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Early voting not for me, even when Election Day is a dead end

By SUE CARLTON
Published August 28, 2006

I don't vote early. Though doing so probably could have saved me some embarrassment.

Back when I lived in a succession of rented apartments like some shady character on the lam, I cast my ballot at whatever community center or smoky Moose Lodge they sent me to. Didn't much matter where.

Then I went from call-me-the-breeze renter to stable homeowner, and where I voted got more interesting.

Now I would do it in the heart of my community alongside my neighbors, united in the slightly inconvenient but fundamentally important task of trying to elect a president, a governor, a soil and water conservation board member. Whatever it is they do.

My polling place turned out to be the Methodist church just down the street. I thought I would beat the rush Election Day morning, but the parking lot was filling up. What a politically enthusiastic place I'd moved to!

Folks streamed in. Like me, everyone looked dressed for work. And purposeful! Not a lot of idle chit-chat where we went voting.

We filed through the doors. I heard music, which seemed a little weird.

Then I saw the casket.

"Oh, no," I blurted out, which under the circumstances wasn't completely inappropriate.

Turns out the voting place - that gauntlet of sign-waving supporters lining the path, the stilt-legged machines, the poll workers waiting for customers to trickle in - was around the back of the church. I'd walked in on an entirely different sort of serious ceremony.

Not that it tempered my enthusiasm for Election Day voting. Early voting - which lets you cast your ballot in the weeks before an election - is a stellar idea for easing lines and generally making the whole business more convenient. Of course, you miss the nasty mailers and ads that the candidates sometimes ooze out at the very end, but usually I've got my mind made up by then anyway.

But few experiences make me feel a part of something larger than walking into my polling place with everyone else on Election Day, showing my card, making my picks and leaving with that nerdy "I Voted" sticker on my shirt.

During the last presidential election, lots of us waited in long lines. My husband stood in an epic one at a library near downtown Tampa when a skittery homeless man stuck his head in the door. He wanted to know what everyone was waiting for.

To vote, someone told him. He considered.

"Is it free?" he asked. A couple of people smiled. Yes. It's free.

* * *

Good news: Mrs. Payich gets to ride.

Earlier this month, I wrote about Louise Payich, a 73-year-old widow who lives in downtown St. Petersburg. Mrs. Payich has serious arthritis and other health problems and can't walk much, so she tools around on her motorized scooter for local errands.

She needed to get to Pinellas Park to visit her 46-year-old daughter, who has cancer and is in hospice care, a trip obviously too far for a scooter. When she applied for the special PSTA service for disabled people, she was told she could ride the regular bus.

But Mrs. Payich doubted she could maneuver her scooter onto the bus, particularly given her shoulder surgery earlier this year.

Twice she was denied access to PSTA's Demand Response Transportation, or Dart, which uses modified vans to transport people and their scooters at $2.50 a trip.

Last week, after the latest denial, PSTA sent over a ride trainer to try to get Mrs. Payich and her scooter on the regular bus.

It didn't work. For probably 20 minutes, she tried to make the left turn on the bus and then the sharp turn-around. She couldn't do it.

The driver and the other riders waited patiently, Mrs. Payich told me. "They were very nice," she said. "I apologized to them."

So last Friday, PSTA decided to let Mrs. Payich take Dart after all. She plans to see her daughter as soon as possible.

Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 28, 2006, 01:58:45]