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QUEUE FACTOR
Along political lines
BY CAMILLE DODERO
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The line of people leading to my district’s polling place this morning made my street look like the sidewalks flanking last Saturday’s Red Sox victory parade. Well, not exactly. There wasn’t any screaming, woooo-hooooing, or high-fiving. For once, no one was yelling "Yankees suck!" No one was visibly drunk, either, though I’m sure some people were imagining the whiskey shots they’d be having later this night if a certain person remained president. And the actual time it took to vote was about 30 seconds, whereas the duck-boat parade took about three minutes. But like Saturday’s parade, this morning’s line to the polls was another one of those rare instances when you see regular, non-activist people gathered in the streets for a common purpose. And to know that this scene, for something that isn’t blatantly commercial, was being replayed over and over again across the country was somewhat surreal. It made you think that Americans are becoming less apathetic. Around 8 a.m., the voting line in Davis Square was 125 people long, stretching from the polling place, at Ciampa Manor on College Avenue, along the sidewalk in front of the MBTA station, and around the corner down by the bus depot. When I went back at 9:45 a.m., I was the 63rd person waiting. People in front of me read the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, the Metro. Others drank coffee, stared off into space, remarked how quickly the line was moving. And although the line did move rather steadily, people joined at the same rate, about one person every 30 seconds; in the first six minutes, 13 people queued single-file behind me. There were old men with Popeye grimaces, moms with their children in tow, middle-aged locals in leather jackets. Two women discussed enrolling felons on the ballot, but then segued into a dialogue about the Red Sox. "Did you see Johnny Damon on Letterman last night?" Nope. "Johnny Damon is a great visual prop, it doesn’t matter what he says." As one elderly couple pulled over to park in a metered space so they could vote, a cab driver sat on his horn, startling everyone outside the polling place. It figures; his cab had a sign on it for Vincent Ciampa — the Massachusetts state representative distributing homophobic fliers about his adversary, Carl Sciortino. Actually, I heard more dialogue about politics at the Red Sox parade than I did during my 36 minutes spent waiting to vote. During the Red Sox celebration, at Park Street, one man wended his way through the crowd, carrying an anti-Bush sign on a pole. As he passed a small group, one twentysomething kid in a leather jacket yelled over his shoulder, "Hey, don’t be dissing on my homie George Bush." Nearby, another Sox fan heard him, came over nodding, and suggested, "Yeah, man, we should kick his ass." But at the polls, the actual task at hand wasn’t a topic of conversation. Really, the only comment about the proceedings came from a woman walking by who eyed the 60 or so people queued up and cheered, "Nice job, voters! Nice job!"
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