George W. Bush, friend of democracy
The image above is from Sheila Pree Bright’s series “Young Americans,” which features young Americans with their flag. I like the series enormously.
My wife voted when our polling place opened at 7 a.m. and told me the line was longer than she’d ever seen it, and that by the time she was finished it was longer. When I drove our filthsome chidlers (with apologies to Roald Dahl’s “BFG”) to school just after 8, I scoped out the line and it looked lengthy, so I went back home, got on the internet for an hour and a half and went back. Now it was almost 10 and the line was longer. I found a place to park — far away — and wound up as number 49 in line. Previously, the longest line I’d ever been in to vote in my 20 years in Burbank had been a line of 6. I wish my father were alive to see this. Yes, he would have been a McCain voter (as I once would have been), but he would have been delighted to see all those people waiting to vote and he would have befriended every one of them. All up and down the line those of us waiting to vote were engaged in conversation about politics and what the future holds; judging solely from this line, we need to retire the myth of the uninformed voter.
There are reports of long lines such as this across the nation. Here’s my conclusion: George W. Bush and his disintegration have been very, very good at motivating people to go to the polls. In their third debate, Senator McCain said to Senator Obama, “If you wanted to run against George Bush, you should have run four years ago.” Maybe so, but whether he knew it or not (and I suspect he did), McCain has been running against Bush all year, with both of them losing. In a final irony that I hope has escaped neither of them, Karl Rove yesterday predicted an Obama landslide. He should know: He will have helped to create it.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
On a local level in Margate, NJ I did not have to wait at all to vote. I went to a local elementary school; at 9am and was done voting by 9:3am. There were no lines at the five district poling stations of the city that vote at the school. Part of the reason of no lines was that each area had two voting machines, Margate has a lot of seasonal residents, and it also has a lot of seniors who can vote throughout the day.
I am happy to see the long lines at polling places. This is how the democratic system should be.