O, call back yesterday, bid time return.
~ William Shakespeare, Richard II 3:2
The first time I voted, I was 19 years old. The 26th Amendment was freshly passed a few months before Election Day, giving the right to vote to citizens aged 18 and older. It was a proud and exhilarating feeling for my classmates and me to register in our little college town and vote in our first election.
My friends and I marched en masse to our polling place, the local firehouse, on Election Day afternoon and lined up behind a mix of other students and local residents. Grey-haired, grandmotherly volunteers, their reading glasses draped on neck chains, were seated at folding tables, ready to assist us. After my registration was checked, I was given a paper ballot.
The paper resembled the sheets that used to be handed out in grade school for sketching in art class; it was coarse and somewhat grey in appearance, with flecks of brown (lumber?) dotted here and there. A wooden pencil (with no eraser) was also provided.
There were a few grey canvas curtains on metal rings sheathing wooden voting cubbies. Each on our turn, my classmates and I entered the sacred space of the voting booth. I marked my ballot and returned to the table sentries.
One of the smiling ladies instructed me how to fold my ballot, shielding its contents from view, and to tear off and keep the perforated triangle at the top left; this scrap of paper, stamped with a number that matched the number printed on my ballot, was my receipt.
There was a large wooden crate at the edge of the first table with a huge metal padlock latched on top. It had a slot cut into the wood near the padlock, wide and long enough to accommodate the folded ballot size. The lady directed me to drop my ballot into the slot, which I did. I had voted, and the election results were readily available later that night.
This was before the internet, cell phones, voting machines, AI, or any other technological intervention, which were all beyond imagination in the 1970s. Yet Election Day was completed and the nationwide results were official within one day.
Anyone who prefers today's "system" should be able to explain WHY. Based on more than five decades of faithful voting, I would take a rough sheet of grade school sketching paper on Election Day over a month-long mail-in ballot any day.
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| First line of a 1972 election ballot |
