> Let me tell you about backwards Pennsylvania. They only had ONE voting machine at my precinct, and it looked like something out of a machine shop from World War II era. Your moms and dads can probably tell you about these things. For someone who is used to Ohio's punchcard system, it took a minute of just staring at the thing to figure out how it worked. My wife said she probably stared at it for a full minute and a half before asking a voting official for help on how to work the thing. It was all lever-driven. You pulled a big red lever and it closed a curtain behind you, and then there was an array of little levers all across the front of the thing, one lever for each candidate. You pulled down the lever above the candidate you wanted to vote for, and when you were done, you pulled the red lever back over and all the little levers snapped back up again. Then a lady stationed next to the machine pushed a little button in to reset it for the next person.

I remember going with my mom when she voted once. I thought she said she was going boating. I remember waiting while she disappeared behind the curtain and wondering where the boats were.

I got to play the "connect the arrows" game when I voted. Frankly, I'd rather get to operate the funky lever-machine, since that's about all the point there'd be in my voting. There's no chance in the world Massachusetts will not go Democratic (especially this year!) so it's not like my vote actually matters. I bet even Darien could be convinced to go vote if it involved pretending to be the Wizard of Oz.

~Mina "I guess we're too cheap for stickers, though" moon