[Lyric] Democracy Inaction: How Not to Vote for the Mayor of New York City (Ezra Glenn)

In an uncharacteristic move, I stepped into the voting booth with my mind unstatic, forgot to pull the lever, and stared blankly at my options. “Who’s Randy Credico?” I wondered slowly, barely awake and not thinking enough about the line of my neighbors behind the curtain, who were all probably much more sure of themselves upon entering Elijah G Stroud elementary school in Prospect Heights. Sure enough of themselves, I’d guess, that they didn’t expect the whole voting experience to take very long at all. But neither did I, and there I was causing a democratic pileup.My stress in the booth lasted at least several minutes, but felt eternal. Once I realized why the antiquated machine wasn’t working, I bought myself some time by taking a picture of the ballot on my iphone, and then by casting a vote for Anthony Weiner for mayor, of which I also took a picture to post to instagram later before unchecking his name with much greater certainty than I’d displayed up to that point in the process.Until the night before my booth-induced anxiety attack, I’d felt certain about my decision. “De Blasio,” I’d say to my fellow voters. “Everyone’s doing it.” And the truth was that I actually did and still do find Bill de Blasio the most appealing candidate where my liberal values are concerned.In conversation with my parents a few weeks ago, we discussed our priorities. “I think you know who I’m voting for” said my mother, as my dad and I rolled our eyes. “The Woman.” The Men present in the conversation were unimpressed. “You can’t do that!” we chided her. “She’s gay lady Bloomberg!”My father had some reasonable criticism. He works at Asphalt Green, a community center on the Upper East Side, where a proposed marine transfer station is slated for construction in the middle of its campus, creating a constant stream of garbage trucks passing through the space currently occupied by families playing sports. Christine Quinn is the only Democratic candidate who supports the placement of the dumpster circus in the middle of this real-life Benetton ad of diverse children dodging obesity by doing astroturf-based sports stuff. “I’m a one-issue voter,” my father proclaimed, “and she is the only candidate I can’t vote for.” We both agreed that de Blasio was the best and most likely choice. “He’s got his smart, charismatic, biracial kid in all of his commercials. He’s going to win.” And as ludicrous as that sounded to me at the time, it proved true, and I tossed my eggs in the biracial basket. Hey, why not.A few days ago I was driving upstate and listening to Hot 97 until they played "Get Lucky" too many times, an advertisement for Bill C. Thompson, a candidate I’d until that point given basically no thought to until that moment, played during every commercial break. The content of the ad was this, essentially:Bill Thompson is black. He is the only actual black candidate running for mayor of New York. Bill de Blasio is not black, and the teachers’ union did not endorse him. President Obama once said that Bill Thompson did a good job as Comptroller. Vote for Bill Thompson.I was put off. If anything, hearing the ad and “Get Lucky” interspersed so many times with one another put me in a bad mood for my drive and made me want to vote for Bill de Blasio even more than I already did. And it made me change the radio station.On the day before election day I decided I needed to do more research about my local primaries, and in the process became confused and nervous. THREE black women running against each other in my district for City Council??? What to do. I want them all to win! I want everyone in the City Council to be a black woman. I chose one basically at random before texting my friend Natalie who’s been on the campaign trail for the Working Families party for over three years. I generally vote along their party line anyway, and Natalie is smart and tall so I figured I should listen to what she says. She texted me back at 4AM with the name of a different one of the ladies.As I approached my polling place in the morning after barely sleeping as a result of internal democratic turmoil, I felt unsure about a lot of things. My roommate texted me that the voting booths were broken and she had to vote by paper ballot. I panicked before realizing that she still votes in her parents’ district in Brooklyn Heights; I have a deep-rooted love for the old voting machines, and I was primarily excited about voting because they were back in use for one-time only after their retirement in 2009. The new electric machines are boring and ugly. I’m a material voter, so sue me.One of the last things that happened to me the night before was a conversation with this same roommate where she tried for a final time to convince me to vote for Christine Quinn. She cited a conversation she’d had with her father, who said that no businesspeople would vote for de Blasio and then Joe Lhota would win the whole thing. Until that point I really hadn’t thought about the non-democratic possibilities in this election. A guy whose ads could be confused with posters for the musical “CATS”? Yeah right. But this Lhota guy. He seems really bad. I looked at his campaign website and it was as if he wrote it as a joke just for me, a campaign that aligned with the exact opposite of my views on everything. And his ads don’t make me confused about musicals at all. NO MORE bike lanes? NO MORE taxes? NO MORE HAPPINESS??? No. This guy can’t win, I’ll have to move or die.Whether by sleep deprivation, an actual epiphany of sensibility, or something else entirely, I came to the conclusion based on my fear of a Republican victory that Bill de Blasio could be the Sarah Palin of this race, only completely different. “I’d rather have someone who at least pretends to care about the things that I care about in Gracie Mansion than someone who pretends not to be evil incarnate,” my brain said as I drifted, in horror, to sleep. My final waking thought: “Fuck politics. I’m still voting for de Blasio.”So there I am this morning in the voting booth, in the dimly lit gymnasium of my local public elementary school. The Weiner fakeout for instagram is complete. The lever is in position. I make my choices in every category, leaving the Mayoral ballot for last. I take a deep breath.As soon as I hit the gray morning air on Sterling Place I feel a wave of nausea and start sprinting toward the bus stop. I voted for Quinn, the gay lady Bloomberg whose vagina my mom is sure exists. I text my roommate, ashamed at having betrayed my own beliefs for the political game, which is probably the first time I’ve ever identified with Bill de Blasio or Christine Quinn on such a personal level. The bus ride was so slow and awful now that school buses are back on the road that I’m just going to have to move to North Hampton, Massachusetts and give up. I’ve heard the people there are ugly and boring, but at least I won’t be forever plagued by my own democratic impotence.