This year was the first time that early in-person voting was an option in Connecticut, so I decided to try it out. My guess was that in our town with a population of 16,000 that there would not be many people early voting and that I would be in and out of the town hall quickly.
Wrong!
The parking lot was full, but I lucked out as another car was just leaving when I showed up. There was a very short line at the check-in desk, but after checking-in, I found a longer line of winding through the hallway to the voting room. So it took about 30 minutes to get in and out of the town hall.
A word about checking in… I did not recognize the woman staffing the check-in desk. I handed her my driver’s license and when she examined it, she looked up and said, “Stanley! How are you?” She was a family acquaintance who I had not seen in years. She asked about my family and then she sent me on my way to end of the long line.
She never said anything about how I was dressed. I was wearing skinny jeans, a long sleeve tee, sneakers and minimal jewelry and minimal makeup (how unlike me!) so that I matched the boy photo on my driver’s license. I guess I was so androgynous that my old friend did not notice or she was so nice that she did not want to say anything to embarrass me.
Go figure!
And go vote!
By the way, I voted for Harris and Walz and I hope you will, too.
Wearing Alice + Olivia |
Alexandre Wetter femulaing in the 2020 French film Miss. |
I went out for early voting this past Tuesday. I wore a short floral dress and sandals. The poll worker who checked my ID and handed me a ballot was puzzled with my feminine appearance and my name of "John" on my drivers license. The picture on the license resembles a mature woman. I voted, and inserted my ballot into the ballot box. The lady working the ballot box complimented my dress.
ReplyDeleteJohn
As an out trans women I did a little outreach at the polling place.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got there the line was quote “30 to 40 minutes.” I sat when ever I could, I was in a group around six or seven people and we were talking about growing up in town. About the old 5 & 10 store, the Red & White… etc. etc. Just by being ourselves we are doing outreach, nobody blinked, walked away, we were just a bunch of women talking about growing up in the town. We talking about the forest fire in town that was still burning after 2 weeks, we talking about a new store opening and joked about how long that store will last. I mentioned that I was going to an orchard in town to get farm fresh milk, free range eggs, and ice cream. It is a little more expensive but it all fresh from local farms and they all wanted the details about what they sold.
But one guy kept staring at me, I figure he either had the hots for me and he wanted to ask me out or he was MAGA, probably the latter. I think he didn’t say anything because he saw I was getting along with all the women so it put him on the defensive.
Anyhow, no problem and the wait was around 35 minutes.
However, I did walk away with something… a cold. The room was packed with about 100 people, it was hot and the air wasn’t being circulated.