Please please please, let me, let me, let meeeee get what I waaaaaant this tiiiiime
Election Day is nigh at last; I can’t WAIT to vote. And, honestly, to have this campaign madness over with at last…not to mention the last eight years’ worth.
In case it didn’t go without saying, I hereby and without reservation endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. I urge all American citizens in the readership, regardless of your party affiliation (or lack of same; I’m an independent myself), to vote tomorrow, no matter how cold or rainy it is outside where you are or how long the line is or whatever other minor hassle might prevent you from exercising your right to affect the political future of your country. We’ve all just proven that everyone doing a little adds up to doing a lot; your vote counts. Cast it.
To my international readers: fingers crossed for us, please; we’ll try not to biff it again.
Not sure where to vote, or what you need to bring? PopWatch posted a handy links guide.
Tags: Barack Obama civic duty friends politix sites
CA checking in, and it’s NO on 8, NO on 4! C’mon Californians!
I’m voting first thing in the morning, and then volunteering to drive voters to the polls. Did you vote already? Don’t want to spend the day obsessively refreshing your polling statistic website of choice? Volunteer! Or bring snacks and water to those who are standing in line!
This election is making me so crazy I can’t stop using exclamation points! On everything I say! So very annoying!
If the Philadelphia Phillies can win the World Series, then Obama can be president!
I’m voting after the first worker rush (it tends to get calmer after 9:30). Then swimming to relieve stress, then going to work from 3:30 to 8 pm as an election watchdog for a nonpartisan group that’s been doing that here for about 100 years, I think. My assigned area is a black middle to upper middle class neighborhood. So I don’t expect many problems–these neighborhoods are always high turnout and not likely to be subject to any shenanigans–and I do expect a lot of elation. I’m planning on being elated to, in a nonpartisan kind of way (until 8 pm when I turn on my partisanship).
Jenno, you made me cry. And reminded me of an assistant I once had who would go bonkers if anyone suggested not voting. She said people had died to give her the right to vote and she would never take that for granted.
Not only am I working from home tomorrow, I literally live across the street from where I vote. All signs point to VOTE!!!!
@Luna: …Ew. Sorry about that. I’ll go into Google AdSense and try to pull it out.
That reminds me of when TWoP had the Bush/Cheney ads up in, I think, ’04, and Yahoo is all, “Sorry, they’re run of network, nothing we can do!” “…Really. Well, we’ll just give them your individual email addresses, then.” Seems there *was* something they could do after several hundred complaints. Go figure.
via Jossip: http://www.jossip.com/something-to-remember -this-election-year-by-20081103/
Hubby and me voted last week. For Obama, of course. So did my son. So will my daughter if she hasn’t already.
Like you I keep repeating to myself “please, please, please”…being blue in a red state is not easy, but I’ve seen so many more Obama signs/stickers/etc, I’m hopeful the red may turn a bit lavender by the end of the night…
How am I going to sit still at work??
I have planned to vote for Obama the entire time, and hoped he would snag the nomination all along. But my true affinity for him — the moment when I assigned him the status of “natural ally,” which my best friend reserves for those people you realize are One Of Us, came while I was watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCeNPAaGVVY
Watch the whole thing, because IT IS AWESOME, but at the eleven-minute mark, you will see Barack Obama LINE-EDIT HIS OWN SPEECH.
Specifically, he changes the line, “How good can your judgment be when you think George Bush is right 95 percent of the time?” to “How good can your judgment be when you think George Bush has been right 95 percent of the time?” He changes “is right” to “has been right.” There is ZERO chance that this affects the political effect of the line; it makes the same point either way. No one’s going to notice, no one’s going to talk about it on television, and no one’s going to react differently because of that change.
But the statistic they’re citing is past votes, so it should rightly be “has been right” and not “is right.” If anything, “is right” would make a better political dig, but it’s ever-so-slightly not strictly true, even though by election standards, it’s perfectly reasonable. Watching that clip, I could reach no conclusion other than that he changed that line in a way that absolutely nobody had any chance of ever noticing, simply to make it more accurate.
I’m thinking there are very, very few people who have run for president in my lifetime who would copy-edit their own speeches to begin with, let alone copy-edit them for no reason other than incredibly subtle points of accuracy. LOVE that bit.
Pardon me — it’s “was right” to “has been right.” So I’m not sure it’s accuracy, even. He just likes it better. He’s just…an editor. Which makes me equally happy.
I heard about the Google Adsense “yes on 8” crap earlier today, and pulled Adsense from my blogs…at least until Wednesday. ;-)
And yes, definitely NO ON 4, as well as hell-to-the-NO on the horrific Prop 8. Unfortunately my fiance, being the father of a nearly-teenaged daughter, is leaning yes on 4. *sigh* I guess we’ll just have to cancel each other out on that one.
