Tom reports after a long 14-hour day at the polls.
"As you may know, I am a Monmouth County board member for local and general elections in Aberdeen. The job entails getting to the polling place at 5:15 AM, setting up the voting machines and allowing as many registered voters to cast their ballots on election day. Today was a special day that really had me excited to get up at 4:30 in the morning. I have been anticipating this day for quite some time and all the hype is finally going to be relieved.
I performed a little breaking and entering before the polls opened. We were locked out of the polling place in the pre-dawn pitch dark. The woman who knew the code to open the EMS building door was not showing up today. A worker from the Fire House came over and tried to help to no avail. We found a window that was open and he jimmied the screen with a screwdriver. I squeezed my fat ass in the window and opened the door from the inside.
We had about ten minutes before the first group of voters started to line up outside. It was utterly impressive that we were able to get such a huge turnout for the election. To give you a guideline, the highest national average for voter turnout in 100 years was 66% back in 1908. My district had 74% of total eligible voters cast their vote today. The crowds were mostly dense in the morning before 9am. We expected the evening commute crowd to be overwhelming as well, but it never materialized quite as we expected. It seems as if everyone was very eager to cast their vote in this election and did not want to leave it to chance to wait after work. It was very encouraging to see that so many people were motivated to participate in the democratic process. We saw black, white, young, old, pregnant, disabled, enabled and people from all walks of life. We are used to seeing more elderly people more than anything, but that was hardly the case this time.
On another note, I was able to use my iPod touch for good during my work day at the polls. Oftentimes, voters come to our polling place without knowing what district they belong to, or where they were supposed to vote in the first place. Generally, the people I worked with are experienced enough to know the local area, but for the ones that really stumped us, I broke out my Safari browser on the iPod and found some free wi-fi that I tapped into and surfed on the web to find the correct polling location for the wayward voter. Since I am the youngest board member, by far, I could safely say that no other board member thought of that idea. These old folks hardly know how to use cellphones, let alone an iPod touch.
My final thought is that I really hope that the outcome of this election brings about real change that was promised. My personal choice aside, I would like for all of us to unite and work hard toward building a better America and putting the last eight years behind us in the history books."
Tom Out.
The MVP of the night was Jobby, who, after his entire flip-cup team was decimated down to a 5-on-1, came back to beat our squad, at the cost of his own stomach. His prize was a face-to-face meeting with my toilet bowl.
