It’s election day. If you’re registered and haven’t already done so, go vote. Take a state or federal picture identification that has not expired. Wait 30 years. Tell your kids about today. As always, a quote from Starship Troopers and/or Neal Patrick Harris is in order. Here’s a two-fer:
NPH: We’ve got one of their brains now. Pretty soon we’ll know how they think, and then we’ll know how to beat them. One day it’ll be over, and everyone will forget that this was the moment. This is when it turned. And it wasn’t the mighty Fleet, it wasn’t any fancy new weapon, it was a cap trooper named Zim who captured a brain.
There is reason to hope that today is the day we start getting the country back on the right track. Maybe we’ll reject the talk tough, hope for the best foreign policy of the neocons. Maybe we’ll reject the religion-on-the-sleeve, not-in-the-heart moral grandstanding of the social conservatives. Maybe we’ll reject the unregulated, debt ballooning, economy wrecking crony capitalism of the money conservatives. Instead, maybe we’ll speak softly and keep the big stick in reserve rather than waving it about. Maybe our morality will encompass the well-being of those living in the period between birth and brain death. And maybe we’ll recognize that our economic engine depends on a stable, prosperous middle class. Maybe.
So, go vote.
Oh, here’s a bit of election day inspiration from Walt Whitman, swiped from BarbinMD:
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
‘Twould not be you, Niagara – nor you, ye limitless prairies – nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite – nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones – nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes – nor Mississippi’s stream:
This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name – the still small voice vibrating -America’s choosing day…
Voted for change and it felt great.
Voted for actual change- Libertarian – and it too felt great.
You’d do better to quote from the book than from the cartoonish movie of the same name…although the movie WAS fun…
I’ve been told I ought to read the book, and I intend to. But the schlocky, B-movie quality to the film is one of the things I enjoy deeply.
You have high hopes for the USA. Thanks.
Went by to vote and there were long lines. I purposely planned a block of time around 1 pm as a contingency. Line or not, I will stay then.
BTW I have never seen the precinct that votes at my church this packed.(I live in a different precinct.) Usually there are about a hundred people total who vote the whole day. I’ll bet there are at least 35 people in line in the fellowship hall as I write this.
Sunday it was time change…today-it is time FOR A change!
Only one other person in front of me at 9:30… sigh… BUT, 289 people did vote before me which I believe beats our typical daily totals.
No line. Did encounter a truly obnoxious poll worker who refused to believe that I knew my polling place and who tried to bar me from entering the room. Luckily I was rescued by another poll watcher, who said that this chap had been acting like this “all morning.”
Mine seems to be the only polling place with no line. Perhaps he was coping with boredom through outright hostility?
No line here either. I waited longer for the primary this spring. But then I went at 10am purposefully to avoid any lines. The wife and two kids and I walked to our polling place (about 4 blocks away) and it was a beautiful way to spend an beautiful morning. Just think, in only 4 or 5 hours I can spend the rest of the evening glued to the TV and websites…
Yeah– in Tippecanoe County:
Vote center at Purdue had 150 people waiting at 6 AM– over 400 in line by 7 AM– and steady.
Morton Center had 30-40 minutes waits from opening.
Lafayette City Hall had about a 10 minute wait at 10-10:30 today. Probably hard for parking, but I expected it to be less by 10.
AND… we had over 36,000 vote as of the opening of the polls, which will likely be 50% of our total. Clerk is expecting about 70K today out of a real 85 K (104K on the books).
Doug, I’d like to see some love and praise heaped on the way we vote in this county.. should be practiced statewide, espo in Presidential years
As a poll worker, things went mostly smoothly in Marion County with the exception of some absentee ballots that weren’t delivered before the polls closed. The staff at the Clerk’s Office had obviously been working very hard to prepare for the election.