Personal Reflections on Voting (plus featured artifacts)

With all the recent discussions in the news about the process of tallying votes and the length of time involved, I've been reflecting on the different methods of voting that I've seen in my lifetime. I vaguely remember going with my mother to the polling place on election day.  I'm not sure what form the ballots took in those days, but for many years voters received a paper ballot on which the voter marked an X by the candidate of choice.  After the polls closed, the ballots were removed from the ballot box and hand tallied. 

Ballot box used in Benton County

The photograph below shows the hand tally of votes in Philomath in a 1926 election.

That process was time consuming and prone to error.  It also took a long time to get results, especially in large cities. I grew up in a Chicago suburb and the vote totals from Cook County were always the last to arrive at the elections office.  As the city voted differently from the rural parts of the state (as they do now), outcomes were sometimes not determined quickly. So, it doesn't seem strange to me that vote totals in this election can change as the urban areas are the last to finish counting absentee ballots.

Later, I lived in upstate New York and had to use a voting machine. To vote, you pulled a lever opposite the name of the candidate you wanted. Wheels turned within the machine to record the vote. At the end of the day, election officials would check the position of the wheels and record the votes. There was no paper record.  I was always nervous using one of these for fear that I'd do something wrong and be unable to correct it.

I moved to Oregon before we had vote by mail.  I remember well going to the Jefferson School gym and using a device like that in the picture below. 

Election set for 1944 (Wayne Morse for Senator)

Voters received a punch card, inserted it in the device, and used the stylus to punch a hole opposite the name of the favored candidate.  The elections office used a tabulating machine to read the card and tally the results. That was a lot quicker than a hand tally and did provide a paper record; however, sometimes the process did not completely removed the bit of paper and the machines could not read the card or read it incorrectly.  These “hanging chads” were the issue in Florida in the 2000 election that went to the Supreme Court.

Vote by mail in Oregon has the advantage of a paper ballot which is read by an optical scanner into a computer for a quick tally once the signatures are checked and envelopes opened, especially as local elections departments here can begin the process before election day. And when I call the elections division a month or two after my husband died, I was pleased to find that they had already removed his name from the list of eligible votes.  That gave me more confidence in the system.  Just one more reason I'm glad I live in Oregon!

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon