Living in a Middle-Class Bubble

 This morning, my local paper, the Delaware County Daily Times, ran an op-ed, which spurred me to write this letter to the editor:

To the editor:

Clearly, Jerry McOscar lives in a white, middle-class bubble and doesn't understand how his life differs from those who may be poor, non-white, elderly, or otherwise "out of the mainstream".

In his op-ed on Tuesday, after outlining the problems that Julie Berger, a Senior Research Coordinator at University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, observed at a polling place in West Philadelphia--problems that included an inability to locate the proper polling place, long lines, and difficulty in understanding how to operate the ballot scanning machine--McOscar wrote:

"The truth is that most of these purported 'obstacles' are easily remedied by a little pre-election day homework — reading sample ballots, verifying the proper polling place, checking paperwork, voting early if work is an issue, for example. Ms. Berger even admits to being confused at times when voting in person.

"She asserts that voter suppression can take blatant forms, but its more insidious forms can be hard to see for those, like her, who have always exercised their voting rights easily: a labyrinth of registration forms and deadlines, a hard-to-read ballot, 'complex' voting machines, mismatched polling books."

What McOscar fails to acknowledge is that that kind of "homework" may require an access to the internet, or a library, or even the skills to utilize either, that may not be commonplace in areas like West Philly, especially among the poor and elderly. Has he not heard of the "digital divide"? Further, it may require a time and effort that even a younger person, working two or more jobs, holding together a single-parent household, simply cannot manage.

 
I'm a senior citizen who was an "early adapter" to the computerized world, thanks to working in the publishing industry in my youth; but when I took a part-time job in a supermarket in my later years, I discovered a wide swath of people of all ages and races who had difficulty operating a self-checkout or understanding how our loyalty card system operated.

Mr. McOscar needs to realize that what he finds simple and easy may not be for everyone.