I Voted!, originally uploaded by kallure.

I hope you did too!  I’m not going to wax poetic on my political views or even tell you directly who I voted for.  Not because I don’t want to support my candidate or defend my views regarding him, but because I don’t feel like it’s something I should have to justify to anyone but myself and what I believe.  And in this lovely interwebs environment, there is never going to be a right or wrong answer because we all are going to believe what we believe.

I do believe our country needs help and needs a change.  And I would hope that whoever wins is willing to dig their heels in and fight for us.  Because right now, no one, not even ourselves, is looking out for us at a country.  And someone needs to.

I stood in line for 3 1/2 hours to cast my vote.  I should have gotten there before the polls opened but could not drag my butt out of bed.  By the time I got to my old high school, of all places (the one I attended for three months before moving to PA my freshman year), the line was snaked around the front of the building.  But I chatted with the people around me and it moved rather quickly inside.  It was when I got inside that I realized it had only just begun.  After walking through three hallways, I finally came to the end.  Another two hours in line and I was finally able to cast my vote.

The buzz was electric.  There were two ladies who almost started to fight with one of the poll managers because they were calling people to the front of the line according to the letters of their last name.  Not fair, necessarily, but that’s the way the odds were stacked.  They had five lines broken down according to what your last name started with.  And there just weren’t many people in some of the lines.  So they were trying to fill the spaces. Everyone else was just excited and waiting patiently and proclaiming that they didn’t care if they were late for work, they were staying until they could cast their vote.

It felt good to see so many people turn out to vote.  That’s why I was patient.  Everyone else, record numbers of people, were there for the same reason as me.  And we all had to be there.  It wasn’t going to help anyone if we made the situation miserable for each other.

There were moments of chaos and frustration.  The wait was rough.  My legs and back were killing me.  It was hot and muggy inside the school, which actually feels and looks like a prison.  It felt a bit unfair that they were calling people ahead after others had been waiting for hours.  Some were allowing people to come to the front just because they had children with them (seriously, don’t get me started on that! I’m fine with the elderly but there was an almost nine month pregnant woman patiently waiting in line and these women with children, not toddlers or infants mind you, just children, were cutting in front of everyone!).  And when I finally got up to register, I had to wait for them to process the curbside registrations on the computer that was being used to process my registration (couldn’t they have had a computer specifically for that?).  Not to mention the fact that they took two rather large voting districts and shoved us all into one school and one tiny little cafeteria.

But those were minute inconveniences for such a landmark day.  And while I would like to try and avoid all of the never ending coverage tonight, I know I’m not going to be able to stay away.

So here’s hope tomorrow bring a victory and some hope.  Because Lord knows we need it!

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