One Man's Vote: Right Makes Rite

Roger Angell has an almost religious view of the act of voting, and he shares it in the New Yorker. His experience might seem odd to voters outside New York, where touch screens are more prevalent, but the curtain, of “material and stiffness unknown elsewhere,” gives Angell a jolt. “Nothing is new inside," he writes, “but all is urgent.”

Angell reflects as he leaves the polling place. “A cloud of smugness enfolds me as I hit the street, exactly the kind of feeling that’s pretty well kept me out of churches. But why resist? I believe in this. It’s been said but I’ll say it: for a nanosecond I am important; infinitesimally I have done good. Feels great.” (More Election 2008 stories.)