Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Election day thoughts

So. I voted. I bet you did too. My polling place was busy but not crowded and I was voter number 26 for my precinct when I voted at 7:20 a.m. I had to ask for a second ballot because I had marked proposition 3 when I thought I was voting on prop 2, so I was glad I checked my answers. It flummoxed one of the poll workers, an older man with a very piratey black eye patch, when I went back and only wanted ONE of the pages of the ballots. "I give them out in pairs," he said. Another poll worker let him know that I could just get the page I needed, thus preventing me from voting for president twice.

Throughout the day, I kept checking stories on polling places at Andrew Sullivan's blog. He was posting stories from readers who reported on the events at polling places all over the U.S., many of which made me cry: the 50-year-old African American man voting for the first time, the father letting his child push the button for president.

There was a polling place here at the parish where I'm working and as I left for the day, a woman was exiting the polls with her daughter, maybe six, who asked, "Can everyone vote?" And it seems like most everyone who could, did. There's democracy for you.

It was a lovely day.

God bless America.

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