Good Day Citizens and Welcome to What Would Jefferson Do, our weekly opportunity to discuss

current American events with President Thomas Jefferson, who is seated across from me now.

Good day to you, Mr. Jefferson.

Good day to you, citizen.

I would like to talk to you, sir, this week about voting.

It's the season for that, and I thought perhaps you could share what it was like during your time, sir.

Well, much different in my time than in yours.

Voting was done in public.

Ballots were usually not secret.

In fact, there usually were two ballot boxes, one for candidate A and one for candidate B.

These votes usually took place on a green, a town square or some other park, and people would have picnics and

there would be festivals and parades and bands and fireworks and so on.

I have to say there's a fair amount of drinking involved in these

things and then at a certain point the local justice of the peace or the sheriff

would say line up to to vote how do you vote citizen and the person would come up and put his ballot, his vote

into a box, into a slot in a box and everyone in that public place would know which candidate he voted for.

So there was not the same anonymity that we have in your time.

Americans nowadays have a tendency to just think, well, everyone has the right to vote,

but that's not necessarily

true during your time or mine let me say who didn't vote in my time American Indians

didn't vote because they were part of other sovereign nations just as if they had been French or Portuguese.

Women didn't vote. Briefly, they voted in New Jersey after the war,

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