I have said it here before, but I will give my background just for those who don't know. I voted for GWB the first time around, thinking he would be the education president. Not that it mattered, his carrying Texas was a foregone conclusion. In fact, I live in Collin, one of the reddedst counties in Texas, where the only real conversation was during the Republican Primaries, about whether McCain or Bush would be the president nominee. Anyway, after Saddam failed to gas our troops, I figured out it was all a lie. Not only were there no nukes, there weren't even minor WMD like gas or biological. So in 2004 I voted Kerry. Fast forward to the present.
This week, I signed up to be a "Precint Captain" for Obama. I actually figured it was a largely ceremonial thing, like everybody gets a participant ribbon and we're all "captains", but yesterday they called me and asked if I had been to a training session. I promised to go to one this morning at 10:00. There, I learned that my position was anything but honorary; they have about 85% of the precincts of Texas covered, but certainly no more than 1 per. We have various responsibilities such as making sure the funky Texas Two-step is understood by our supporters, and that the caucus part of that goes down in a legitimate manner (we expect to win legitimately, so we have a stake in that), and that our supporters know where the caucus is and that they need to attend it if possible, and that they can early vote and still have the election-day thrill by going to the caucus. Finally, I learned that of all counties in Texas so far, Collin county was the one with the greatest percentage increase in Democratic Primary voting in the state.
Right after the meeting, I went to early vote with my wife, now that I understood that it would be a clusterf*#k on the day of. The polling place was at a local rec center. As we pulled up to the location, there was a line of cars waiting to pull out and the parking lot was full. Initially I panicked and thought that early voting was going to be beyond huge, and this would take all day. Then I saw that there was a couple of soccer games going on, and attributed the traffic to that.
When we went inside the rec center, there was a sign pointing to the designated voting place. There was a small mob/line of about thirty to fourty people waiting in line to vote, and about 6 diebold machines at which to vote (I know). The line was for Republican or Democratic primaries, and depending on which you were determined which ballot you got. That line kept replinishing itself the entire half hour or so that we were there. If you voted Democratic, they would ask you if you wanted to vote in your party's caucus or not, so they could stamp your voter card. I didn't see anyone in line NOT get asked that question.
The wait was quite a long one, but it was orderly, and we eventually got through it. I think a lot of people were confused, never having voted in a Democratic primary before (or possibly any primary), but everyone had a sort of determined look on their faces. I don't think anyone was there to vote for John McCain. Even my Republican-leaning wife voted for Barack.