I don't write a lot of diaries here. I normally get by with comments. Sometimes, however, I'm motivated to sit down and write a diary of my own. Sometimes the topic is silly. Sometimes I just have an itch to write about something in the news (note that that story is now outdated).
Sometimes, though, I feel compelled to write, driven by an event so wonderful, so amazing that I have to share. What's the event? I voted today ... and so did a whole hell of a lot of other people.
I live in Georgia, specifically DeKalb County. We are lucky to have early voting here, and today I took advantage. In fact, today is the first day of a long-overdue vacation, and I had promised myself that the first substantive thing that I did on my vacation would be to cast my vote for Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jim Martin, John Lewis, and about 735 judges (seriously, the judicial elections went on page after page after page).
I'm not sure if DeKalb has multiple early voting locations, but I went down to the county office at I-285 and Memorial to do my civic duty. The parking lot was packed, but I didn't think much of it because there are a bunch of other county functions there. I turned to the right and then to the left in the parking lot and parked on the east side of the building, where there was a somewhat inconspicuous door marked "Absentee Voting" or something like that. There were a lot of people, but it wasn't clear where they were going (this is the worst foreshadowing in the history of history).
I walked in, and saw a small area to the left where elderly and disabled voters were seated. There was a line going back into the building. I'm terrible with distances, but I'd have to guess the hall was about 20 yards long, packed with people. I grabbed my Absentee/Early Voting form and a clipboard and started marching back through the line. At the end of the hall, the line doglegged to the right...
... and there was another hall, three times the length of the first or more. Filled with people, with voters, patiently waiting in line. I walked down this hall, took another dog-leg...
... and there was another hall, about the same length as the last, filled with people, filled with voters, patiently waiting in line. I walked down this hall and turned left...
... into a large room still under construction, with a line of people about as long as the last two halls. I took up my place at the end of the line, and started the long walk back to the voting room.
I want to pause here to thank the DeKalb County elections staff and the rest of the crew. The line was incredibly smooth, and very fast. I was only in line for 30 minutes. They were professional, friendly, helpful, and they knew exactly what we needed to be doing to keep the line moving. So, DeKalb County: you're doing a fine job, and I appreciate the attention you're giving to this even though we're still a month out.
Just ponder that: today is October 6, and there were already people holding candidate signs on the street corners, already voting officials with a game plan for handling the crowds, already immense crowds of voters ... for all the people I saw in line at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Monday that's not Election Day, the voting official I talked to said that our line was actually pretty short (she said it had been about 30% longer at 10am today) and that it had been packed since early voting opened.
We are voting here in Georgia. Voting in large numbers. I'm sure some of the voters are McCain voters, and I'd offer a sincere and hearty thank you to them as well as well as to Obama voters, because this act of voting is as close as we come to a secular sacrament in the United States and it's something we should all feel blessed to be able to do. But no matter who was voting, the numbers, the happiness, the excitement ... it was jaw-dropping, overwhelming. Can we turn Georgia blue? It's a long-shot (though I think Jim Martin has an excellent chance) because blue areas like DeKalb are competing with the the huge portion of the state that is quite red. But what I saw today gave me tremendous hope.
Some random information:
- The line was easily 85% African American when I was in it. All ages, about an equal number of men and women.
- People walking in were hilarious. Walking down the first leg, they were happy to be there voting, then they became progressively more dejected as they saw the line going on and on and on and on and on, but we were in line cheering them on by telling them that it was moving quickly (and it was!). Of course, I saw this in reverse order as I was walking up the line, so I saw the happiest people in the lobby area: the new arrivals and the people who were about to go in to vote.
- I'm going to repeat this: DeKalb County did a great job organizing this. I hope people who have positive experiences will write to their elections officials to let them know what is working and how much we appreciate the work they do.
Now, I have some pictures but they're from my phone, so I apologize for the poor quality. They don't really do a good job capturing the distances and numbers involved (plus the pictures themselves are tiny). But you all need to see this, because this is what is going on in Georgia. It's extraordinary. Again, this was 3:00 on a random Monday afternoon in Georgia. (Each picture is taken from, essentially, the most distant point in the preceding picture, except for the mysterious missing section that I might have hallucinated.)
From about a third of the way from the back of the last leg of the line (i.e., in the "under construction" room):
From immediately around the corner looking up the next "leg":
Now, here I'm not 100% sure what happened. I am almost certain there's another leg (as I described above), and that the hallway features a large intersection with another corridor (which isn't showing up in the picture above). I could've been so out of my mind crazy that I'm imagining a third leg, but I think I just forgot to take the picture.
In any case, here is the last leg, from the end of the hall, looking towards the small lobby area and, to the right off in the distance, the voting room.
The voting room was extremely well organized, with four rows of about 30 voting machines. And I walked up to mine, took a deep breath, thought for a moment about how much I love this country, took another deep breath, and voted for Barack Obama. Finally.
Yes I did.
Addendum: Please go vote early if you can. Please donate (if you are able) to Barack Obama, Jim Martin (also), and all of our great Democrats running in 2008.