As my wife plans our Obama party, and our boys prepare their Obama Cakes, I took great pains to remind them that victory is never easy nor guaranteed. There are a zillion things that can happen between now and the end of voting. To prove my point, I pried the kids away from the Wii and brought the entire family to one of 5 early voting centers here in Sarasota County.
Ok, I know you all are probably hungry for some Obama cake. I'll get to that later. Check out the image at the bottom:
We turned the corner to the local Gulf Gate library, which is located on a normally quiet side street here in Sarasota. I had called the local Obama field organizer before leaving to see if he needed any help. It had started raining, and he needed water and rain ponchos delivered to the voting center.
"What's all that, daddy?" the younger boy asked. The boys usually ride their bikes to the library. He could see that the sidewalks were blocked by parked cars on both sides of the street. An initial smattering of candidate's signs quickly turned into a unreadable mass of red, white, and blue - and green.
It was a carnival like atmosphere, with candidate's supporters waving signs and handing out flyers. But, the carnival ended there.
A line of nearly two hundred voters snaked from the rear entrance, through the parking lot, and wound up running down the length of entire sidewalk in front.
"Why are they waiting?" asked the 12 year old.
That was a great question. Why were they waiting? Why SHOULD they have to wait at all? Why were hundreds of voters braving the chill of a fall rain to exercise their right to choose their next set of leaders?
"Change," I said, "They all want things to change and they can't wait for it to happen."
We piled out of the minivan and met the field organizer. He brought water and rain parkas. We all grabbed a box of both and moved toward the line.
My kids handed out the water. My wife and I handed out the parkas. Republican or Democrat, it didn't matter. This crowd was tired of waiting, tired of standing, tired of a voting system that actually punished them for showing up to vote.
They were also really thirsty. We went through three cases of water in a few minutes. A vast majority of the voters were thankful. Some were suspicious, especially since the kids had their Hebrew "Barack Obama" pins on.
Suddenly, someone at the front of the line started yelling.
"Aw, c'mon!" he groaned. It didn't take long for the groan to move it's way down the line of voters. One of the two printers had broken. The line would not move until it was fixed.
So, one of the zillion things that could go wrong did, and a couple hundred voters were in jeopardy of losing their right to vote. Remember, in 2000, the election was decided by Florida and then only by 537 votes!!!! This line represented half of that difference!
In time, the rain stopped, and the printer was fixed. The line moved once again, and the voters, after waiting for nearly two hours, could finally vote.
"That's a little messed up, isn't it Daddy?" the eight year old asked.
Ah, the young ones can see things so clearly sometimes.
Ok, now about the Obama cake. My kids love to cook. They have come up with a method of carving Barack Obama out of two boxes of Duncan Hines cake mix. The mix is marble. The frosting is a medium light brown buttercream. We've delivered them to the volunteers at the local Obama field office and the local Democratic party HQ. Nothing like a sugar buzz to keep up the energy!