Election

Valerie Geleplay

Mr.Hussey

American History

27 April 2016

On April 26th, 2016, I got a chance to work with the Committee of Seventy to see how primary elections truly work..no word of the mouth but eye to eye experience. The primary election did not turn out to be what I expected, I thought the polling places would be located in different types. For example, me and two of my peers Shanni-kie Watson and Anaiah Davis visit places like McCreesh Recreation Center, Tilden Middle School, Catharine Elementary School and Morton School. I didn’t know that elections could take place in places like that I thought they would be held in office buildings not around the communities. The election to me was also very straightforward, you would go in the booth, vote for the candidate of your choice, receive your “ I voted today” sticker and walk out. Pretty straightforward right?

Another, thing I took from this experience was knowledge. When we were walking around meeting voters around our community and ask them questions I got a chance to get more insight on voting in case I would like to vote in the future. I learned the difference between popular and electoral votes, I learned that popular votes are what makes the electoral vote so our votes did help make a change even though it didn’t seem like it at first. When we walked around asking voters if they would like to answer a few questions on our survey provided by the Committee of Seventy a lot of people shut us down but a few were interested. I did not know that voting could be so secretive, I guess it was because we were with the Committee of Seventy and they’re known for being the ones that report when polling places weren’t organized or well instructed. Be sides the rejections we met a lot of nice people from the community. We even met a guy that ran one of the polling places and he helped us get a better understanding on how the voting machines looks and what to do and how to do it. If I had an opportunity to visit more polling places and meet candidates running in the election I’d would.