THE JOY OF VOTING IN THE LOBBY

In the elevator, early in the morning on Election Day, I press 1 for democracy.

Because I vote in my lobby.

Then, after deciding among candidates, I pick between getting some exercise or going back to bed.

My friends are usually surprised it’s legal to hold an official New York City Board of Elections event on the first floor of a private building.

Hey, I don’t know if it’s legal. I only know that it’s what we do.

It’s convenient for me and sensible for others. I live in an big Art Deco masterpiece (it’s not bragging if it’s true), where there are already hundreds of voters right on site, and it’s an easy-access, or relatively-easy-access, location. The lobby is spacious enough that during those long-ago, silly seasons when I actually considered switching to another building I would return gratefully to our first floor, which seemed well-lit and ably decorated when compared to the ugly hot little foyers that greeted me in other places. On Election Day, our lobby becomes a community meeting space, and it makes me proud. Although for some reason we don’t attract the bake sales that made democracy so tasty during my suburban years.

In New York, though, you get to vote a lot. Especially this year. We’ve OD’d on election days: the April 19 presidential primary, the June 28 Congressional primary, next week’s state and legislative vote and the big kahuna, a general election with two New Yorkers on the ballot, battling for the chance to lead the free world. We could have meshed some of these elections together, like smart people in other states, but we didn’t go that way. The plethora of confusing dates suggests the state doesn’t want you to show up.

Not only do we have a lot of elections, we also move them around. In the past couple of years there were even times when, gasp, I voted outside of my building, over at a high school on West 102nd Street. It was awful. I had to walk three or four blocks, and I’m talking about the long crosstown kind of blocks instead of the fantastic, far preferable vertical blocks. Then there were a lot of strangers hanging out at the polls. I couldn’t even find one person I knew in there, among the poll watchers or the voters. It was lonely.

Thank God they moved the vote back to the building.

It is, I know, the voting that matters. They say that you can’t complain if you don’t vote. Of course this isn’t the least bit true. But what’s great about voting is that it can be so much like complaining, only more tangible. You are being counted, and our crankiness can make a difference. Voting is self-expression that can change the direction of a town, a state, a country.

I never understand how people can fail to get excited about it.

And doing it in the lobby is even better.

Christopher Moore is deputy editor at Straus News Manhattan. He lives on the Upper West Side.