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Issue 1.2 - Dave Bonta

2/4/2019

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Polling Places 


Like so many other counties in Pennsylvania and across the country, we were upgraded to fully electronic machines ten years ago when everyone was saying they were the wave of the future. [NARRATOR: But they weren't!] By next year, I'm told, they'll all be replaced again, this time with something that preserves a paper trail. Me, I miss the old punch cards, and that extra bit of interaction with a poll worker when you handed over the completed ballot and she tore off the stub and handed it back to you, because the voter alone must drop the ballot in a box. There was a ceremonial, almost religious feeling to it. But then we were in a church. Not the sanctuary, you understand, but the room where they have church suppers. It felt homey, despite the fact that all the poll workers and most of the other voters in line were probably conservative Republicans and I'm on the far left. 
 
     polling station       
     of the cross
     loving thy enemies 

 
About the same time that we got the new machines, they moved our polling place to the middle school. You walk in and there's someone sitting in the hall playing traffic cop and waving everyone through a door to the right. I smell the once-familiar smells and notice a funny feeling in my stomach. 
 
     back to my old school
     but not in a nightmare
     election day 

 
We go as a family group but each votes alone . . . except for my mother, who always has trouble with the machine's weird combination of analog and digital, the action of turning this, clicking that, and looking up there at the screen. A poll worker has to assist her from an arm's length away. 
 
     voting machine
     turning the wheel around
​     and around 

​*****

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    Dave Bonta


    Dave Bonta  http://davebonta.com 
    ​divides his time between the mountains of central Pennsylvania, where he grew up, and London, UK, where his partner lives. He's the author of the poetry collection Ice Mountain (Phoenicia Publishing, 2016) and his videopoems have been screened at film festivals around the world. 

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Published in Wilmington, DE, USA.
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  • HOME
  • Mission
  • Submissions
    • Regular Submissions
    • SPECIAL ISSUE Submissions
  • ISSUES
    • Issue 1.1
    • Issue 1.2
  • Contributors
    • Akane
    • Mike Andrelczyk
    • Jan Benson
    • Dave Bonta
    • Stephen Briseño
    • Morwen Brosschot
    • Sondra J. Byrnes
    • Erin Castaldi
    • Norman Darlington
    • Chris Dominiczak
    • Jacob Fowler
    • Joshua Gage
    • Mary Ellen Gambutti
    • Mark Gilbert
    • John Hawkhead
    • Tia Haynes
    • David He
    • Kyle Hemmings
    • Peter Jastermsky
    • David J Kelly
    • Nicholas Klacsanzky
    • Deborah P Kolodji
    • Kat Lehmann
    • Eric A. Lohman
    • Antonietta Losito
    • Carole MacRury
    • Marietta McGregor
    • Babs McGrory
    • Lori A Minor
    • Gautam Nadkarni
    • Kit Pancoast Nagamura
    • Ashish Narain
    • Réka Nyitrai
    • Laura Page
    • Marianne Paul
    • Madhuri Pillai
    • Bryan Rickert
    • Alexis Rotella
    • Agnes Eva Savich
    • Rich Schilling
    • Olivier Schopfer
    • Tiffany Shaw-Diaz
    • Sheila Sondik
    • Debbie Strange
    • Alan Summers
    • Rachel Sutcliffe
    • Hansha Teki
    • Julie Warther
    • Lucy Whitehead
    • ​Matthew Yates
  • Team
  • Reach Out
  • Resources