Election Day 2008

Travis County holds early voting for the two weeks preceding Election Day. I took advantage of this on October 23, Val last week on the last day. So we didn't have to go to our precinct polling site today.

(Our polling site has moved around a lot since I settled at this home address in late 1993. For a while, it was the building at the local city recreation center. Then it moved to a church, and stayed there a while. Then, thanks to the Delay-driven redistricting of Texas, we wound up as part of Texas Congressional district 21, which is mostly San Antonio, by about 1000 feet -- and that time, our redrawn voting precinct had no public facilities whatsoever, so for two years we voted in the garage of a home down the street. In fairness, it was a very clean garage, easy walking distance, and it was nice of the neighbors to volunteer their space. And then, when that redistricting was thrown out and we got re-re-drawn, our polling site moved to an elementary school. Not the one Amalie attends, as that would make sense, but one about twice as far away -- maybe a mile and a half, it's not a burden, but geez, who plans this stuff?)

Carson felt sick last night and slept late into the morning, but when he awoke he felt better (and has shown no signs of relapse, which is all to the good). We decided to take an afternoon walk coincident with Val picking up Amalie on the extendabike. I thought Carson might get tired on the way home -- we planned to visit the rec center and kick around a soccer ball -- so I took out the wagon. Carson decided this meant he got to ride the whole way. Drat. That wasn't my plan, but off we went.

And then I decided to walk all the way to the school and see how the voting was going. It's a good hike, and even pulling the wagon it didn't tax me. We got there, and as I was parking the wagon in the shade, one of the election marshals (or judges, or proctors -- whatever) -- they were both quite young, early 20s at a guess -- asked if I was there to vote.

"No. I voted two weeks ago." I was hardly alone in this distinction; Travis Co. has around 609,000 registered voters, and almost half -- 299,000 or so -- used early voting. Austin is the state capital, and politics of any stripe is like a sport here, but this sort of turnout was unprecedented. The other marshal riffled through the precinct registry for me -- and yep, about half of the names had an "EV" mark next to them. This election really matters to a lot of people.

I told them I just wanted to see how things were going. It was not at all crowded at the moment -- if there was a wait, it was probably no more than a minute, and there was no line outside the door. The marshals said they'd been at the poll since 5:45 am (it was around 3:00 - 3:15 when we stopped by) and, while there had been a line early in the morning, that ended rather quickly and it had been calm and steady since. We agreed that there might be a late crowd but nothing they couldn't handle. I mentioned that I tried to attend the Democratic caucus back in March at the same school, and the line was simply impossible -- I never got in the door, and reportedly the line inside still stretched far down a hallway. Today was a more peaceful sight, and a highly encouraging one.

Carson and I moseyed on. We stopped at the local 7-11 for refreshments (Diet Coke for me, a yogurt smoothie for him), and finally got around to the rec center. Carson romped on the playscape for a bit, played ball with another kid, and finally we went down to the field and kicked around the soccer ball. (He plays on a 3-year-old team in a rec center league on Saturdays, and is quite good at it.) Finally, he was ready to head home, so he saddled up and the team of oxen (me) moved on. Just as we were getting home, Amie and Val rode up on the bike -- Amie loves playing on the school playground after school, and this explained their delay in getting home and our completely coincident timing. My back is a bit stiff from the walk -- the distance didn't trouble me but pulling the wagon (with Carson aboard) for that long did wear me some -- but it'll recover soon.

Big day. Important day. And the real work begins tomorrow.

Vote while you still can.