The most fundamental act of citizenship in democracy is voting. Today I contributed to documenting what this looks like, along with hundreds or thousands of others who are uploading photographs to the Polling Place Photo Project.
Here's one of John, a pollworker in my neighborhood, up at the Polling Place Photo Project -- one of many pouring in from NYC, the Northeast, and all over the country.
But friends, somewhere in New York City enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my letters from the Board of Elections of the City of New York -- copies made by the polling place coordinator of the letters I scrambled to get late this afternoon, after she said I'd need to have proof it was legal before I could take photos. It took a bit of journalistic resourcefulness to get them so quickly -- leaving me wondering what other citizens/bloggers did if confronted with similar requests.
As I read it, the Polling Place Photo Project's goal is to create an alternative to the typical images that glut the mainstream media during an election day, and also to make transparent what this most basic of American actions looks like. By the very nature of creating a photograph of it, that action gets elevated into something noteworthy -- and just as important as the punditry and posturing by a select few that tends to define even the most local news outlet's political coverage. It's an experiment in citizen journalism and networked observation.
And for the record, it is legal with to take pictures in a NYC polling place, under Section Eight of state election law, as long as you have a letter authorizing you to do so from the city's Board of Elections.
