Sandra Roa

Kieran K. Meadows & Sandra C. Roa

They looked like vertical metallic coffins, rows and rows of voting machines lined up in a Brooklyn warehouse on the last Wednesday before Election Day. (See Article)

They stood side-by-side, more than 2,200 of them, six-and-a-half feet tall. Inside each one, distinctive levers that recorded an estimated 100 million votes readied for what could be their final service to democracy.

This Election Day likely will be the last time New Yorkers will cast votes using the city’s aging fleet of pull-lever machines. The Board of Elections plans to phase out the Shoup 3.2 Mechanicals by next year’s mayoral election. New York is the only state in the nation that still hasn’t updated its machines.

In the back of the dusty warehouse, a senior voting machine technician, Richard Kanar, picked up a few machine parts scattered along the floor, leftover from hours of meticulous maintenance work performed on each machine.

“This is a handle, that’s a thick,” he said, holding a thumbnail-size rounded metal holder. “That’s a three-strap,” he said, pointing to a flat, seven-inch-long silver piece of metal that looks kind of like a nail file with a hole at each end and in the middle. A three-strap allows only one vote for a candidate who is listed under more than one party for the same office.

It takes 85 technicians to get the machines ready for Election Day. The machines themselves are only one part of an intricate system that includes serial numbers, keys, police envelopes, protective counter numbers, and signed seals, all assigned to specific election districts.

Nearby, Yolanda Bentley, 42, marked some of the envelopes in red to remind poll workers to use the correct key to lock the machines when the polls close. If not, the keys will break in the machines, which causes delays on election night, she said.

Bentley said she was going to miss the lever machines. “The main thing is to get everything out and in order. Either way, it’s history and we’re a part of it,” she added.

John O’Grady is responsible for overseeing the task of moving all the machines and equipment to over 1,300 polling sites citywide.

At a time when the world is working in a matrix of ones and zeros, this facility operates on switches, screws and wheels, and of course many hours of human labor.

With more than 700, 000 new voter registrations in the last year, the squadron of aging machines prepared for the high turnout.

The week before the historic 2008 election, the warehouse in Red Hook buzzed with activity. Unbeknownst to any of New York City’s voters, a team of dedicated workers– no, not Keebler elves performing ‘magic’– carried out a routine set in place since the 1960s. See Photo Slideshow.

Voter Reactions After Using the Machines on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008

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Voter #1

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Voter #2

Many women I know well have told me that when they were children, an adult engaged them in some sort of inappropriate sexual behavior. These stories come to the surface during intimate conversations, but then go underground again.

Most abuse goes unreported. This is a work-in-progress aimed at collecting the testimonials of survivors. Through conversations and collaborative photographic moments explore the memories and emotions that child abuse leaves years after.

I became interested in how often these survivors had been abused was by someone they knew. About 95% of victims of sexual abuse know their perpetrators.
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Molested Memories is a collaborative photographic project that explores the experience of sexual abuse survivors. Interviews about the sexual abuse are juxtaposed with still images of survivors in contemplative moments.

Full disclosure is given about the intimate details, often only shared in high confidence, and promote a space for conversation about the topic.

Harlems Goes Wild

On Nov. 4, 2008 hundreds of people came together in front of a large video screen on the corner of 125th Street to watch as votes across America were counted.

At approximately 11 P.M. Sen. Barack Obama was declared the next elected president and the first black man in history to be elected for the highest office in U.S. government.

A diverse crowd of all ages and various ethnicities cheered on with  were mostly residents from the neighborhood.

As the presidential elections move closer to the voting day, the nation is flourishing with new voters, many of them are new citizens. In downtown New York City on Friday October 10, 2008, 239 immigrants each received a crisp thick piece of paper titled “Certificate of Naturalization”. These new citizens who came from 57 different countries were kindly congratulated by Judge George B. Daniels who also led the ceremony.

Just outside the court room a voting advocate group named the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund hosted a voter registration table. According to their counts they collected 141 completed forms from the new citizens on the last day to register to vote in the state of New York.

see photos

Undocumented female immigrants are standing around a corner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn as a first stop into the American dream. The stop, known in Spanish as La Parada, is an unofficial hiring-site on the corner of Marcy and Division Avenues. Most of the jobs they find here are cleaning America homes. These women represent an immigrant population that is at the very bottom of the food chain in a devastating economy.