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Voting Absentee from Kenya - Jane Stockton

Page history last edited by Henry Hamburger 10 years, 7 months ago

 

     It was 1964, the first year Ron and I were eligible to vote in a U. S. presidential election, and we felt a real need to cast our votes against Barry Goldwater.  I asked my parents to send us absentee ballots.

 

     Unfortunately, Illinois had failed to complete a redistricting plan, and every candidate for representative was forced to run “at large.”  This created what was known as a bedsheet ballot.  It wasn’t quite large enough to cover a bed, but it was enormous, and it was an all-or-nothing deal—vote the entire set of ballots, or don’t vote at all.  It cost a small fortune to send it to Kenya.  And since so much had been invested in sending it to us, we now had the formidable responsibility of filling it in and sending it back.  I can’t remember exactly why, but it had to be notarized as well as filled in.  As all of us will remember, you can find almost every item and service you need when you live abroad, but the search does not necessarily become intuitive.  Where do you go to find a notary public? Does another country even have such a title? 

 

     In fact, we did find one; I’m not sure where.  We loaded those bedsheet ballots into our Volkswagen, hoping the suspension would hold, and drove them to the Machakos post office.  We didn’t exactly have to take out a loan to mail them, but it was darned expensive—

 

—and I doubt that our votes saved the election for Lyndon Johnson.

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