A couple of hours ago, I sent a text message to son Stephen, announcing I'd just voted and asking whether he'd done so yet. He responded, "We're about to head over. Linda [Holmes] said the line in her ward is nuts and that they'd already reached 40 percent turnout as of 10:30 a.m. No early voting, either!" He and his wife are in Silver Spring, Maryland, in the Washington, D.C., neck of the woods, and I have yet to hear that they've finished casting their votes. Topping it off: Stephen works for National Public Radio, and the crew there is going to be up late, late, late tonight. (I'd forgotten that aspect of being in the news media. When The Cleveland Press still existed, election day and the following day were crazy.)
Here is one of the (many) advantages to living in rural Wisconsin. I decided to be at the polling station at 7 a.m.,when the doors opened. (For one thing, a bunch of guys are in the process of installing a heat pump at my house, and I wanted to be there if there were any questions during the day. For another thing -- well, I just wanted to be there when the doors opened.) The crowd that was there already amounted to three people. The doors opened, the first guy said he wanted to register, so he stepped to one side, while the multitude of the rest of us (I think three more people had arrived after me) were processed through. I opted, as ever, for the paper ballot to be read by the optical scanner, there was a minor glitch, the minor glitch was fixed, and I was on my way. [Parenthetical note: This photo is from the September rally I referred to yesterday. That posting was so photo-heavy it made itself crazy, so I saved this one for today. Someday, I'll gain the knack of illustrating this blog so that pictures don't confuse it. Or me. But not today, I fear.]
Now, it's just a matter of waiting -- for both voting results and the heat pump. And I'll be checking out The Daily Show and Colbert Report special broadcast tonight on Comedy Central. Check your local listings.
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