After watching the first few minutes of Barack Obama's speech at his rally in Tampa, I figured this was the time to wander out and hit my local early voting location. Since my new job starts next week, I wanted to make certain I got out as soon as possible to vote.
Using the voteforchange.com website, I looked up the three (yes, only three!) locations in Pinellas County offering early voting. I decided to hit the one in Largo and arrived at about 1:40pm.
Parking was at a premium with cars parking on the grass surrounding the building. There were very few campaigners outside the building, I only saw one or two local candidates. Once inside, I joined the line of voters. Based on the time of day and day of the week, it was really not much of a surprise that I was the youngest voter in line by at least 25 years.
Every worker I encountered was friendly, courteous and efficient. I asked as many of them as I could if it had been this steadily busy all day, and the answer was always a smiling "yes". I was only in line about 15-20 minutes, with a very pleasant crowd discussing last night's baseball game (I still can't believe the Rays are going to the World Series; as a long-suffering Pirates fan it kind of stings a little).
No touch-screen machines this year. I instead got to flashback to my high-school days by filling out ovals with ballpoint pens. The ballot is laid out very clearly and I didn't hear of anyone struggling with the layout or legibility. At the end I slid my ballot into the scanner, got my badge of honor (the I VOTED sticker) and walked back out into the Florida sunshine.
I know this diary is low on drama and flowery prose. I don't have any tear-jerking stories of elderly first-time voters. It was just a day where the voting process appeared to be working fairly and efficiently, allowing all those who chose to exercise their rights the chance to do so.
In Florida, that's a victory in and of itself.