VOTING TODAY: We want to hear from YOU! By Geniusofdespair
Tell us what happened and where you voted. I will be going out to vote about 10 a.m. and will report back. This is a place to post anything you want to say on the election or voting.
20 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I want to know where I can vote against Florida Power and Light: "BY JOHN DORSCHNER JDORSCHNER@MIAMIHERALD.COM With Florida Power & Light's parent earning $774 million in profit during the last quarter and fuel prices plummeting, state regulators on Tuesday will consider the utility's request to hike customers' monthly bills another 7 percent starting in January."
I had a fantastic voting experience on Miami Beach this morning. The lines were well-managed and short. There were a few glitches with my address and everyone was extremely helpful and courteous; I even was given a donut by one of the volunteers. Please remember to thank everyone who has volunteered today.
My sense from talking to campaign staffers from both parties is that the race to focus on is Mario Diaz-Balart v Joe Garcia. Diaz-Balart has been consistently a few points ahead in the polls, but Democratic registration was sky-high, and the Garcia put a lot of effort into making sure African-Americans vote down the ballot. A high Obama turnout could push Garcia over the top. I'm not about to make a prediction but I know Republicans are nervous.
Bob Herbert says it all: NY Times November 4, 2008 OP-ED COLUMNIST Beyond Election Day
By BOB HERBERT Conservative commentators had a lot of fun mocking Barack Obama’s use of the phrase, “the fierce urgency of now.”
Noting that it had originated with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Obama made it a cornerstone of his early campaign speeches.
Conservatives kicked the phrase around like a soccer ball. “The fierce urgency of now,” they would say, giggling. What does it mean?
Well, if your house is on fire and your family is still inside, that’s an example of the fierce urgency of now.
Something like that is the case in the United States right now as Americans go to the polls in what is probably the most important presidential election since World War II. A mind-boggling series of crises is threatening not just the short-term future but the very viability of the nation.
The economy is sinking into quicksand. The financial sector, guardian of the nation’s wealth, is leaning on the crutch of a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout. The giant auto companies — for decades the high-powered, gas-guzzling, exhaust-spewing pride of American industry — are on life support.
As the holiday shopping season approaches, the nation is hemorrhaging jobs, the value of the family home has plunged, retirement plans are shrinking like ice cubes on a hot stove and economists are telling us the recession has only just begun.
It’s in that atmosphere that voters today will be choosing between the crisis-management skills of Senator Obama, who has enlisted Joe Biden as aide-de-camp, and those of Senator John McCain, who is riding to the rescue with Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber in tow.
As important as this choice has become, the election is just a small first step. What Americans really have to decide is what kind of country they want.
Right now the United States is a country in which wealth is funneled, absurdly, from the bottom to the top. The richest 1 percent of Americans now holds close to 40 percent of all the wealth in the nation and maintains an iron grip on the levers of government power.
This is not only unfair, but self-defeating. The U.S. cannot thrive with its fabulous wealth concentrated at the top and the middle class on its knees. (No one even bothers to talk about the poor anymore.) How to correct this imbalance is one of the biggest questions facing the country.
The U.S. is also a country in which blissful ignorance is celebrated, and intellectual excellence (the key to 21st century advancement) is not just given short shrift, but is ridiculed. Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are cultural icons. The average American watches television a mind-numbing 4 1/2 hours a day.
At the same time, our public school system is plagued with some of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world. Math and science? Forget about it. Too tough for these TV watchers, or too boring, or whatever.
“When I compare our high schools with what I see when I’m traveling abroad,” said Bill Gates, “I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow.”
The point here is that as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the United States is in deep, deep trouble. Yet instead of looking for creative, 21st-century solutions to these enormous problems, too many of our so-called leaders are behaving like clowns, or worse — spouting garbage in the public sphere that hearkens back to the 1940s and ’50s.
Thoughtful, well-educated men and women are denounced as elites, and thus the enemies of ordinary Americans. Attempts to restore a semblance of fiscal sanity to a government that has been looted with an efficiency that would have been envied by the mob, are derided as subversive — the work of socialists, Marxists, Communists.
In 2008!
In North Carolina, Senator Elizabeth Dole, a conservative Republican, is in a tough fight for re-election against a Democratic state senator, Kay Hagan. So Ms. Dole ran a television ad that showed a close-up of Ms. Hagan’s face while the voice of a different woman asserts, “There is no God!”
Americans have to decide if they want a country that tolerates this kind of debased, backward behavior. Or if they want a country that aspires to true greatness — a country that stands for more than the mere rhetoric of equality, freedom, opportunity and justice.
That decision will require more than casting a vote in one presidential election. It will require a great deal of reflective thought and hard work by a committed citizenry. The great promise of America hinges on a government that works, openly and honestly, for the broad interests of the American people, as opposed to the narrow benefit of the favored, wealthy few.
