As you are certainly aware, today is election day and I just came back from voting. I always like to write up a brief post about my voting experiences and today is no different. I voted in Northeast Wisconsin and I know my vote is worth something.
First of all, the weather is pretty terrible in my part of Wisconsin, possibly the whole state. It's rainy, dreary, windy and generally unpleasant. The only saving grace is that it's rather warm for this time of the year, 55 degrees, which is cool but tolerable. Thankfully I only had to stand out in the wind and the rain for a couple of minutes before the line moved up enough so I could go inside.
That was shocking to me and makes me wonder if turnout is down considerably. I remember in 2016 and 2020, during the pandemic, the line was so long that not only did it go outside but it went around the block as well. This year the line was half as long and was comparable to some more recent highly contested midterm elections. It took me about 25 minutes to vote, which was very surprising to me.
This could also be due to the fact that so many folks in Wisconsin voted early. Supposedly 1.5 million, 41% of the electorate, voted early in my state so that might explain the shorter lines. But even if that's true it does seem like turnout was down quite a bit.
As for the demographics, it was majority male and majority older folks. There were probably three men for every one woman and I barely saw anyone under the age of 30. And the young folks I saw were almost exclusively men. Given that my polling place serves a college, that seems pretty surprising, though who knows if that was more of a function of early voting, the time I voted, or possibly redistricting.
I didn't see anything suspicious and the whole thing ran smoothly. I didn't really talk to anyone but I did hear someone talk to the person handling the same-day registration saying he was a refugee from California and that not only they didn't have ID's for voting, it's actually illegal to ask for ID there. Folks in line were pretty shocked by that, because we have had to show our ID in Wisconsin for years...
Either way, I have done my part and all I can do is hope that everyone else gets out and vote and that they do it in a way that pleases me. I am still somewhat hopeful that things will go well for my "team" today but I'm going to be a wreck until the final results are announced and might be for awhile after if it doesn't go my way. There probably won't be a blog post tonight unless the election is called absurdly early and I won't guarantee one tomorrow either. I think one of my friends had the right idea, right after the election she's heading to Disney World in Florida, and now I wish I was going on vacation the rest of this week too!
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