For there was once a sanctity to the act of voting; your vote was between you and your conscience. Even Presbyterians like me understood something inviolable to take place in the instant between the pencil being gripped and the cross being marked; the act was so secular-holy that it would have been an obscenity for a third party to witness it, let alone interfere with it. That’s why we had curtains on polling booths. And that’s why only the bedridden (and servicemen) were excused the walk to the polling station: it was your civic duty to make the effort to vote.