one day more
24 hours from now, the polls will be closed in several states and we’ll be starting to have a sense of how the election played out.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be getting up early to volunteer at the polls, helping people find parking spots in the dark and helping with the lines. Then I’ll take a break for a few hours to run the bake sale for the PTA (since the school is a polling site) and to vote myself. And then I’ll head out to the local organizing site to do whatever they need me to do until the last voters on line get their chance to vote. I’ll bring folding chairs for those who need a place to sit, and magazines for parents to read to their children.
I’m feeling tired and drained and elated all at once, and I’ve only
been on the margins of the campaign. One of the things that’s special about this campaign is how many people feel like they own a piece of it. I can’t imagine how the folks who
have been working 24/7 on this feel, let alone Obama himself, what with
his grandmother dying this morning.
I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to report in, but I’d love to hear from the rest of you. What are you doing? Have you voted already? What sort of lines are you seeing?
And don’t forget, if you see any voting problems, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:23 pm
There are giant lines for early voting here, and have been for days.
I can’t help noticing the difference, for me, in the feel between this election and ’92. In ’92 I agonized about voting for Clinton, even though he was the obvious man, and considered writing in Cuomo. I just had a bad, bad feeling about him after the Gennifer Flowers stuff — not because he ran around, but because of how it was handled. But the day after Election Day in ’92, I was overwhelmed by how I felt like a citizen of my own country again. I was poor then — stealing toilet paper poor — and when Clinton got on the mike, it was like this was no longer a barrier.
This time around…I think I am too old, not credulous enough about the virtues of either party’s pet projects, and less taken with the power of the presidency. I am also too much involved in the work of raising a child, without somehow having been subsumed into “mother”, and see how nonexistant those concerns are at the top. And I’ve been put off in a serious way by Obama supporters for 1.5 years now — by the destructive, animal, ad-hominem, and frankly none-too-bright quality of so much of the discourse. It makes me think that something has gone seriously wrong in how we raise and educate people. So I feel I stand outside this election and these election politics. I would trade in the results of this election for an electorate which had as solid a grip on civics and arithmetic as my PS-whatever-educated, regular-Joe grandpa had.
Anyway. I hope he presidents as good as he looks. My only up-close experience with him was in groups of a few hundred, rather large for Iowa, and I cannot say I came away impressed. I wish I could.
I am going to go see if I can find where my tail dropped off now.
November 4th, 2008 at 8:16 am
In Chicago it’s absolutely electric. Many, many people voted early, but the lines, as reported by my co-workers, were already out the door and down the block at 6:30 a.m.
There’s also a ton of chatter about the giant Obama rally in Grant Park tonight. The common themes:
1. “You got tickets???? No way!!! Take pictures!”
2. Estimates of just how long it will take to get home tonight because of the traffic.
3. “I just hope everyone behaves themselves.” That’s the polite way of saying, please please no violence or trashing of property, and please let the cops not do anything stupid. Emotions are running high and many of the people I know who are attending the rally are young, and may have a couple of cocktails beforehand. (They aren’t opening the gates until 8:30pm, and most people I know are heading downtown right after work. The normal Chicago thing would be to fill the time in the middle with drinking. Anyone who has attended a wedding in Chicago knows this pattern well.) It could end like a particularly raucous Bears game, which is to say people *not* behaving themselves.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:41 am
No line to vote this morning at my polling place, but it was very well-staffed and there were, I think, a few more booths than usual. I was voter 176 at 8:25.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
There were lines at my polling place in the early morning, from 6 to about 7.15. Since there were plenty of people greeting voters near the entrance, I assigned myself to the parking lot and directed people to empty spots and stopped them from going down the narrow path to the last spots when they were all full.
By 8 am, there were no lines, and it took me about 5 minutes to vote (with a paper ballot). I was at the bake sale until a bit past 12, and I don’t think there was ever more than a 10 minute wait between 8 and 12.
Having some lunch now and then going out to see what I can do to help.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I went to the polls at 11:45 and the parking lot was packed. People possibly took early lunches to go vote, but the only line was for voters who needed to check which election district they lived in. There are at least 2 elections a year (election day and school budget vote), so I gather those are new voters or people registered voting for the first or second time. 10 minutes was the magic number for how long it took me to sign in and vote. The woman guiding people into the voting booth gave me a look of surprise and a gasp at to how fast I voted. I looked at the sample ballot so I did not waste time.
This was probably the saddest feeling I have ever had after a vote. I do not agree fully with either of these candidates and probably would have stayed home if my local congressman was not up for reelection, plus there was an important local proposition bill on maintaining our environment (open space and drinking water). I have finally accepted the fact that I do not have the right to or should not expect to love everything a candidate stands for.