Ballot-counting day: a sad imitation of real voting

AS a little kid I had a sense that Election Day was important. I have a vague memory of my parents taking me to the polling station. While they went behind the curtains, a poll worker kept me busy with a toy voting machine. I couldn't read the names, and afterward was worried that I'd voted for the wrong guy. I asked her: Had I voted for Ike?

Yes, she said. But she hadn't looked at the levers I'd pressed. She was one more adult treating me like a 5-year-old.

That might have disillusioned me about Election Day, but it didn't. Every four years, adults voted and we all watched the returns on TV. When I was 21, I voted too.

For the past 30 years I voted at a neighborhood church. As years went on, more people I knew were voting absentee, though they weren't absent from the city. They were just absent from the polling station.

Lazy people. I thought it was a bad idea to make it easy for lazy people to vote.

To me, it was important to go to vote. There was ritual to it, and personal contact. Always there was a row of poll workers.

Mine was a lady well past retirement age. I don't remember her name; I remember her hair. It was bright orange. The orange-haired lady knew me by name. I never knew my precinct, but she did.

I always left the polling station with a good feeling, partly because of her. I had shown up, done my duty, and had been recognized.

That was Election Day. This isn't. Today is merely Ballot-Counting Day, and it's a sad imitation of the real thing.

— Bruce Ramsey