The 44th President of the United States
Barack Obama

FINALLY! An election has gone my way! Until today, I was 0-2 in presidential elections. It's nice to finally win one.

Freshman year at UW-Madison was my first presidential election. I voted absentee for Minnesota. I liked the tiny pencil that came in the mail along with the ballot. :) Wow, was that a weird and stressful and crushingly disappointing and anger-inducing election. Elation turning to horror. Countless hours logged in front of the TV in the coming weeks. The infamous hanging chad. It's still bizarre to me to see a candidate get more popular votes but still lose. On a related note, I just learned tonight that Nebraska splits up their electoral votes based on percentages. I didn't know states could do that.

Then there was 2004. Honestly, I don't remember much about that one. Except Kerry lost. :( And it was really close in Wisconsin. This was the year that I was student teaching at Sherman Middle School in a 7th grade classroom. I taught about elections and the importance of reading about the issues. We had a class vote. Kerry won. The kids had to do a project that year about the future. Different groups had different themes. One group, comprised all of black students, had the topic of government, or something. I remember them saying that they couldn't imagine a black person ever being elected president. That was just so sad to me at that time. I'm now very happy that 4 years later they can say that their future predictions were incorrect. :)

As I was waiting for the bus this morning, I was hoping the buses would be scrolling "Vote!," since on Badger game days they scroll, "Go Badgers!" As the 3 bus came into view to pick me up, I saw that it was indeed scrolling the words, "Vote Today." Yay! That made me very happy. Today and yesterday I saw a plane flying around with a banner trailing behind proclaiming, "VOTE OBAMA." There was an obscene number of "Election Observers" at my polling location this morning. I don't really remember seeing many at all in previous elections. But there were probably 15 of them today.

Measuring elections in terms of concerts, in 2000 I saw Melissa Etheridge perform at a Gore rally. In 2004 I saw Bruce Springsteen perform at a Kerry rally, and this year I saw Wilco perform for Obama. Only not at his rally. I did go to both Hillary Clinton's and Obama's rallies in Madison when they were campaigning for the Democratic nomination.

Very discouraging news on the number states passing referendums denying rights to homosexuals (both marriage and adoption). I haven't heard anything about California's Proposition 8 yet. In Minnesota races, I'm saddened to see that it appears Michele Bachmann will win her race. Coleman and Franken are currently neck-in-neck, with Coleman having the slight lead (80% reporting). I wish I knew which 20% have yet to be reported. Traditionally Republican or Democrat? I hate Coleman. The only reason he got voted into office 6 years ago was because Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash a few weeks before the election. Good to see District 1 (including Rochester) overwhelmingly voted for incumbent Democrat Tim Walz.