Election day diary
This is what my November 2nd looked like:
6:45 a.m. Alarm goes off for the second time, conclusively waking me up. I stagger out of bed to the sounds of NPR hosts saying "It’s ELECTION DAY!"
8:00 a.m. Breakfasted, caffeinated, groomed, and dressed, I head out the door, pausing to grab a warm jacket that later turns out to be completely unnecessary on an unusually warm and mostly cloudless day.
8:15 a.m. I arrive at my local polling place. It’s surprisingly quiet, with only a few people in line. There’s a momentary hold-up: apparently, since I registered by mail, they want a proof of my address as well as my voter card. Fortunately, I’ve come prepared with my electric bill. The poll workers at the table look relieved and apologize for the inconvenience. Another shows me how to work the touch-screen in the voting booth. I ask if the machines provide a paper receipt, and the poll worker says no, but there’ll still be a paper record locked inside the machine, which they’ll use in the event of a recount. Satisfied, I punch the four boxes on the screen, hit "Cast Vote," and I’m out of there, sporting my "I Voted" sticker.
8:35 a.m. Crossing the street on my way to work, I pass a small cluster of students who are holding up Kerry/Edwards signs and waving at passing cars. I grin broadly at the girl nearest me. She looks at my sticker and says "Yay!" and I say "Yay!" in response. We smile at each other and I walk on.
8:45 a.m. Arrive at the library. My colleagues are all wearing "I Voted" stickers of their own. We compare early-morning-voting notes. Everyone else’s polling places were jammed, so we conjecture that my precinct has a greater proportion of students, most of whom don’t have to be at work by nine.
10:00 a.m. Sit in on meeting. More comparing of early-morning-voting notes; more reports of jammed polls. Discussion turns to actual meeting for next hour and a half, which is something of a relief.
11:30 a.m. Meeting ends. I get coffee and a highly unhealthy donut from the library cafe, then head to my desk. Unsurprisingly, the Electoral Vote Predictor is awfully slow to load today.
12:00 noon. First reference shift of the day. Some, but far from all, people in the main hall of the library are wearing stickers.
1:00 p.m. Lunch hour. Weather’s still magnificent, so I mosey across Grounds eating my tomato sandwich and head to Heartwood Books for some browsing. (I find Elizabeth Bishop’s letters and Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony, and God. It’s a good used-bookstore day.) The store owner sees my sticker and asks what the turnout was like. More comparison of notes (see above).
2:00 p.m. Very quiet hour staffing the information desk in our new building. No major news to be found on the web except "huge turnouts everywhere."
2:30 p.m. or thereabouts. My sticker falls off. I reaffix it.
3:00 p.m. Back at the reference desk. More people seem to have voted. I was kind of hoping for last-minute questions about how to find one’s polling place, but there aren’t any. People are starting to report big turnouts in other places in Virginia. I don’t expect Kerry to win here, but the sheer numbers are encouraging. Afterwards, I go back to my desk and attempt to do some reading and research, but with my mind elsewhere.
6:15 p.m. I catch the bus home. A handmade sign inside the bus reads "VOTE!" I sit behind a group of guys who’ve evidently been playing soccer or ultimate frisbee or something of the sort, if their muddy shirts are any indication. One is describing how he waited fifteen minutes for the man in front of him at the polls to finish voting. (Some voters remain undecided to the last? But I suspect it’s more likely to be due to the two state constitutional amendments on the ballot, both rather minor and obscure and couched in legalese.)
6:25 p.m. Home again. I’m starving. I cook some salmon on a bed of rice, make a salad and pour a glass of wine.
7:00 p.m. Election coverage begins. I sit down with my dinner to watch. Virginia election results aren’t in yet. (Update: they just called it. Virginia’s gone red. Oh well.) Faint sounds of music can be heard outside my window — some of my neighbors are evidently marking the occasion by throwing a party.
Without knowing the ultimate outcome: I’m impressed with how calmly everything went today. No inter-party hostility that I could see, no polling shenanigans, no flaring tempers, no doomsday scenarios. That’s what I’ll be holding onto for the rest of the evening. And with that, I’m signing off so I can call a few friends in other states and hear what their own election day was like.
lots of election day blog entries
In no particular order: BoingBoing Household OperaChuck Tryon Dave Eubanks Kari Kraus Matt Kirschenbaum Critters & SpectaclesJason Rhody Amardeep Singh Bob Mould Arete Crooked Timber Earth Wide Moth Edith Frost Geoffrey Schramm Frogs and Ravens Marcia …
lots of election day blog entries
In no particular order: BoingBoing Household OperaChuck Tryon Dave Eubanks Kari Kraus Matt Kirschenbaum Critters & SpectaclesJason Rhody Amardeep Singh Bob Mould Arete Crooked Timber Earth Wide Moth Edith Frost Geoffrey Schramm Frogs and Ravens Marcia …
lots of election day blog entries
In no particular order: BoingBoing Household OperaChuck Tryon Dave Eubanks Kari Kraus Matt Kirschenbaum Critters & SpectaclesJason Rhody Amardeep Singh Bob Mould Arete Crooked Timber Earth Wide Moth Edith Frost Geoffrey Schramm Frogs and Ravens Marcia …
Well, I think your above post was a good one. Good as in intelligent and rational.
lots of election day blog entries
In no particular order: BoingBoing Household OperaChuck Tryon Dave Eubanks Kari Kraus Matt Kirschenbaum Critters & SpectaclesJason Rhody Amardeep Singh Bob Mould Arete Crooked Timber Earth Wide Moth Edith Frost Geoffrey Schramm Frogs and Ravens Marcia …