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An interesting conflict between voting and reporting

Francisco Miraval                                

Last week, in the context of the midterm elections, I had to fulfill two duties: voting and reporting about the elections. After all, as it was clear once the election results became known, those elections will shape the future of the country (at least for the next couple of years). Therefore, voting and reporting about the elections was very important for me.

It was easy to vote, but I soon discovered that being a reporter on Election Day was not an easy task.

In Colorado, where I live, this was the first election only by mail. Therefore, there was no need for voters to go to the polls. They only needed to complete the ballots and send them by mail to the election offices of their respective counties. Alternatively, they could go on Election Day to a voting center and deposit their ballots there.

In choosing this methodology, there was no need to wait in line to vote and there were no long lines to vote. In addition, it was said that voting by mail will allow people in rural areas to participate in the elections without having to drive many miles to vote.

Whatever the case, voting was easy. The ballot came in the mail. I opened the envelope, selected my candidates and issues, signed above the dotted line, closed the envelope, affix the stamps, and mailed the ballot. A simple task, indeed.

Yet, when, acting as a reporter and properly identified as such, I visited three voting centers to talk with voters about the election, I found that private security guards in all those three places (two public buildings and a private facility) were not open to my presence in those buildings, not even after indicating I was a reporter.

For the first time in my almost two decades as a reporter in the United States, not only I was denied access to a voting center (something I did many times in the past), but in one case I was not even able to remain nearby.

Due to those unexpected developments that prevented me from reporting about the elections as planned, I called my editor. When one of the security guards at a building in south Denver detected I was speaking Spanish (outside the building and far away from the main door), he called another security guard (clearly Latino) to listen to what I was saying.

The Latino security guard told me I should not be there because I was being “disrespectful” of the privacy of the people. Obviously, I was never disrespectful in any way to anybody. And obviously, the guard did not wait from my answer or my explanation. He and the other guard adopted a clearly unfriendly posture and waited for me to leave.

I wonder was the point of voting and celebrating democracy if at the same time the freedom that allows us to vote and to report is restricted, impacting those who, with our stories, want to strengthen our freedom and our democracy.

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