I’m a ballot box.

I eat ballots.

People come up to me and feed me.

Any time of day or night, I’m there, always ready, hungry for votes.

I say, “There’s room for one more.”

I think people don’t hear me or don’t understand because they don’t speak ballot. That may not be the reason, but any explanation is an answer to a question, even if nobody asks it.

I don’t think of myself as particularly smart. I know my place in the system. I’m a conduit.

I’m like a nerve cell. I carry messages to the brain.

I’m like an artery. I keep the blood of democracy flowing from the heart.

I know, I know, I’m making analogies, I’m talking too much, and I’m talking to myself. But what else can I do? I just sit around all day and night, especially at night, when it gets so lonely. Hardly anybody comes by to vote after midnight. Once a guy drove by at 4:00 a.m., stopped, got out, dropped his contribution in, muttered, drove away.

Some people are night owls. Some night owls are people.

I know, I know, I expect too much of people. I mean, I’m the one who’s inert. They can get around. They can do things, like live. All I can do is watch them do it.

But I’m important in people’s lives. I mean, where would they be without me? They’d be up the creek.

I’ve seen it all. Well, maybe not all, but I’ve seen too much. And not enough. Like everything, I’m a paradox, a whole pair. Good/bad, yes/no, right/wrong.

I’m part of an extended family. Mother, father, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins. You can find us at places where people gather or pass by. In town or in the country. At libraries, churches, schools, shopping centers. We’re where people can’t get to to vote in person. Those are voting centers.

We ballot boxes talk to each other with the voting centers as parts of the same system.

There used to be a voting center at Eliot Middle School in Altadena, in the auditorium, before the fire. Then there was also, maybe still is, I can find out, inside voting at the Armenian Center at the corner of New York Drive and Allen, across from Prime Pizza. There’s one at the Altadena Historical Society where they keep the archives. They don’t turn you away, and help you navigate the machines. That’s for the people who don’t need me, which explains why I get lonely.

I used to have a cousin voting box at Farnsworth Park, but then everything burned down in the fire, and my cousin had to move.

That might actually have been me, because we’re so alike and interchangeable that we don’t always know who and where we are. I know, I know, you could also say that about people.

I come from a long line of ballot boxes. We go way back. I am my Father.

We talk to each other and share experiences. There was this one time, actually more than once, when a voter dropped in a ballot and then changed his mind. “I saw the news and I want to change my vote!”

They called the Ballot Police who showed up right away and took the whole box away to an unspecified location, emptied it out, searched to make sure none were stuck to the insides, then threw all the ballots away because they were in a “compromised” batch. Apparently a single vote can infect like an epidemic.

Ballots have been found floating in a river. A whole bunch were discovered where a mail carrier had dumped them because it was too hot outside and he was too tired, and the government exonerated him just because.

There are so many stories we tell each other that they wouldn’t just fill a book, it would take volumes.

The ballot box becomes a voting booth.

Like the person who comes to vote in person, the guy at the table finds a “reason” to say no, so they go home, mark their ballot that came in the mail this time, and bring it to me.

I go so far back in my family that we remember when almost everybody voted, and the votes were counted by hand under supervision, then counted again to make sure. Tallies were written down and upgraded and reported. Now, it’s machines and scanners. Then experts come to check the machines.

The machines are a questionable part of the system and are plotting to take us over and replace us.

I try to warn people. But too many people don’t even vote and don’t know how to handle the warning truth. I once tried to attract their attention by shaking, but they thought it was just an earthquake.

Like with all families, we provoke different reactions. Some people bring us flowers. Some cover us with graffiti and smear us with feces. Some just nod or shake their heads.

I want to go on a speaking tour to encourage people to vote, tell them how important it is, their “civic duty,” and what I look like and how to drop their ballot in.

But I’m just a box anchored to a spot.

But I’m here, still here, ready, waiting.

I’ll be seeing you.