This eMail I got this morning:



Yesterday was surreal. Our original plan was to join the campaign on Saturday to get out the vote Indianapolis, but when we saw that Obama was holding a rally Friday night, we decided to go to Gary for the day and then attend the rally that night.

We arrived in Gary at 1 p.m. We were immediately sent to the Lake County courthouse, the local polling place. We walked a few blocks through the war zone that is Gary, Indiana. More boarded up buildings than open ones. Nobody on the streets -- until we got to the Courthouse.

I'll admit that I didn't truly understand the concept of Republican voter suppression until I spent about 10 minutes at the courthouse.

When we arrived, the court house was a mad house. Long lines, weapon detectors, and not much organization. It appeared that although more than 100 people had been in line for hours, there were only three actual election officials there. The rest were a handful of volunteers from the Obama campaign who were not there to campaign but simply ensure that voter rights were not suppressed. If it weren't for the Obama volunteers, I have no idea how it even would have functioned at all. But that was apparently the goal -- to frustrate voters so much that they would leave. Our job was simply to encourage folks to stay.

What was going on was early voting. Indiana is a state that only allows absentee voting with a good reason. From what I can tell, lots of states are still this way, which is beyond idiotic. Going to an all mail-in election is the subject of another rant. Anyway, what Indiana has done after an ongoing legal battle is open up for early voting which is "absentee in person". I guess it's better than nothing. But here we were on a Friday and the wait was two and a half hours. Yes, hours. The line was constantly at around 75 to 100 people.

Voting is quick, you say. Why should it take so long? What's wrong with these people?

Gary, Indiana has a population of around 100,000. They had two voting machines. Two. On top of that, and here's where the fun begins, the Election Judge which is overseeing that polling place is a Republican. A lot of the people in line recognized her as a former toll booth employee. I think her name may have been Constance. From what the volunteers told us who had been there the day before, she was going out of her way to make it a slow process. I didn't see this first hand, but she had to be one of the meanest people I've seen in a long time. It was clear that the lines sped up later in the day as she seemed to want to go home.

We tried our best, but people would come up to the door, look at the long line and leave. Some would wait a while and leave. Luckily, though, this number was probably less than 20 which in itself is a small miracle. My job was to meet people as they came in and get them a clip board and pen to fill out the absentee form they would need as they voted. The clipboards and pens were bought by the Obama volunteers since nothing was provided by the elections people.

My friend Melinda worked crowd control, keeping the line moving orderly and trying her best to keep people in good spirits which surprisingly most people were. We moved people with disabilities and even people on oxygen up into chairs, but the judge wouldn't allow them to vote before anyone else. They had to wait until their place in line came by. Even with this treatment, nobody seemed to complain. A few people were turned away by the judge because their information didn't match her list. The volunteer lawyers from the Obama campaign would interview them for an affidavit to contest the rejection. I think a the end of the day there were only less than 10 of these. Nobody seemed overly upset that they were turned away and I hope having the lawyer there to make it right helped.

A couple times we had vans come by that were provided by Service Employees International Union. We got a few volunteers to hop on to be driven 10 minutes to East Chicago since the word was that it was only a 40 minute wait even though they too only had 2 machines. A few people I was able to get to just drive themselves to other polling stations in other cities. Apparently they had mentioned on the news about a polling station in Crown Point to the south that was a more efficient setup. Gary has a population of about 100,000 and is 84% black. It has 2 machines. Crown Point has a population of 20,000 and is 95% white. From what I was told, it has 7 machines. I'l let you draw your own conclusion from that.

After illegally turning people away at 5 pm before, this day they followed the rules and whoever was in line at 5 was allowed to vote, but they locked the door. We left at 7 and the line was nearly done. A woman who was part of the election board had been counting the voters al day. She said she was a democrat and was clearly frustrated. She had counted around 450 people the day prior but the judge claimed that the vote tally was 330. Today she was having people write down their names as she counted so she could match it up with the count. She had 309 for the day. A very small number compared to the number that could have voted. I can only imagine what Tuesday will look like.

I wrote a lot of this with seriously lack of sleep after making it to the Obama rally in Highland and then driving to Indianapolis. I hope it makes some sense. I just wanted to get it down while it was still in my head. It's just so amazing wen you see it in person. I hope wen we get out today in Indianapolis we can make a difference. If we can get out enough democrats in this county and Lake county, I think we can turn Indiana blue, which would just be amazing.