Here's my promised "voting experience" post. I was #109 at my poling place and it sure was busy. I arrived there at 7:20 AM and didn't get out of their until 7:55. There was a LOT of turnout, comparable to the 2016 presidential election. Part of that is likely due to the fact that I showed up right away in the morning.
The crowd skewed older. I don't think I saw anyone over the age of 25. I live in a college town and when I voted in 2016 there were a couple of younger people that were voting, obviously for their first time, but I didn't see them this time around. This may have been due to the time of day, I know that when I was in college I would be voting after lunch at the earliest but still, I expected to see a few younger people. Even the people in their late twenties were the minority as the crowd seemed to be my age (35) and older.
I also saw only two people register to vote. Everyone else was already good to go. The two that I saw were an older gentleman and a woman who was one of the few people in her twenties. This seemed odd to me as even during other elections there were more people registering for the first time. This was even true for the Wisconsin primaries, which only took about five minutes to vote.
The mood of the people seemed pretty upbeat, with a few people complaining about the lines. I was kind of surprised that nobody complained that the line extended outside of the building. It was raining here this morning so I got a little wet, but even if a hobo ran up to me and stabbed me in my ribs I was going to vote. A little rain wasn't going to stop me.
A couple of people did not stay in line after it was clear it wasn't going to be an in and out thing. One younger couple left early without voting as they had to take their kid to school. That's something I have never seen before in any election. I wonder how serious they were about coming back and voting later? They were talking about noon, but that's probably an even worse time to vote with everyone taking their lunch breaks.
I do have to say that my local polling place seemed a bit disorganized. Part of it was because the line was divided by last name. This seems like a good idea in practice but in execution it never seems to work out. Just like in 2016 the people with names A-N got screwed while the M-Z people were able to skip half the line! Just my luck I was in the first group.
Other than that it was a fairly painless voting experience. It took a bit longer than I would have liked but that's my fault for not early voting and for doing it right away in the morning. It was the only time I could do it easily though so it worked out. I am so glad that I got to vote and I was even a little irrationally worried that I WAS going to get stabbed by a hobo or get into a car crash or something so I would end up missing voting. Now that it is done, it's like a weight off of my head.
As for this blog, a reminder. I probably won't have a reaction post up tonight. I do have work tomorrow and I doubt that election results will be completely called by this evening. I also don't expect to write it tomorrow morning but I should have one up by Wednesday night.
As for tonight, I may have a post up about non-election related things though that is going to depend on what happens in terms of stories and time constraints. I do have to go grocery shopping tonight, so I might just take tonight off and just relax. I think I earned it!
No comments:
Post a Comment