FUNNY POLL WATCHING INCIDENTS

This past week I made the shift from phone banking to poll watching as early voting started in Florida on October 20th. I was up at the crack of dawn to get to West Miami City Hall by 7am each day from Wednesday to Friday. I was an outside pollwatcher which means I am allowed to speak to voters who have a problem. Today, Sunday the 25th I take up inside pollwatching duties. Even though I haven't done the latter yet, I suspect that outside pollwatching is far more fun since one comes across the whole gamut of members of the voting public. Here are just some of the more amusing incidents from that experience in an area (overwhelmingly Cuban) that seemed to mostly favor McCain/Palin. But there were notable exceptions.

One MALE voter came up to just after he got on the queue for voting and said "I don't know why we are making such a big thing about Obama being a black man. In my case, I wake up next to one every day!" And he proudly showed me his "domestic partnership" certificate and clearly a vote on Amendment 2 (on the definition of marriage) was top on his priority list!

In another incident, two women walked up to the queue with a 8/9 year-old boy in tow. As they were approaching I overheard the little boy saying "I don't know why I can't vote. I want to vote!" Then one of the two women tried to explain to him why he could not vote. And then once he was finally able to accept that, he then exclaimed, "Well, if I could vote, I would vote for John McCain." Then one of the women said, "Well, it's a good thing you can't vote!" Very amusing. Then, completely undaunted by the mother's comment, he launched into a loud solicitation -- "Vote for John McCain!, "Vote for John McCain." This was actually a violation of the law as it was occurring within 100 feet of the polling station. What was I to do in the case of an 8 year-old boy violating it? Well in the end I enforced it against this little brat and politely told the adults with him that he was not supposed to do that!!!

More to come . . . .