From http://www.fiverthirtyeight.com
“If there is one shocker on election night in the presidential race, cast your eyes to Georgia. 1,994,990 people voted early in Georgia. 3,301,875 total voted in Georgia’s presidential race in 2004.
Let that sink in.”
Go America. Please please PLEASE don’t disappoint me.
Appearing at an Obama GOTV event tonight in West Philly? Deborah Messing, (my wife) Morgan Fairchild (that’s the ticket!), and Phillies shortstop and reigning (for just a few more days) NL MVP Jimmie Rollins (looking much more serious than I’ve ever seen him).
I’m so psyched. Please let this be even better than last Wednesday.
Those “Yes on Prop 8” ads have been EVERYWHERE from what I hear on the few other blogs I read, too. (Unclutterer, Cakewrecks, and some then secondhand comments discussion of where others have come across them).
Someone’s shoving some money out there making a last minute push!
My husband was one of Obama’s students in law school waaay back in the late ’90s, and later told me that Obama was “the single most admirable person on the entire faculty.” That was in late 2003. My poor sweetie has been glued to the coverage for weeks and I honestly think that if Obama loses he’ll blow an aneurysm and then I’ll be a widow. I am keeping my fingers crossed, since I would prefer to remain married and have Obama in the White House.
I live in Oregon, so I have already voted (for Obama!!). Tomorrow after I get off work, I will spend the afternoon picking up ballots for people who haven’t turned theirs in yet. I have to do *something* tomorrow or I will sit at home getting more and more wound up.
Go Obama!!
@Linda: My mother and I were just laughing — mirthlessly, mostly — the other day about what a nice change of pace it will be to have a president who is not locked in a constant death struggle with the English language, in which English is taking a crunchy beating.
My Obama shirt FINALLY arrived in the mail today. Somehow I was sent an XL, and it’s eeeeee-NOR-mous, but I don’t care. Belting it, wearing it as a minidress.
I’m grateful that the only proposition on the New York ballot this year is kind of a no-brainer. “Do you hate disabled veterans? No? Awesome. Vote yes on Prop 1.” Trying to understand some of these bi-level bond issues is hard enough in an off year, but I just can’t really deal with that level of complexity this time around.
This lazy-assed non-activist Southern Californian has volunteered to drive carless peeps to the polls tomorrow. I have a trunkful of bottled water and a bag of fun-sized Snickers and I am ready to make sure that anyone who wants to cast their vote, gets to cast their vote.
I’ve even a-getting up early to do it.
No on 8, YES ON HOPE!
Joining the NO ON 8!!!! chorale. I consider the “Yes on 8” sign on my neighbor’s lawn damn near hate speech, and only my bone-deep respect for their right to express their totally noxious opinion has kept it from being lit on fire. If the incredibly deceitful Yes on 8 campaign, coupled with the already existing intolerance, leads to this bigoted crap passing, my fiance and I have agreed that despite being het, we will either get a domestic partnership or go to Connecicut to get married because we feel like we’re sitting on the front of the bus getting hitched in a state where gay people can’t.
And @ Amie — there’s a very interesting article at http://www.thedailybeast.com on the total, compete, utter nutjob who has hurled $900,000 at the Yes on 8 campaign. Did I mention: nuts?
As an American residing overseas, I voted absentee a few weeks ago (for Obama, natch). I also got my mom, who doesn’t live in the U.S. either, to vote this year. The national news media over here is doing a 24hr coverage of the U.S. elections. I’m not sure I’ll survive the suspense.
@ Kate H “my fiance and I have agreed that despite being het, we will either get a domestic partnership or go to Connecicut to get married because we feel like we’re sitting on the front of the bus getting hitched in a state where gay people can’t.”
I feel you girl, as an engaged woman highly invested in human rights, but I urge you to reconsider– one of the arguments against gay marriage is that it will impact straight marriage, and not getting married because teh gays can’t delivers that self-fulfilling prophesy…
On topic now… Go Voting!
my fingers are sooooo crossed that my US ‘cousins’ will make the right decisions.
Voting is compulsory for over 18s here in Australia.
Go, VOTE!!!
I’m so excited about voting I woke up at 4:00 this morning. It’s like Christmas when I was a kid. I’ve never voted for a woman for President before. I will probably cry. I just am vibrating with anticipation.
I voted early in Florida, too, and I would like to add to my fellow Floridians’ pleas to vote no on 2!!!! I’m in a domestic partnership, but even were I not, I’d still think it’s abhorrent. The anti-2 ads have mostly featured a 60ish white middle-aged couple pleading the rest of us to not take their hospital visitation rights away. I think that will mostly result in the bigots saying, “Just get married then, fools” rather than seeing that they’ll be hurting people. Then again, running ads with gay people certainly wouldn’t work on the bigots, so I’m not sure what to think.
