This Is What Democracy Looks Like

RED QUEEN IN LA - The polls for Prop 50, CA’s ballot initiative that counters MAGA’s illegal gerrymandering in Texas, opened yesterday (11/4/25) at 7am and closed at 8pm under a nearly full, “beaver” moon, with 300 people waiting in line. Hundreds upon hundreds added themselves all day long to the end of this queue. Everyone waiting at 8pm eventually cast their vote, though it took some well over three hours to do so.

Utterly remarkable was the good behavior of all these fellow citizens. Hundreds upon hundreds stood quietly, patiently, with no trouble, no squabbling, no contention, no complaining – just grim determination to have their one vote be counted, and heard. I have never felt anything like it. This is what democracy looks like but also, as a friend recast it:  this is what dissent looks like under fascism -- stay quiet and orderly so you give no excuse to be pulled out of line.

In fourteen hours, I witnessed just two incidents of rancor: a pair of voters fanning annoyance with verbal and line-spacing provocations. And a poll worker who flirted with state law by commanding ID for registration, and hampering timely passage of voters dropping completed ballots and the processing of those waiting for b     allots. His coworkers and ROV (Registrar of Voters) superiors did not condone the subversion and at length managed to neutralize the malignance.

This process took some while, but a process there is. Checks-and-balances is the lynchpin of our democracy, and I have come to prize this feature so. As a poll watcher, my oversight contributes to the machinery there in a way that a worker’s cannot. My labor can be spared when there is a shortage of it, because I am not part of the core operations. I can be utilized to observe actions that are undermining, to witness procedure and watch for protocols or signage that falls short, to listen for warnings and complaints.

These observations are logged as part of an oversight operations, supported by a small army of mavens adjudicating my observations and forwarding concerns among officials empowered to right them. This is how hiccups in voting for the disabled was accommodated in real time; this is how intimidation was managed and minimized. This is what your elected delegate to and within a functioning opposition Party looks like:

Democracy had a good night.

(Sara Roos is a biostatistician from northern New England living in West LA.  Raising children from private to charter to public schools provides a front-row seat to the microcosm of electoral politics that is education politics. She started blogging this experience at redqueeninla.com, eventually co-publishing the LA Education Examiner. Sara is an elected delegate to the LA County and state Democratic Party Committees since 2020.  Her monthly constituent newsletter and essays can be found at redqueeninla.com.)