Rochester, New York, November 8, 2016. It was one of those unforgettably splendid fall days in Upstate—the leaves on the trees had turned brilliant shades of gold, orange, and red, and held fast to their branches, resisting gravity and decay, creating a delightful canopy that celebrated nature's artistry. It was unseasonably warm, the sun was bright, and after voting, I drove to the historic Mount Hope Cemetery to document, as an anthropologist, what I expected to be a sizable crowd of visitors at women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony's grave. By the time I arrived, at 9:15 a.m., and clambered up the cobblestone path, a long line had formed and people had already been waiting more than an hour just for the opportunity to put their “I Voted” stickers on her headstone and leave other tokens of gratitude. As a steady stream of visitors came throughout the day—an estimated 8,000– 12,000 people—the wait grew to two hours, even after it started raining in the evening, until the cemetery gates closed at 9:00 p.m., at which time polling stations were closing up and down the eastern seaboard.

Cultural anthropologists use a combination of research methods to understand the complexity and dynamism of sociocultural phenomena. My research for this chapter included: standardized interviews of open-ended questions with fifty-four people who visited Susan B. Anthony's gravesite on Election Day (thirty-one interviews on Election Day itself and twenty-three over the three weeks following the election); ethnographic observations at the cemetery on Election Day and the next morning; interviews with three people whose photos of the sticker ritual attracted national attention prior to Election Day; and consultation of news related to Anthony's grave since 2014. I asked open-ended questions in the interviews to encourage people to talk about what was most important to them, so I could understand the meanings and motivations of their gravesite visits.