Election Day

The seven voters of Millsfield, N.H. (pop. 16) stayed up late on election eve and marked their ballots just as soon as the clock struck midnight. Everybody had gathered in the parlor of Mrs. Genevieve N. Annis' 125-year-old house well ahead of time, and the votes were cast, in the light of kerosene lamps, amid a fine, conspiratorial atmosphere. Mrs. Annis, the town clerk, collected and counted them quickly, recorded one absentee ballot, and, at 12:02 o'clock, proudly reported the nation's first election returns (eight votes for Eisenhower).

The rest of the U.S., too, could hardly wait to vote; an astonishing number of people got to their polling places before dawn, and by breakfast time big lines had formed outside flag-hung schools, garages, country stores and basement voting places. All day long the great outpouring of voters went steadily on.

The U.S. public had seldom been so enthusiastically belabored by the public-spirited and the civic-minded. Except in Minnesota, which bars transportation of voters as a corrupt practice, there was hardly a city in which a voter could not get a lift to the polls just by picking up < his telephone. In some towns he could get a free taxi ride, and in Rochester, N.Y. an ambulance was his for the asking, even if he wasn't sick. Orange City, Iowa blew its fire siren every hour on the hour to remind the apathetic that it was

Election Day. From New York to San Diego volunteer baby-sitters offered their services to voting mothers. Thousands in St. Louis turned on their porch lights as dusk fell to remind the laggards of their duty.

The vast majority of citizens, however, came to the polls with the air of people who needed no urging or reminding. The weather was fine almost everywhere, but most of the electorate acted as though it would have braved the rain, snow or a plague of grasshoppers. Mrs. Virginia Borrison of Tarentum, Pa. went to the polls six hours after giving birth to a baby; an unidentified woman in Miami was informed that her "I Like Ike" skirt constituted electioneering, took it off, stood calmly by in her slip until it was her turn to vote.

It was an astonishingly quiet Election Day. A few election officials unscrewed the backs of voting machines "for mechanical reasons" and sneaked a look at the vote. There was a little minor scuffling: in Albany, N.Y., a Republican committeeman punched a Democratic poll watcher in the nose. In Seattle an old man who had waited in line for three hours was told that he had forgotten to register. He began to weep. "This," he sobbed, "is my last time." The crowd yelled: "Let him vote." He registered forthwith, voted and said happily: "I thank you all."

But the big phenomena of the day were the long lines of intent and patient people who shuffled slowly outside almost every polling place. In 1952 the U.S. people urgently wanted to vote. In the secrecy of the voting booth, they had their say.

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