I guess I kind of wondered what it would take to knock Virginia's non-Republican voters out of their apathy and to the polls to make protest votes.
I live in a heavily Democratic (or, at least, non-Republican) neighborhood. Usually I'm in and out of the polling place in five minutes. In 2000, I had to wait fifteen minutes. My precinct only has four voting machines, the old lever kind, more than enough to cope with the usual low turnout.
Today I arrived at 9:00 and the line went out the door and halfway down the block. I waited one hour and forty-five minutes. Admittedly, this was due as much to the poor throughput of the election officials handling the A-J voters (the K-Z team's throughput was seven times theirs—I was waiting more than long enough to make the calculations) as it was to the number of people showing up. One of the campaign people told me that when he arrived at 6:00 am, the line went all the way down the block and around the corner.
Yay for the Seventh Precinct! I knew we had it in us.
188 words | November 2, 2004 06:28 PM | Real true story