Voting adventures in Boston
Navigating City Hall’s quirks and concrete corners
The Observer vectored to City Hall last week to cast my absentee ballot for the preliminary municipal election this Tuesday. Absentee voting is my own way of saying, “Don’t forget this little black duck’’ whenever I’m out of town for a vote. All Bostonians should know their wards and precincts, by the way. It’s like knowing your blood type.
I hadn’t entered the place since I was married in style there over a year ago at City Clerk Rosario Salerno’s happy office up on the sixth floor, so I thought I’d look around while I was in the building.
My wedding foray blinded me to the fact that City Hall really was designed for Orcs. There is no other way to put it. You immediately enter a cold, hard darkness. If you don’t have mental problems going in, you will going out. I gaze at brick stairs that seem to go nowhere, windows on the upper floors that look out on nothing, long, claustrophobic corridors without natural light that take me back to “The Shining.’’
But you first must make it through a ridiculous metal detector. I say “ridiculous’’ because I passed without incident despite having two titanium hips. I am always flagged at airports and taken off with the shoe bombers for further examination. So my initial glee was tempered by some dread.
The Boston Election Department, where I cast my absentee vote, is the bowels of the place. It takes grit to get there. You descend into a Slough of Despond that includes the life cycle windows for Birth, Marriage, and Death. Beyond is the Office of the Parking Clerk and its perpetual line of dour campers waiting to pay their hard-earned simoleons or challenge parking violations. “If you’re in this line, it won’t be good,’’ one man mutters.
Eventually you arrive at a large, well-lit room where the Election Department lives. Now the Election Department has not always bathed itself in glory. Secretary of State William F. Galvin assumed oversight of the department in 2006 after it failed to provide enough ballots to polling stations that year. In 2005, the US Justice Department sued the city over alleged civil rights violations for hampering the ability of limited English speakers to vote. It had monitored elections through the end of last year. By then, the department had gotten its act together enough for the feds and later the state to lift their supervision.
If you enter the office you’ll notice a sign on the door listing six foreign languages: Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Haitian Creole, and Cape Verdean Creole. A phone bank of interpreters to translate in all of them will be available on Election Day. Ballots in all 254 precincts will be available in English and Spanish, while some printed in English/Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) and English/Vietnamese will be available at those precincts identified as needing assistance.
Joe Hanlon comes out to waltz me through the absentee dance. I preen at “V.I.P.’’ stamped in black on my outside envelope. The City of Boston, if no one else in the world, appreciates my elevated stature. But Hanlon then informs me it stands for “Voted In Person.’’ You can always apply for and receive an absentee ballot by mail. You can also have a family or household member - no one else - deliver it to the department.
I ask Hanlon how he knows that the person who sends in the application by mail really is the person he claims to be. “That’s what we don’t know,’’ he says. “We’re not the police.’’ Whatever. The ballot boxes stored at the Election Department office are taken away in vans on Monday night to police stations in Boston’s nine voting districts for safekeeping. (Do you know your voting district? It’s the same as your City Council district.) Police then bring them to the polling locations by 6 Tuesday morning in time for them to open at 7.
I ask Maryann Marrero, the queen of absentee ballots, how many we have so far this year. As of late Thursday afternoon, there were 1,398 applications, compared with a mere 655 absentee ballots taken to the polling stations four years ago, presumably because of the spirited mayoral contest this time. As Texas lefty populist Jim Hightower likes to say, “This race is hotter than high school love.’’
After leaving City Hall, I run into a young Waltham native named Sam Hines above the Park Street T stop. She is holding a cardboard sign with both hands that read “Free Hugs.’’ What a delightful idea. We all need something along those lines to get through the day. I’ve thought for years about opening a chain of places where people could stop by on the way to work or, better yet, on their way home and get a three-minute standing O for 10 bucks. Five minutes for 20. Imagine.
Sam thinks as I do, but she’s nicer than I am. She does it for free. She got the idea watching a YouTube video of someone doing the same thing. She started in mid-August, when it was really slow, but business has since picked up. She’s out there five or six hours straight, once a week.
Sam has embraced all types, including strange men. “I’ve been hugged by perverts occasionally,’’ she says in passing. “Some try to kiss me on the neck or cheek. Some say really inappropriate things.’’ No big deal.
Aren’t you worried about swine flu, I ask, ever the concerned parent. Uh-uh. As we’re talking, man pauses and says to himself, “What the hell’’ and hugs her. I ask how he feels. “It helps,’’ he confirms.
Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com 
