I Was Denied The Right To Vote

or

How I Spent An Entire Monday Trying To Qualify To Vote

by

Alayne Gelfand

In June 2014, I moved from Orange County, California to Riverside County, California. One of the first things I did was change my address with the DMV. I did so online. When you do this, the DMV site asks if you'd like to also change your address with the Registrar of Voters. I pressed “yes” and filled out whatever I had to fill out, then pressed “submit”. This was the third time I did this online with the DMV after moving from one county to another. Since it worked wonderfully well the last two times, I expected it to work this time as well.

On October 31, 2014, it suddenly occurred to me that the upcoming Tuesday was November 4, 2014 and, so, election day. It had simply slipped my mind. I still didn't have any voting materials so, thinking it was a clerical error, I got online, looked to see the status of my voter qualification in Riverside County to find my status “pending”. It was now November 3. I got back online, located the Riverside County Registrar of Voters Office and then, at 12:30, got in my car and drove the approximate 27 miles from Corona to Moreno Valley.

Inside the Riverside County Registrar of Voters Office the day before an election, things were pretty busy but I was helped very quickly. The clerk, once I'd explained things to her, had to ask another clerk for help who had to ask another clerk for help. The last clerk looked up my name and saw that my case was pending but she also said that my request to register in Riverside County had come in on October 21. It was time stamped. The deadline to register to vote was October 20. Um... That's about a five month lag between me filling out the request on the DMV site and it registering at the Registrar of Voters.

When I repeated that I requested my address change went through the DMV, she was very helpful. She handed me a stack of forms, told me to fill them out then take them to one of five locations where I'd have to go before a judge to petition him for the right to vote on Tuesday, November 4. That was the following day for anyone not keeping up. So, I drove the 17 miles from Moreno Valley to the City of Riverside.

I'm fairly familiar with this part of Riverside so I knew where I was going. Inside the Riverside County Superior Court Building, however, I had to ask several times until someone told me to check with the County Clerk's office, which I did. Once inside, a clerk helped me quickly but had no idea what I was talking about. I had to explain what I was doing there several times before she got it enough to tell me to take a seat while she went to checked with the judge. I took that seat.

About half an hour later, she called me to her window and handed me another stack of forms to fill out, which I did. She told me to sit down again, which I did. It was now 2:45. I sat. And I sat. And I sat. Then I heard someone say: “We close at 4:00.” I looked at the clock and it was just past 4:00. People were finishing their business, clerks were closing down their stations and I still sat there. A few moments later, a supervisor came up to me and asked if she could help me. I explained again what I was doing there and she went to the clerk who'd been helping me and asked: “Did he sign it?” The clerk replied: “Not yet.” They both disappeared at that point.

Another clerk asked if she could help me, because I was still sitting there after they'd closed, and then she said, “Oh, are you here for the voting thing?” Apparently I'd become a story around the office. And I can understand why. I mean, how many people would go through all of this just to vote?

When the clerk finally called my name again, it was 4:35. She said she had my papers but the judge had denied my petition. I would be unable to vote on November 4, 2014. When I asked the clerk “Why?” she said she had no idea, the judge didn't tell her. So I was denied the right to vote.

Today was the first day since I turned 18 that I didn't vote in an election. I find that personally devastating and borderline illegal.

Was it because the Registrar of Voters has my request for an address change and, so, permission to vote in Riverside County, logged in on October 21, 2014, which means I missed the October 20 deadline? It's reasonable to say that the DMV dropped the ball here.

My other guess is that the judge either didn't read my request until the last minute and was just done for the day or just couldn't be bothered to speak to me about the situation and, perhaps, give me the benefit of the doubt after everything I'd gone through to get permission to vote. Again, how many people do you know who would go through so much just to vote?

On one hand, I feel a little silly about all this. I mean, it's just voting. Nothing important. On the other hand, like I said, it was personally devastating to me that I couldn't vote today. I think of all those women who went through so much to gain the right to vote, I think of their sacrifices and I think I owe it to them to vote. I think of all the women around the world who are denied basic rights and I feel deeply that I owe it to them to vote.

And to think, a judge simply couldn't be bothered to look into a case at the end of the day, couldn't raise her tired head to give a woman the chance to vote. Yes, the judge who denied my petition to vote was a woman. And maybe that's the saddest part of this entire story.