{"id":490,"date":"2004-11-02T10:44:26","date_gmt":"2004-11-02T14:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/11\/02\/i-filled-in-my-ovalsyou-do-the-same\/"},"modified":"2004-11-02T10:44:26","modified_gmt":"2004-11-02T14:44:26","slug":"i-filled-in-my-ovalsyou-do-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2004\/11\/02\/i-filled-in-my-ovalsyou-do-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"I Filled in My Ovals…You Do the Same!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I fulfilled my civic duty and voted this morning. Our polling place is the lobby of a former senior-citizen housing building (now market rate apartments) in the West End (Charles River Park). It’s about a 5 minute walk from our condo. When I got in there, the line had a few hundred people in it, but seemed to be moving quickly. It was refreshing to see such a variety of people: old\/young, male\/female and every single race in the book. <\/P>
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The line ended in the check-in room about 30 minutes later. I was able to overhear everybody provide their address to the staff person and the addresses were all the same. Then it dawned on me that the staff at this particular location probably have it easier than almost any other polling station in the country. My district (or ward..whatever it’s called) consists of a 40-acre park-like setting of spaced-out high-rises (ranging from 12 to 38 floors) smack dab in the heart of the city (it’s what developers in the 1960’s thought the future of city living would be). So, the staff only had to deal with 5 buildings: Whittier Place, Emerson Place, Hawthorne Place, Amy Lowell House and my building. Cushy job. In fact, the woman that handed me my ballot told me she lived in my building.<\/P>
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What suprised me most was the lack of security. There was no bag check, no ID check. Nada. Just hundreds of people casually walking into a residential building and standing around in line without any supervision (until they go to the voting room). There was one police officer on duty – but he was seated in the back corner of the voting room and was busy being the guy who checked off your name after you completed the ballot. Otherwise, the place was staffed only with geriatrics. <\/P>
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But now it’s time to wait for the results. If Kerry wins (fingers crossed, clicking heals together three times) Boston’s Copley Square will have a huge celebration with Cheryl Crow, Black Eyed Peas, Carole King, James Taylor, Jon Bon Jovi and Don Henley. If Bush wins, I hear he may have Toby Keith.<\/P>
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 <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fulfilled my civic duty and voted this morning. Our polling place is the lobby of a former senior-citizen housing building (now market rate apartments) in the West End (Charles River Park). It’s about a 5 minute walk from our condo. When I got in there, the line had a few hundred people in it, but seemed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}