Tweet of the Day

[RandySF]

Link to tweet

[Rock Fly]

1. Yep...looooooong time ago.

I remember as a little kid going behind that curtain with my mom.

[bcbink]

2. Yes it was

Seniors got to practice on it in the gym. Any 11th grader turning 18 before an election was also included.
It was just like you said. It was awesome and intimidating at the same time. It was so adult.

[Charlie Chapulin]

3. I liked those machines

[Conjuay]

5. I always thought the lever would jam on me

And I would be accused of breaking it.

I wonder where they all went? Probably to places in the third world.

[unblock]

4. It really made voting feel weighty and important. You make your choices then pull the big lever to commit

Nowadays, you fill in some bubbles like you're answering only a few questions from a school test and put the ballot into a box that quietly scans and counts it.

There's no heft to it anymore!

[Sanity Claws]

6. New York had them

I loved them.
I wonder if other states used them.

[whathehell]

9. Pennsylvania used them..

I liked them too.

[FSogol]

12. Virginia had them. I helped set them up one election. n/t

[KnoxVol]

7. That brings back memories

I never got to vote on one of these, it was all computerized by the time I started voting. But my mom took me into the booth in 1988 to vote for Al Gore in the Democratic Primary. I was an elementary school kid, but thought that was the coolest, most amazing thing to go in there and pull those levers and vote.

[cyclonefence]

8. In Altoona in 1982 we marked paper ballots

and handed them in to a poll worker, who tore off a corner and handed the corner back. You could use that proof of having voted for ten cents off a cup of coffee at the diner.

Innocent times. Innocent place.

[beaglelover]

10. I think we should go back to those machines. They didn't seem to have all the problems the modern machines have.

[rsdsharp]

11. I cast my first vote in one of those; the 1972 Iowa primary.

I voted absentee in the general, so didn’t get to use a machine.