History in my Hands, by Ollie Owl

HISTORY IN MY HANDS:

The mail volume that night three weeks before the Presidential
Election of 2000 was extremely heavy. As a rehab with a permanent
injury while a mail carrier, I was assigned as a distribution clerk
casing mail in the rehab section of the General Mail Center in
Jacksonville, Florida. This section was charge with placing mail
that was either too large or could not be processed through the
automated machines into mail cases. Once these cases were pulled
down the mail was placed in trays, placed in rolling bins and
sent to the various post offices in the North Florida and Southern
Georgia areas. Other sections of the GMC would case the mail
going to other parts of florida and throughout the Nation.

One night while casing mail, I came across a large envelope that
didn't have a cancellation stamp, no date, no postage and no return
address. I thought to myself this isn't right, knowing that it was an
absentee ballot probably coming from overseas. I weight the envelope
attached the proper postage from my own stamp book, cancelled and
dated it and on the front I wrote my work site, telephone number and
inialed it and put it in the proper tray. In the next few weeks I
did this on several envelopes. From this moment up until the
expiration date that absentee ballots would be counted I made a
concerted effort to process mainly absentee ballots. Every night
I would go through the bins of mail to be cased, remove them and
take them to my case and insure that they would be directed to
the right post office. I went to most of the employees on my
tour and ask them to lay aside the absentee ballots they handled
and I would come by and pick them up.

The day after the election of 2000, when it became apparent
that the presidential election would be decided by Florida's
absentee ballots I increased my efforts. One night sitting
at my case with several trays of absentee ballots, I thought
to myself that I had history sitting right there at my feet.
That if I was that type, which I'm glad I'm not, I could very
well change the outcome of history by making these absentee
ballots disappear. Knowing at that time that most of these
ballots were coming from military bases outside of
florida and that most of them voted Republican. In this
election I personally didn't vote for either candidate and
in the last election I voted for Mortimer Snerd.

On a second thought, the way things have evolved over the
last eight years, I probably should have made these absentee
ballots disappear.