Voter voices: West Palmdale poll workers have time to chit-chat
Belethia Myers volunteered the garage of her six-bedroom home on Tangerine Street in West Palmdale as the official polling station for the community of Anaverde.
As she and five poll workers waited for voters to trickle in, the group’s chit-chat ran the gamut: From work and family to horror stories about healthcare.
By 9.30 a.m., only 14 people from Anaverde, a community of 700 modern tract homes, had voted. By 10 a.m., the number had risen to 16.
“People are frustrated,” said Myers. “They’ve seen that nothing they do is going to work.”
Kenneth Maupin, an electrician, added that “people at my job said they don’t care about this election. They think it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
Anthony Infante, another poll worker, said he had worked the phone banks for a candidate running to fill a vacant seat on Palmdale’s City Council -- a measure also on the ballot for Palmdale voters. Hardly anyone he spoke to knew about the special election, he said.
Just before 10 a.m., Alex Iudica and Lisa Gunton pulled up in an SUV and wandered into the garage polling station.
“Where’s the beer?” Iudica joked as he approached to poll workers. “It’s gonna be a long day.”
Gunton, an unemployed worker of the construction company that built Anaverde, said she came out to vote because “it’s my duty and it’s my right.”
She recalled how during November’s general election, the line to vote stretched out into the street in front of Myers’ home.
Gunton said she was particularly opposed to Proposition 1D, which would shift about $1.7 billion dollars away from early-childhood development programs over the next five years, and use it to help balance the state’s budget. She also opposed Proposition 1E, which seeks to divert about $460 million from mental health programs over the next two years.
“We don’t want to steal from programs that help children, in order to pay the debt,” said Gunton. Like many voters, Gunton’s verdict on the special election was generally negative.
-- Ann Simmons
