The office of New York Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz, a Republican, requested that second and third-year students at Albany Law School volunteer to be deputized as special assistant attorneys general for the 1962 general election in Albany. Like many of my second-year classmates, I signed up, and after a brief orientation by a representative of the Attorney General’s Office the day before the election, I was assigned to a precinct in Albany’s south end, then a white neighborhood, armed with a copy of the New York election law and a telephone number. In 1962 all of Albany was dominated by the Democrat machine controlled by Dan O’Connell.
The polling place was a firehouse. The fire truck had been moved out of the firehouse and parked along the street, and in its place were two voting machines and some desks and chairs. I entered this unfamiliar territory with some trepidation and presented my credentials to the election officials, who greeted me with some surprise and some apparent hostility. I was told that there were never any irregularities there since this was “Uncle Dan’s ward” and he insisted that everything be on the up and up. I really didn’t know what to expect, and for a while, I just sat in a chair and watched voters come and go.
Election machines in common use were portable booths. Voters entered the booth and moved a large handle, which closed a privacy curtain. An election official stood by the booth and used a manual counter to keep track of the number of voters using each machine. After the voter finished moving the levers to cast the vote for the candidates of choice, the voter moved the handle, registering the votes and opening the privacy curtain.
Finally, I noticed that there was a small round hole in the curtain of one of the machines. It looked as though it had been previously been burned into the curtain by a cigarette, and it was at the eye level of the election official, giving him a clear view into the machine so he could watch the voter. When I realized what was happening, I jumped up and told the election officials to stop the use of the machine. I remembered that Nedda kept a small sewing kit in the glove box of our Volkswagen. I got the sewing kit, and to the amusement of the election officials, both Republican and Democrat, I sewed up the hole.
I thought that I had solved the privacy issue, but after a short while, I realized that I had only provided voter privacy to one of the two machines. The other voting booth backed up to the fire pole, and there were men on the second floor looking down the pole who could see directly into the voting booth. I don’t know if they could really see what votes were being cast, but their presence was obvious to anyone in the booth, which must have been intimidating. Again, I stopped the voting, but the officials said that they couldn’t move the machine, and I had to call the County’s Board of Elections, which eventually sent a couple of men over to move the booth a few feet away from the fire pole.
As the day wore on, the Democratic ward leader became friendly and sat beside me. He had a list of all of the voters and would check off their names as they came in to vote. Sometimes he would summon a lieutenant to fetch a voter who had not yet appeared, usually an older person who wouldn’t have any excuse for not coming in during the day, or who needed a ride. He shared some interesting observations with me. He would tell me who would vote a straight ticket, and who would veer away from the straight party line, sometimes offering a reason for a particular defection.
Under New York law, a voter could request assistance in the voting booth, and several voters did so and were accompanied by election officials if they were not accompanied by a relative. The ward leader told me that many of the voters asking for assistance did not really need the assistance, but wanted a party witness that they were voting a straight party ticket, and were thus loyal.
The most interesting fact that I learned from the ward leader was that the Republican election inspectors, the ones who gave me the most grief about the hole in the curtain and the voting booth being against the fire pole, were enrolled Republicans only for the convenience of the Democrats. The law required that both major parties be equally represented, and the Republican election officials in that precinct were rewarded with low property assessments and jobs for family members in the local government.
When the votes were counted, the ward leader showed me the tally he had made during the day, and not surprisingly, it was only off the official tally by a few votes.
