The Art of Voting in Maplewood New Jersey

I used to love the old fashioned voting booth, where you pushed down a little thingamabob to your candidate's name, and then when done, you would move the handle from one side to the other, which required a bit of muscle, and then you heard a thump, the sound of the machine registering your vote.

And then, someone from the polling place would move the handle back to reset it, preparing the next person to vote.

That's the sort of machine I used up until recently.

Okay, today, I get to the polling place, and the new fangled machine is broken. (It's a push button machine, that will make no sound.) So, what are they doing, they're handing out paper ballots, along with number two pencils, asking you to fill in a bubble next to your choice!?!

So, we go from older, working machines, to new, busted machines, to a paper ballot that oddly resembles a standardized test! That's progress. Not to mention the loss of the visceral feel of voting in that old machine.

If I lived in a state where the election appeared to be a real horse race I might have made a stink, after all, we were filling out our ballots in PENCIL!!!