Tuesday, September 17, 2019

A postcard on my doorstep tells me, just in time, that my polling place has changed. As I approach the school, a couple of blocks from my house, a voice with an Australian accent calls out "Hello, Cleveland!" A man waves from a booth for my party, just outside the boundary. Apparently he recognized my t-shirt. In a classroom, I hand the poll watchers the postcard and my ID. They hand me a blue envelope. I step behind a cardboard barrier, slip a piece of paper with my party's initials inside it, then drop the sealed envelope in a box where the poll watchers can see it. Moments later, a block away from the school, I arbitrarily catch a passing bus into the larger city. Its card reader is disabled. On Election day, a legal holiday, buses are free. I hop off the bus at the square where five streets meet. In the center, a white-haired woman, portly and joyous with pink sunglasses, a guitar case with loose change open at her feet, sits in a lawn chair surrounded by plastic flowers and sings popular, religious, and patriotic songs. A large crowd dances and sings along. When she stops to swap the karaoke disc in her player, she orders the crowd to vote. "I don't care who you vote for -- well, I do care but I won't say -- but if you haven't voted yet, go vote, and then come back!" A few men start a chant of "Bibi! Bibi!" but it fades quickly. A gaunt woman of African descent, bent over and without teeth, approaches the singer, her palm out. The singer takes a coin from a plastic bag and gives it to her, then announces "This women has nothing. I have started her off with ten shekels. Who will add more to help her live?" The bowed woman moves among the crowd. The white-haired woman sings again. I stay with the crowd, listening, filming, and singing, until sunset.