Letter to the editor
My voting experience today was not uneventful. So unnerved was I by what I found at my polling place that I went directly home afterwards and wrote this letter to the editor of the Washington Post.
Today as I checked in at my polling place in Fairfax County, Virginia, offering up my identification to a certified volunteer who checked my name and current address, a second line of men and women without any form of visible identification peered down hawkishly at my driver’s license and scribbled on lists of their own. These were “poll watchers,” a partisan group of Republicans, ostensibly on the lookout for voter fraud. So many questions came to mind. Who were they? Why weren’t their identities known? Why no Democrats in the mix? Wouldn’t it have been better if a bipartisan group monitored voter registration? In this manner, wasn’t the real goal of poll watching to intimidate voters? And then there was and is this question, undoubtedly the most troubling of all: Should we walk away after voting, the most democratic thing we do in life, feeling as though we live in a fascist state?
As soon as I sent in the letter by email I regretted it. It was a knee-jerk reaction. I was just venting. Nevertheless, I figured it didn’t matter. The Post wouldn’t publish the letter. Well, I was wrong. Within two hours, I had a response from an editor at the Washington Post. He was interested in publishing the letter. I didn’t know what to do. I did in fact resent that this was a partisan group of Republicans looking over the voters as they checked in. The whole experience did have a fascist feel to it. But was the motive to intimidate voters? Probably not. I have since learned that both parties are participating in the poll watching process in Virginia. It just so happens that only Republicans showed up at my polling place. (Not surprising considering that I live in a predominantly Republican district.) Still, I felt that since the poll watchers were not bipartisan, the Republican group should have done the right thing and backed out.
In all likelihood, the Republican poll watchers were honestly checking the lists. I didn’t have a problem registering and I didn’t see anyone else having a problem, either. When the Washington Post editor called to do his fact-checking, I told him what I am telling you. That I didn’t like what I saw at my polling place, but that I probably overstated the problem. I am sick of the vitriol associated with this election and I do not want to add fuel to the fire.
I decided not to publish my letter in the Washington Post because I believed that I had made a mistake. Ironically, the man I voted against, facing the same situation in reverse, would have gladly let that letter go to press. The man who makes no mistakes. The same man who has led us into the most unjust war this nation has ever known. No, I was not about to stoop to his level.
8:45:49 PM 
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