Election Day

Sunday was Election Day in Bolivia. Since I got here in August, there have been announcements and ads about the candidates. They were elections for the judicial offices in Bolivia and the ballot was larger than an average newspaper, over 50 candidates.

Election Day means everything is closed and quite. Vehicles are prohibited from being on the road unless you have a special permit. Voting is required here. If you don’t vote, you don’t receive your ‘carjeta’ . Without which, you can’t do any office business for three months without paying a fine.

 My host dad invited me to go with them to the nearby school where they were going to be voting. Voting is never a particularly exciting activity, but I reasoned this will probably be the only chance in my life I can see Bolivian voting and therefore I better not miss it!

We walked into the square, open school yard surrounded by class room doors. Each door was flanked by a table and labeled alphabetically. You last name determined which voting line you were to wait in. My host dad and sister’s last name starts with an ‘a’ and my host mom with an ‘o’ so we spilt up and my host mom and I stood in the ‘o’ line. There was a bit of confusion and discussion with the others standing in line with us because there were two ‘o’ lines but after double checking with the people at the tables, we stayed where we were.

You know how when your waiting and waiting, you start to suspect the line isn’t moving because if the line was moving, you would have been somewhere by now. I was having this discussion with myself when I 

realized the same women in the leopard dress was still in the front and we really hadn’t gone anywhere.

Little by little I was able to gather that the two people who were supposed to work at the ‘o’ voting table weren’t there yet. It was 10:00, voting started at 8:00 and they hadn’t showed up. A young man wearing a shirt with ‘Bolivian Elections’ on his breast pocket asked the 30 or so people standing in line if anyone would be willing to volunteer to work the table. But volunteering means sitting there until 6:00 p.m., at least, and no one was willing to step forward. Soon a police officer came over and asked the line, again, if anyone would be willing to volunteer. When he didn’t get a response, he walked to the front of the line and started checking IDs, looking for a volunteer to nominate. In a matter of moments, the orderly of people melted into  a crowd, milling around and pretending that their name didn’t start with an ‘o’.

Apparently the first few people who were too close to the front to slip away, had a good enough excuse, because soon the police officer gave up and wandered away. A few minutes later, by some unspoken signal that I missed, the line snapped back into shape.

I suspect the two people they were waiting for showed up but I can’t be sure because we left shortly after. My host family got tired of waiting and decided making lunch was a much more pressing. When my host mom returned later in the afternoon, she said she walked right through without a problem.