It’s erection day!

Addendum…

Because I am old enough now to be a cantankerous old man, I decided to challenge the system, a little bit. This is a follow-up to my father’s objections to mechanical voting machines that were used in the 1960s in Pittsburgh. At the time, the steel mills were still making steel, the coal mines were still mining coal, and the streetcar drivers were constantly striking, even though they were some of the best paid people in the entire city. Labor unions ruled the city.

My father objected to the mechanical voting machines on the grounds that it was possible to determine who a voter voted for – subverting the principle of the private ballot. Single lever straight party voting further allowed the people handing out “walking around money” to confirm they got the votes they paid for.

The only thing on the ballot today of any interest is the mayor’s race – a white female Democrat versus a white male Republican. Since registration is about 60% Democrat, Republican women would be because of low turnout. For some of the 40% of voters who are black, they probably figure their vote doesn’t count no matter who they vote for.

Turnout will be low – maybe 10 to 15%. Since there were no lines and the workers were bored, I just felt this was the moment to find out the truth. In Charlotte, and probably most of the country, the process is – after you’ve been identified, a sticker with a barcode is placed on your card. You take your card to the electronic voting machine, handed to the person in charge, who put your card in a nice neat stack in the sequence in which people voted. Each time you press a button, a printer inside the machine prints your choice on a paper tape. It is pretty obvious the election officials have the ability to connect me to my votes with very little effort. So here is my conversation as best I can recall it:

Me: “hello, I have a question that you may not be permitted to answer, but here it goes”
Flunky: “Go ahead”
Me: ” The way the system works, is my vote really anonymous? Could somebody come back later and determine who I voted for? ”
Flunky: “hmmm, I don’t think so let me think about it.”
Boss rushes over:
Boss to both of us: ” no, he’s right – the paper tape permits us to see who each person voted for – sometimes we have to use the tape to identify imbalances when the counts don’t match.”
Me: ” so what I think you told me Is that there is no such thing as a “secret ballot”…
Boss: “Yes, you are correct.”
Me: “Thank you for that information… [heading toward exit]… Well I didn’t vote for any Communists that I know of…”

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