OutdoorType

Election Day is here! Woot!

I have come to love Election Day. It is, for me, like Christmas (even though sometimes it is like the Christmas when I was six and woke to find Castle Grey Skull missing from under the tree)…

The anticipation begins the night before, on Election Eve, when I plan my trip to the local church that serves as polling place and make one last scan of the papers and candidate websites. (Yeah, I cram for voting info as if preparing for a history mid-term.)

This year’s Election Day festivities will begin at the crack of dawn. With an 8am meeting to run and after work commitments on the other side of the county there is no other way to find time to vote. Alarms will begin blaring at 6am and if all goes to plan I will be exercising my constitutional rights before the sun rises.

It’s a short drive to the polling place and pulling into the parking lot I will secretly hope to find a line out the door. This is counterintuitive I know, but a line out the door means your fellow neighbors actually give a damn. The last time I voted the polls had been open for over 12 hours and I was only voter number 113. True, the vote was only for the Republican Primary, but I try not to miss any chance to vote, especially when you could possibly sway the outcome and help select the lesser candidate.

The fun begins after confirming my ID with the volunteers. Walking over to the booth I cross my fingers that no one will hack into my particular machine today. It’s a touch screen and I’ll finger tap my way through the choices, voting as straight a ticket as possible. On the way out the door, after confirming my selections, a volunteer will hand me one of those oval “I Voted” stickers and not for the first time will I wonder about who actually decided that a small oval sticker was the way to go for this sort of thing. Then it will be back in the car and into the traffic that will surely bring forth an oath or two and make me hope ever harder that I voted for the right person.