Rock the Vote… if you can

Happy election day!

I will be spending this day avoiding the news at all costs. Until the final numbers start rolling in. We have plans to keep ourselves away from the TV and Twitter. And especially Facebook. It’s ugly out there.

I am able to do all this avoiding because we early voted on Saturday. But it wasn’t easy.

The original plan was to get up early on Saturday and drive to our closest polling station, which happens to be very close to our home. As we were about to walk out the door, I heard a newscaster say that people in Florida were having a very hard time voting, with up to five hour long wait times. Wow, really? Well that must be in Miami or something right?

Not quite.

We got to our Supervisor of Elections Office at 7:30 and it was already packed. Long line and no parking spaces. Okay, we thought, maybe it’s just a morning rush and it’ll clear up later in the day.

So we went to the Green Market and spent a couple of hours. On our way home we drove by the SOE office again. This time the line was all the way out to the sidewalk. People were making their own parking spots in the grass.

We wanted to give it one more try later that day. (I’m so glad we did, because it turned out that we couldn’t have voted on Sunday). We got there at 5 and got in line. There were a couple hundred people there in a line snaking around the parking lot in a very Disney-esque fashion.

We settled in for the wait. It wasn’t a huge deal for us. We’ve waited in lines like that on Apple product release days. But not everybody had our fortitude, or spare time. By hour three, a couple of our line-mates had dropped out.

We were lucky to have some really nice people around us in line. That made a huge difference. There was a teacher, a school bus driver, a guy from Comcast, and a retiree who had been an election worker in years past. Everyone was in a relatively positive mood. There were a few kids there and they kept us entertained, running around and being silly. Some people handed out candy and bottled water. Jason and I did a lot of talking, a lot of social media, and a lot of quiet standing.

For four and a half hours.

That’s how long it took for us to finally get in to vote.

It actually took Jason close to five hours because of a clerical issue.

I’d say we earned these stickers.

If you’re wondering WHY the lines in Florida were so disgracefully long, you can read about it here.