CLEVELAND — On the last day of early voting in Ohio, oncologist Paul Hergenroeder pulled his Prius into the parking lot of a senior high rise to give Walter A. Brown a lift to the polls.
Hergenroeder and Brown don’t live far apart, but the doctor is in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood while the retired sanitation worker’s building, called Scranton Castle, is part of public housing. Someone stole Brown’s car a few months back, so while he uses his walker to get to the grocery store, no way could he make it a few miles to the Board of Elections building — the only early-voting location for Cuyahoga County’s 1.2 million residents.
And he wanted to vote early because he’s about to have cataract surgery. “My eyes are not that good,” he said, “but I’ll do the best I can.”
When Hergenroeder picked him up — as one of 140 drivers deployed by a new nonpartisan group, VoterDrive — Brown still wasn’t sure how he’d mark his ballot. “Going to try to vote for the best man” was how he put it.
A long queue greeted them as they pulled up to East 30th Street and Euclid Avenue. But then a police officer directing traffic told Hergenroeder to bust a U-turn; another moved cones so he could ease the Prius into a “handicapped entrance only.”
“God, Walter, you get VIP status,” Hergenroeder joked with Brown. “Wish I had you when I came.”
Both men passed the required temperature check and were whisked into the Accessible Voting Area. “He has fuzzy eyes,” the doctor told a poll worker. She ran through Brown’s options: a large print ballot; headphones to hear the candidates’ names, or someone to read the ballot aloud.
Brown picked #3. “We have to have one of each party — a Democrat and a Republican — read the ballot to you,” the worker explained. “They will even color in the circles for you once you say who you want.”
Within minutes, he was done. And who was the best man? “I voted for the Democrat,” Brown said. “I figured we needed a change of pace.”