people do need to prioritize their time. Until I met with Feinstein’s aide I had been mystified as to why I had gotten as many appointments as I did.
After that brief appointment, I decided it was time for a real lunch, so I made my way to the Senate cafeteria. After lunch, the rest of my afternoon was open, so I continued visiting offices on my list until I had run out of notebooks. Then I headed back to the hotel, tired but very pleased with my efforts.
I woke up early the next morning to find that reinforcements had arrived. A Deaniac friend from Florida had taken the train up to join me. It arrived at dawn and I woke up as she was trying to slip quietly into my hotel room. I hopped out of bed, showered, and dressed. My first appointment wasn’t until 10:30, so we had time for a leisurely breakfast before setting out for the Senate. I gave her a quick rundown on my activities the previous day. We went back upstairs before we left, where I again loaded up my office on wheels and gave her two notebooks for her two senators. Florida...the state that outlawed paper ballots. When we arrived at the senate offices, I wished her luck and we went our separate ways.
When my 10:30 appointment saw my office on wheels, he thought I had brought an electronic voting machine along with me. I said was sorry I didn’t have one to demonstrate. A few months earlier, I had posted a suggestion to my state elections integrity listserv, that we go in together and purchase one...they are really not all that expensive...and let our local geeks play with it, to see what they could do. But I didn’t get any response.
This was my favorite appointment. It was with the senator’s general counsel. The first question he asked me was, "So what is the advantage of not having paper?" I shook my head and said, "You tell me." I went on to explain that I had given the matter quite a bit of thought by now, and I hadn’t been able to figure out a single good reason to not have paper. "Well, then," he asked, "Why don’t’ we have paper?" I shrugged and asked, "How cynical of an answer do you want?" We seem to get on quite well from there. I suggested he might want to contact a couple of vendors and see if they would come in and give him their best pitch for paperless voting. He took down the names of several vendors. He said he didn’t know that much about the issue but he knew it was going to be an active one in the next session. When he saw the Congressional Research Service Report in my binder, he shook his head and said he often forgot to check with them when he was looking for information. He also asked me what the Carter-Baker Commission report had to say about electronic voting. I said they didn’t recommend paperless elections. We talked for about 45 minutes, until someone came in to take him off to his next appointment.
I hit a couple more offices on my way to meet my friend for lunch. We headed over to Union Station, where we compared notes on our morning and talked about our plans for the afternoon and the rest of the weekend. I was enjoying myself and not really ready to go back for my next appointment when it began to rain. I called the next senator’s office to explain that I was at Union Station with a lot of inkjet-printed paper and an umbrella that didn’t seem nearly wide enough. The aide said that would be no problem and put me into another slot that he had open a bit later in the afternoon. Perfect.
The rain had slacked off to a drizzle by the time we finished lunch. We picked our way through the puddles back to the Senate offices, where we again parted company. My friend went off to call on Florida senator number two, and I went to my postponed appointment.
This was the most interesting meeting of my trip. It had, for reasons I can’t describe, the most "political" feel to it. Perhaps this was because I think I blindsided the aide with a pitch for verifying not only the vote, but the voter. He knew I was unaffiliated. What assumptions, if any, this might have led him to make about my political leanings, I don’t know, but he didn’t seem prepared for this. He said he didn’t really think there was much problem with voter fraud. I said I didn’t either, so why not put safeguards in place and leave the issue behind us. His response was noncommittal. Otherwise, he talked about the legislation his senator had sponsored in the previous session and I said I hoped there would not be too many competing bills introduced in the next session. I didn’t say I hoped his senator would not reintroduce their bill from the last session, because there was a better bill, but he might have figured that out. It was, nonetheless, a cordial conversation, lasting not quite half an hour.
That was my last appointment of the day. I met up with my friend and we wandered through the Senate office buildings for another hour or so. I had delivered most of the state-specific notebooks, so I started popping in to whatever office we passed and delivering the handful of generic notebooks. Finally we decided it was time to go. We wanted to beat the horrific Friday rush hour traffic in DC and had one stop to make on the way back to our hotel.
Coming soon, or whenever I get around to it: Part 4, some commentary and some fun!