Election Day

I voted early. Last Monday at the Government Center. I waited about 90 minutes.

I voted early because I knew I'd have to work today. I thought I'd have to wait a long, long time today. I was wrong. When I visited my precinct, Rothschild Middle School, I found out that even when there were 250 people in line, it only took 90 minutes.

It turned out that Nancy Boren's office had trained the poll workers very, very well. For the first time, I saw queues like the ones you see in amusement park lines.

Another new thing was the "greeter" at each precinct. This person asked every person who was in line if they were a new voter to make sure that he was in the right precinct. What a great idea. I mean wouldn't it suck if you stood in line for 90 minutes only to find out that you were in the wrong place?

Everything went smoothly at the two precincts I went to — Rothschild and St. John AME Church.

And I got to meet some really neat people like Sandy Dowdell at Rothschild and Debora Grant at St. John.

Sandy is a top salesman at HH Gregg and has been working the polls for 19 years. He made his way from a volunteer to assistant poll manager to poll manager. It was his first year at Rothschild, so he wanted to make sure things were running well. When he got to the school at 5:30 a.m., there were already 50 people waiting in line. Some brought lawn chairs and blankets. By the time he opened the doors at 7 a.m., there were about 250 people in line.

When I got there about 2:30 p.m., people could just walk in and vote and leave. But Sandy was expecting another surge around 4:30 p.m. as people got off work. He told me to come back around 8:15 p.m. to get the results.

He was just about right on time about that.

Over at St. John's, Grant, who is the pastor of the church, had set up a table just outside the door of the fellowship hall where the voting took place. She was offering coffee, tea, cider, juice, water and snacks for both voters and poll workers. If people could pay for it, fine. If not, that was fine, too.

To the side, were some folks selling hot dogs and fish sandwiches.

It was almost like a festival.

She also had prayer night Tuesday, where there wasn't a service. She was just offering her sanctuary for people to pray for "our country, our leaders, our community, and most of all, to pray for peace."

What a wonderful idea!

At the newspaper, our editors had a plan and we were all split up across the city. Besides the reporters, we had folks from advertising and circulation departments helping us. And we had students from Columbus High, Harris County High and Brookstone School going to precincts to get results.

All we had to do is go to our assigned precinct, get the results and call them in.

I was finished by 9 p.m.

Now I'm home and watching the returns on ABC and flipping back to Andrew Zimmern and "Bizarre Food" on the Travel Channel.

I was talking to my sister Dorothy tonight. I told her that South Carolina has gone for McCain. She said she wasn't surprised.

Every week, she goes to the Saturday outdoor market. She said she was talking to a woman and told her that she had voted early. The woman asked if she voted the right way. Dorothy told her she voted the left way! And the woman said, "Good for you."

When I was voting last week, I met my sister-in-law, Cheryl. She said she and Fred split the vote every year. She votes Democrat and he votes Republican. "We cancel each other out every year," she said. But I told her that every vote counts. She ought to know. She lived in Florida during that disastrous 2000 presidential election.

Anyway, I've done my part. We'll see what happens as the night goes on.