This was my first experience voting in Bloomington. Not that
my particular location in Bloomington had anything specific to do with my
experience on Election Day, but it did force me to visit a new polling
location, after many years in the back room of a church in Niagara Falls, NY
and then several years after that voting absentee. I did a lot of things on
Election Day this year that could be documented and probably turned into
something interesting, but at 9:30AM, after leaving my polling location, I knew
that there was nothing else that could capture the day in quite the same way.
When I received my Indiana voter registration card, the
polling location seemed a harmless one: Summit Elementary School. I thought
nothing of it, noted the address and looked up directions the morning of. When
I arrived at the location, I was greeted not by a slew of campaigners and
signs, like I’ve come to expect, but by a swing set and an outdoor jungle gym.
Entering the doors of the school, dwarfing the obligatory “Vote This Way” arrow
sign, were large, colorful posters framing the doorway of a library full of
tiny chairs and big paper cutout trees and flowers. Walking down the hallway
led me to a large wall of small handprints behind a glass case, beckoning
“Welcome Veterans.” The “Vote Here” sign leading me directly to the door of the
polling room was positioned directly underneath a colorful street sign that
informed me I was on “Caring Blvd.” and would be turning onto “Patience Pkwy.”
to vote. Just outside the doorway to the voting room, the walls were lined with
colored pictures of the American flag, each bearing a crookedly-written name
and grade number. When I walked into the voting room to register, no one told
me to turn my phone off. No one said anything as I snapped several photos of
the voters in action. And finally, before leavings, when I asked if I could
take photos of the children’s drawings along the back wall, the older man at
the door responded, “sure you can,” in the same tone he might have used if I
had asked to have another cookie.
I don’t really know how to improve on this experience in an
archive setting. I think it would be hard for anyone to walk through a
simulation of my voting experience, with the same handprints and drawings
surrounding them, not to have at least some form of strong reaction to the
setting. But I do think it might be interesting to simulate this same setting, with
perhaps a museum visitor walking through the experience as if he or she was
actually voting, and have children present the space. In fact, it might be
really fascinating if every person the voter interacted with on her way into
the voting booth was a child, elementary school age. Several children outside
the main room, just in front of a sign that reads, “Absolutely NO polling
beyond this point,” handing out campaign literature, wearing big t-shirts and
campaign baseball caps that fall over their ears. Then walking into the voting
room, to encounter two children sitting at the registration table, asking
voters for ID and instructing, “Please sign on the line here.” Then children at
the door on the visitor’s way out, next to the machine that processes the paper
ballots – “Please place your ballot in the tray, ma’am. Thank you very much for
voting today,” in small, serious voices.
I’ve been struggling to analyze and pin down my election day
experience at Summit Elementary. On one hand, the setting made me very proud to
be voting and taking part in the process of the day. But this feeling,
countered with the frustrating knowledge that Indiana would probably go red and
my vote couldn’t have as much of an impact as I would like it to have. These
thoughts jammed with the brutally innocent reminders of our country’s future
surrounding me, and the questions of what state our country will be in one day
for the grown-up children of Summit Elementary, made it difficult to vote at
all. I was almost paralyzed by my insignificance. 
As I grappled with these thoughts while filling in the boxes on my ballot, I was literally facing the signs pictured here along the back wall of the voting room. I was struck by the directions the children had chosen to include, especially since there was only space on the wall for four words. I’m still wondering how the children came up with these words and how much prompting they received. Did the children drawing these posters understand what they were writing or were they just excited to be drawing on big paper? Was there a brainstorming process that resulted in a list of choice words? If so, which words were crossed off the list? Are these signs the result of a successful lesson on American voting practices? What other information was given to the children in class that day and did they draw these signs on the same day they colored in and "John Hancock-ed" their American flags? Did these signs affect any voter's choice? Did anyone taking part in the election at Summit Elementary school follow the children's directions?
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