Voting and Polling (Places Photo Project)

It’s probably annoyingly tiring to hear people say, “I voted!” today, so I won’t say it, even though you know what I did.

For the past few days, I wondered if I should participate in the Polling Places Photo Project, organized this time by the New York Times and AIGA. The main reason for not doing it was that I was scared, scared that the poll workers would yell at me and kick me out, or that the other voters would feel uncomfortable with someone taking photos. But fortunately, that didn’t happen. The poll workers were very nice.

At first, there was some confusion about where I was in their roster since I registered “late.” But it got all cleared up and I painlessly cast my ballot on the fancy electronic ballot. Turns out that supposed iPod-like thing that I saw in the sample ballot was huge; I thought it was going to look like a BlackBerry and whatnot.

Anyway, I didn’t take the photos of the space, but just the machines, because I was scared that other voters were uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to ask them personally for permission. I did ask for permission from the poll workers to take photographs, and I said that it was for a “national project” called the Polling Places Photo Project by the New York Times, but they didn’t seem to know about it. I mentioned “national” and “New York Times” just to gain some credibility that I’m not doing this just for myself or as some sort of partisan spy.

I took a few pics of the machines and quickly left the polling place to take photos of the signage outside, which I believe are as important as the inside. (I guess I should mention now that (for the locals), I voted at Westborough Rec Building on Galway Place in South San Francisco. I looked up the city on the NYTimes site and they don’t have any photos from SSF posted, so I’ll see mine up there soon and hopefully, someone else will post theirs, too, especially someone who had the guts to photograph the space inside.)

Here’s the farthest sign I found from the entrance. The cones were leading towards the alley-like path to the venue. Notice the yellow sign temporarily slipped between the rock things to let you know where to go.

Here’s a more official, intentional sign for the event. (Same sign as the one off-right on the previous photo.)

Here’s the alley that leads you to the entrance. It kinda made voting a shady thing where you go to the back of some building to do it.

Here’s a Photomerged composition of the end of the alley and the entrance (Click here for the entire image). Lots of blue painter’s tape with information in three languages. I didn’t bother to read them; I don’t know who does/did. Nice touch with the American flag, with the blue painter’s tape.

So that concludes my voting experience for the presidential primary. I want to thank my old roommate Mike for informing me that citizens vote for the primaries, too, and making me register, because I probably would’ve been apathetic about it and wait for the candidates battle it out before I do it for sure in November.

Flush.