Sample ballot for the 2008 Presidential election: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A sample ballot for the United States 2008 Presidential election in New York, New York. Printed in black ink on large off-white cardboard paper, the hyper visual ballot is designed with 11 top to bottom voting columns; voting machine instructions; voting party/group options from A to K, and an amendment proposal. Extensive voting machine instructions on the far left of the board are presented first in English, then again, in Spanish. To the right of the machine instructions, twenty rows of horizontal voting choices, A to K, list political parties and their candidates: Barack Obama/Joe Biden; John McCain/Sarah Palin; Roger Calero/Alsyon Kennedy; Gloria La Riva/Eugene Puryear; Ralph Nader/Matt Gonzalez; Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente; Bob Barr/Wayne A Root; Martin Schoenfeld; Marcy L. Kahn; Judith J. Gische; Shirley Werner Kornreich; Nora S. Anderson; Nancy M. Bannon, Charles B. Rangel; Bill Perkins; Adam Clayton Powell; Edward Daniels; Norma Soriano; George L. Espada, Sr.; Martin Koppel and Craig Schley. The last voting column on the far right, with the number one inside, offers “yes” or “no” in English and Spanish, on a proposed amendment to Article 5, section 6 of the Constitution. A blue ink stamp from the Board of Elections [SAMPLE BALLOT] features towards the lower half of the board, and at the bottom of the of the last column are Chinese and Korean characters, instructing the use of the voting machine lever. There are no markings on the reverse of the ballot.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 2008
• Printed by: New York Board of Elections
• Subject of: President Barack Obama, American, born 1961
• Subject of: President Joseph R. Biden Jr, American, born 1942
• Subject of: John McCain, American, 1936 - 2018
• Subject of: Sarah Palin, American, born 1964
• Subject of: Democratic Party, American, founded 1828
• Subject of: Republican Party, American, founded 1854
• Type: documents
• Type: ballots
• Medium: ink on paper (fiber product) cardboard
• Dimensions: H x W: 36 × 43 3/8 in. (91.5 × 110.1 cm)
• Dimensions: H x W x D (partly rolled): 36 × 43 3/8 × 7 1/16 in. (91.5 × 110.1 × 18 cm)
• Place printed: Manhattan, New York, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Activism
• Topic: Government
• Topic: Multilingual communication
• Topic: Politics
• Topic: U.S. History, 2001-
• Object number: 2019.103.2
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Karen J. Greene, Ph.D.
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: No Known Copyright Restrictions Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.