Tales from Elections Past...

April 26, 2007 5:47 AM

In honor of tomorrow's Freedom Day (April 27), please enjoy these tales from elections past...
posted by loosemouth (15 comments total)

First, A Brief Illustrated History of Voting.

There was no right to a secret ballot; having been sworn in, the voter simply called out his choices to the election clerks who sit on the porch behind the judge tallying the vote.

Next, we read an old civics textbook and learn that we can thank the Australians who, in 1857, gave the world the Secret Ballot...

If individual ballots are provided, he selects the one he prefers, or corrects it to his liking by pasting upon it a single name or an entire ticket. If he prefers, he may write the names of candidates of his own nomination in place of those already printed. He, then, without communicating with any one, deposits his ballot as his vote. Only one man is allowed to enter a booth at a time, and none but the ballot clerks and the man about to deposit his ballot are allowed within the enclosure erected for the purpose.

We then go way back in time to 13th-14th century Sandwich Kent England...

Every man of 12 years or more go to St. Clement's Church, there our commonalty hath need, haste - haste.

We visit 1890 Japan to see Gorgeous Ballots from the first House of Representatives election...

The franchise was limited to males, with only some one percent of the total population eligible to vote.

Then we swing over to Terrace, Canada in 1928 to watch its citizens' very first municipal election...

None of the candidates elected were particularly keen on seeking election but having only held office for two months, and being in the midst of drafting by-laws and regulations for the further guidance of the new municipality felt it incumbant upon themselves to at least complete the work they had undertaken.

Jumping across the globe to 1951-1952 India, we watch the wagering in The Biggest Gamble in History...:

...the neighbouring booth was visited only by an elephant and two panthers

Finally, in 1994 South Africa, a rock-and-roller witnesses the first South African elections....

On our way out of Johannesburg, we passed a voting hall where thousands of Afrikaner, British, Zulu, Nedebele, Venda, Xhosa and Indian people, speaking more than 11 different languages, stood together for the first time in history. Mendela supporters ran up and down the street, waving yellow, green, and black flags into the air, shouting, "Tata," (father).

These stories barely scratch the surface. Everyone, please add your election tales.
posted by loosemouth at 5:50 AM on April 26, 2007

I was 17 years old at the time of the 1988 plebiscite, where Chileans had to vote for or against the continuation of Pinochet's regime.
I was to young to vote, so I was a courier for the PPD (Partido por la Democracia, a sort of neo-socialist party, Lagos' party). I got to be driven around to many different voting locations, getting the running tallies of the observers we had at each station, take them back to the party headquarters, and see everybody sit around an sweat when the results started to come in.
We won, and by "we", I include me.
posted by signal at 6:21 AM on April 26, 2007

I think it's funny that a guy named George Clinton ran for president against Washington in 1792...

I wonder if he needed da funk...
posted by chuckdarwin at 6:24 AM on April 26, 2007

I was student in Paris during the 1988 French Presidential elections. Though I didn't have a dog in the fight, I ventured outside my dorm in the aftermath and joined in the party with a bunch of friendly, joyous and slightly inebriated Socialists. We partied all night long. At the time, I remember being glad Mitterrand had one, because the Chirac supporters looked like pretty dour lot, that probably would have gone to bed well earlier.
posted by psmealey at 6:52 AM on April 26, 2007

I just missed the last white only election in South Africa by 1 year. Seeing the minority vote themselves out of power was a great experience. A very positive year. Since moving back to Belfast I haven't missed an election, partly due to what I experienced in 92.

Personally though I think referendums are much more exciting than and interesting than general elections. It was a referendum that ended aprtheid and a referendum that started the peace process in Northern Ireland. It's hard to ignore >70% of a population when they vote overwhelmingly on an issue.
posted by twistedonion at 6:53 AM on April 26, 2007

I was a knocker-and-dragger for Deval Patrick in last November's elections. We had a breakdown of names, phone numbers, addresses of potential Democratic voters. Um, I don't think me and my companion managed to eke a single person out of their evening in those last hours to tramp to a polling station (part of that may have been coz everyone knew Deval was going to win in a landslide.)

The USA needs to make national election dates a mandatory holiday and pretty much all countries everywhere need to figure out how to make voting easier than having to trudge out to some place and wait in lines.

I was pretty surprised that the campaign had things down to such precision! "Here's a few hundred names and addresses of people who're likely to vote for our candidate but haven't voted yet today (we know this because we have someone sitting right there crossing off names as someone calls them out for their turn to vote.) Go ring their bell and remind them to vote."
posted by Firas at 7:16 AM on April 26, 2007

>The USA needs to make national election dates a mandatory holiday

Is this really going to help? Hell, I'd be more prone to take a vacation and be as far from my polling place as possible if I got another day off. We americans dont get 4+ weeks of vacation like many Europeans and if you give us a needed and much-deserved federal holiday, we'll use it as a holiday.

Public key cryptography and internet voting solves all these problems, btw.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:04 AM on April 26, 2007

Public key cryptography and internet voting solves all these problems, btw.

Yes, but American political culture is pretty (and in my view, irrationally) antithetical to having government IDs, and hence far from approving any "official citizen database" like that for citizen services. Especially since I'd much rather the fed handle something like online voting rather than state governments, but that's currently impossible to implement in the USA.

I'm not an unthinking 'centralizer', clearly the states' independence from the feds can be a positive thing in implementing progressive policy and regulation as much as it can be drawback. But I really wonder whether the voting process should be a state matter. It's a bit too important, you know?

It's kinda funny that y'all have such a horrendous problem on your hands with this electronic voting stuff. Talk about the perfect storm of what happens with federalist devolution, the sleazy machinations of a two-party system, and the dumb hypercapitalist insistence on giving contracts to private corporations rather than having the government build the government's own voting machines!

I only rag because I love :)
posted by Firas at 8:16 AM on April 26, 2007

Quite interesting fact about British elections:

All British elections are held on a Thursday. This dates from the times before women's suffrage, when it was believed that the main factors affecting the partiality of (male) voters were the church, his employer, his wife, and drink.

Thursday was selected as the day when these factors were least potent. People were paid on Fridays, and would be well-disposed to the employers OR not so if they were not paid; they would then spend all there money on drink, on Saturday they would be nagged by the wife all day and on Sunday they would be sermonised and influenced by the church.

Thursday was the day most distant from any of these influences (although none would be entirely absent, of course).

I've always enjoyed that story. Happy Freedom Day - and it's a Thursday!
posted by WPW at 8:24 AM on April 26, 2007

I always did wonder about the Thursday thing.
posted by vbfg at 8:37 AM on April 26, 2007

Why the US Votes on Tuesday
posted by loosemouth at 8:55 AM on April 26, 2007

It's a good story, WPW, but women were granted suffrage before the habit of Thursday elections began.

Elections have only been consistently held on Thursdays since 1935. Universal suffrage was granted in 1928, and limited female enfranchisement began 1918.
posted by Aloysius Bear at 9:03 AM on April 26, 2007

It's a good story, WPW, but women were granted suffrage before the habit of Thursday elections began.

Might the parts based on employers, drinks and the church still be true?

I can't remember when I was first told the story - so long ago it must have been at shool. Horrible to think that I've been wrong all this time.
posted by WPW at 9:07 AM on April 26, 2007

Please, do be careful how you celebrate Freedom day. We don't want another war with the Decapodians.
posted by smallerdemon at 10:38 AM on April 26, 2007

Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Oy!
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 1:38 PM on April 26, 2007