Single What? Female...

ELECTION DAY

This morning, a lovely, surprisingly warm fall day, I found myself getting dolled up for the polling place.

After hearing on the radio about the long lines, the heavy turnout; the calls from poll workers across the country talking about voters showing up well before the polling area was open; about having to handle overflow and machines that were already causing trouble, I found myself feeling electrified...the excitement of this day finally coming was and remains palpable.

As I got ready to head out this morning, I caught myself actually thinking very carefully about what I was going to wear. I wanted to remember what I wore on this day, November 4th, 2008 when I went to vote. I got out the nice jeans, my orange turtleneck sweater, my black oxfords with the flame decorated toe and heel, my rubber ducky earrings, my orange pea coat and orange/yellow/black/red shag scarf. I even put on lipstick! It was as if I was putting on my Sunday best! But I felt I had to...it's an historic day...why not look decent?

I walked the 16 or so blocks to my polling place and was almost a bit disappointed when I did not see a line down the block, but then again, I thought, there's hardly ever a line here: it's a large space, they tend to have a good number of machines...And then I walked in, as did a few others behind me. Suddenly, the line was pouring outside on to the steps, and the line ahead of me, was nothing I'd seen at this polling place since I'd registered there. Not even in 2004 did I have to wait more than a few minutes. Today, the poll workers looked a bit frazzled, were understaffed, a machine was being difficult (not completely broken, but definitely had issues and was constantly being kicked or shaken by one staffer, while a coordinator paced around the room, cellphone glued to his ear, trying to get someone to come up to Inwood to look at it, as well as trying to wrangle a few more poll workers), and it was forty-five minutes before I got to pull the lever.

As I stood in the booth looking at the wall of choices, I have to admit, I still wished that Hillary had been one of them. I would have been so thrilled to pull the lever next to her name and see the 'X' pop up. Still, to pull the lever and see the 'X' pop up into place next to Barack Obama's name was an exciting and moving experience. I even took a picture of it with my cellphone.

My mom is writing in Hillary, not sure who my sister is voting for (she was leaning towards Bob Barr last I recall), but whoever you may be voting for today, I hope you took a moment to appreciate it. This truly is momentous occasion...and should be every election day.

You might also just want to raise a glass somewhere that, no matter what the end result, this ridiculously long campaign is finally frickin' over.

If you haven't voted yet, GET OUT THERE NOW!!!!! VOTE!

Peace --Alex

posted by funkweee @ 9:31 AM