Election Night

Was asked and volunteered to do poll work at our precinct's voting place, my son's old elementary school.  I voted in the morning which was a madhouse, and did the 16:00 to 19:00 shift (polls close) in the afternoon.

Actually it was a bit anticlimactic,  about 80% of the voters had already cast their ballots either directly or by absentee by that time, so the other 20%......  We stood around doing much of nothing most of the time

A bit fun was provided by 2 other volunteers, on opposite sides of the fence, one from the neighboring state of Maryland, and the otter a bit new to this area.  there was loud debate and pretty aggressive pushing of sample ballots. The rest of us, all of us stood and did our bit, but it was much more civil, caught up with neighbors we had not seen for a while, I saw my son's elementary school principle, the first I've seen of her since he went on to Jr. high, etc. Made new acquaintances too. 

So I guess a lesson or takeaway from this is that perhaps we should not let ourselves be worked into a blinkered frenzy by pundits, analysts or other political 'experts'  because someone thinks  they have the right to chew our intellectual food for us and so earn a living . We can disagree and still be civil about it.

Now that the polls here have closed, I am going to warm myself up (its drizzly damp and chilly here and I've been in it  for the past 3 hours) then relax and then do what Harry Truman did on election night in 1948: go to bed and read about it in the papers the next morning.