(no subject)

[geekchick]

From today's Washington Post, a mention of my polling place:

At Greenbriar West Elementary School in Fairfax, 100 people were already in line at 5:30 a.m., a half hour before the doors opened. When the polls did open, there were more than 150 waiting to vote in four booths.

Insomnia kept me up so late that I didn't have time to go before work this morning, but I'm taking my allotted hour and leaving early to vote this evening. I have a book, my voter registration card, and a bottle of water to take with me.

One thing I will say for Bush is that he seems to have been a great motivator in terms of getting people to vote. I have to confess that I didn't register to vote until 2000, and I did it in large part to vote against him. Not that my vote mattered that much since he won Virginia handily (no big surprise there), but I felt that if I didn't vote I lost any leg to stand on regarding bitching about the administration. This year, I know at least one person who registered to vote for the first time in order to vote against Bush. I'm amazed to hear stories about hundreds of people in line to vote when the polls open, given how utterly apathetic about voting the American public is; no matter how it goes, at least one good thing to come out of this election is what looks at the moment to be a record voter turnout.

This year was also the first year I've donated money to a campaign or political party, because this time around it's even more important to me that Bush not win this election. I'm grateful to people on my friends list like patgreene and gothic_peacock who are also donating their time and energy to help get out the vote and to work with Election Protection to prevent disenfranchisement.

I'm not going to exhort everyone on my friends list to go vote; those who are going to are already going to, those who aren't won't be swayed at this point by my asking them to. Soon it will just be a matter of waiting for the lawsuits to roll in.

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

And one pollster this morning (Zogby) now predicts a dead heat in Virginia, driven by higher-than-expected turnout in the north and African-American neighborhoods, and disillusioned military families in the Tidewater. It could be *very* close there...