Scenes From A Poll: The South End
Location:
Ben Franklin Institute
Time:
6pm
I'm not exactly old – this is just the third presidential election
that I've covered. But out of all the municipal races and everything
else that I've seen in my short time, the current scene off Berkeley
Street – of people waiting to vote at the Ben Franklin Institute –
is the worst electoral nightmare that I've ever witnessed. Fingertips
are freezing. Friends of poll workers have come in to help, having
heard online and by phone that the place is a mess. Most alarmingly –
there's a two-plus block line with hundreds of people wrapping around
the corner and up Tremont Street, and expanding almost all the way to
where Masa is.
As my colleague David Bernstein noted earlier, there's something
strange going on in Ward 5 Precinct 1, and we won't likely know what
it is for a while. The crowd is a colorful scrum, with everyone from
gay couples and students to immigrants, black families, and people
with dogs – so it's hard to pitch conspiracy theories (unless you
think Scott Brown's behind this, which he isn't). While the rest of
city had almost doubled its rate of voting (from 2008) by 3pm,
though, this place was actually down; for obvious reasons, it doesn't
seem like it's from a lack of voters trying.
And here's the bigger problem – there's no way that all of these
people will get to vote by 8pm. At 6pm, they'd still only processed
about 1,600 people, or about 35 percent of the people who are
registered in that precinct. That's simply inadequate considering the
crowds that are still showing up, a scrum that includes a number of
elderly, disabled, and pregnant people who are already at the end of
their ropes, and in some cases toward the end of the line. When the
secretary of state's office looks into the biggest disasters of the
day, this is the first spot they should analyze. It's disgraceful.