What are some of the ways folks remember voting in Dallas (or other places for that matter) over the years?
I voted for the first time in 1966 (voting age was 21 then), and used the old, massive, lever type voting machines. One moved a small lever over the name of the person one wished to vote for. There was a curtain that closed by a lever, and when all the small levers were positioned, opening the curtain lever moved a series of cogs that recorded the votes.
Most schools were used for polls, and I was as a kid always fascinated by the voting and the machines, and looked forward to being able to do it myself.
Two years later I voted on a punch card ballot that must have been very similar to the ones used in the Florida 2000 presidential election that was so controversial. Then I moved to Tarrant County, where I voted with paper ballots placed into a slotted, locked box. That was true in Denton County later, and in Big Spring, Texas. Then it was back to the massive voting machine in Oklahoma for a while, then paper ballots in Kentucky, then paper machine read ballots in Kentucky, Texas again, and then Oklahoma.
Here in Washington we vote with machine read paper ballots that we get in the mail and send in by mail. I did mine a couple of weeks ago. It is more convenient, but I miss going to the polls and exercising my responsibility to vote.
Dave McNeely