It was over in five minutes. It took me longer to get there than to actually do it.
At 1600 hours I headed to my polling station.
Thinking there might be a line, I brought along a book to read, forgetting (luckily) to bring my mobile phone.
But it turns out there’s no line at all, and we’re all strolling in.
First, you face two people at a table. One of them, an Indian is wearing a “Presiding Officer” tag.
“Polling card and IC,” he says.
I hand him the polling card and IC that he checks. Then he asks, “Do you have a mobile phone?”
I shake my head. “Off your mobile phone,” the Chinese woman next to him says to my mother, who has it in her handbag.
Then we follow the arrows that point us to the polling station.
Inside, there are people sitting at school desks, more or less in pairs. I’m reeling from the memory of my Chinese Oral exam.
One Chinese woman, who is standing in the middle of the passageway like a maitre’d waiting for diners sticks out her hand and I go to her. She doesn’t offer a welcome or a “how are you” or a smile. Voting is serious business.
She takes my polling card and I/C and says “A2” to me. It would have felt completely like my ‘O’ levels except that I was more acquainted with B3s and C6s so I knew it wasn’t the ‘O’ levels. She then pointed me to a set of desks where a Malay man and a Chinese woman sat and handed me back my polling card and IC.
I went forward to where I was pointed to.
The Chinese woman was looking at something over her shoulder. I’m not sure what. But it sure got her attention, because she totally did not see me observing the yellow notice on the floor that said “Do not stand beyond this line”. Why I have to keep this distance of about five inches from the desk I do not know. Maybe I’m carrying some unknown virus. Maybe they don’t like close talkers.
Still, I am waiting for this woman, eyes over her shoulders for so long, that I’m wondering if I should be standing there at all. Maybe I’m not far behind the yellow line enough.
The Malay man next to her finally takes a little initiative. He lightly flicks his fingers in the air and the turbulence he causes makes her turn around. She seemed annoyed to be distracted, before finally… noticing me still standing behind the yellow line.
Well, not quite. By this time, I’ve become bold. I’m standing on the yellow line.
She takes my polling card and IC. In front of her, there’s this big sheet with printed boxes. Remember looking up your seating position for your exams? It was exactly like that. She ticked off the box and gave my polling card and IC to the Malay man with the powerful fingers.
He tells me “Come over here.” So I go over and find yet another yellow “Do not stand beyond this line” sign pasted on the floor.
The man tears out the voting slip from this book like it’s a lucky draw coupon and folds it in half. Very precisely. Then out of the blue, he yells. “Joanne Teo! Serial number 1097!” as he hands my voting slip to me.
Why all the name yelling? Does everyone need to know my name?
The guy in the opposite row suddenly springs to life and does something. What? I don’t know. I’m so caught by surprise. Partly because my name was yelled out. Partly because I failed to observe the other guy’s existence on the other side because he was so still.
They definitely skipped all these steps in the “How to vote” video I saw on TV.
So I take the voting slip, walk past the ballot box to this booth and make my mark. At this point, I’m so nervous I’ll do the wrong thing. Make a cross in the wrong box. It is such a big box, you think you can’t make a mistake. But believe me when I say making a cross in a small box is much simpler than making a cross in a big box. My cross is shaky. but I think it’ll do.
Then I folded my voting slip, walked back to the ballot box and put in my vote in the slit. It really is like entering a lucky draw.
A guy standing across the room voyeuristically watches you do it – put in the vote, that is. If he suspects you didn’t, he’ll ask you if you did.
I thought the poll box would be made of metal, with locks and things, but no, it’s made of corrugated paper – the very same box you’d use to move house.
And so like that it was over. I’d cast my vote for the very first time.
Couple of questions:
- Why is there so much handling of the poll card and IC? Pass here, pass there, pass back. Why can’t the person who checks the first time also tick off the boxes and then pass me the voting slip? Surely it’s not that difficult? Would Ford approve of this assembly line? No wonder the staff looked so bored.
- Why is the poll box before the station where you make your mark for the vote. You have to walk past the poll box before making your vote then come back again to the poll box. What if you’re so blur and put in the voting slip before making your mark? The vote-flow doesn’t make sense.
- If I made a mistake, could I ask for another voting slip?
Okay, that was three questions.
Conclusion: The run up to voting is more exciting than the actual deed.