Nov 3, 2008
Anticipating the voting-day blues
I may have gained an hour of sleep this weekend, but I’m set to lose it again tomorrow morning.
My alarm clock’s poised in anticipation of dreadful lines at my polling place (Bethesda Elementary School, in MoCo). I’m planning to arrive at 6:30 a.m., even though it doesn’t technically open till 7:00 a.m. Sure, it’s anal-retentive, but I’m a “better safe than sorry” kind of gal. And I’ve heard from friends in North Carolina and Virginia that early-voting wait times in those states took up to two hours.
Thankfully, I spent a good portion of the weekend binging on West Wing episodes, so my sense of patriotism and love for democracy are at an all-time high.
I’ll have my camera and cell phone and plan to document the experience. Hopefully, the result will be a picture of a grade school with an empty parking lot.
If you’d like to do the same, send in a picture or a description of your voting experience and we’ll collect them for the blog. I’d love to get reports from around the state. Email them to tdrweb[at]gmail.com and we’ll do the rest.
Godspeed to us all.
JACKIE SAUTER, Web EditorÂ
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And the verdict’s in: One hour, 10 minutes to vote this morning. How about you?
We’ll post a collection of our voting experiences here later today.
The verdict for my polling precinct in Northern Silver Spring was about two hours and 45 minutes for folks who got there between 7 and 9 a.m. today. After I got into work I found out Silver Spring is has historically had some of the slowest precincts in the nation — lucky me.
But I was pleasantly surprised by the mood of everyone there, from the tired, coffee-withdrawn voters (such as yours truly) to the election volunteers, most people were in good spirits and seemed pretty accepting of the long wait. There was also a Democratic Party volunteer handing out sample ballots and donut holes, so that livened things up as the temperature dropped outside.
Once inside the school, it was orderly, friendly and fast, although I did notice two voting machines that were not being used out of the approximately nine or 10 others in use. By 10 a.m., an unofficial count posted on a wall showed that 454 Democrats out of the more than 1,600 registered there had voted already. For Republicans, 80 out of the approximately 300 had voted.
Despite the skew at my precinct, I still felt a sense of accomplishment upon leaving the polls (although my feet and back weren’t nearly as thrilled). This is the biggest turnout I’ve ever seen for an election and it’s exciting to be a part of it!