It’s funny to live in a town so small that the 9 percent of Saratoga Springs votes that went to Kucinich yesterday translates to just more than 100 voters. There were 1,162 Democratic voters who went to their polling places yesterday. Had Jen and I not moved to town, that number would’ve been 1,160.
And speaking of yesterday’s voting, what’s up with the medieval New York voting machines? Maybe they’re just in counties upstate, but these things are crazy: You walk into this giant metal booth, grab a red lever, shove it to the right, watch the curtains close you in and present you with the mechanical ballot. Then you flick these metal switches corresponding to your selection, and slide the red lever back to the left, which registers your vote and releases you from behind the magical curtains. I just stared in awe at the thing for a while before casting my vote.
I was cracking up. In California we had a little marker and a giant ballot that got sucked in by a scanning machine.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Phil // Mar 3, 2004 at 4:12 pm
Welcome to New York, Gabe. We have those exact same voting booths in New York City. They’ve been around for decades and are likely to be here for a few more decades. But hey, at least they beat Florida’s butterfly ballots!
2 glenn // Mar 3, 2004 at 4:59 pm
i remember those bizarre machines from my days in binghamton (i voted for cuomo, not pataki)- probably were set up just for tammany hall-like gerrymandering. btw- i sent moveon.org another $50- every bit counts when attempting to beat down the despot!
3 Jen // Mar 3, 2004 at 5:17 pm
Since Tony and I voted early last Saturday (absentee), we had to go to a “main” San Diego place instead of our usual local voting place. They had electronic voting! That was a first for me. The voting machines looked like a tablet pc. It was pretty cool tho: you insert a card they give you into the machine to activate it, then touch the screen for your votes. They give you a chance to review your votes when you finish, then it just spits your card back out and you take it and put it in a little box sitting on a desk. Interesting experience. =P