I’m online right now, logging in to AOL and MSN IM, plus I’m attending the RIT party…virtually, of course.
Reading through the usual blogs (see the list to the right), I’m impressed with how many of us wrote about our election day experiences.
I’ll probably be online for awhile, so log on if you want to talk.
Do we talk about our voting experience? Not usually.
Up at 5:30 (“twirly,” indeed), downing caffeine at 5:40, out the door at 6:00, in line at 6:05 or so, back home at 6:20. There were about 25 people in line when we arrived and about 50 when we left 10 minutes later. One line was for A-L, the other for M-Z. Six people sat behind the table. One person checked ID, called out the names, initialed next to each voter’s entry on the printed list. Another person also initialed, and then I initialed and signed my name. Another person (an “observer”? I should have asked) wrote down each name on a pad of paper.
They handed me a paper ballot, and I had to wait a minute or two until one of the ten booths opened up. The booths are very small and do not have a curtain, just raised sides. I slid the punch card (technology almost as old as our nation itself) into the slot and used the small metal punch. After making my selections, I returned the ballot to the presiding election official, who tore off the top portion before handing me the remainder, which I dropped through the slot in a locked metal box. As we left, a young guy in a full-on “Uncle Sam” costume arrived to take his turn.
Random voter: Is this your first time voting?
Uncle Sam: Yes
Random voter: Awesome.
I didn’t wear a black hoodie (somewhere in the laundry circuit), but L did.
Today I have reading to do, grading, a couple of meetings, and a funeral. Tonight I’ll be following the news and perhaps participating in the RIT-IT election night party. My gut feeling is that we won’t have a decisive winner for awhile. I hope I’m wrong.
Update: 
So tomorrow’s the big day. We plan to hop out of bed first thing and walk down the street to our polling place. I have to admit to being nervous. This will be my fourth fifth presidential election (I just barely missed 1984), and it seems like more is at stake in this presidential election than in the previous three four. The world cannot afford another four years of the Bush adminstration’s lethal cocktail of myopia, arrogance, dishonesty, and incompetence.
What if you show up to vote next Tuesday and election workers say you are not registered?
Please pass this on to as many people as you can.
(via Liz Lawley)
Local readers might be interested in the Missouri Elections Website.
L and I will vote at a location about two blocks from our apartment. The polls open at 6 a.m., so I think we’ll probably roll out of bed and head right over. Both of us received our voter registration cards this week, and we should be good to go. I cancelled classes on Tuesday so that my students could get a head start on their research in the library, and so that they would not have to worry about making it to class on time if they were faced with long lines.. For almost all of my composition students, this is the first election in which they will vote, and I’d hate for it to be a negative experience.
Recently talking with L about this, I was persuaded that the United States needs a military draft in order to make the world a safer place. As long-time readers and friends know, I come from a military family.What I haven’t written about before is that like many Americans, I am only two generations removed from abject poverty. These two facts are related. Three of my grandparents grew up in broken families in the rural South of the early twentieth century, became young adults during the Great Depression, and were dirt poor for years and years. Both of my grandfathers entered the military because it was the most promising employment opportunity available to them. My father and uncle, first-generation college students, went into the army not only because of their desire to serve their country but also because of the job security such employment promised.
There will always be men and women who feel such pride in their country that they want to serve in the military, putting their personal safety on the line because of their patriotrism. However, there will also be a large number of very young people who enter the military because while it is not a career that will make them rich, it will appear to be the only available low-paying job with such a high level of prestige, and it offers the promise of “helping pay for college.” In America, this is the ticket to middle-class respectability. Meanwhile, the popular kids from high school–the ones who could afford the expensive, brand-name clothing instead of the no-name imitations; the ones who got a brand-new car on their sixteenth birthday instead of saving up to buy some old hoopty with their burger-flipping money–those kids are going straight to college. They don’t have to risk their lives for socioeconomic mobility.
When our nation goes to war, we are all implicitly responsible for what happens. But we don’t all have to take equal risks. This is wrong. The United States should reinstate the draft and make every single young American eligible with no loopholes whatsoever. Are you in college? I’m sure your professors will understand. Married? Maybe your spouse will join up, too, so she can be with you. Have kids? At least your spouse will still have someone to love if you get killed.
When we invaded Iraq, the safety of every single Iraqi–man, woman, child–was threatened. If we all knew that everyone we know here in the United States is also at risk, maybe we wouldn’t find it so easy to go to war.