Signatures are important. Maybe a little too important.
I have two: an ornate, professional one I put on important documents, and a lazy squiggle I put on receipts. Just a quick swoosh: that’s what’s worked its way into my muscle memory whenever someone asks me to sign a receipt or tablet. Nobody looks at these things, anyway—I could sign John Hancock’s signature, and 96% of the time, no one would notice.
Except, of course, when they do. Tonight at my polling location—a church, on a street named “Liberty”, of all places—I was asked to sign my name on a tablet instead of the usual paper book. I slapped down my lazy signature without thinking. The tablet flashed a confirmation screen comparing the signature on file to the one I’d just entered. They did not match.
The signature on file was my fancy one. The signature I’d just put down was my lazy, CVS-receipt one. The woman at the voter table squinted—hesitating, unconvinced.
“I probably could have been a little more careful…” I said.
“Uh huh…”
I noticed, for the first time, that her badge said REP. Seconds passed. I asked if there was a problem.
“Oh, uh, I’m just trying to make sure your information matches,” she said, staring at the screen.
More seconds passed. “They look different,” said REP, pointing at the signatures.
“Both of those are most definitely my signature,” I said…nerves contracting, tensing up, body gearing into fire-and-brimstone mode. Bureaucrats are bad enough; ideological bureaucrats are straight from Dante’s Inferno. The idea that they couldn’t verify me because the signatures didn’t match was absurd; I am a registered voter, with the identification to prove it.
Nonetheless, I realized that I hadn’t prepared for this—hadn’t reviewed my rights in the event of poll worker shenanigans. Could I demand a provisional ballot? Present my driver’s license? Call the ACLU and request a lawyer…?
“I think when he hit the button the first time, it didn’t go through,” the woman to her right—DEM—said. This was true: I’d accidentally cleared my signature the first time and had to resubmit. But both times, I’d signed with a scrawl—not my fancy one. And that might have been enough to convince REP I was an imposter: one of those teeming, illegitimate voters nipping at the heels of democracy, clutching at rights that weren’t mine. Thousands of us, goddamnit, only one forged signature away from ramming some secular Central American socialist into the hallowed womb of Beacon’s city council…
REP was still hunched over the tablet. She wasn’t touching it. I couldn’t tell what she was doing. She seemed dubious.
The two women on either side of her—DEM and DEM—shared a quick glance.
“You’re fine, you’re fine,” DEM 1 said to me.
“Euh…” said REP, not sounding pleased. “I guess. Yep…eh…”
“Go on,” said DEM 2, and I went.
It could’ve been nothing. It could’ve been anything.
But I wondered, all the way home, how this would have shaken out if I wasn’t white, or if a DEM hadn’t taken notice, or if I’d seemed less sure of myself—or if I just wasn’t the sort of person who’d dare to argue with a well-dressed white lady designated as an Emissary of Authority. I’m not an expert on voting rights. Nobody’s ever tried anything with me before…and I got complacent, assuming things would just work. They always have. Until they don’t.
Because it doesn’t matter how many rights you have if someone can fool or intimidate you into taking a step back. And pretty much everything that matters the absolute most in your life ultimately comes down to a bureaucrat who doesn’t trust you, squinting suspiciously at a form.
Anyway. It’s done, for now. The next time I visit the Liberty Street church will be 362 days from now, and I will sign their tablet as though it were the Constitution—and I will also come with a plan for what to do if someone does not find that acceptable.
The Boy Scouts say: Be Prepared.