Here’s a test to see what kind of voter you are. Stay with me now, but be warned — once your rage boils over, you don’t want to be near pointy things that cause physical harm, cause material damage to property, or slam your fist into a wall.

Let’s say you are eligible for something. OK, let’s say something from the federal or state government. Here’s how this test works:

Find the telephone number. Any agency will do. Sounds easy, but try it. Is it online? Where? Is it in the phonebook? What phonebook?

OK, let’s say you call about five places, and you get to a number that sounds right. You call.

For grins, begin to count how many “options” you have. My favorite was eight options on one call when I tried, as a retiree, to ask a question of my financial agency. This is an agency of the federal government.

They are happy to work with you. Of course, you don’t know who “they” are, since you haven’t gotten to a human being yet. And you won’t. Part of the cost-cutting measures you voted for are the ones to get rid of the “wasted overhead” and to “streamline” government “services,” right? You didn’t know you were getting rid of the people who used to answer the phone. Now you are “optioned” hither and yon.

By now, your temperature is warming. You get through to no one. You are, in fact, referred by those who are happy to help you to option after option. Isn’t choice wonderful? You may want to option a scream-o-meter because you can’t stand the wait or the merry chase. The wait music is stupefying, fraught with tunes from musicians who must have relatives in Congress.

Oh yes, the wait. “Your estimated waiting time is 43 minutes.” This is a real quotation. Oh, and once you get on the phone with a human, before they respond, they ask for a number given to you years ago, which you don’t know, much less know how to find. You hang up, because this human is not among those happy to be of service to you. If you don’t have your ancient number, which you don’t know or know how to find, they won’t deal with you.

You go in quest of your ID number. This is a complicated process. You get on your computer. God help you if you don’t have one. Of course, this also saves the government money, because by this time, many eligible people have given up. 

Armed at last with this ID number, your reward after you have given endless data to this otherwise uncontactable agency, you think you are there. But, no. To get to this point, you have to click “yes” that you agree giving your info to the agency is not secure. To be sure, now you don’t have a choice, so you click yes. 

Next, you arrange to get a password, to go with your ID, to go online, to get the number that you need, to get to the agency you can’t contact otherwise.

Of course, getting through this process has been my occupation for days. Once I got all of them lined up, identification authorized, password validated and targeted agency zeroed in on, I entered the whole bag of cats online only to have them time me out.

Undeterred, I tried again. And all my data disappeared. Disappeared? Oh, I’m referred to a Frequently Asked Question. (Why is this a frequent question?) It gives guidance to rediscovering the ID and password in language an MIT graduate would find daunting. You are then asked to evaluate this answer to your problem. You can give stars, not comments, because as of yet you are unworthy to write a comment. The collective rating is abysmal. So, what? No human will ever respond to this. You had the option to “star rate” the answer, which doesn’t help. Don’t you feel lucky?

So, gentle reader, I haven’t gotten the information I needed to begin with. Luckily, I don’t have to beat a concrete wall into submission. What I’d like to stomp are the politicians who are devilishly tricky. They don’t cancel popular, necessary and good government programs anymore. They starve them of money. Eligible people are treated as disease-bearing rodents who are not worth talking to. They are sent on endless fools’ errands to supply personal information which is unsecure, unusable and finally canceled out.

Next time a politician says he wants to get rid of waste in government, know he’s coming after you. Vote the bums out who say this. That’s how you know what kind of voter you are.

— John William Davis is a retired U.S. Army counterintelligence officer, civil servant and linguist. He was commissioned from Washington University in St. Louis in 1975. He entered counterintelligence and served some 37 years. His published works include “Rainy Street Stories: Reflections on Secret Wars, Terrorism and Espionage” and “Around the Corner: Reflections on American Wars, Violence, Terrorism and Hope.”