Unique Voting Percent Locations

- October 27, 2014

Shopping Malls, Casinos, and Arcades: A Look at America's Wackiest Polling Places'

More than 12,600 voters cast ballots in Georgia’s first widespread Sunday voting effort, according to final tallies from 10 of the 11 participating counties. Pictured,

voters’ forms as they line up Sunday afternoon inside South DeKalb Mall.

Your may remember this article:

"Georgia State Senator Complains That Voting Is Too Convenient For Black People."

Well...and so, I was doing a quick bit of shopping this week at a store OUTSIDE of

the mall when what to my wondering eyes should appear but signs encouraging

me to vote.....in the shopping mall! It made so much since to me, to go into my

favorite store and causally stroll into a voting booth. Yes, I was at a "shopping

mall popular among local African-Americans." The mall was packed and so was the voting percent.

There were young voters actually VOTING, more then I've ever seen in my life; all in one place,

their favorite place...the MALL! It was 7pm and they were standing in line with their ID's in hand.

What a great idea. I wondered who thought this up and what a genius they were.

Then I wondered, given that there is NOTHING new under the sun, how many other unusual polling place around the U.S.there were.

Take a look......

Michael Mergen's Vote covers unique voting locations across America.

Early Voting No. 10, Las Vegas.

When was the last time you took a break from shopping to vote—without leaving the mall? Have you ever picked up a gallon of milk from the same place you voted? How about hanging out with a friend—and voting in his kitchen?

The photographer Michael Mergen was on assignment in 2004 covering the election between George W. Bush and John Kerry in Philadelphia when he stumbled upon a polling center inside a barbershop. The image stuck in his head, and in 2008 he decided to focus less on the election and more on unique voting locations.

The result is his series of photographs appropriately titled Vote.

Mergen’s work began with a list of around 1,100 voting locations he culled down to include only privately owned spaces being used as polling centers, including pizza shops, funeral homes, a roller rink, and even private homes.

After 2008, Mergen put the project on hold but was inspired by a professor while pursuing an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design to expand the series nationally. Mergen then contacted secretaries of state to obtain statewide voting-location lists, searched county by county, and tracked locations by reading newspaper websites. He then edited down the lists, plotted the locations that appealed to him into a Google map, and edited the list based on proximity to get the most shots in the quickest amount of time.

Does Mergen feel voting in specific locations can influence.

an election? He’s not sure.

The clash of public and private—public voting, public government—taking place in privately owned spaces is really at the heart of the project.” “It raises issues of the consumer citizen and this increasingly blurred line between the roles of the individual capitalist we each assume in some way, versus the inherently public, almost socialist act of voting.

Or maybe Americans are just getting lazy. The reason cited for early voting in supermarkets was simply to bring voting to the people. And for the businesses that house these voting locations, there's the added bonus that the voter might take home something.

“I think for the businesses, it's a mixture of altruism and civic pride.” “If you stop to vote but happen to walk out with a case of Gatorade, I’m sure that’s fine by the store.”