Obama ’08!!!
I am a London lawyer with US clients who used to work with both Obama and Michelle at their previous law firm (where they got together – she was his boss one summer I believe!) – both terrific people apparently – and frighteningly bright. We are all crossing our fingers for you over the pond, and waiting with baited breath. My team has a champagne breakfast laid on for all of our local clients from 7am so we can watch the final results come in – good luck to you all!
@ Ibis & FloridaErin: Good for both of you guys. I waited in line on Sunday for 6-1/2 hours to vote early in Miami, so I had ample opportunity to read my sample ballot about 13 times until I just about had it memorized. I had known about Amendment 2, but reading it that many times just made me sick. I don’t know how it is we haven’t been more coverage in Florida for it, but I was theorizing to my new best friend that I met in line that day that perhaps it’s because we haven’t had any celebrities campaigning about it (what a sad comment on our culture if that’s true). Of course, as I was doing so, Cynthia Nixon and Jeffrey Wright turned up to shake our hands and encourage us to vote against it…
I don’t know how I’m going to get through today. I woke up with the same feeling that I used to have when I was a little kid and it was my birthday.
I feel better days are soooo close….soooo close. I’m going to go vote in about an hour. It will be interesting to see how busy my polling place is. In past elections I’ve never had to wait.
@Sarah: It seems like a small thing, but it’s not, really. He’s a law school professor. He was the goddamn president of the Harvard Law Review. Things are going to be thought through. He’s not going to kick scientists out of the government for saying things they’re not supposed to say. I was just watching Frontline last night — their awesome special on the candidates — and watching how he disappointed some progressives when he became president of the HLR, because they assumed that he would see his primary task as advancing his side of every argument, and it turns out that as the president of the law review, he thought his primary task was, you know, making the law review good.
And I was like, “Oh, please please please…”
Today’s the day. Now………VOTE!!!!!!!!
When you vote today, if you or anyone you see has any problems, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. They are hooked in to every nonpartisan watchdog group across the United States. Concerns will be handled by volunteer organizations that are experienced at this election thing. Four years ago I was involved in sheriffs coming to confiscate Russian-language voter intimidation materials at immigrant-heavy polling places and I never felt so useful as an election watchdog. There are plenty of people out there ready to respond if there is any attempt to subvert the free election process. So go, vote, and if you see anything shady, or see anyone upset because they’ve been denied the right to vote or feel they’re being coerced or intimidated, call.
@Jenno: “…failure to vote when you have the right is a slap in the face to your ancestors who didn’t.”
Hear, hear, Jenno! And for many of us, it’s our not-so-distant ancestors. My great-grandmothers did not have the right to vote until they were in their 40s–women did not have the right to vote until my grandmothers were in junior high. That is a *short* time ago.
Most of my great-grandmothers weren’t heavily involved in the fight–they were too busy raising children, crops, and livestock–but I know that one of them was a suffragist, much to the dismay of her Chicago-politician husband! (Word is that he didn’t really disagree with her, but his cronies did.) And once Great-Gram got her vote, she would never tell her husband who she was casting it for. Drove him crazy. Hee hee. Until I heard that story, I had no idea that the sweet little old lady we used to visit in the nursing home was such a pistol.
Anyhoo, the short version is that I vote for Great-Gram, and her mother and grandmother who came to these shores and weren’t given the same rights that their spouses were.
Man, these comments are inspiring. Coming off our own very uninspiring Canadian election, I have chills at the thought of what you guys can accomplish today. It’ll be a sleepless night for me tonight as I watch the Tomato Nation and the American Nation make history.
@Bo
Thanks for the heads up about 1-866-OUR VOTE. I called them after I found out that my usual polling place had been moved. We never received notification and there was no notice anywhere redirecting voters to the correct location. A passerby in a car stopped and let me know what was going on.
I called the local paper which has an online edition along with 1-866-OUR-VOTE to see if a sign could be posted at the old location.
My favorite part of voting in NYC is that they use the old mechanical ballot system, and when you record your vote and pull the lever, there’s this super-satisfying KECHONK! And it happens all around you: KECHONK KECHONK KECHONK!
Sometimes a little drama is good, gets you invested in the situation.
I waited in line an hour to vote- Hurray! Love the turnout (even if I don’t live in a swing state).
Sadly though, no one had any “I voted!” stickers, so no free coffee or donuts for me.
I’ll be okay though, as long as my Obama rocks the vote.
A Prayer for Florida
“If there has to be a screw-up, let it be somewhere else. Let some other state’s ballots go missing, its machines cough up negative numbers, its computers declare a victory for Grover Cleveland. Let the assembled media of the world descend upon Albuquerque or Des Moines.
“But preferably, let it happen nowhere at all. We’re due for a nice, clean, undisputed election. Please.” –Howard Troxler, St. Petersburg Times
We’re trying not to screw this one up. Honest.
