Early Voting with the Family

Saturday afternoon, Shirre and I took the girls with us to the Larry R. Jackson Library in North Lakeland to early vote. It took over 1.5 hours as we arrived at 4:50pm and walked out at 6:36pm. The wait was well worth it as we were more than glad to stand in line to vote fore Change & Hope. Needless to say we happily voted for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

When we finally got inside the library, we continued in a line which snaked further into the library voting area. Upon arriving at the voting room, we had the girls sit quietly outside the room while Shirre and I stood in shorter lines at 2 of the 4 voting check-in tables all staffed by women poll workers. We presented our driver's licenses and voting IDs, then scanned the licenses into a card reader which confirmed our correct address and voting precinct. The lady who waited on me apologized for the long wait. I told her that in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal for me to wait to excercise my Constitutional rights. I have been waiting for 8 years and voted for Al Gore and John Kerry in the last two elections. The poll workers then demonstrated how to fill out the voting forms which reminded me of the scantrons on which we had to bubble in answers for exams at University of South Florida. We then marched into separate booths to do the deed.

I didn't realize that there are so many candidates for President & Vice President of the U.S.! Though I already knew who I was voting for (Obama-Biden, duh!) I perused the other choices and recognized the dreadful Maverick ticket (McCain/Palin), Bob Barr/Wayne Allyn Root (Libertarian Party), Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente (Green Party), Ralph Nader/Matt Gonzalez (Independent-Ecology Party), and Alan Keyes/Brian Rohrbough (Independent). The first weekend of October, Shirre and I signed an early vote pledge for the Obama Campaign for Change, though we certainly would have voted early pledge or no. When it came to the Florida Constitutional Amendments it took me a while to read through each one at least twice to make sure I understood the spirit of each amendment before voting yes or no. I'm proud to say I voted "Yes" on #2, Florida Marriage Protection Amendment which "protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife". I also voted "Yes" on an Amendment #8, Local Option Community Funding which will "levy a local option sales tax to supplement community college funding"--having been a product of the community college system--and "Yes" to an amendment which provides a tax-free first year for new business owners. My wife will be starting a teen mother's home in the near future, so the latter amendment seemed like a no-brainer to me. America's lifeblood comes from it's small businesses with nearly 60% of Americans working for small businesses and those businesses creating 90% of new jobs, and according to the Small Business Administration, 66% of new businesses fail in the first two years. So certainly I think that lowering barriers to their initial success is one of the keys to their continuing sustainability especially in tough economic times.

For the complete picture album of our early voting adventures go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=41395&l=d2c95&id=512157070

The Great [VP] Debate of 2008

Last night was an interesting and entertaining if not slightly confusing debate, thankfully the only one between Joe "From-hard-scrabble-Scranton" Biden and Sarah "wink-wink-participles-not-ending-in-g,-Joe-Six-Pack,-Hockey-Mom" Palin. Now it is somewhat (by 'somewhat' I mean 'completely') obvious that Joe Biden won that debate on the basis of actually having a sensible and factual answer to every question asked rather than employing mealy mouthed generalisms in every other sentence. That he was able to do this without at any point seeming condescending to to someone of incredibly low intelligence speaks a whole lot for Biden's restraint and self-composure.

I did find myself confused several times as to what exactly Palin was saying. A number of times, her answer was incoherent enough that even my 8, 11, and 12-year old children wondered, "What?" to her rambling, nonsensical answers to the most basic questions. After all, Debate Camp can teach you how to answer questions by deflecting and redirecting them, but no week-long training can teach you the fundamental rules of applying logic to a debate environment if you're not accustomed to using logic and facts to back up your arguments in the first place.

As far as ratings go, the Palin-Biden debate was the highest-rated political debate EVER, even bypassing the 1st Obama-McCain debate of September 26, 2008. I included the graphic above summarizing the totals by network with ABC getting 13.1 million viewers at the high end, CBS and Fox News with 11.1 million viewers for a tie in the middle, and MSNBC getting the lowest viewership of 4.4 million viewers. All told, nearly 70 million folks watched the proceedings.

In post-debate coverage, the NY Times provides a unique way of reviewing the debate. A reader can click on any portion of the debate text and will be taken to the corresponding portion of the debate TV footage.