I'm freaking dying here. As you may have gathered over the last couple months, I'm a political junkie. I caught the bug over the Florida 2000 recount fight and haven't shaken it. I can tell you about obscure political races in Florida, Washington, down ballot initiatives in all kinds of places.
I voted today, early, at around 7:30. As I wrote at Cynical-C's joint:
Voting in my neighborhood is at the school where The Littlest Critic goes, in the room where they have extended care before and after the official school day. Today, with all the people coming into the building, classes are canceled. Since we walk to school every day (we live that close), I walked to go vote while TLC was asleep and The Wife was waking up and getting dressed.
It was a beautiful day and cars lined all the streets radiating out from the school. I walked with a big smile on my face, happy to be voting and happy to be voting for Obama. I didn’t see a line outside which made me happy and sad. I wanted a huge line to show that people were jazzed up to vote, but I wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible.
When I walked in the door, I saw something different about this election. Usually, I can walk right in, give them my ID and get my ballot in five minutes tops. In 2004, I had to stand in line for ten minutes before I got to the table to get my ballot. The line today stretched all the way out the door and down the hall near to the end. I stood in line with happy joking people laughing and excited, and it took me forty five minutes just to get in the door of the room where we vote.
Inside, it was packed. Since we’ve dumped the touch screen machines, we were back to fill in the bubble optical scan ballots. People were crammed into the room working on every available surface. In one corner, a man wearing a suit and tie stood with a clipboard (I’m assuming he was one of the many lawyers there to advise on election law and to stop any potential challenges from GOP idiots out to disrupt voting). I managed to snag one of the little voting booths, but others were at tables, filling out ballots on top of computer monitors, against walls, standing and using clipboards or stiff pieces of cardboard.
For me, Election Day is kinda like one of those childhood holidays where you just can't get to sleep, can't settle down, can't get any relief. It's agonizing knowing that I have to wait at least another six hours before real results start to trickle in. It's agonizing in a good way this year, because I'm pretty confident of a number of positive scenarios going down tonight.
But nevertheless, I'm a combination of hyped-up on adrenaline and tweaked out on caffeine. It's sort of uncomfortable and sort of unpleasant at the same time. I'm no good to any employer on a day like today, so I just try to look as busy as possible and try to remember my obligations. Tomorrow, I'll be more focused, but probably no less wigged.
Tomorrow I'll be super freakin psyched. After voting today, I couldn't stop smiling and wanted to shout and jump in the street, but I'm not really the most expressive of my enthusiasms publicly.
Suffice to say that today will go down as a great, great day in American history. That much I'm pretty damn confident of.
Anyway, go read this if you feel like crying in that good way. It's pretty awesome.
1 comment:
I was in a very giddy mood when I strolled to the precinct where I would vote as well. I get a good feeling when I see a bunch of people who are fully aware that collectively, they are all going to be swaying the vote together in the Obama direction. When deducing why I was in such a good mood this morning, I realized that the eight year strangle hold is soon going to be over. Real, educated Americans are reclaiming the nation from the pigs that have exploited it.
D.
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