Election Day
I showed up a little before 5am. There were already people in line to vote! When the polls opened at 6, we had an estimated 1.5 wait for the end of the line. I started out at the electronic poll book checking people in, so I kept up with our vote counts. In the first 3 hours, we voted ~750 people. I didn't see the end of the line until after 9. The rest of the day we voted another 800 people. We never had a line after 10am. Our last voter showed up at 6:59:15. Polls closed at 7. We congratulated him on his excellent timing. For our precinct we voted ~68% of registered voters with election day plus absentee votes. The experienced pollworkers told me this precinct usually votes about 60% for presidential elections, so we did better than usual. Being up here in Fake Virginia, the Dems crushed the Republicans on everything. We finally got everything tallied and packed up at 9pm, so I got home around 9.15 and proceeded to stay up to 1am watching NBC and Comedy Central. Brooke and I watched Obama be declared president, McCain's concession speech, and Obama's acceptance speech.
Foreign visitors are intrigued by the American election system. Groups of them request to visit precincts on election day. Our precinct had two groups of Chinese visitors and one group of mixed Middle Eastern visitors. They are fascinated by the mechanics of how a person can vote and how the machines work.
We also had a group of Democratic pollwatchers. They were generally unobstrusive and seemed nice enough. The Republicans didn't send any pollwatchers to our precinct, but they might have in areas where they thought they had more voters.
All in all it was a fun day. I think I'll probably volunteer again next year for the governor's election.
Foreign visitors are intrigued by the American election system. Groups of them request to visit precincts on election day. Our precinct had two groups of Chinese visitors and one group of mixed Middle Eastern visitors. They are fascinated by the mechanics of how a person can vote and how the machines work.
We also had a group of Democratic pollwatchers. They were generally unobstrusive and seemed nice enough. The Republicans didn't send any pollwatchers to our precinct, but they might have in areas where they thought they had more voters.
All in all it was a fun day. I think I'll probably volunteer again next year for the governor's election.