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Voice of Experience

Voice of Experience: September 2024

Voting and Election Experience Roundtable

David M Godfrey, Douglas Denton Church, Norm Tabler, Stanley Peter Jaskiewicz, Christine Dauchez, and Seth D Kramer

Summary

  • Lawyers are a vital part of our system of government—they are the legislators who write the laws and judges who enforce and interpret the law.
  • Turning 18 brings on a whole new world of opportunities, including voting, or does it?
Voting and Election Experience Roundtable
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David Godfrey

My first election was in 1976 when I was still in high school. I turned 18 and registered to vote just before the deadline. It was a contentious election, and the choice was Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter. I had friends who promised to leave the country if either of them won. The polling place was in a converted storefront on main street in a tiny farm town in Michigan. I remember a line snaking out the front door and down the sidewalk, it was cold enough to see your breath that morning. Voting was on mechanical voting machines, with levers to pull for each choice. It was the only time I ever voted on those machines. I have never missed a Presidential election. 

Doug Church

My best guess is that I was in the 4th grade at Emerson Elementary School in Muncie, Indiana. My Dad and Mom both were active in local politics and the family mantra was “Vote for the Best Person for the Job regardless of party affiliation.” That earliest memory is that my Dad got me up in what seemed to be the middle of the night and got me dressed and out the door by 5:30 a.m. The polls opened at 6 a.m., and it was his practice to be first in line at the polling place. We stopped at the local donut shop and got a dozen donuts which we took to the polling place and, sure enough, he was first in line! Donuts were distributed to the poll workers and  we went when the polling began at 6 a.m. By that time, a line had formed and there were many of our neighbors and friends in line.  Everyone enjoyed the visit, and all kinds of conversations were going on while waiting for the door to open. Plans for the day were discussed, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood and happy to see each other.

As a veteran of WWII, my Dad was fervent in his devotion to the democratic process, and voting was high on his list of things that a good citizen should do. He and Mom would occasionally volunteer to work at the polls, but until his death in 2019, Dad was always first in line on election day! Since, for the most part, we didn’t live in the same precinct, there was never a contest between the two of us over “first in line,” but I did adopt his habit and made it a point to get up early, get donuts, occasionally take a thermos of coffee to give the poll workers in appreciation for their service and always tried to get to the polling place early enough to be first in line.

Until relatively recently, there was never any consideration of voting on any day other than election day and only in person at the precinct polling place. Because precincts were typically following neighborhood lines, it was not unusual to know everyone at the poll including all the voters in line as well as the poll workers. It was not unusual to see appropriate accommodations made for persons with handicaps or other issues that might be a hindrance to their ability to vote, and in my recollection, this wasn’t a result of a law or mandate but, instead, just common courtesy. Because of the familiarity with the poll workers, and a personal sense that they were persons of integrity, it never crossed my mind that there would be anything close to a fraudulent election. Votes were cast and counted by honest people doing the job they had signed on to do. The system was designed to ensure honest counting with party representatives in attendance. While we may have heard about “dead people” voting in Chicago, no such behavior occurred in Muncie that I knew of or worried about!

Today, early voting, absentee voting, mail-in voting, etc., has taken away the focus on the old-fashioned Election Day. No more long lines waiting at the polls. No more coffee and donuts. No more neighborly visits. Lots of security measures, from voter ID requirements to redundant voting machines. In spite of the changes, however, voting remains a true mark of citizenship, and I am thankful to have the right and ability to cast my vote for my government leaders.

Norm Tabler

Too Old to Vote

Generally, young people look forward to turning 18 so they can vote for president, just as they yearn to turn 16 so they can drive.

I was certainly eager to vote for president, but when I turned 18, I couldn’t. Why not? Because I was too old. What? Too old to vote?

Yes. Hear me out: I was born in October 1944. I turned 18 in 1962—a full two years before the 1964 Johnson vs. Goldwater election. But in 1964 you had to be at least 21 to vote in a presidential election. The age wasn’t lowered to 18 until 1971. That meant I wasn’t able to vote for president until the 1968 election, when I was a creaky 24.

If I had been younger, say, born in October 1954 instead of 1944, I could have voted in the presidential election the year I turned 18, in 1972. But as I said, I couldn’t vote at 18 because I was too old—or at least born too early.

What’s a Clerk?

I cast my first vote in 1966 in an Indiana election. Because I was temporarily in Connecticut, in grad school, I voted by absentee ballot. The ballot had a line for my signature, along with a second signature line. That second line had the word Clerk written under it, and the word Seal next to it.

Being totally inexperienced and a thousand miles from home, I assumed Clerk must mean the City Clerk, so I looked up the address of the New Haven City Clerk and made an appointment to see him. When I explained my mission, he looked first puzzled, then amused.

