Tuesday, November 4, 2008

i voted/yo voté

Waiting in line outside Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville at 9:15 this morning.

Everyone and their mother has come out to vote today, and morale was very, very high in the line as my mother and I waited to vote at Paint Branch this morning. It felt like a reunion - I saw old friends, classmates, one or two readers, while my mother rubbed elbows with people from my brother's school. I was impressed at how well everyone was able to put aside their politics and just hang out in the parking lot, as people flying down Old Columbia Pike hit the brakes when they saw the congregation outside and let out a collective "Shit, man, look at that."

Inside, the election judges told me that, as of 10:30 a.m., 766 people had voted at Paint Branch since the polls opened at 7. If that turnout persists, we could easily see 3,000 people just at this one polling station, which serves Tanglewood, Calverton and Deer Park. According to the 2000 Census, this area has 5,274 residents. I don't know how many registered voters there are, but that's a crazy good turnout. I think.

5 comments:

Sligo said...

Why you stealin' my blog post title?!

Dan Reed said...

Hey, it's not like you thought of it first! We all got the same flag sticker. (In all truth, though, I didn't read your post until after I'd written mine.)

Sligo said...

I figured. I'm just kidding.

Dan Reed said...

great minds, man, great minds.

Thomas Hardman said...

I should mention that I got to Parkland Middle School a bit after noon, and my poor ol' mom was just walking out as I was walking in. She'd left to vote considerably before I did, I imagine she was in line a bit longer.

It took only about fifteen to twenty minutes for me to get through to the polling booth. One of the elections judges told me that the they'd had a line out into the parking lot when they had been open for an hour, one fellow evidently had been camped out in the cold since 5:30AM.

Yay me, I've got my spiffy little sticker, but there's nowhere I want to redeem it.