Day of reckoning

Well, I did my duty and went out to vote this morning. The polls opened at 6 a.m., and the whole family was out of the car and in line at 6:05. There were probably 200 or so people ahead of us, with maybe 30-40 of them were standing outside. It moved pretty quickly, only taking 33 minutes to go from joining the line to putting my ballot in the box and leaving.

The girls were so funny while we were waiting. You can tell they've been listening to their parents, because they quite often will ask, "Can we go see Obama? Is that Obama? Where's Obama?" and this morning was no different. We had talked to them about keeping who we're voting for a "secret" so that they wouldn't be inadvertently electioneering at the polling place, but several times in line they asked, "Mom, can we get an Obama sticker? Are we going to see Obama yet?", which drew chuckles from everyone around us in line.

Now it's time to sit back and wait for results while I spend the whole day working my butt off. This is the one part of election days that is so bittersweet for me - I'm always so excited to exercise my right to vote, but it's dampened by the fact that election days are some of the longest, most hectic nights of work for me. And that's just based on being in Wyoming, where elections aren't even that hotly contested or have any where close to the population of Missouri.

I'm amazed at the predictions of turnout. Several places have predicted 70% or higher turnout in Missouri - if that holds, that would be 2,805,021 based on the Secretary of State's numbers from 2006. That's huge! And it doesn't even include however many new voters have joined the ranks in the last year as part of the most interesting election of my lifetime. After bottoming out in 1996 with less than 50% voter turnout, I hope to see us smash the national record of 63.06% set in 1960 - I think it's going to be easily surpassed. And the 122 million that turned out in 2004? Easily going to blown away. I wouldn't be shocked to see it come close to or even pass 200 million!