Month: November 2008

Poll closing times from around the US. More info here.

A reader writes:

My wife and I live in a predominantly blue-collar Irish-Catholic Philly suburban neighborhood where the McCain/Palin signs outnumber Obama/Biden signs at least 5 to 1. I had planned to stay home from work today to vote having been prepped by the news reports of long lines for early voting and knowing that our voting locale was someone’s garage with a single voting machine.

However, as my wife left around 7 am to catch the bus to go into work, she was amazed to find nobody in line.

I was busy preparing my five year-old son for school when my wife called to inform me about the voting situation.  After hanging up, I asked my son if he wanted to go with me to vote (he has been obsessed with Barack Obama for about two months much to the consternation of both sets of his very Republican grandparents).

It was one of those incredible moments as a parent that I hope to never forget—walking to the polls with my son in his red and blue voting hat that he made at school yesterday with his incessant questioning about Obama and McCain, his awe at the voting booth and seeing the large list of candidates for political office, and trying to contain the volume of this excited five year old as I agreed to let him help me push the button confirming my vote.

From New Hampshire:

This morning I awoke to find hanging on my front door an Obama-Biden-Shaheen mailer reminding me to vote, and, after voting this morning, at 2:00 PM ET, I have already been personally checked up on twice by Obama/Democratic volunteers who have knocked at my door. If this is what is happening nationally, it is very impressive.

Colorado:

I work from home and have just talked to the fourth Obama GOTV person in three days – this on top of a door hanger and a few phone calls.

A reader writes:

Saw you on Colbert last night. You were, you’ll pardon the expression, a great straight man.

A reader writes:

I live in Lincoln, Nebraska, the heart of one of the reddest states in the country.  I have voted in the same polling location for the last 8 years.  Every election, my wife and I are the first two people at the poll when it opens (we like to vote immediately).  Today, when we arrived a half-hour before the polling place opened, there were already fourteen people in line.  The poll workers were astonished, my wife and I were shocked – and the line kept growing.  When we left, after voting, the line was longer than it was when we got there.  This has never happened before.

Ahead of us in line was three-generations of an African American family.  It was the first time voting for all three of them.  The youngest, who graduated high school last year, was calling his friends and getting them out of bed while we waited in line.  He was describing the polling place and giving directions for getting there. After he voted, he had probably the biggest grin I’ve ever seen.

(PHOTO: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty.)

A reader writes:

Dale City VA field office. Every five minutes, twenty new volunteers were showing up to canvass for Barack.

A reader writes:

I’m an agnostic libertarian who has been working since I was sixteen years old;  I’ll be sixty-one in a couple of weeks, and I’m terrified by the world created by the Bush-Cheney administration. I founded my own company in 1992, and it’s in danger of closing its doors now. My IRA is all but wiped out, and I can’t imagine who will hire a person of my age in these desperate times, despite my experience and work ethic. I hope I’ll muddle through, but I fear a refrigerator box in my near future. I’m another rendition of Joe the Plumber–a small business owner in big need of a break, maybe even a miracle (that’s the agnostic position–one hopes for miracles without the least certainty that Anyone is listening).

It’s hilarious and uplifting to me that, like you, I favor a flat tax, oppose entitlements and corrupt unionism, and I support Obama.

Like you, I am very leery of a single party government, perhaps for different reasons: I believe that humans are frail, and just as Wall Street was seduced by unregulated roads to obscene wealth, Dems may well be seduced by the power in their grasp with the Executive and Legislative branches sewn up, and the Judicial not very far behind. 

I thank you for the hope, faith, and vision you shared with the world in your blog today. Please pray, while I hope, for a Democratic landslide.  Please pray, while I hope, for a united centrist government that will restore law, dignity, prosperity and personal freedom to our country.

A reader writes:

I waited in line for three hours to vote the other day.  What amazed me was all the different people out there voting.  There was this ridiculous line and a single mother was in front of me, she was trying to feed her child in her arms and scooted the baby carrier on the ground with her foot.  I saw men and women in uniform, I saw elderly in wheelchairs, elderly standing in the line wheeling oxygen tanks along with them. When I got up to the poll worker who printed off my ballot for me, I asked her if it was like this every day.  She said for the past week or so it had been, averaging thirty thousand people a day coming in to vote early.  Then I read in the paper this morning about how Ohio is expecting an 80% voter turnout. It is absolutely amazing.

(Photo: A student at Ohio State University casts her vote at a campus polling place November 4, 2008 in Columbus, Ohio. By Chris Hondros/Getty.)

Megan responds to Ross:

Obama is almost certain to disappoint in big ways; he doesn’t have the money to pull an FDR, or even an LBJ.  He will have to fulfill their committments before he can look to his own, and the tax situation is looking pretty dire.  Obama may turn out to be the president of tax increases and spending cuts, which didn’t work out so good for the first George Bush.

But for me, I think one thing is clear:  the Republican party cannot survive without some time in the wilderness. 

Look at this election: what do Republicans have to say, except "I’ll cut your taxes and pay for it by cutting spending on some entirely fictional person who lives nowhere near you?"  and "Pointy headed liberals with fancy degrees are looking down on you!  Are you going to stand that?"  That’s not a platform.  It’s barely worthy of a drunken 3 am rant.

I don’t like most of Obama’s ideas, but at least he has some.  If conservatives really want smaller government and so forth, they need to step up their game.

It’s a sunshine day!