The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1895-12-02
HOW THEY VOTED BY MACHINERY.
Some Lost Their Votes, Others Voted the
Wrong Ticket. but on the Whole the
Voting Machine Was . Success.

Correspondence of the New York Times
The Myers balloting machine was used
at the recent election for the first time in
this village, Yonkers, Rye and Yorktown.
Mount Vernon also used the machine,
but the voters there, having used it once
before, were somewhatifamiliar with it.
In the four new places there were the
usual humorous experiences always at
tendant upon trying a new idea of the
sort, and the funny incidents in this vii
lage are typical of those in the other
places
The voter who proverbially "knew it
alp scorned instruct ions from those dele
gated to impart Them, with the usual
result, One very intelligent citizen, who
has held some of the highest offices in
the gift of his fellow townsmen, entered
the booth or cabinet, and without pro-
ducing the usual clicking noises incident
to pushing in the knobs, emerged, grave
his ballots. This of course only caused a
broad smile all around. The man had
gone through the machine, and not voted
He was told that he had lost his vote,
and could not under any circumstance,
got through the machine a second time.
Another man, an out-and-out Demo-
GRAFT, who has no patience with sthird
PARTIES" went in, and, without stopping
| to think. pushed in every knob of the
Prohibition ticket, a thing he could
never have been hired to do.
Tho r,actor IF tho cOlorl chnrch cd
something OF the experience of a man who
goes into a mediums cabinet, but his
made a record. He went in, tackled the
first set of knobs he saw, and rushed
out with his hair standing on end,
| exclaiming: ''Bress de.Lord, I'm alive p
He had done the act in just six seconds
and could not, for the life of him, tell
for whom he voted.
One corpulent individual passed in all
right, but came to grief when about to
come out. The entrance door Is larger
than the exit, and shere are two doors to
the latter, one of which let's the voter
out of the main apartment, where the
voting is done, into a little space about
8 inches square. The first of these two
doors has to be closed before the second
can be opened. The fat man was
squeezed in there like sardine in a box,
and as the cabinet was not standing OK
actly plumb, the outer door could not be
readily opened. He seemed a probable
candidate for asphyxiation, but he man.
aged to kdraw oxygen through small
opening in the door until the cabinet
was leveled, and then he came out with
the perspiration trucking down his
cheeks.
An Irishman went into the cabinet in
one district, and as soon as the door had
closed upon him there was rattltng as
though he WAS having a set-to with the
SPIRITS of a medium. There is a little
opening in this apartment, with shield,
arranged so that while the inspector in
charge cannot see the balloting knobs,
he can talk to the man inside should he
desire any instruction. The Irishman
grabbed this, and seemed intent on tear
ing it out, until the inspector finally pre-
vailed upon him to desist; then it was
learnedthat the man had become SO scared
he did not know what he was doing, and
wanted to know how to get out again.