Early voting

It is a few minutes before midnight and I am filling out my absentee ballot. I am kneeling on the floor, writing out the ballot on top of my bed — positioned in such a way that it resembles how a child might kneel before evening prayer as depicted in the movies. The irony is not lost on me, considering that I need a Plan B if the crowds are too large when I go to the first day of early voting in New York State on Saturday, October 24.

"Take the envelope with you," my husband suggests, "Just in case it takes too long so you can deliver your ballot at the polling site."

It is a few minutes after eight in the morning and although the polling place is scheduled to open at 9 a.m., there are thirty people ahead of me socially distant in pajamas and hoodies, jerseys and shorts. They sit in folding beach chairs and drink from tall insulated cups of coffee while they look at their phones. There are two people independently recording the line as it grows, clearly an Instagramable moment.

I have voted in every election I could for over four decades. I have gone from mechanical machines to scanning devices and now paper and envelope — it's been a long civic journey.

The line starts to move, but I decide to cross the grass to go directly to the entrance. I am greeted by a poll worker who walks me and another voter to the location where our absentee ballots may be delivered for collection. The other voter tells the worker that there's a stamp on her envelope just in case she would have had to mail it. I walk up to the box, throw my ballot through the slot and leave, missing out on a typical voting experience: signing in, submitting my ballot, even getting my "I Voted Today" sticker.

But these aren't typical days with typical experiences. And as I leave the building, watching the line not just turn the corner but lengthen due south on Levittown Parkway, I realize that even if it isn't a typical voting day, it is a momentous one for me and thousands of my fellow New Yorkers and my fellow Americans.

A contributing writer to the Herald since 2012, Lauren Lev is an East Meadow resident and a direct marketing/advertising executive who teaches marketing fundamentals as well as advertising and marketing communications courses at the Fashion Institute of Technology and SUNY Old Westbury.