Friday, June 17, 2016

I Was Slammed Into Virtual Voter Prison For Signing a Petition!

Prison cells in the closed San Quentin facility.*

 Yes. This is happening and to some decent and well meaning folks. Beware and understand it's easy for them to do it to you too.

Tuesday I showed up in the earlier parts of the afternoon at our local polling place as usual in a nearby park.  I went just before most get out of normal work hours to keep the lines down in the early evening for others. I had spent the rest of the day checking on the profiles of and recommendations of the o so opaque judicial elections.  And yes found the best information mostly at the LA Times website.  I didn't actually follow all their recomendations, but found valuable information there.

I showed my id at the entry table to let them know who to check off their list, so far so good. Then I was asked what party I was in. Democrat I proudly said.  A lot of white folk like me in my neighborhood are Republicans, but in all I think there's just as many Democratic voters around here and we're heading for a majority.

Then came the shock.  They couldn't find my name. But I always vote.  "I never miss a major election", I said. They searched diligently under different spellings and couldn't find it.  Then they looked on Independent list, then the Republican list as I rolled my eyes.

They found it. They informed me I was a Republican.

I'm older now and the emotions don't get control that easily, and I reminded myself that Hillary was going to win the state no matter what. I don't think my emotion even showed but it's possible it did because after I voted they gave me a number to call to report being switched without consent.

I was not able to vote for Hillary in the historic and important race for president , but luckily the rest of the races were under the state's top two bipartisan races or I would have been shut out of those as well.

Now Republicans are whining that our two Senate candidates for November are Democrats.

The Rs never got their people the news to vote for one person. And in fact I looked at all the candidates. They had nobodies running. Either their bigger names didn't want to be stomped into the dirt electorally by Kamila Harris or for whatever reason it was like the GOP was playing dodge ball in the middle of a Warriors/Cavaliers game. I mean couldn't they have even tried?  They aren't that much of a minority in the state. It's only been about 6 years since our last GOP governor. Okay it's true that's not enough time to forget that disaster.

I came home and searched online about people being unknowingly switched  to the GOP and sure enough it's being done and ground zero appears to be California with the largest number of complaints coming from Orange County and various other So Cali areas though some areas around San Francisco reporting the same scam happening.  It starts with a request that you sign a petition for a good sounding cause. But the petition in the copious printing of explanation just  quickly mentions you will be requesting a party affiliation change according to reports.

In my case I think I do remember a petition for some worthy change in government. At the bottom of the page (which was a strange method of doing a petition, one person one page instead of a table like structure) there was a check box for joining the GOP.

I was assured that I could ignore that if I didn't want to join the Republican party. But apparently after I signed and left, that box was checked.

This happened last fall, about the time it was becoming apparent that Hillary would be running for the Democratic nomination.  I think I was targeted specifically because I was a middle aged woman. The GOP wanted  to try to keep women  like me from voting in the Democrat and Independnt only races because you know middle aged woman genes. Give them credit. We are wise and yep I would have voted for her if I could have and lived all my voting years registered so I could help the best Democrats win primaries and elections.

It would be easy to profile me to block that vote.

I hope they catch that worm.  After all he had to have turned my name in to some authority. Someone in government could find out who he is.

And no I didn't vote for any of the Republicans.  It's a matter of pride and integrity. (LOL actually it was a matter of piss and repulsion) (It also helped to prove my point to the folks at the table that I was not a Republican, but I didn't think of that until I handed it over.) (I hoped it shamed the man wearing the NRA hat  while he helped voters just a little bit.  Yes, that is a political statement, dude and doesn't belong in a voting location on the head of one of the officials.)

* Picture (at link) used via CC by 2.0 thanks to Flicker user miss_millions who has no connection to this blog or blogger