Oct 20


It’s just not the same

by Terry 20 October 2006


I voted this morning. 

Six months ago Spokane County adopted a vote by mail initiative.  Now, rather than go to the polls, all registered voters receive an absentee ballot in the mail.  I can see where it would save money, and would provide a paper trail missing from voting machines, but I just don’t like it.  I miss all the little rituals that go with voting.

I remember casting my first vote at 18.  I stepped inside a phone booth-like voting machine and pulled a lever to close the curtain behind me.  I was thrilled by the sense of anonymity it gave me; my vote was secret and I could ignore all outside influences while I was inside the box.  I had the option of flipping a switch for each candidate or a master switch to vote a straight party ticket.  I voted all Democrat, but I took pleasure in expressing my opinion on each individual race.  I felt such power in that, as if my opinion, and my vote, mattered.  When I pulled the lever to open the curtain, all my votes were registered by the machine, unseen by anyone, including the election officials.  I had spoken.

Those old voting machines are gone now, replaced here years ago by a ballot card and a sharp implement to punch the holes.  With this system I stood at a high carrel with a shield on 3 sides, but without a curtain.  I felt more exposed than I had with the old machines, but as I fed my anonymous ballot into the counting machine I could watch the tally of votes cast move up by one, knowing that I’d done something that counted.  I proudly collected my “I voted” sticker on my way out and wore it all day.

I stayed up all night election night to watch the returns, counting off pluses and minuses as I saw the percentage counted grow on the television screen.  By the time I went to bed, I knew exactly how it all came out.

All those little things are gone now.  I received my ballot in the mail and filled it out sitting at the table.  My power of anonymity is gone as I sign the envelope to mail it in.  The post office could discard my plainly marked envelope.   Should an unethical official wish, they could know how I voted.  They could choose not to count my vote at all and I’d have no way of knowing. 

Election night won’t be any revelation to me; it will be weeks before results are released and they’ll be reported in the paper, long after the national contests are decided.  My local elections will barely register a blip on the public consciousness.  They are reduced to an afterthought.

As I put a stamp on the envelope and put it in the mailbox, I felt a little melancholy.  This doesn’t seem like progress to me.  I used to feel important in the election process; now I’m just another little cog in a machine that would easily roll on without me.  Sadder still is the idea that my 2 youngest children will never know the feeling of power I did in casting that first vote.  They won’t get that tangible statement of signing it at the table and feeding their ballot into the machine themselves.  Voting now may have no more significance that filling out a product survey.

This may be cheaper and more efficient but we’ve given up a lot for those small gains.  Voting is now an impersonal enterprise rather than the community experience it once was.  I don’t think the “progress” was worth it.

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14 Responses to “It’s just not the same”

  1. tish grier on October 20th, 2006 3:44 pm

    Terry,

    I have to agree with you about the alienation that cheap, efficient mechanisms can give us. Even simply reading your story gave me a sense of disconnect from the democratic process.

    Continuously, we’re living more and more atomized existences–removed from our communities. Heck, in many places we don’t have communities, or towns. We have acre after acre or suburban bedroom sprawl where there’s nothin’ goin’ on but the rent…

    Makes me wonder, though, how much longer it will be before we lose total interest in voting. Will they make it so cheap and easy that we’ll just forget to do it? and will cheap and easy make voter fraud much simpler?

    T.

  2. Terry on October 20th, 2006 7:39 pm

    Alienation is exactly word to describe what I’m seeing, Tish. Without the experience of the polls, we’re disconnected from the process, I believe.

    Fraud is supposedly one of the reasons behind the drive for vote by mail, since a paper trail is more secure than Dibold machines. But 2 years ago here the governor’s race was decided by a bag of absentee ballots which was misplaced and discovered a month after the election. There’s just too many opportunity for votes to “go missing” with the process.

  3. Magpie on October 21st, 2006 12:05 am

    Yes! When Oregon adopted mail-in balloting in the late 90s, it just made me sad. There is so little that we do as citizens that reminds us that we are citizens **together**. While my two housemates and I usually sit down at the dining room table and discuss the ballot as we decide how to fill each of ours out, it’s a poor substitute for going to that school, or garage, or church and casting a ballot in a public place along with the other people in the neighborhood.

