What If The County Held An Election and Then Locked The Entrance To The Central In-Person Polling Place An Hour Before the Polls Closed?

No, Seriously, That Really Happened Last Night in Marin.

Possibly the most iconic of Marin's in-person voting centers is located at Frank Lloyd Wright's labyrinthine Marin Civic Center, nicknamed "Big Pink" for its distinctive paint color. The fastest and most-used route to this particular, long-treasured County voting center is through the main entrance on Peter Behr Drive. In fact, for most Marinites, this entrance, with its pleasing gate made of vertical, gold-anodized grills, and its spectacular view of the hills to its north, is the only known entrance to the Civic Center's main building.

On any given day, you will see young mothers with their children, books in arms, stroll past these main entrance gates to travel to and from one of the County's most popular libraries. Others use the main entrance to attend Board of Supervisors meetings, or to visit the County Clerk, the Assessor, and other vital County offices, including the Registrar of Voters. But this entrance, sadly, had been fully locked at least an hour before the polls were set to close on March 5, 2024. For most of this time, there was no explanation of any alternate entrance.

I know about this only because a very young voter who had shown up to cast his ballot at that location called to alert me to the situation at 7:01 p.m. By that point, the youth had already started asking the security guard and various county staffers questions about why voters were being locked out before the polls closed. He was able to advocate for the unlocking of the gate, which eventually made it a little easier for those trying to get in:

What I was able to piece together from a combination of video, photographs, late-night interviews, and the persistence of that young voter, follows:

1. The entrance began to be locked as early as 6:30, when it was already getting dark, but no alternate instructions were posted for how to access the voting center via a back entrance at "Middle Arch".

2. A woman who appeared to be working with or for the County emerged from the interior near he main entrance to shout to confused voters that they could use an unseen door across the street, walk up the non-handicapped accessible stairs, and cross back over to the main building. (This would put them on the second floor, from which they would have to find the first floor voting location without benefit of a map.) But this woman’s proposed work-around was not possible, because the door she instructed people to use was locked.

3. Multiple people attempting to vote in person were confronted by the gruff Barbier security guard who told them to "go around to the other entrance", referring to the largely unknown "Middle Arch" entrance, which is a circuitous walk in the dark.

4. Others simply met a locked gate with no explanation and no other directions, and left either to try to vote at another location, or simply went home without voting.

5. Due to the persistence of the young voter, who was flanked by multiple citizens who also complained, the County apparently relented and unlocked the gates to the main entrance.

6. The gates, once unlocked, were subsequently re-locked for no apparent reason. The young voter again complained, and the gates were "re-unlocked." Rinse and repeat. This locking and unlocking would continue, seemingly based on the whim of the Barbier security guard – but ultimately due to the County's own intransigence in locking out its own voting public.

7. The young voter was thus obliged to monitor the security guard's changing moods regarding the gate until 8 pm. This is an awkward, stressful, and vulnerable position for anyone, but especially for someone young.

8. At one point, a signboard was placed outside the gate with piece of 8.5" x 11" paper on which had been printed: "ENTRANCE CLOSED. USE MIDDLE ARCH." But there were no instructions on the sign for how to walk or drive to "Middle Arch" and the only map was located (tantalizingly!) behind the locked gate.

This Is Fine:

Regardless of political outlook, everyone I was able to talk to about the apparently deliberate decision to restrict their access thought it was novel or bad. Some defenders of the County will no doubt suggest, "they should have mailed their ballots in before election day after work.” But there are good reasons for waiting to fill out one's ballot on election day – not least is which is the difficulty working people experience trying to cut through the misinformation regarding candidates, measures, and propositions. If your vote matters, shouldn't you wait to make the best decisions possible?

Further, while the mail-in/drop-off ballot is an important option, a mail-in ballot may not reach one's mailbox, or if received, it may get lost. In another not-uncommon scenario, voters may have filled in their mail-in ballot, and forgot to put it in their briefcase/backpack/purse prior to leaving the house for work. Still others simply don't trust mail-in/drop-off ballots. But whatever the reason, every voter has the right to vote in person. That right can obviously be obstructed, however, when the gates to the voting center are locked and no other clear instructions are provided.

Okay, So It's Not Fine, But The County Didn't Break The Law:

I checked the available law code around voting centers and it didn't appear to be have any specific requirements for counties with regard to voting centers. I reached out to an attorney in San Francisco who confirmed the likelihood that Marin County's Registrar of Voters had not broken any laws. That attorney did suggest, "it would be a great piece of activist litigation for a disabled rights group to sue."

If that is the case, it certainly seems possible that a paper trail that began in mid-2023 would be relevant. In a series of letters to the Board of Supervisors there appear repeated questions and concerns about the County's decision to lock the gates to the main entrance prior to evening commission meetings, including the County's troubled (and now suspended) Human Rights Commission.

Then, as now, there was no signage instructing the public that there was a back-door entrance through Middle Arch.

Unfortunately, this is part of a larger pattern by the County, including, as detailed many times earlier, willfully destroying a full eight of the twelve AB1185 “Sheriff Civilian Oversight Working Group” meetings, from which the public itself had been barred.

Many of those letters from 2023 express concerns that the County was deliberately attempting to squelch public participation in supposedly public meetings by locking the gates early. Those same letters reference concerns about discrimination against disabled participants.

When the activity was a meeting of a County commission, it was bad enough. But when it interferes with one of the most basic political rights – voting – it represents a kind of "doubling down" on the County's contempt for the public. Especially since voting itself is such a limited political expression in the U.S.

Some years before I volunteered for (and sadly grew disenchanted with) President Obama, a classicist at the University of Texas wrote a book which he had conceived partly in reaction to our post-9/11 reality. In laying out the basis of "First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea", Paul Woodruff reminds us that a representative democracy is only the illusion of democracy.

The real thing, Woodruff maintains throughout his book, requires much more commitment than most Americans are aware of — but it is also far more inclusive than what we have. Our current status quo, he urges, is worth re-examining.

Marin's local vote totals are beginning to trickle in. There do not appear to be any surprises for the most powerful County seats. In fact, one Supervisor, Stephanie Moulton-Peters, represents a district so stagnant that no one even bothered to challenge her candidacy. Meanwhile, the poorest in Marin County, those who toil in the homes of the wealthy — the immigrants doing some of the most vital life-saving work of caretaking — can't even register to vote. But when they eventually gain that right to vote, will it be protected? Or will they be met with a literal locked gate?

©️2024 Eva Chrysanthe