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Archiver > NYALBANY > 2002-09 > 1031938292


From: Cliff Lamere <>
Subject: [NYALBANY] Voting in Albany
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 13:34:06 -0400
References: <DAV72HZ4JUJ8H5sajmW000678f5@hotmail.com>


Albany had the longest running political machine in the country at the time that it was in operation, possibly in the history of the country.

Concerning the $5 payment for your vote in Albany mentioned in other emails, I was shocked about 1960 to learn to that it was true. A college-mate told me that her mother ran a rooming house and that landlords were given one envelope for each person rooming with them who had voted Democratic. It was an envelope with the person's name on it and had a $5 bill inside.

You only got it after the vote according to Nancy, because they could tell how you voted, although she didn't know how they did that. Since it was Nancy's first vote, a man at the polling place wanted to go into the booth with her to give her "help". She wouldn't let him do that. She voted Republican and did not get an envelope.

Many, many years later, the newspaper said that a Democrat was stationed outside the voting booth and could tell how each person voted because the Democratic levers had a different sound from the Republican levers. I have long suspected something like that and have always pulled the levers down very slowly so that they make no sound. For fear that I would be labelled a Republican in a city where you almost had to be a Democrat to get any help with a problem (or so I was told), I clicked the Democratic levers loudly and then quietly switched them.

Cliff




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