It was invisible. As always, they'd begun to vote in the villages of New Hampshire at midnight,

as they always do, seven and a half hours before the candidates rose. His men had canvassed

Hart's location in New Hampshire days before, sending his autographed picture to each of the 12 registered voters in the village.

But from there on, it was unpredictable, invisible.

By the time the candidate left his Boston Hotel at 830, several million had already voted across

the country in schools, libraries, churches, stores, post offices.

These two were invisible.

But it was certain that at this hour, the vote was overwhelmingly Republican.

On election day, America is Republican until five or six in the evening.

It is in the last few hours of the day that working people and their families vote on their way home from work or after supper.

It is then at evening that America goes Democratic if it goes Democratic at all.

All of this is invisible, for it is the essence of the act that as it happens,

it is a mystery in which millions of people each fit one fragment of a total secret together,

none of them knowing the shape of the whole.

What results from the fitting together of these secrets is, of course,

the most awesome transfer of power in the world. Yet, as the transfer of this power takes place,

there is nothing to be seen except an occasional line outside a church or school or a file of people

fidgeting in the rain waiting to enter the booths no bands play on election day no troops march

no guns readied no conspirators gather in secret headquarters.

The noise and the blare, the bands and the screaming, the pageantry and the oratory of the long fall campaign fade on election day.

All the planning is over.

All the efforts spent.

...