A Man With No Vote

This essay first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, May 31, 1998

A few weeks ago I received voter-registration material in the mail. There it was, clearly marked, my disqualification: "You must NOT be in prison or on parole for the conviction of a felony.'"

I felt obligated to press further, to fight for the privilege. I telephoned the registrar and explained that I'm on "supervisory release," not parole. Could I vote?

She had to check. On hold, I began to feel silly, to wonder if I really cared if they let me vote or not. When she came back and told me I could vote only after my sentencing judge's supervision ends-another three years-I must admit, I was a bit relieved.

My relationship with the vote has always been a complicated thing. To vote would be yet another step in transforming myself into "John Q. Citizen"-the name prisoners disparagingly use for average members of society. It means a common John of the herd-mentality, milquetoast-variety.

But the truth is that, two years out of prison, I want to be John Q. Citizen. I struggle to understand precisely what my duty is to you, the society whose conformity I once despised. And sometimes I am ashamed of the political animal I once was, even more than of my 20-plus bank robberies.

I first recognized a corrosive political competitiveness in myself in ninth grade, in a mock election in Mr. Wasserman's government class at Luther Burbank Junior High School in Burbank.

I was nominated to run against Pam Franke, a popular friend. We courted delegates at a red-white-and-blue-bannered convention. The race was close, with one crucial holdout: nerdy Mary Lolonis, whom I badgered. I pestered her until one day she cried.

Then she cried to Pam, who complained to Mr. Wasserman, who told me I'd been leaning too hard on tiny Mary. You'd think I was a loan shark threatening to bust kneecaps the way everyone scolded me. Pam made a scene near our lockers, unable to believe how coldly coercive I was.

The day of the convention came, and everyone had to vote out loud. Mary cast her vote for me. Pam voted for herself. To win, I only needed to vote for myself.

I voted for Pam. It stunned my classmates, but I had been embarrassed of my Machiavellian approach. Conceding the election was a clumsy attempt to behave nobly.

But the remorse soon turned cool, and nobility lost its sheen. Within four years I voted for Reagan. My grandmother cried, saying he was going to take away her Social Security. I became the first Republican in my family anyway.

First thief, too.

I admired Republicans because in my imagination, they were the wealthy caste playing wolf to the Democratic Party's sheep. I believed that Republicans who were fond of robber barons' avarice would surely admire my greedy initiative. It was my conviction that Republicans would do anything to get money and protect their power-like me.

For proof, I needed to look no further than Reagan's deregulation and the bundle Charles Keating and others earned in the savings and loan hustle. Tricky Dick was resuscitated to elder-statesman status. Ollie North became a hero for his complicity in an illegal fight against pinkos in jungle parlors. Watergate criminal G. Gordon Liddy was reincarnated into a political commentator. The Republican Party looked like a book that might be titled Let Us Now Praise Infamous Men. I merely wanted one chapter.

During the Dukakis vs. Bush campaign I wore a T-shirt emblazoned with an American flag and the slogan "Nixon in '88." My favorite political operative was Lee Atwater, the malicious man who dug up a grubby prison photo of Willie Horton and turned the presidential race into race baiting. Later, a brain tumor raging, he felt the need to apologize for his cynical tactics and his part in the casual corruption of the political process.

Oh yeah, I won $350 in bets on Election Day.

Some four months after the rout, Kitty Dukakis was hospitalized. Defeat withered her, and she turned to drinking rubbing alcohol. I rubbed loss in my betting colleagues' face by posting the article at work. The Dukakis family wasn't human to me; they were figurines, and I needed them to figure as failures in my imagination.

I was a real SOB.

Since I've come out of prison, I've spent a lot of time seriously contemplating how to best contribute to a community, instead of terrorizing it. I came out wanting to act and think 100 percent different than when I went in. I imagined that the opposite of the virulently anti-social criminal would be an optimistic civic-minded citizen.

That's where the confusion started. The average citizen is actually quite apathetic, as every presidential election for the past 20 years has shown: Less than half the eligible electorate comes out to vote. A recent Public Policy Institute of California survey found that only 16 percent of Californians have a great deal of interest in politics. Thirty-seven percent have little or no interest.

Cynicism runs deep. John Q. Citizen, it turns out, has that in common with the average prisoner.

During the summer of 1992 many prisoners of the war on drugs were hoping for respite from the lengthy mandatory prison sentences the courts were meting out. They talked about having better chances with a Democrat as president. Bill Clinton sounded like the man.

But Gov. Clinton chilled prisoners nationwide when he took a break from the campaign trail to preside over the Arkansas execution of Ricky Ray Rector. Rector was so dumb that when he finished his famous last meal, he remarked that he was going to save his peach pie for after the execution. He always ate his dessert at bedtime.

That presidential election sobered many prisoners. And the politics behind bars did nothing to alleviate cynicism.

My last residence was Norfolk Men's Prison in Massachusetts. Like some prisons reformed in the '70s, Norfolk prison had an inmate council. Candidates would promise better visiting privileges, cheaper prices in the canteen, less brutality from guards.

I never cared. In prison, nothing is given that the warden doesn't want to give. No real concessions can be won from men who can, if they wish, gas you or strap you on a concrete bed for days at a time.

Prisoners of a real revolutionary stripe-who clandestinely agitated others to strike, to stay in their bunks and not go to work or to "chow"-were always shuffled off to another prison in the hush of night. The inmate council members were suspected of surrendering the rabble-rousers in exchange for special considerations for themselves, such as good-time credit, or a transfer to a lower-security prison closer to home. I called the council a puppet regime, our version of Vichy.

While at Norfolk I received an offer for three free issues of the National Review, a conservative rag. Bored, I said sure. They must have sold their mailing list, because soon every Republican in the state, along with Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich, sent me a letter that began, "Dear Friend" or "Dear Fellow Conservative." They'd proceed to defend their agenda, which usually began with getting tough on criminals. Then they'd ask for donations.

The irony continues in my civic life: Although my donations count, my vote doesn't. Although many who can vote are as apathetic and cynical as I once was, they have a privilege I don't. If I dwell on it, I could easily feel myself a member of a marginal criminal class again, resentful to have given up the clandestine life for one that offers no substantive role in exchange.

Life on the outside is a conflict, a tightrope strung between the remorseless cynicism of my former self and the good citizen I now aspire to be. Something in the shadowy criminal mind is unsuited to the overt life of John Q. Citizen. Without a vote, a voice, I am a ghost inhabiting a citizen's space: silent as a spy, treated as a traitor, invisible as a great impostor.

Before, I made my grievances known in violent ways. Today, what I really want is a politics free of meanness, a way to register my qualms without hostility: I want to walk calmly into a polling place with other citizens, to carry my placid ballot into the booth, check off my choices, then drop my conscience in the common box.

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