Voting Thanks

Wow! I am so, so impressed with the voter turn out in my state for the Democratic caucus. There have been some delays in the vote counting and it isn't all in for us - but it's a real squeaker so far, let me tell you! Both Clinton and Obama have 48% of the vote, with Clinton having a slight lead.

The current breakdown as of 11:37 a.m. today is: Clinton with 65,845 votes, Obama with 65,728 with 181 of 184 districts reporting. That's a 117 vote difference, folks! Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Dennis Kucinich also got some votes even though they'd already dropped out of the race. The ballots had already been printed, so their names hadn't been removed.

So we need to hear from 3 districts as well as have absentee ballots counted to get the final tally. It is so exciting to have an election this close! We did have some problems with polling places running out of ballots which resulted in long waits in places. Amazing! That doesn't happen much because of how few people (based on our census of people eligible to vote) actually vote anymore. So running out and needing new ballots printed was actually great news to hear.

The school on our street hosted a polling station -- but not the one for me and Jim (that would've been too convenient). Wouldn't you know the dividing line was the side of the street we're on? We had to drive to our polling place and through traffic already thronging our street with people looking for places to park and a line snaking out of the building by 12:05. We got to our polling place early. The parking lots were full and people were starting to park on the street. The line inside was moving fairly quickly so we had our votes cast shortly before 12:30 p.m. Once home, we estimated a couple thousand people made it to our street's polling station to vote there just based on the amount of traffic. The flow of people continued as we headed over to Willow and Kenn's to watch the returns on CNN about half an hour before the polls closed.

My feelings were of joy and pride to see that people are believing how much this upcoming Presidential election matters for all of us and acting on that belief.

I want to thank everyone who went out and voted yesterday. You rock! And that includes everyone in the other states as well -- Democrats and Republicans!