:) Well, I didn’t get a KECHONK – I got a BLEEP. It was kind of dramatic, in a “hee-hee-OMG if he doesn’t win I’m going to barf” sort of way.
I also love those old NY style voting machines. I like the rumble rumble bing! sound when you open the curtains.
I’m voting straight down my ticket this year, but I will do it by hand just to fill in the Obama circle. Makes it more real.
Maybe the volunteers at my polling place will let me skip the line once they assess the odds of me transmitting death flu to everyone.
@Liz- I’m officially wickedly jealous of your husband, and that is just an awesome story.
@Drew- Ok, that’s just neat. Unfortunately, Kissimmee, FL got a rally, but no celebs came out for no on 2. They did have people going up and down the line handing out stickers and trying to educate people, which was cool.
Then again, we did get Jimmy Smitts at our rally, being all awesome, making the crowd scream “Si se puede!” (even us gringos chanted along) and getting the hispanics riled up, and spouting Matt Santos quotes left and rights. So, you know, I really can’t complain.
Election hijinks: I was talking to someone outside my polling place this morning, and bitching about the ridonkulous long list of judges we have to vote for here in Chicago (68 judges, not counting appellate court and whatnot). Turns out…she is one of those judges.
*facepalm*
Go Americans Go! We’re counting on you guys. And I’m going to stay up until midnight, at least – apparently some of the early states may well decide it and then I might be able to go to sleep, safe in the knowledge that a woman who thinks ‘seeing a country across the water’ = ‘foreign policy experience’ is not the second most powerful person in the USA.
I like voting, I think it’s cool. This is the third time I’ve gotten to vote for President, and it’s kind of neat to think that maybe this time I’ll pick the winner. :)
Also, I live in Pennsylvania, so that’s awesome, too. Yay for voting!
@Hannah: I’ll pray for Florida if you pray that it’s not California either.
This is my first in-person vote – I’ve been absentee since leaving high school! I have no idea what kind of polling device this state uses, but I have a feeling it will be a lot more “real” than putting an envelope in the mail with my bills. :)
Vote ’08!
(And I’m more than a little bit relieved that the constant campaigning will be OVER today. I’ve had literally 12 messages on my do-not-call-listed house phone in the last 48 hours.)
I am 26 and I voted for the first time ever today. That line in the speech Adrienne mentioned: “But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope”. Yea, that gave me goosebumps. It is the reason why I finally decided to cast my first (and hopefully not last!) vote, and why my vote goes to Obama.
Oh, and I also got my mom (42 years old, never voted) registered to vote. She texted me a little while ago to let me know she voted for Obama. :)
For my fellow Chicagoans — I’ve heard Early to Bed (sorry no link, I’m at work and that is probably not considered a work appropriate site) on Sheridan, just north of Foster is giving free goodie bags and 10% off to people who voted today.
Went and voted this morning without a hitch. Took about an hour – I had worn comfy shoes and brought a coat and was prepared to wait, so no problem. While waiting, my guy was marveling at the lines and noted that the school where he works is also a polling place but never has any lines and almost no one shows up. Well after we parted ways to go to work, he called to say that people were in line 3 deep and the line was several blocks long. There were people in line at 4:30am! Yay! I have to believe this is all because of Obama!!
@ Jacq – *snerk* Thanks for the laugh. I was born in Alaska, so I’m doubly crossing my fingers that she won’t be second-in-command.
I’m so mad at how she’s representing my home state.
“Sadly though, no one had any “I voted!” stickers, so no free coffee or donuts for me.”
You totally don’t need one. Just go to Starbucks and ask for a “voting coffee.” That’s what I did, as did the four people in front of me. I asked for an “I Voted” sticker but they were out. Don’t matter none; I’ve got my Obama button.
I voted in NYC this morning (KECHONK), and I came in at the end of the before-work rush, so it took about an hour but was slowing down when I left. The attendant said that they got there at 5 AM and there was already a crowd waiting. I was grinning like a nut on the way out, and then I started getting butterflies, and they have not abated. I am a MESS.
Word, Jenno. My ancestors were considered subhuman, and then three-fifths of a person – you bet your ass I vote, every time.
My Facebook news feed is full of friends who just voted for Obama. I am so happy that some of my generation actually cares. I’m in Massachusetts and I voted against some of the questions most people my age voted yes on, but I am still happy they voted at all.
I don’t know how I am going to make it through the day. Move faster, time! I need to know the winner NOW!
Woooooooooooooooooooord. My mother, brother, and sister-in-law saw Obama in VA last night – apparently 100,000 people showed up? In Manassas? THUG LIFE, Y’ALL.
ps: @Sheila – I looked at that long list of judges and totally skipped it, which is a total fail on my part. So at least you didn’t tell her something like that.