Tuesday, November 4, 2008

New York City Votes

Hope everyone out there voted today. I got to my polling station at 6 AM and there already was a line down the block -- so many people anxious to make history.

The line moved pretty decently until we actually got inside the gymnasium where all the machines were. Once inside, several poll workers mistakenly sent people to the wrong lines and there was much consternation. Fortunately I had my voter registration card and got onto the correct line for my election district. Unfortunately the people working at the tables for my election district didn't seem to know what they were doing so the line got stalled. On top of that there were people doing dumb things like taking cameras into the booth so that slowed things up as well.

It took me almost an hour to vote and, while I was happy to do it, it was annoying that it took so long and it could have been avoided. That said, I won't be a baby about it -- as Americans, we're lucky that we can vote at all.

So now all we can do is hurry up and wait. The first polls close in about 5 minutes and the first big state, Virginia, closes in about an hour. Fingers crossed, breath held, eyes closed, America is about to make a big giant leap into the future.

P.S. I was included in a mass e-mail from Philip Leventhal of Columbia University who's plugging the new edition of The Almanac of New York City. He gives a short history here about how New York City has historically voted in Presidential elections, and it includes a few surprises.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please keep it civil, intelligent, and expletive-free. Otherwise, opine away.