A Girl With a Sword

I voted today!

and they didn't give me a sticker. I called Will and gave him the update, I was about the 200th voter at my polling place at 1:30. Not sure what that means, but CNN says turn out this week is better than turn out for the Republican primary last week. When I went in there was no line, but by the time I left it was out the door.

So I don't know where they get the people working the polls, but these people were seriously holding things up. The person who was supposed to be looking up the names didn't seem to have a firm grasp of the alphabet, and then he had to fill in little bubbles for Republican and Democrat (not sure whether he was supposed to ask the people, which he didn't, or whether it was supposed to indicate which primary they were voting in), but he seemed to be very confused about which bubble he was supposed to fill in. I noticed a Barack Obama poll watcher sitting off to the side eating a sandwich. I guess candidates can station people at the polls to make sure everything is in the clear. I hope the guy went and told someone that things were kind of crazy. Thankfully the actually voting was fairly simple--computerized actually, which I hadn't encountered before, but it just gave you a list of names and you picked one and then it came back with a screen that just had one name, basically so you could be like "yeah, that's who I wanted to vote for," and then it was like "VOTE" or "Return to list" and you said "VOTE!" and then it played Sufjan Stevens's Come On! Feel the Illinoise! if you voted for Obama or that Celine Dion song if you voted for Hillary. Actually I made that last part up, the actual voting was terribly anticlimactic and there were no exit pollers so I just walked home through the park and did more homework.

I went over to the Obama field office near my house the other night. I was just dropping off some donation so they could get food for their volunteers, but it was such a great atmosphere in there. So busy but warm and happy and there were signs everywhere and it was so exciting to see so many people getting behind a cause like that. So, needless to say, I was very easy to talk into volunteering, especially since the boy who was trying to talk me into it was pretty and funny.

So on Thursday afternoon I showed back up at the headquarters and they ran through the phone script with me and another girl who came in at the same time as me, only she had just gotten there from Virginia. I wanted to ask her more about why she traveled all this way and stuff, but wasn't sure how to put it. I mean, the stuff they had us doing was just calling Obama supporters to see if they wanted to volunteer, it seemed a little redundant, getting volunteers to get more volunteers, but oh well other people were doing other stuff, too. They were mostly looking for volunteers for today to go canvas neighborhoods, but door-to-door stuff has never been my thing and I figure, if I don't have to do it for Jesus, I don't have to do it for Barack Obama (although that isn't my policy in all things, like, say, voting).

But calling people is really annoying, especially since half the numbers didn't even work, you know, they gave the "we're sorry, the number you have dialed . . ." message. Perturbing since these people were supporters who were supposed to have supplied their contact information. So there I was, a South Carolina voter calling other South Carolina voters, but the thing is, I'm not from South Carolina, and I knew that I should have been saying "ma'am" and "sir", but I don't know where to put them, and that made me nervous and I was already nervous, and then I was nervous about my northern accent and it just made me more northern, I was Michigan, movin' on up to Canada!! Hopefully they were charitable and thought I was just from Barack's home state of Chicago. By the time I left I was just hoping I hadn't done any damage to the Obama campaign! But I didn't go to any of the (three!) rallys this week, and I wanted to show my support some way, besides voting that is. Although I guess that's the only way that really counts. And let's hope it counts. Polls close in four minutes.