Monday, October 13, 2008

My Voting Experience

So this morning I woke up to the first day of early voting here in Illinois. Then I went and looked in the mirror. Oh. My. God. I have an infection in my left eye and it's all swollen, red and hurts to blink. Crap. I should go to the Doc. But I really want to vote. Sooooo, I take a shower, get dressed and don my sunglasses to hide my oh so attractive eye! Over to Arlington Heights I go at about 11:30 A.M. Not too bad a line. Mostly elderly people. The woman behind me is Republican ( she's carrying a republican fact sheet ) and she begins chatting to me. She was a pleasant person but I'm sure she was voting McCain/Palin.

So I wait. Chat and wait some more. My eye is hurting me. The woman in front of me is a nurse like me so we chat about nursing stuff. She's from India originally and is voting because she's leaving to fly to India to visit family. She says this is a very important vote and she wasn't going to miss it. She tells me she's voting Obama. I smiled.

OK, it's my turn to get my voting card. Off I go to the touch screen and I think it took me less than 7 minutes to finish. I read up on who's on the ballot so there's no messing around. Geezez, I really want to rub my eye. I vote: Obama/Biden, Dick Durbin for Senator and Dan Seals for Congress ( I really hope we say good-bye to Mark Kirk this time ). Yaaaaay, I'm done.

As I leave some overweight man in shorts ( Republican because he, too, is carrying a Republican voting guide ) says to me "I hope you voted the right way." I looked at him and said "Yes, I believe I did, the Democratic way." He looked floored and grumbled. I smiled and left. I swear it must be my white hair that makes people think I'm old and must be voting Republican. Hahahahaha I'm not that old! And I'm not dying my hair!

All in all, a good experience and I felt great after voting. I hope to see an Obama Presidency in November. Now, I'm going to go put a cold compress on my eye and call the Doc.

2 comments:

Beth said...

Oh, I hope you get some relief for your eye! I know you know not to mess around with it--get some antibiotics pronto!

I'm thinking about voting early, too. I had a phone call from the Obama campaign today and the person said that they're encouraging early voting so that the polling places aren't so packed that people get discouraged. I never looked at it that way, but it makes sense. The person told me that 700,000 new voters have registered in Indiana! How cool is that? And the numbers I saw showed as leaning heavily towards Dem registration.

Beth

Ken Riches said...

Glad you got to vote early, and hope your eye gets better.

Thank you for being a nurse :o)