My Election Day

I am a Democratic Election Judge in a precinct of 925 voters. Of that 925, 85 people voted Early or Absentee, and ONLY 489 people came to our Precinct today to vote. That translates to roughly 58% of voters showing up at our Precinct today. Or roughly, 63% of the registered voters in our Precinct voted. What’s up with that?

We had people lined up at 6am outside the building and we had people backed up waiting for an open booth until about 7:30am. After that, the rest of the day was like the Primary, a few people here, a few there. We thought we would get a rush of voters after 5pm, but they never showed up. In fact we only had about 20 voters from 5pm until the polls closed at 7pm.

The Precinct that I work at is overwhelmingly Republican, however McCain did not win overwhelmingly. The Republican Committeeman’s face visibly dropped when he read off the votes. In our little Precinct Obama got 212 votes and McCain got 259 votes. When I first heard the results, I was a bit disheartened, until one of the Republican Judges voiced her dismay that Obama got so many votes. Then I realized, this isn’t a bad thing. This is a good thing. It means that a whole lot of Republicans voted for Change, they voted for Obama. (In our Precinct, I can’t say for the rest of the Precincts in our County, although the Republican Committeeman led us to believe that other Precincts in our County had similar results. Time will tell. I’m watching the results on television now and am anxiously awaiting the tallies.)

I am a Democratic Election Judge. A Republican Election judge and I helped 3 young retarded men vote for the first time. According to Election rules, a Judge from each party must accompany any voter who needs assistance, in order to insure that the assistance is fair and impartial. I was honored to assist these young men in casting their first ballots.

These 3 men knew EXACTLY who they wanted to vote for in the Presidential Race. All three couldn’t wait to blurt out “Obama” when we began to read the Presidential Candidates.

I have to say, after the third man cast his ballot I got a little ferklempt. Kudos to Trinity Services for driving these young men to their polling place! These young men were so excited after they put their ballots in the ballot counter. Each of them came up to the Republican Judge and to myself and shook our hands and thanked us for assisting them in casting their ballots. Their faces were beaming with pride. I have to say, this was the best part of my day today.