My First Time to Vote and Assorted Election Adventures

 Voting has always been a favorite civic duty of mine. I look forward to casting my ballots, even if I’m usually backing the losing horse in the race. I have always liked observing the political process and taking part in it on every election day. 

Chalk that enthusiasm up to my 1960s-70s civics education in public schools. I learned voting is an essential part of democracy. As soon as I turned 18 in 1975, I registered. This was in Texas, back when the Texas Republican Party wasn’t the well-oiled political juggernaut we know and love today (well, maybe not everybody loves it). Indeed, the party infrastructure was so minimal that its primaries had voters stick paper ballots in shoe boxes, or so I heard. That lack of political presence didn’t appeal to me, the GOP didn't offer enough candidates and electability, so I registered as a Democrat. That act didn’t stop the local GOP contingent in Hidalgo County from asking me to start a “Youth for Ford” group at my high school as part of the 1976 campaign. I didn’t do that, although I kept the campaign swag, like a groovy “President Ford ‘76” T-shirt and a roll of President Ford stickers.

Still wearable, 45 years later. 

My maiden voyage voter came on May 1, 1976, the Texas Democratic primary. I proudly cast my vote for  . . . Jerry Brown, yes, Governor Moonbeam, who was young and dynamic and dating Linda Ronstadt. People said if Brown were elected president, Ronstadt could hold the role of “First Chick.” I must have been in the hip, aware, forward-looking youth demographic that Brown wanted to reach. Voting for Jerry Brown was the first of many times I’ve supported off-brand candidates to give support to the independent thinkers and protest the limitations of the two-party system. I’m still doing that and still getting the same results. Some things never change. 

In October 1976 politics became up close and personal for one afternoon. I joined the Princeton University Student Democrats for a trip up to Newark for a Columbus Day parade. Vice presidential candidates Walter Mondale and Bob Dole both appeared. I must have had glimpses of both of them. I cannot imagine two national-ticket candidates from the GOP and Democrats appearing at the same event these days, especially not Columbus Day, now that most reviled of civic observances among some political factions in our troubled times.

Anyway, I voted absentee for Gerald Ford, so the t-shirt and stickers must have swayed my opinion. Then in 1980, Carter vs. Reagan squared off in an election colored by a terrible economy, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Three Mile Island and the Iranian hostage crisis—names and crises similar to the current situation. I cast my ballot for the thinking man’s candidate, John Anderson, a breakaway Republican. I even have a Princeton Students for Anderson button somewhere. Needless to say, Anderson didn’t move into the White House but he impressed me then and he still does. 

The campaign cycles rolled through. I took notice of Jesse Jackson’s confident, plainspoken presence in the Democratic primaries of 1984 and 1988. I might have even voted for him, as the spoiler candidate in the New York primaries.  And don't forget idiosyncratic Ross Perot in 1992, with his slide show.

The grimmest election day involved a voting place where I didn’t even vote. This was November 3, 1992. I was the east coast editor of a trade magazine called Video Store. On October 31, MCA Home Video president Robert Blattner was killed in an airplane crash in Colorado. His funeral was on election day, at Congregation Agudath Shalom in Stamford. In my role as an industry reporter, I attended the funeral. Agudath Shalom was also a polling place, so I had the unsettling experience of attending a funeral where the mourners and voters were streaming into the same building. 

Fast forward to election day November 2008. I’m living in Stamford and go to a school in the Springdale neighborhood to vote. Compared to the short lines I’d always encountered, I had to wait at least an hour. That’s the kind of enthusiasm Barack Obama created. In a notable coincidence, I lived on Hope Street at the time the Hope and Change candidate was elected. 

My adventures in voting in 2016 and 2020 weren’t just political—they were visual. Sensing the 2016 election had great historical consequences, I ran around Manhattan taking photos of news crews, police, TV network booths, anything to capture the moment. I especially photographed the news trucks lined up on 6th Avenue, next to the New York Hilton Midtown where Donald Trump had his headquarters for that world-historical night. I didn’t get to the Javits Center, where Hillary Clinton’s supporters had gathered for a celebration that never happened.

Avenue of the Americas, across the street from the New York Hilton Midtown.

The 2020 election also gave me visuals, up to a certain date. I happened to be in Boston the last week of February, perfectly timed to check out a Bernie Sanders rally at Boston Common on February 29. The weather was freezing, my cold stiff fingers struggled with the camera, the crowd was a sea of pro-Bernie blue and the onrushing pandemic turned the world upside down 10 days later. Bernie soon got frozen out of the campaign. The rest is history still unfolding.

Bernie blesses the masses.

So here we are, another election done. I did my part in the Town of Bedford and Westchester County. I didn’t find any dramatic photos to take, since town elections rarely generate visual excitement. But 2022 and 2024—if I can get into Manhattan after voting locally, that’ll be another story.

Have camera, will travel, at least to Grand Central for an election.