It’s just 8 am, and already I’ve had tears in my eyes a few times. I’m trolling around the Internets, and finding dozens of stories: Long lines of excited people at polling places, Americans abroad awaiting the results, youth voting for the first time, etc.
This one got to me, via Andrew Sullivan about Dartmouth College:
Those who are wondering if the youth will turn out ought to see what I saw this morning.
One well-known government professor here told me that she has never seen so many students vote in the first hour of voting as she saw this morning. And I’ve never seen so many students up and alert at this hour. They’re normally stumbling out of bed to make it to their 10 a.m. courses. Today, the campus has been buzzing for hours this morning. It appears that many of them decided to go to the polls as groups of twos, threes, fours and more when the polls opened at 7 a.m. The number of students I saw by 8 a.m. walking around with “I voted” stickers on is astonishing.
At breakfast, I sat next to a table of four black students, all of whom had voted. The three men were wearing ties. I asked them why. The answer: It was their first election, and they wanted to mark the occasion.
Tell us your story.
I forget sometimes how much of a priveledge it is to be able to cast a vote. This year I have been blessed to work with someone who was voting in his first presidential election and I was able to see how seriously he took it and how much pride he got from it. Yay for voting!
I totally swing back and forth between being super excited about our imminent victory and being scared shitless that they’re going to find some way to steal it away from us.
“It’s just 8 am, and already I’ve had tears in my eyes a few times.”
No shit.