So today we had primary elections in the US and I went to cast my vote.

As I approached the 2 poll workers sitting there, 2 interesting things happened.

One of the Indian poll worker (I am an Indian too), instead of asking for my name so that she could find me in the register, asked for the sample ballot we get in the mail. I have never in the past 10+ years of my voting ever taken this sample ballot to the polling place. I asked her why she was asking. She said so that she can get my name accurately.

So just by looking at me she assumed that I would have a difficult name? Do all Indians have a difficult name?

The other poll worker, a caucasian gentleman, found me in the register, had me sign next to my name and took me to the voting booth. I told him that I would be writing in one of the candidate and if he could show me how to. So he took me to the voting booth which had 2 options – those voting Democrat and those voting Republican. He clicked on the democrat option without asking me and then was going to proceed to show me how to write in my candidate. I told him I was not a democrat. We had to go back and start over.

So just by looking at me, he assumed that I would be a democrat? Are all people of color democrats?

I could justify both their actions with logic. But in some situations, logic just doesn’t cut it.

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