By all means, vote today. But that is just the first step toward meaningful change.
I am back it is 1:35pm. Voting wait for me was about 30 seconds. I then took a ride and checked out about 10 other precincts. The worst I saw was about an hour and a half wait. Most were empty. Pinecrest is pretty quiet as is city hall (Miami). Pompano Beach had a half hour wait. So get out there and vote -- there are no lines to speak of. I also stopped to pick up my free cup of Starbucks coffee. They are giving it to everyone who comes in with a sticker saying "I voted today".
Call your friends, tell them it is a very good day to be voting!
Unbelievable long lines here in Chicago. My polling place had a line that went a block.
There have been the usual Chicago shenanigans. One woman reports have been given a ballot that was already partially filled. When she gave it back and requested another, they did not shred the old one but put it somewhere- why?
just voted in north miami. brief wait, but in and out in 30minutes. what a historic day and we're all living and breathing it together. I've been voting in this precint for 3 years and it was the most crowded I've ever seen it!
South Dade reporting in. It took me about 15 minutes to vote because I didn't wait to use the "privacy box"-filled out my ballot in line. Others waited an hour or so to vote at the same precinct earlier in the morning. I drove by Florida City,Goulds , Redland and Homestead precincts and there are tons of cars everywhere. This is a heavy McCain area so it was great to see others "baracking the vote" with me.
I voted last week by mail-in ballot. Obama is winning. The landscape of this country, both political and emotional has been altered forever. Now we can begin the difficult and painful work of extracting Bush and the wide path of destruction he and his boys have forced upon our people for the last eight years. And I do take it personally. If you're not voting for Obama, I know you are either too rich for your own good, too racist and bigoted to even be allowed to vote, or to ignorant of the desperation this country has suffered during the reign of the ultra-rich, self serving, murderous, lying, hypocracy of the Bushies.
Precinct 902 Silver Palm Methodist Church at 1;45 P.M.only 22 minutes from the time we left the car in the parking lot to the time we left the polling place. I'd say that was a quick in and out. Poll workers were very courteous and professional. It was a pleasure to vote in what could be a Redland Agricultural city.
20 comments:
I want to know where I can vote against Florida Power and Light: "BY JOHN DORSCHNER
JDORSCHNER@MIAMIHERALD.COM With Florida Power & Light's parent earning $774 million in profit during the last quarter and fuel prices plummeting, state regulators on Tuesday will consider the utility's request to hike customers' monthly bills another 7 percent starting in January."
Why don't you call John Dorschner and tell him to stop being a cheerleader for the company. What does he own stock in the company?
I had a fantastic voting experience on Miami Beach this morning. The lines were well-managed and short. There were a few glitches with my address and everyone was extremely helpful and courteous; I even was given a donut by one of the volunteers. Please remember to thank everyone who has volunteered today.
I bet they're handing out doughnuts so that the last thing someone sees before they vote is a big "O"!
Cheaters
M
My sense from talking to campaign staffers from both parties is that the race to focus on is Mario Diaz-Balart v Joe Garcia. Diaz-Balart has been consistently a few points ahead in the polls, but Democratic registration was sky-high, and the Garcia put a lot of effort into making sure African-Americans vote down the ballot. A high Obama turnout could push Garcia over the top. I'm not about to make a prediction but I know Republicans are nervous.
Bob Herbert says it all:
NY Times
November 4, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Beyond Election Day
By BOB HERBERT
Conservative commentators had a lot of fun mocking Barack Obama’s use of the phrase, “the fierce urgency of now.”
Noting that it had originated with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Obama made it a cornerstone of his early campaign speeches.
Conservatives kicked the phrase around like a soccer ball. “The fierce urgency of now,” they would say, giggling. What does it mean?
Well, if your house is on fire and your family is still inside, that’s an example of the fierce urgency of now.
Something like that is the case in the United States right now as Americans go to the polls in what is probably the most important presidential election since World War II. A mind-boggling series of crises is threatening not just the short-term future but the very viability of the nation.
The economy is sinking into quicksand. The financial sector, guardian of the nation’s wealth, is leaning on the crutch of a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout. The giant auto companies — for decades the high-powered, gas-guzzling, exhaust-spewing pride of American industry — are on life support.
As the holiday shopping season approaches, the nation is hemorrhaging jobs, the value of the family home has plunged, retirement plans are shrinking like ice cubes on a hot stove and economists are telling us the recession has only just begun.
It’s in that atmosphere that voters today will be choosing between the crisis-management skills of Senator Obama, who has enlisted Joe Biden as aide-de-camp, and those of Senator John McCain, who is riding to the rescue with Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber in tow.
As important as this choice has become, the election is just a small first step. What Americans really have to decide is what kind of country they want.
Right now the United States is a country in which wealth is funneled, absurdly, from the bottom to the top. The richest 1 percent of Americans now holds close to 40 percent of all the wealth in the nation and maintains an iron grip on the levers of government power.
