hope
I spent the last two days in Pennsylvania working in Monroe County on GOTV. One of the things I was signed up to do was line manage last night -- bring food and water and encouragement to people on line waiting to vote. In 2004, the last vote cast in this area was at 12:30am, so they were braced for a long night. I collected up umbrellas, too, because it was threatening to rain.
I got to the polls and there were more volunteers than voters. There were no lines. It was actually kind of terrifying in the moment, until I got back to the office and they confirmed turnout was actually up significantly over 2004. Everyone had just gotten out and voted in the morning -- all the poll watchers said they'd had a line out the door before the polls opened. At one polling place, they had 1400 of 2300 registered voters show up before work even let out, more than they'd ever gotten there before. That was when I was pretty sure we had won.
We kept calling people until the polls closed, even when it was already pretty much impossible for anyone to get to the polls in time. There was a satellite office open nearby (to help manage the enormous floods of volunteers) and it took about ten minutes after 8pm for someone to remember to call and tell them to stop calling -- they had just sort of kept going. "Early get out the vote for 2012," someone said.
I was standing in the office watching the countdown to 8pm when the polls closed, and refreshed MSNBC on my iphone to see the "Breaking News: Obama takes Pennsylvania" headline immediately. There was much screaming. I had to drive home early this morning, so we left shortly thereafter to go back to my mom's house for the night; about ten minutes after I got home, they called Ohio, and then it was just waiting for the west coast to bring it home. (Actually I heard the final call at 11pm from Jon Stewart, which was pretty awesome. <3)
I'm really sad about Prop 8 and hug all you lgb folks out there extra hard. :( I am comforting myself with penknife's smart thoughts and the underlying message of last night, which is that hope is never false, progress does happen, and good ideas win in time, like equality and respect for other human beings. I've got faith we'll win this fight too. ♥
From Portland, the moment when it was called for Obama; this made me cry:
I got to the polls and there were more volunteers than voters. There were no lines. It was actually kind of terrifying in the moment, until I got back to the office and they confirmed turnout was actually up significantly over 2004. Everyone had just gotten out and voted in the morning -- all the poll watchers said they'd had a line out the door before the polls opened. At one polling place, they had 1400 of 2300 registered voters show up before work even let out, more than they'd ever gotten there before. That was when I was pretty sure we had won.
We kept calling people until the polls closed, even when it was already pretty much impossible for anyone to get to the polls in time. There was a satellite office open nearby (to help manage the enormous floods of volunteers) and it took about ten minutes after 8pm for someone to remember to call and tell them to stop calling -- they had just sort of kept going. "Early get out the vote for 2012," someone said.
I was standing in the office watching the countdown to 8pm when the polls closed, and refreshed MSNBC on my iphone to see the "Breaking News: Obama takes Pennsylvania" headline immediately. There was much screaming. I had to drive home early this morning, so we left shortly thereafter to go back to my mom's house for the night; about ten minutes after I got home, they called Ohio, and then it was just waiting for the west coast to bring it home. (Actually I heard the final call at 11pm from Jon Stewart, which was pretty awesome. <3)
I'm really sad about Prop 8 and hug all you lgb folks out there extra hard. :( I am comforting myself with penknife's smart thoughts and the underlying message of last night, which is that hope is never false, progress does happen, and good ideas win in time, like equality and respect for other human beings. I've got faith we'll win this fight too. ♥
From Portland, the moment when it was called for Obama; this made me cry:
Click to view