Well, today, of course, is Tuesday November 2, 2004. That means that here in the US, it’s Election Day. Beth and I voted first thing this morning, and then went out to The Egg and I for breakfast, and then I went to work.
I’d heard so many horror stories about the long lines for early voting, that I was prepared for the worst. You see, there have been news articles and reports from co-workers of voters having to wait in line for 2 hours, or even 3 hours, to vote. I think it’s ironic that (some) people do early voting to “avoid the long lines” on election day, only to have a 2 hour wait on the early voting day.
Anyhow, it took me a whopping 12 minutes, from the time I got in line at the voting place to the time I walked out the door. I’d estimate I stood in line for 3 minutes, filled out the form for 1 minute, and voted for 7 minutes. Then it took a minute to drop my voting card in the box and walk out the door. So, as I’d hoped, things went a whole lot quicker in Broomfield at the local voting precinct than the horror stories I’ve heard of early voting.
This is the 5th Presidential election I’ve participated in. Sadly, it was the 1st where I used my vote to vote against someone rather than for someone. I feel that President GW Bush has been such a poor leader that the country would be better off with just about anyone else in office. He’s presided over a period in American history with a nearly unprecedented opportunity to unite the world and especially the American citizens, and he’s squandered his chance. Some people look at how he handled the 9/11 terrorist attacks and say that shows what a great leader he was, and I think just the opposite. That wake up call was a perfect chance to rally Americans toward a common cause, and yet it looks to me like the populace is more divided than ever before! Similarly, he had the perfect opportunity to bring the whole civilized world together to fight terrorism, and Bush decided instead to go it essentially alone. Again, it looks to me that there is more anti-US sentiment throughout the rest of the world than ever before. These things matter! One part of being a member of a society is cooperation and collaboration with the other members. Being a lone wolf and playing by your own rules ultimately doesn’t pay off, and history shows that. It’s just not the way a stable and healthy society operates.
So, I voted against Bush. I filled in the “John Kerry” oval on the ballot, but not because I really like Kerry. It was only because a vote for Kerry was the most effective vote against Bush.
Beth and I took bets on when the Presidential election will really be decided. In the last election, with the Florida debacle, it was weeks after the actual votes were cast. Beth thinks we’ll know by tomorrow who the next President is going to be. So she’s betting on 11/3/2004. I guess I’m a lot more pessimistic. I’m betting that it’ll be closer to 12/10/2004. I expect dozens of challenges all over the country, investigations into electronic voting fraud (a new report just came out yesterday about crackers breaking into Diebold voting machines), accusations of intimidation at the polls, etc. But maybe I’m just being a pessimist again. We’ll see.
There were, of course, a number of state and local issues on the ballot. I think I’ll track what percentage of the ones I voted for (or against) end up passing (or not). Usually, it seems I have about a 50% record overall of voting for the winner (with the exception of the Presidential election – I’ve never voted for the winning candidate in the past 4 elections).