My Great Schlep -- What Happened When I Went Down to Florida

I was just getting to work in Lower Manhattan when my cell phone rang. It was my 88-year-old grandma Sylvia, who was calling me from her waterfront condo in North Palm Beach, Florida. The day before, I'd left Grandma Sylvia a voicemail, checking in that she planned to cast her vote for Obama. "I'm course I'm voting for him," she snapped into the phone that morning. "Who did you think I was going to vote for -- that idiot?" Then I told her that I had bought a ticket to Florida that weekend. I was going to knock on doors for the campaign. My grandmother was horrified. "I know you don't have the money to do this, Elizabeth," she warned, and informed me that if I didn't learn "how to save my pennies," I was going to be in major trouble in life. "I highly disapprove," she said, and begged me not to go.

Thus began my great schlep. I'm sure Sarah Silverman couldn't have envisioned a more apropos send-off than the naysaying of a kvetchy Jewish grandmother!

Arriving at the Obama office in West Palm Beach, my friend Becca and I were handed a clipboard by a smiling, if slightly-tired, African-American woman named Carol. Carol was a former marketing rep who had taken over the office when it opened two months ago. The clip board contained a list of "leaning Democrat" houses: mostly registered Democrats who, for one reason or another, were unlikely to the vote. These were the apolitical voters. They lived at nearby Sumter Road.

Sumter Road was quiet, Latino neighborhood of small, low-slung stucco houses that had probably been built in the seventies. Some had small patches of grass out front. None had doorbells. Early voting had already begun in Florida: our instructions were to encourage people to go the polls before election day. We had been told to only knock on the doors of the houses on the list. The campaign figured it was too late to change anybody's mind.

But on Sumter Road, the registration list was completely inaccurate. More than three quarters of the time, the residents of the houses did not match those on our list (Florida is messed up, I thought. Later, someone from the campaign told me that the transitory nature of many immigrant populations makes it tough to update registration data). And, almost no one spoke English. If I hadn't been able to speak Spanish, the campaign would have sent us on a completely fruitless mission. At one house, we were greeted by a small, Puerto Rican man wearing a neck brace. I went to the polls twice, he said, but each time, the lines were too long. It hurt his legs to stand on them, and so, after a while, he went home. He and his wife, a Cuban, invited us in to their living room at the front of the house. We told the couple, who were both in their seventies, they could vote absentee. They didn't know about it. It was the last day to apply for an absentee ballot. Becca and I sat on the couch beside Alistair and his wife and filled out the forms for them.

Another older man, from Colombia, called out hello to us from his porch. He was also a registered voter, but he suffered from a disability, and said he couldn't stand on line at the polls. "Just yesterday," he said in Spanish, "I was telling my wife that I wanted to vote. I didn't know how I was going do it," Mr. Nieves said, as if we he had willed us into his home. He also didn't know about absentee voting. We sat on his couch too, a spotlessly clean living room with the tile floors that remind me of the house I grew up in, in nearby Palm Beach Gardens. The couple's son came by to wish them a good Saturday.

That afternoon, Becca and I dropped a small pile of absentee registration forms at the commissioner of elections. We asked the families to call and let us know whether the ballots actually arrived (this was Florida, after all).

This is the same generation of Floridians that Sarah Silverman was talking about when she encouraged us young Jews to go and get out the vote down there. Same generation, different lives. My grandmother, opinionated, staunch Democrat that she is, already knew that if it hurt her legs too much to stand in line at the polls, she could she could fill out an absentee ballot. She doesn't have a language or a class barrier that prevents her from getting information about voting.

Becca and I went back to Sumter Road the next day. We disregarded the campaign's advice and knocked on the door of every house.

Comments

[Ldyandrea]

I think it's so great you took the time to do this!

FYI, I live in WPB (in the area covered by the Obama office you went to!), I work in Palm Beach Gardens, and I'm volunteering as a poll watcher for the election.

Please make certain you let the voters you speak with know that if they are concerned about standing for a lengthy period of time, (I saw at the North Palm Beach Early Voting site) they were allowing elderly or otherwise disabled folks who can't stand for long to sit and wait. They give a special tag to the person who would be right after them "in line", and then allow the person in question to wait in a chair until the person with the tag gets to the front. Then that elderly/disabled person can go in to vote, and still has waited their turn without having to stand for hours. This could be especially important for those voters who didn't get their request for an absentee ballot submitted in time.

In general, voting locations will keep an eye out for, and do their best to accomodate elderly or disabled voters, so don't be afraid to ask!

[shehariah]

You are awesome! Thank you!

[9liberal]

Great job!! And thank you so much!!

[marysandra]

Great Job Elizabeth, if you grew up in south Fl. you know what a disaster the board of elections is here.
Well, actually the whole country knows, considering our history..Let this be a caution to the Spanish media outlets here to make sure they are informing their audience about their options..
Thank you!

[Ajita]

Awesome! Thank you, your friend and your grandmother.

[Texas4Obama]

Bravo! Great job.

[ohioan73]

Nice job! :D

[Indepatriot]

Thank You, Ms.Dwoskin! You and Becca rocked the joint hard. Yes We Can!

[Jaid]

We must vote for the democracy we desire or we deserve what we get. 4 more years of nonsense! GOBama

[Lizzieruth]

Thank you Elizabeth! I'm sure your grandmother is proud of you. I know I am.

[MadOzbo]

Bless you a thousand times over!

Not only did you do what Sarah Silverman asked, in making "the Great Schlep," you did it one better.
You made a MUCH bigger accomplishment by helping not just your Nana, but others, who would NOT have been able to vote, even though they did not need encouragement, but could not due to physical barriers.

I live in Colorado. THANK YOU for helping make a difference that will hopefully affect me, too, on November 5.

Obama-Biden '08

[valleygent]

Florida is going to go Democrat this time...no doubt about it. Please get out and VOTE!

[BeccaHayesJacobs]

Lizza, thanks so much for posting this story about our trip...It means a lot.

I want to add a note... In addition to going door-to-door on Sumter road, we drove Sandra, a Jewish voter probably in her late 70s, to the polls, because she didn't own a car. During our car ride Sandra let us know that she lived alone on social security and didn't usually leave her house more than once a week because she had no way of getting around and couldn't afford to go out even if she did. So many older Americans are disenfranchised not just on election day, but every day.