  4. dustbury.com on October 21st, 2006 7:18 am

    See you at the polls…

    Around Spokane, and some other locations in Washington state, they’ve gone to balloting by mail, and, says Terry, it’s just not the same: I received my ballot in the mail and filled it out sitting at the table. My power……

  5. Terry on October 21st, 2006 10:46 am

    You’re so right about the sense of community, Magpie. We’ve lost that in voting my mail.

    The ability to discuss our votes with others while filling out the ballot bothers me, though. My daughter constantly asked my opinion while doing hers so she doesn’t get that sense of individual power I had. I believe every single person should be responsible for researching the issues and the candidates - in voting at the polls you have no one’s opinions but your own to consider.

  6. Sherry Chandler » On the ritual of voting on October 22nd, 2006 2:43 am

    [...] Out in Spokane, Terry of I See Invisible People has already cast her vote and she’s not completely happy with the experience: I voted this morning. [...]

  7. Burrow on October 22nd, 2006 3:22 pm

    Whatcom County adopted it too, and it really freaks me out. I don’t like it.

  8. Terry on October 22nd, 2006 7:03 pm

    My sympathies, Burrow. I have the same frustrations you do. A lot of the smaller population counties have passed it on the “money saved” rational and that really bothers me. Some things are worth spending money on.

  9. Burrow on October 23rd, 2006 8:53 am

    Part of it is that I feel my vote may not get counted if I vote by mail. Too easy to lose a ballot I suppose. That and you only have to mail it on election day, and with our world of announcing winners that night makes me more then wary about the whole thing.

    Seriously, if I could stand in line in the cold in NYC for 2 hours waiting to use a machine the least they can do here in WA is give us a choice in the matter. I hate voting by mail.

  10. Ahistoricality on October 23rd, 2006 3:49 pm

    It’s a mixed bag. I’m a huge fan of election day, myself, but I’ve heard of more and more districts that just can’t seem to handle the biennial logistics. I’m a big fan of better technologies, and electronic voting has made the ballot accessible to people who couldn’t vote by themselves before, but the security stinks, in no small part because of the biennial nature of the process (ATMs, for example, are extremely secure, but they achieve that security partially by being maintained by a small number of professionals who don’t have to service all of them at once). For someone who pays attention, absentee ballots are a good alternative (though, as Terry points out, not perfect by any means), but the error rate is actually extremely high.

    As I understand it, the best results are achieved with optical scan bubble sheets, under the supervision of reasonably well-trained election volunteers. We don’t have those anymore (either of them)….

  11. Terry on October 24th, 2006 11:00 am

    Excellent points, A. Part of the push toward absentee ballots here was a lawsuit that ruled voting places must provide accessable machines for the handicapped. That was deemed too expensive, so there was a big incentive to go vote by mail. I’m very concerned about the high error rate, too.

  12. T.G. Scott on October 26th, 2006 11:05 am

    Voting by mail? I don’t think we have that here in Tennessee. We still have to go to the voting stations in our particular districts if we don’t opt to early vote at the courthouse located in the county seat. Having had vital documents lost in the U. S. Postal system before, I would not think that’s a very secure way of voting. In fact, I would have absolutely no confidence in it not knowing whether my marked ballot even arrived at its intended destination or not. At least I get to check and make sure my voting card doesn’t have any hanging chads (it’s void if it does) before putting it into the locked box and signing off on it.

  13. Terry on October 26th, 2006 2:53 pm

    I agree completely about the mail not being a secure form of voting — I’ve had too many things lost by the PO to have a lot of faith in it. I’m lik you — I want to verify my vote myself.

  14. dustbury.com » See you at the polls on September 13th, 2008 7:56 am

    [...] and some other locations in Washington state, they’ve gone to balloting by mail, and, says Terry, it’s just not the same: I received my ballot in the mail and filled it out sitting at the table. My power of anonymity is [...]

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