He patiently explained that in the context of my absentee ballot, Clerk meant a notary public—any notary public. My university, he went on, no doubt had scores of notaries on hand, with their pens and seals at the ready. I needn’t have made an appointment and journeyed downtown to visit the city’s single City Clerk.

Was he annoyed that I had wasted his time on my fool’s errand? Not a bit. He expressed genuine satisfaction at seeing a young person going to such effort—albeit misguided effort--to vote.

I doubt that I’ve missed voting in a single election since that visit with the New Haven City Clerk. 

Stanley P. Jaskiewicz

I cast my first absentee ballot in November 1978 – and have no memory of it whatsoever.

That is not surprising.  I was away at college for the first time. 

Voting, even in Congressional and Gubernatorial races, was not at the top of my mind. 

(I do recall vividly my first Halloween in college, the prior week, and the costume party on the late President Giamatti’s lawn.)

As a result, I missed all the “excitement” of casting my first of many votes. 

Perhaps my lack of recall is because I cast an absentee ballot (when you truly had to be out of town). 

I was in Connecticut, not near the polls in Philadelphia.

It was truly a different time, which is hard to imagine today – there was no internet.

First, I had to request an absentee ballot by mail on a pre-printed form.

Then, I had to wait for the ballot to arrive (also by mail) at my dorm in Connecticut.

Finally, I had to mail it back to Philadelphia (and hope that it would arrive on time).

But the more things change, the more they are the same.

I found online that in the primary that year (just before my 18th birthday), “an inordinate number of absentee ballots had been filed” – but that the District Attorney’s investigation found “isolated instances of illegality, but no pattern of fraud.”

In my actual first voting experience, “fraud was claimed before the General Election of November 7, 1978, when it became clear that the Registration Division was experiencing difficulty in processing the unusually high number of last-minute registrations.”

However, again an investigation found “no evidence of any attempt to deliberately rig” the voting machines.

(In elections I do recall, candidates in my first two Presidential election primaries, in 1980 and 1984, both became embroiled in personal scandals arising from their extramarital activities.)

Christine Dauchez

I voted for the first time in the US presidential election in 1988. I was a junior at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but studying abroad in Oxford, England, so I voted by absentee ballot. I remember my surprise at having to use a pin (not a pen) to cast my vote, but the rest is a blur.

I had an opportunity to vote for the first time as a French citizen (by marriage) in the 2007 presidential election, as generations have done, in person by paper on Sunday. I have a much more vivid memory of this ceremonial rite, referred to as voting by urn.

After presenting my French passport and having my name verified on the electoral list, I was handed a thin blue paper envelope and directed to a table to select from a colorful array of small sheets of paper, a different color for each candidate. I stepped into a private booth, pulling the curtain behind me, selected the paper of my chosen candidate and discarded the rest in the bin. I carefully folded the paper in half, inserted it in the blue envelope and tucked the tongue inside. I made my way to a large clear cube flanked by voting officials. My identity was reverified, and I was asked to sign by my name. An official removed a paper so I could drop my ballot in the slot. The official covered the slot anew and announced, “Christine [Huang] a voté!”

Vive la France!

Seth Kramer

The first presidential election that I voted in was 1976. I was in college and planning to go to Law School. I was very excited about the upcoming election. I considered myself as a somewhat savvy political junkie. I had read the entire series of Theodore White’s Making of the President books. I kept myself well informed about the political scene by regularly reading either Time or Newsweek (sometimes both) and religiously watching the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. This was before CNN, cable news and the 24-hour news cycle. I was always on the lookout for political news. As such,

I watched the 1976 election very closely.

There were several people running for President. Most of whom I don’t remember. The Iowa Caucus was the first “contest” of the 1976 Presidential season, culminating in the election in November. The Iowa Caucus was in January. At that time, something really had to be newsworthy to “break through” and become news. As I recall, there were several candidate forums throughout Iowa. And one of the candidates would regularly introduce himself as the former governor of Georgia, a peanut farmer, a former Naval officer and—most importantly and with pride—not an attorney. That last part would always generate applause. And that was reported on the nightly news.

I was bit taken aback. I had grown up admiring fictional lawyers like Atticus Finch and Perry Mason. They were admirable and smart. And in real life lawyers had been crucial in the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. In addition, I thought that lawyers were a vital part of our system of government—they were legislators who wrote the laws and judges who enforced and interpreted the law. As such, I held the legal profession in high regard.

But prior to the 1976 election, the Watergate-related scandals had a lot of attorneys involved and the reputation of the legal profession suffered greatly. So much so that running for President and affirmatively saying that you were not a lawyer could be a positive differentiating factor. And the individual who identified himself as a nonlawyer was Jimmy Carter, who went on to be the 39th President of the United States.

It gave me an interesting view of the zeitgeist. Lawyers were not as popular as I had thought.

I graduated college and still went to law school.

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