The Thursday before the election, I called a meeting of the polling captains I was in charge of, the people who were to stand outside polling places from 5:30 until the last voter left, hand them Obama literature, offer them food, snacks, and whatever other comforts they could, as well as encourage them to tolerate those long waits in line. Of the 26 people I invited to the meeting, maybe 16 or 17 showed up, almost all of them strangers to me.

But one man caught my attention and everybody else’s. He was a slim African-American, 5’7″, mid-fifties. He’s a retired middle school social studies teacher. He told us that he had already bought his plane ticket for the inauguration. If Larry Lewis had stood on his head, he couldn’t have made more of an impression.

As it turned out, it was a good thing he was so gung ho, because he had the most crowded, molasses slow poll of the day for our sector. And he was equal to it.

On Tuesday, Larry showed up at the Wellington Arms Apartments, a high rise on New Halls Ferry Road in North St. Louis County, at 4:30, ready to haul out of his car the five dozen donuts he had just bought and the four cases of water he had brought. To his surprise, 200 people were already there, about eighty percent of them African-American.

They gratefully accepted what he had brought, used the eight chairs he set out for those that needed them (or sat on chairs they themselves had brought), and wondered if he had coffee–which he didn’t, but which the Obama campaign provided by 7:30. At 9:30, some of those 200 people were still waiting to vote. Needless to say, by that time, the line was a whole lot longer than 200 people. It wrapped clear around the building. He could stand at the entrance and see the end of the line. Time for more than coffee and snacks, Larry decided, and he schlepped over to White Castle and brought back sixty burgers.    

In those first five hours, the lawyer inside the polling place stepped out a few times to keep him posted. After several hours, the lawyer said that part of the problem was that so many voters were asking for paper ballots, and the polling place was running short of pens. Larry called me as he was driving to Office Depot for $25 worth of pens to say that the campaign needed to get more pens over there.

The slow line was the main problem, but there were ancillary difficulties. At one point the fire department, concerned about the crowd in the lobby of the building, declared that it was a fire hazard. So the Obama campaign sent someone over who didn’t have any Obama gear on to see to it that only ten voters at a time were in the lobby waiting for the elevator.

Parking was a nightmare. Even if all the residents at the Wellington Arms had moved their cars for the day, there wouldn’t have been anywhere near enough slots for the crowd that gathered. People had to park on the shoulder of a busy four lane road and walk several blocks. Larry could see that many of them hustled down the road at a trot, hoping to get a better place in line.

Some of them parked on Sugarpines Road, which was soon too crowded for residents to get in and out, and the police were threatening to ticket the voters. The cops relented about the tickets, though, and contented themselves with putting up barricades to force folks to park on New Halls Ferry. The place was such a mob scene that two helicopters were hovering overhead part of the time.

Some voters came early and left but came back later. He talked to five or six of them. It’s impossible, of course, to know how many saw the line and left, never to return.

The lines stayed long until late in the afternoon.  In the early afternoon, Larry went for another thirty White Castles. When he came back with the burgers, the people in line applauded. Two women offered him money to help reimburse him, but he was just glad to have a chance to be of help and didn’t take it. He says the women, who were white, were in their seventies. He has no idea who they voted for, but he knows that they told him that they had never before experienced such concern from someone working the polls.

In the early afternoon, we sent another volunteer, Sarah Berry, to help out. Besides giving Larry a chance to go around the corner to where he lives and have a break, she also made a food run. By 5:00, the line was finally gone, and voters could walk right in. Of the 1,800 registered voters in that precinct, more than 1500 voted there that day (and who knows how many more voted absentee?).

Much as the day wore Larry out–he was way too pooped to go to the victory party at the Chase that night–he loved it. People were so cooperative. The weather was mid seventies and sunny, the mood was happy, and people talked about being part of history.

Larry worked that same poll site in 2000 and 2004, and never had any such problems. He figures that the massive black turnout was just more than the poll workers were equipped to handle.

Now that the big day is over, he’s hustling to get tickets to the inauguration. He called Rep. Clay’s office about it and found out that there will be a lottery for some tickets that office will have. But even if he isn’t lucky enough to get a ticket, he’ll be in D.C. on January 20th. He just bought himself an extra heavy coat, hat and gloves. He’s ready to go.