Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Power to the People, Baby!
Got up early, piled in the car, and all three of us voted. I didn't mind the long line, though Brittany was ten minutes late for school, even though we got there a few minutes after seven.
They didn't have "Kids Voting" when I was young. Brit was the first kid in the precinct to vote and then watched me punch holes in the voting card forty minutes later.
Mom and Dad never told us whom they voted for. We would ask. We would campaign. We would try to weasel the info out of them. I think it was only in '68 that Dad finally confessed he couldn't bring himself to vote for Nixon that we knew where his ballot landed. (Though he did joke with us about voting for George Wallace!) Brit asked me which presidential candidate I voted for, but I shushed her as I moved on to other pages. If she had been paying attention, she would have seen, but I'll leave you all in the dark as much as she is. (Hint: did you pay attention?)
In the 80's, it was my tradition to get up early and vote just after polls opened at 6AM. My old grammar school gym sure seemed small. I liked being among the first five or ten voters. In all my years of voting, I never saw a watcher or lawyer, though. Nobody ever wrote down my license number.
Back to '68: my parents let me stay up for those returns. When I fell asleep on the couch, Nixon hadn't pulled it out yet. A change of presidency for the first time in my memory. I will admit I'm more of a tv junkie on election night than even on Super Bowl Sunday or the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I drive Anita crazy flipping between a dozen or so stations. I don't keep a color-coded map any more. And election results from places I've never lived in fascinate me. And when the pundits start talking, I start pressing buttons.
So after All Soul's Mass tonight, I'm speeding home, popping some popcorn, pulling out a beer, and drinking to one of the great nights of the year. I'm going to enjoy watching party operatives and commentators get confounded (at least this year they're a lot more conservative about predictions) and whenever a race is settled, I'm taking a sip and toasting, "Power to the people, baby!"
