Voting and privacy
Aside from schadenfreude, granfalloon pride, and a sick dread that the Dems will somehow blow it, the most powerful emotion I feel about the election is nostalgia for the old voting booths.
The grandmotherly half-curtains, the little levers and satisfying mechanical feedback are gone. Instead there are flimsy black plastic lecterns all facing forward in a row, like huge music stands. There's a central touch-screen with two black wings on either side, a gesture of privacy that would not have prevented a tall person next to you from observing your vote. I laughed when I saw the voting lecterns (to the poll worker: "You're kidding, right?"). The poll worker used an "activation cartridge" to prepare the booth for me, then she showed me how to use the touchscreen. This stranger was actually touching my sacred voting space! I thought that having a private enclosure for vote-casting was an axiom of American democracy, and this whole time it was really just a design decision.
The relationship between the old voting booth and a confessional was somehow lost on me until now. How could I have missed that for all these years? In place of a confessional, the new thing looks like a pulpit. Voting at this thing was a less-serious experience -- cheap, expedient, the vote itself transacted weightlessly and without a sound. The old booths were tough; they demanded respect. The fragile new non-booths invite violence. A frustrated voter smashed one within the first couple hours the polls were open.
It would be interesting to see what people used before the booths. Ballot boxes? Did the sacramental feel of voting booths come from the civil unrest and voting irregularities of the 1950's and 60's?
The grandmotherly half-curtains, the little levers and satisfying mechanical feedback are gone. Instead there are flimsy black plastic lecterns all facing forward in a row, like huge music stands. There's a central touch-screen with two black wings on either side, a gesture of privacy that would not have prevented a tall person next to you from observing your vote. I laughed when I saw the voting lecterns (to the poll worker: "You're kidding, right?"). The poll worker used an "activation cartridge" to prepare the booth for me, then she showed me how to use the touchscreen. This stranger was actually touching my sacred voting space! I thought that having a private enclosure for vote-casting was an axiom of American democracy, and this whole time it was really just a design decision.
The relationship between the old voting booth and a confessional was somehow lost on me until now. How could I have missed that for all these years? In place of a confessional, the new thing looks like a pulpit. Voting at this thing was a less-serious experience -- cheap, expedient, the vote itself transacted weightlessly and without a sound. The old booths were tough; they demanded respect. The fragile new non-booths invite violence. A frustrated voter smashed one within the first couple hours the polls were open.
It would be interesting to see what people used before the booths. Ballot boxes? Did the sacramental feel of voting booths come from the civil unrest and voting irregularities of the 1950's and 60's?