I’m reflecting on the past week of our nation’s political process, and my part in this blur of a campaign process. This past Tuesday, I awoke at 6:30 in the morning, stumbled a couple of blocks to my local elementary school, and faced a confusion of long lines, understaffed poll workers, and two elderly District operators.

But my story really starts earlier than that. The weeks before the election (roughly from October 27th until November 1st), I had (somewhat mistakenly) believed that my right to vote had been unfairly and irrevokably disenfrachised. As some of you may or may not know, this past August I moved from one part of New York State to another. Within a week of my move (on August 8th, 2008 or 8/8/08), I re-registered to vote at a music festival in the younger sibling state of New Jersey (on a New York form, thank you very much!) and had expected everything to go accordingly to plan. Little did I know that the Board of Elections rarely follows a strict plan when it comes to voter rolls.

When I recieved an email from Rock The Vote around October 25th, they indicated that due to large new voter registration, approximately 30,000 to 40,000 new voters had not been added to the New York State’s voter rolls. Then they offered a link to allow their mailing list to check their voter rolls status through the BoE. I followed the link to the Board of Election’s website, search for my name by my contact info, and determined that I was not on my district’s voter’s rolls. This was a problem. I searched for my old address, and it turned out that I was added there, but as an inactive voter. I suppose that meant that I had registered somewhere else (my district), but it turns out I wasn’t listed through the Board of Election’s website.

Now, at this point, I followed the link to find the local Board of Election’s phone number. However, I wasn’t sure of their hours, and couldn’t really take the time during the week to call (as I spend my day job taking calls throughout the day, and enjoy a lunch hour without “the important phone call” taking up my off the phone lunch time), so I decided to do the next best thing.

I emailed the voting organization with whom I had re-registered with originally. I had a response from the organization representative within a day, and then verified my information with them, to have them look into the matter for me. By the time I had a night to check my email again, it was Halloween, and it turned out that the Board of Elections had read my birthdate wrong. Apparently the year which I had put on my voter registration card seemed more like a date from the 1960’s, instead of the 1980’s. In essence, I was still on the voter rolls, at the correct address, in the correct district, with the correct spelling of my name, but simply 20 years older. I was informed that as long as I showed proof of address and a photo ID, there shouldn’t be a problem at the polls.

Still I realize that I have been dis-en-youth-enfranchaized (instead of youth-en-ized…). I am no longer a part of my target demographic for this election, just another way which the youth voter impact my have been mis-represented, even if it was only one vote. The idea is, if “mistakes” or inperfections in the system can happen on just one vote, what does this say about the possibility of the system being an accurate representation of the entire country at this time (or what this means for potential tampering of incorrect votes in swing states). Either way, that was my experience voting for the first time as a part of the mid-40 year old demo…