Voting Trivia
Wed., October 29, 04:16 PM
No, not about the elections. This is about the actual voting.When I read the Golfwidow’s description of voting, I was reminded of our old voting machines.
Connecticut was the first state to have completely mechanized voting. I can’t remember ever seeing a paper ballot as a kid, though I lived in one of the bigger cities. They may have been using paper ballots in some of the smaller districts.
In any case, when I was in the fifth grade, our teacher borrowed a demonstration machine that was used to instruct new voters. So, at the age of ten or eleven, we children learned how to use voting machines.
The first thing one did was to pull the big handle that closed the curtain. (We didn’t know it at the time, but pulling the big handle also signaled the machine that a new vote was beginning.) There were rows of little levers, in columns according to office being elected. At the left of each row was a party lever; when you pulled, say, the Democrat lever, all the little levers for Democratic candidates were pushed down. If you didn’t want to vote the straight ticket, you could push up any of the little levers on that row and vote for the same office in the Republican row, or Socialist, or whatever was running that year. It was simple and straightforward, and it made perfect sense to me. Finally, you pushed back the big handle, which recorded your vote and opened the curtain to let you out.
Some years after that, a few people began campaigning for removal of the party lever, saying it was too confusing. And so the party lever was removed, and the voter had to push down the lever for each candidate separately. (I guess not everyone can be as smart as a fifth grader!)
The only real difficulty with those voting machines — which were top of the line when they were purchased — was that they were “stand-alone.” No one had yet imagined that it might be possible for all the machines to communicate and add up the totals. Each district had to total the results from all of its machines and phone them in to central headquarters. The machines were fast and accurate. Connecticut’s results were usually known within an hour or two after the polls closed.
Those old machines were still in use for the presidential election in 2004. We didn’t have any “hanging chads” in Connecticut. The only reason they have been replaced, after all these years, is that there is no longer any company that repairs them.
I rather like the thinking behind our new system, which we have now used through a mayoral election and several primaries. The voter puts his completed paper into the scanner, which counts it and stores the paper itself inside the machine, in case of there has to be a recount. I do not care for having the instructions thrown at me through the mail, on radio and television. Anyone who votes every election already knows how to do it.
One of our referenda this year concerns whether to allow seventeen-year-olds to vote in the primaries if they are to become eighteen by Election Day. And that reminded me of a debate we had in junior high school. Resolved: that eighteen-year-old should be allowed to vote.
I would never call myself a skilled debater, but I had two advantages. The first was that I know how to follow rules; a debate is a discussion (or argument) run along specific rules. If anyone is keeping score, you can lose points if you do not follow the rules.
The second advantage was that I was assigned to the side that I personally agreed with; it really makes life simpler. Those who were chosen to participate were given all kinds of printed materials to help them set up their arguments. Some of it was good, some of it was not. One statement given to the students was, “Eighteen-year-olds are not ready to vote.” (Well, neither are a lot of older people unless you teach them.) Another statement was, “Eighteen-year-olds do not want to vote.” They played right into my hands. In rebuttal I repeated the statement from my opponent and then asked a rhetorical question: How many people in this class would like to be able to vote? I could see it in their faces. I think it may have been one of the first times I challenged something that a teacher said.
Needless to say, our side won the debate, although it would be another fifteen years or so before the twenty-sixth amendment was passed. But sometimes a bunch of adolescents can be smarter than a vice-presidential candidate.
