A viral Facebook post in which a Milwaukee man melodramatically recounts his experience voting in Tuesday's election is so unintentionally hilarious that we simply had to do a dramatic reading of it.
I’m never going to forget today.
Going to vote was scary. I didn’t get my ballot in the mail even though my request to vote absentee was processed and the government website said it was in the mail weeks ago.
There was a medical station outside South Division high school. The doors were propped open so nobody would touch it. A person wearing full gown and a surgical facemask greeted you and before anything else asked you if you were feeling sick. Then pumped hand sanitizer on your hands.
The people coming to vote all around me we wearing various shapes and colors of homemade masks.
As you walked through, a man greeted you holding a tablet asking your address and pointing you to the right door to walk through if you were or weren’t registered. After that you met another person dressed for the apocalypse to guide you to the next open booth where you were told to stand on a green X and await instructions.
The poll worker asked me to present my ID and I held it up. I verified my address, and answered in the negative when asked if I had returned my absentee ballot. I didn’t know if I should make an emphatic quip about not receiving it in the first place; I just held my tongue and opened my mouth as little as possible throughout the whole process.
I signed in the box with the new pen out of a box the poll worker told me was mine to keep. That felt strangely relieving. When I was handing my ballot and turned to the right I approached the door where other poll workers, watchers, and various staff reshuffled from other government agencies waited to direct me to the next available booth after it had been vacated and cleaned with sanitizing wipes.
I remember passing a man that was in the wrong place to vote and being told where he should go. I had to get closer than I wanted to get around him; he wasn’t wearing a mask, didn’t speak much English, and a sense of anxiety and dread just filled my throat as I had to remind myself of my humanity.
I stopped in the doorway and waited for a booth. The worker told me to go to one, but that took too long to clean, so I got directed to another.
I’ve worked in politics before and overconfidently fill out my ballot probably faster than I should because of comfort. There lots on it, and all of them important.
After a quick once over to make sure I didn’t miss anything, I left the booth with my new pen in hand and begin to head toward the balloting machines but am beckoned over by another gown and mask wearing man around my age. He takes my ballot from my hands and points me to the correct machine for my ward: 296.
This is normally where I begin to feel really good on any other voting day. I would normally let my ballot slip through my fingers into the machine and excitedly take my “I voted sticker,” then proudly display it on my shirt and eventually stick it on my laptop with the tens of others from past elections.
Today there were no stickers. Just another person there to tell you where the exit was.
I walked down the hallway, separated from the entrance traffic by crowd control barricades, and waited for my wife. I watched the planned chaos as people looked around, nervous, scared, shuffling their masks, as poll workers stoically kept doing what they were there to do, even if they looked more like ICU staff than election workers.
A man came up to me not wearing a mask, and asked if I had seen stickers, I said no.
I finally saw my wife coming toward me and I started to get the urge to cry. We sanitized our hands as we left, without touching door handles.
I can’t remember if we said anything to each other when we walked to our car. I just remember silence, the lump in my throat, and the anger I felt that I had to do this today of all days as the courts and legislature ruled this was the only option.
Today wasn’t like normal days. It was scary. It was horrifying. It was sad.
I’ll never forget today.