This is not only unfair, but self-defeating. The U.S. cannot thrive with its fabulous wealth concentrated at the top and the middle class on its knees. (No one even bothers to talk about the poor anymore.) How to correct this imbalance is one of the biggest questions facing the country.
The U.S. is also a country in which blissful ignorance is celebrated, and intellectual excellence (the key to 21st century advancement) is not just given short shrift, but is ridiculed. Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are cultural icons. The average American watches television a mind-numbing 4 1/2 hours a day.
At the same time, our public school system is plagued with some of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world. Math and science? Forget about it. Too tough for these TV watchers, or too boring, or whatever.
“When I compare our high schools with what I see when I’m traveling abroad,” said Bill Gates, “I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow.”
The point here is that as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the United States is in deep, deep trouble. Yet instead of looking for creative, 21st-century solutions to these enormous problems, too many of our so-called leaders are behaving like clowns, or worse — spouting garbage in the public sphere that hearkens back to the 1940s and ’50s.
Thoughtful, well-educated men and women are denounced as elites, and thus the enemies of ordinary Americans. Attempts to restore a semblance of fiscal sanity to a government that has been looted with an efficiency that would have been envied by the mob, are derided as subversive — the work of socialists, Marxists, Communists.
In 2008!
In North Carolina, Senator Elizabeth Dole, a conservative Republican, is in a tough fight for re-election against a Democratic state senator, Kay Hagan. So Ms. Dole ran a television ad that showed a close-up of Ms. Hagan’s face while the voice of a different woman asserts, “There is no God!”
Americans have to decide if they want a country that tolerates this kind of debased, backward behavior. Or if they want a country that aspires to true greatness — a country that stands for more than the mere rhetoric of equality, freedom, opportunity and justice.
That decision will require more than casting a vote in one presidential election. It will require a great deal of reflective thought and hard work by a committed citizenry. The great promise of America hinges on a government that works, openly and honestly, for the broad interests of the American people, as opposed to the narrow benefit of the favored, wealthy few.
By all means, vote today. But that is just the first step toward meaningful change.
I just found my license, frantic search for an hour...i had put it in my pocket to vote on Saturday and never took it out. So, off I go..
Took about an hour
in Aventura.
I am back it is 1:35pm. Voting wait for me was about 30 seconds. I then took a ride and checked out about 10 other precincts. The worst I saw was about an hour and a half wait. Most were empty. Pinecrest is pretty quiet as is city hall (Miami). Pompano Beach had a half hour wait. So get out there and vote -- there are no lines to speak of. I also stopped to pick up my free cup of Starbucks coffee. They are giving it to everyone who comes in with a sticker saying "I voted today".
Call your friends, tell them it is a very good day to be voting!
Unbelievable long lines here in Chicago. My polling place had a line that went a block.
There have been the usual Chicago shenanigans. One woman reports have been given a ballot that was already partially filled. When she gave it back and requested another, they did not shred the old one but put it somewhere- why?
i arrived at my east kendall precint at 10:15 am and walked right up with my id to get my ballot. -0- wait time!!!!
been to 4 polls today and the republican representation is impressive.
Thanks readers...keep the reports coming.
just voted in north miami. brief wait, but in and out in 30minutes.
what a historic day and we're all living and breathing it together. I've been voting in this precint for 3 years and it was the most crowded I've ever seen it!
key biscayne is clear.
My doghnut statement was a joke.
Lighten up
m
South Dade reporting in.
It took me about 15 minutes to vote because I didn't wait to use the "privacy box"-filled out my ballot in line.
Others waited an hour or so to vote at the same precinct earlier in the morning.
I drove by Florida City,Goulds , Redland and Homestead precincts and there are tons of cars everywhere.
This is a heavy McCain area so it was great to see others "baracking the vote" with me.
Ok nOt a mOderate...mine was a jOke tOO.
Miami Gardens and Dania Beach had long lines.
I voted last week by mail-in ballot. Obama is winning. The landscape of this country, both political and emotional has been altered forever. Now we can begin the difficult and painful work of extracting Bush and the wide path of destruction he and his boys have forced upon our people for the last eight years. And I do take it personally. If you're not voting for Obama, I know you are either too rich for your own good, too racist and bigoted to even be allowed to vote, or to ignorant of the desperation this country has suffered during the reign of the ultra-rich, self serving, murderous, lying, hypocracy of the Bushies.
yeeeeehaw!! wink! wink!
GO OBAMA!!!
Precinct 902 Silver Palm Methodist Church at 1;45 P.M.only 22 minutes from the time we left the car in the parking lot to the time we left the polling place. I'd say that was a quick in and out. Poll workers were very courteous and professional. It was a pleasure to vote in what could be a Redland Agricultural city.
El sid
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