AJ Alanson, Author

I voted yesterday in the primary. The act is ceremonial in our house. We go together. Just there and back. No shopping or ice cream. Just the solemn duty of our citizenship. We never planned it this way. It simply evolved. Always the same, every two years. Until yesterday.

Four of us went to the elementary school three blocks from our house to vote: an octogenarian, a septuagenarian, a pentagenarian, and an 18-year-old for her first time. Walking into the polling station, we discussed the clear entrance with no candidates glad-handing the requisite distance from the front doors, the absence of a police presence, and, of course, no mystery SUVs with mismatched license plates and a shifty-eyed blond chick slunk down in the driver’s seat trying to seem frosty—disgusting—but not a worry at our location. However, one of us wasn’t on the list. After decades of voting, my name was missing.

Now, I would generally flap a hand, give an “oh, goodness, I’m sure it’s just a mistake” response, but something more seismic shifted under my feet. As I walked to the other table, I felt an old familiar foe rising up from my shadow. One I had long ago thought defeated.

You see, I’m a woman who absolutely would not abide infidelity. Hence, as is per my times and my culture, I’ve had name changes. Believe it or not, those name changes actually reach back to my birth certificate as though the man I married not only erased my family name but my very existence before him. It’s seems ridiculous in this day and age, but at the time, I was unaware of the water in which I swam.

Which brings me to an awakening and, I’m sure, an unintended consequence of voter ID paranoia. The state I lived in at the time, and had since I was 18, decided women, especially divorced women, who had held driver’s licenses in the state for decades, were, in fact, the enemy at the polls. Suddenly, my ID wasn’t valid and in no way could a single “i” remain undotted or “t” uncrossed. I had to produce not only divorce decrees, name change documents, and marriage certificates, but also every iteration of my birth certificate with surnames crossed out and over-typed.

Of course I missed the deadline to renew. Of course it took me no less than five separate tries. And of course, I felt persecuted, prosecuted, demeaned, and subjugated for being a woman in a culture of assholes. Which was the intent. But I persevered because overcoming this passive-aggressive attempt to disenfranchise me was nothing compared to fighting and dying for this right. Or risking your personal safety to fill out a ballot. Or marching to overcome the bloated bloviating blowhards and their self-preservation lawmaking. I mean, if you have to rig the scales to compete, well, you’ve already proven you couldn’t win in a fair fight. Obviously it’s your genetics that are defective.

And what did that driver’s license obstacle course get me? Was it a golden ticket of clarity and superiority? Nope, not when I moved to a new state. If anything, that previous state’s motives were suspect, so I started again. Three tries this time and a new fear instilled: don’t move around. Big Brother feels better if you’re locked down in one place. With your papers at the ready and your own identity scrubbed from your very birth certificate.

And all this brings me back to the unintended consequence of trying to suppress my will, my critical thinking, my vote. As though a little circus with my identity would somehow instill Stockholm Syndrome. Right, I’ll just go dust off my house heels and chintz tea-length house dress, fetch the paper in the morning and a pipe and slippers in the evening. Should I pop a casserole in the oven? Or be grateful for my household allowance, remain ignorant of worldly matters, and content myself playing bridge?

Nope. If I have to fight just to pull that lever, I’ll dig in my heels with even more resolve, but when I do pull that lever, do you think I’ll mark the little oval for “Oppressor Wannabe?” In whose sick fantasy? In what city? And for that matter, on what planet? And yet, there I am, standing in front of the “other” table wishing this hadn’t happened on my daughter’s first vote and yet, knowing she already sees the world for what it is and wasn’t even surprised.

The man asked the woman what a “G” means next to my name. Not a D, or an I, or an R, but a “G.” I offer, “well, I do identify as a “girl” if that helps.” They don’t think it does. Then my daughter, who just returned from a year in Europe, accuses me of registering as a Green. We all laugh but the humor quickly decays. The woman makes a phone call. I’m in the system correctly somewhere else and, “Gosh, how did this happen?” It gets fixed and I vote, but the uneasiness remains.

I actually caught myself scanning the gymnasium for shady lurkers or cameras, and tried to hide my rising angst. Why was anything changed next to my name? Why me? Will I have to sew a “G” over my breast on my chintz dress, or have it scrawled on my forehead, or worse, tattooed? And if I have this much trouble—me—a white woman of a certain age, what must so many others have to overcome on any given Tuesday during an election year?

That all said, I’m settled in, working on the finale of The Admiral Inn Mysteries series and loving every moment. For those who have read A Ghost in the Tide, you know there’s a cliffhanger going into the final book. Well, all of my books end on a cliffhanger but this one is existential for June…and Ramone…and everyone at the inn. So, grab my books on amazon in ebook and paperback and I’ll wrap this whole affair up for you soon!

Photo is a Shroud of Turin moment I discovered some time after I had rested on an office chair. I had been so filthy from performing very un-ladylike tasks while working on my new office that the dust on my jeans left a perfect image, well, behind…