What's your earliest memory of voting?

[hedgehog]

I can recall going with my mother when she voted for Jack Kennedy back in 1960. The voting booth was a little white shed with a wood burning pot bellied stove for heat. I don't know if the shed was left in place or moved to a storage area, or if it had any other function.

My kids all remember the clanking, chunking voting machines. One thought that those were the engines of Democracy!

[struggle4progress]

1. Followed one of my parents into a lever machine booth in a school auditorium

I must have been about knee high.

[cali]

2. my earliest memory is f the 1960 election

also. It's not really about voting. My parents- virulently anti-tv, rented a set to watch the debate. We kids were thrilled because we could sneak in to the library and watch cartoons. My father caught my brother in the middle of the night sitting on the floor and watching the test pattern. The TV went back to whence it came, and my parents didn't get a TV for several more years.

[hedgehog]

8. That's right - my mother sent my dad out to buy a tv so they

could watch the debates!

[MrSlayer]

3. Going with my dad.

It was a lever machine and I remember one candidate was on the ballot but had his lever removed because he dropped out or whatever. We got the mechanism to turn anyway and when they posted the results the next day, we gave him his only vote. It was an off year election in the seventies.

[MAD Dave]

4. Sometime in the early eighties

I remember going to the polling station and watching my Mom place her X on her ballot. I can't remember which election, but she probably voted for a left wing candidate - definitely not conservative.

[sakabatou]

5. The earliest I voted was '08

That's when I voted. Earliest memory of any vote was with my mom voting, while I sat in the lobby.

[stuntcat]

6. going with my mom

(edit- in the 70's)
She always took me with her to vote. And the polls were just across the street from our house.
I started voting soon as I was old enough. The first votes I remember were for Clinton.

[surrealAmerican]

7. I loved those old machines.

They were so solid and satisfying. The first few times I voted (in New York in the 80's), I used those old machines. They were somehow more satisfying than the "punch card" system I used when I first moved to Chicago.

[graywarrior]

9. Voting for Ted Kennedy when I first became eligible to vote.

[madamesilverspurs]

10. Eisenhower-Stevenson

Big, black, curtained voting machines lined the hall in my school (I was in third grade at the time). Prior to that election, I'd gone door-to-door with Mom as she worked for Ike.


-

[SteveG]

16. Mine as well, 1956

I was 6. I first voted for McGovern against Nixon, in '72.

[RebelOne]

11. My earliest memory was when I voted for JFK,

the first time I was eligible to vote.

[louis c]

12. George McGovern, 1972

[rrneck]

13. I was standing in line to vote for the first time

and some old fart in overalls asked me in front of everybody, "Are you a Democrat or a Republican?" It was none of his goddamn business of course, I guess he thought I didn't know the difference. I said, "I'm a Marxist." He didn't have anything else to say.

[Spirochete]

14. I remember

pestering my mother to hurry up and go vote for LBJ, because the rumors around school were that Goldwater was going to make us go to school all year around. The same rumors schools have every election year.
First time I voted myself was in 1972. i weas 18, and they had just changed the voting age. my first vote was against Nixon.

[Lilyeye]

15. 2004.

I turned 18 that year and voted for Kerry.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Similar to yours, but in Mexico

standing in line with mom for an hour or so, during a hot July day.

What I know is that it was Sunday. Elections ALWAYS fell on a Sunday... and it was a national holiday.

[pinboy3niner]

18. What I remember is volunteering my home as a polling place for a few years

It was in the '70s, when I was in my twenties and going to college after already having been to war. (My first ballots weren't so memorable because they were military absentee ballots).

But when my home was the polling place, staying home and watching the voters come in (and keeping the pollworkers supplied with coffee ) was impressive and was a great feeling.

These days I sometimes do absentee ballots, but other times I prefer to vote in person at my polling place just to have that hands-on feeling and to take it all in--the pollworkers, the citizens showing up to cast their ballots.

As cynical as we can be at times, that process will never fail to impress me.

[hifiguy]

19. I remember going to the polls with my parents in 1962

for a midterm election. The polling place was my elementary school.

I first voted a couple of months after turning 18 in 1974. I voted for Democrrat Wendell Anderson in the MN governor's election. First presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter.