This is why I like to vote in New York
Nov. 7th, 2006 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taylweaverThere is something very satisfying about grabbing a big red lever and pulling it across the voting booth in one big, sweeping movement. It makes you feel like your vote has truly been tallied.
It is also nostalgic for me, as it brings back memories of when I was a child, and my mother took me with her into the voting booth. In NJ - at least where my family voted - they used the same machines with the levers - a little lever by each name, and a big red lever across the bottom. In NJ, the big lever also controlled the curtain - when the vote was cast, the curtain would open, and then it would close again when the next person pulled the lever back. When I was little, my mother would cast her votes with the little levers - I either couldn't or didn't care to read the names, but I remember the little levers. Then came the best part of all: when she was done casting her votes, my mother let me pull across the big red lever. Maybe this happened a few times; maybe it only happened once. But it made me really excited about voting. My mother, through that one simple act, made voting seem like a very cool thing to do.
When I went to vote for the first time as an actual voter, I was away at college. I will admit that i did not vote when I was 18 - I was in Israel, and since it was not a Presidential year, I didn't follow what was going on from overseas. I also made a conscious decision not to vote when I was 19. That was because it was an off-year - only local elections, and I was voting at school, where I was not really part of the local community. College students could have swayed that election - but what right did we have, as transient residents in a more permanent community? So I voted for the first time when I was 20. And I have voted every year since, as far as I can remember.
When I went to vote at college, there was no big red lever. True, the machine was almost the same - but a more updated version. Where the machine from my childhood had levers, this one had touch-sensitive boxes. If you pressed once, a green "x" showed up. If you pressed again, it disappeared. And I was disappointed to see that there was certainly no great big red lever - only a great big button to press when you had finished. Yes, I voted, but it just wasn't the same.
So when I moved to New York, I was very excited to find that the voting machines where I vote are like the ones from my childhood. I hope they don't rush to update them to the computer ones - because there is no more satisfying way to vote than by locking it in with the pull of the big red lever.
It is also nostalgic for me, as it brings back memories of when I was a child, and my mother took me with her into the voting booth. In NJ - at least where my family voted - they used the same machines with the levers - a little lever by each name, and a big red lever across the bottom. In NJ, the big lever also controlled the curtain - when the vote was cast, the curtain would open, and then it would close again when the next person pulled the lever back. When I was little, my mother would cast her votes with the little levers - I either couldn't or didn't care to read the names, but I remember the little levers. Then came the best part of all: when she was done casting her votes, my mother let me pull across the big red lever. Maybe this happened a few times; maybe it only happened once. But it made me really excited about voting. My mother, through that one simple act, made voting seem like a very cool thing to do.
When I went to vote for the first time as an actual voter, I was away at college. I will admit that i did not vote when I was 18 - I was in Israel, and since it was not a Presidential year, I didn't follow what was going on from overseas. I also made a conscious decision not to vote when I was 19. That was because it was an off-year - only local elections, and I was voting at school, where I was not really part of the local community. College students could have swayed that election - but what right did we have, as transient residents in a more permanent community? So I voted for the first time when I was 20. And I have voted every year since, as far as I can remember.
When I went to vote at college, there was no big red lever. True, the machine was almost the same - but a more updated version. Where the machine from my childhood had levers, this one had touch-sensitive boxes. If you pressed once, a green "x" showed up. If you pressed again, it disappeared. And I was disappointed to see that there was certainly no great big red lever - only a great big button to press when you had finished. Yes, I voted, but it just wasn't the same.
So when I moved to New York, I was very excited to find that the voting machines where I vote are like the ones from my childhood. I hope they don't rush to update them to the computer ones - because there is no more satisfying way to vote than by locking it in with the pull of the big red lever.
