Nov 4th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Election Tales
From a reader in Virginia:
Heavy black turnout. White guy says “holy shit. I ain’t got time for this” and drives off.
Good times.
44 Responses to “Election Tales”
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November 4th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Here in the Carmel Valley suburb of San Diego, only three
people in front of me. Not a single black voter,
except this brown one.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Here in the Carmel Valley suburb of San Diego, only three
people in front of me. Not a single black voter,
except this brown one.
Low turnout in suburban SDC? That’s what I like to hear, baby!
No on 8! Yes on 1! No on 10!
November 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
…ain’t we lucky we got’em.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Vote Suppression FAIL
November 4th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Here in LA, lines around the block. I was the 15th voter or so and the three people ahead of me were asked to cast provisional ballots because of either no ID or because of the fact that they were on one list but not another. Great.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Well speaking of election day stuff, does anyone have oppinions on
1. what web sites have the best election results interface? I recall CNN having a pretty snazy set up in the past.
2. Every bar in DC appears to be advertising some election day “party,” any opinions on good places to go?
I’m still deciding whether I want to go out or stay in tonight. If it’s an Obama blow-out I’d rather be partying, but if it’s close I’m going to be craving information too much to enjoy myself (I went out in 04′, and didn’t have a terribly good time).
November 4th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Besides, are there any black people in uber-pricey Carmel Valley?
November 4th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Dude — Carmel Valley’s got to be an all mail-in area. Down here in Kearny Mesa, there was a line 30 deep at 7 a.m.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:40 am
er? hope we didn’t lose a vote.
cletus <—– White guy w/ midwestern accent for Obama.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:41 am
2. Every bar in DC appears to be advertising some election day “party,” any opinions on good places to go?
I’ll be at Hawk & Dove on Pennsylvania Ave. with some friends, I’m told it’s good. If I hadn’t gone there, I’d have gone to Timberlake’s near Dupont Circle, which I’m familiar with just because it’s the site of Drinking Liberally. I don’t know what’s planned there, but I’d be amazed if there won’t be something going on.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:42 am
he was just going to go vote in the real virginia. The lines are much shorter there.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:44 am
That’s not funny, of course. No matter what one’s party affiliation, it’s a shame to see someone driven away from the polls by long lines. I assume, Matt, that you assume he’s a racist asshole who doesn’t wanna stand in line with a bunch of Negroes. Why assume that? Why be exactly the condescending smarmy prick your demographic and job description demand?
November 4th, 2008 at 11:46 am
The Hawk and Dove is a fun bar, sort of dive-y with a heavy marine presence. I think it’r pretty fun, but based on my friends reactions it might not be for everyone.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
he was just going to go vote in the real virginia. The lines are much shorter there.
My line in very fake Virginia was pretty short this morning. Apparently all the communists in my neighborhood got in line to vote at 6:00 before heading off to their socialist government jobs. By the time I went around 9:00, things had mostly cleared out and I only had about a 10 minute wait.
Best part? The two houses directly across the street from the polling place must have decided electioneering laws were for suckers, because they were tricked out with Obama & Warner signs.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I’ve never experience long voter lines. Huh. I was in line maybe 20 minutes, and that’s the longest I’ve ever waited. The guy in charge still manage to seem a bit frazzled, though. Montebello, CA.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
That guy should have sucked it up and voted. Now he’s probably going to be the loudest complainer of all for the next four years.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:56 am
That’s cool that there was a long line of likely Dem voters, but we should want everybody – even McCaniacs – to get easy access to the polls. We don’t want to be the equivalent of Republicans who harass and intimidate people based on their race.
Matt, I’m hoping that you’re psyched about the long line, but not celebrating the nonvoting white guy.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Was somewhat encouraged by my vist to National Revieww Online, where I find them quoting Shakespeare’s Henry V:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
Perhaps not the best speach for an election . . .
November 4th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
My wife is working at a polling place right now. I’m suppose to bring her some St. Louis/Panera Bread soup in a bread bowl at noon and I’ll report back on the chaos.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Here in the People’s Republic of Alexandria, VA, I was in line about 1 1/2 hours. I’m black,late 30s and rarely see another brown face in my neighborhood – except for this morning. We all gave each other the Brother Nod and a big smile. Change is coming!
November 4th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I suspect that this may be the first election in the U.S. where black voter turnout will exceed white voter turnout. with so few competative elctions and with long lines and with the collapse of the Republican Party, what is the point of middle class white Republicans to vote. Whereas the black vote will go 99% for Obama and race has given an added reason for higher black voter turnout. that is why the polls are probably wrong on the low side for Obama.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
We midwesterners don’t have accents, everyone else does. That’s why phone banks set up shop here. Mid-West! Mid-West!
November 4th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I am a white guy and I have time for this ….. do you think there are any black guys who would say the same thing?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Whew, a white person almost voted! That sure was a close one, Matt.
Seriously, what the hell?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I think it’s the only bar in which I had trouble hearing people talk while there was no music playing.
I arrived in DC early on a sunny day in 1984, without knowing a single person in the area. I left Union Station and wandered around until I saw the sign for the Hawk and Dove. It looked promising. I went in for lunch and stayed for 12 hours. It was an interesting crowd.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
URGENT! Can someone make sure that MattY learns about this? I just saw this at FreeRepublic:
Heavy white turnout. Black guy says “holy shit. I ain’t got time for this” and drives off.
Then, the racist FReeptard commented, believe it or not: “Good times.”
Can you believe those people?
Please get this out to all the blogs, stat!
November 4th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Well Hawk & Dove is on my walk home so maybe I’ll check it out, thanks for the pointer.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
WTF?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Is there any chance is was that pin-dick white supremeracist, Steve Sailer?
That would make the story even better.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
URGENT: Can someone help aLoneAndWhackingOff to the polls? The last time he tried leaving his apartment, he saw a taco van and pissed his pants.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
My story:
Southern Indiana, usually quite red (I’m personally hoping the state turns blue this year…)
I get to the polls around 8:20. 3 people in line ahead of me. Guy throws a LOUD temper tantrum because the members of the Indiana Supreme Court up for a retention vote do not have their party affiliations listed and he, therefore, does not have any clue whether he should vote to keep them or drop them. Here’s how the scene went:
Voter: “So it aint listed whether they’re democrat or republican?”
Poll Worker: “I guess not.”
Voter: “Do you know anything about ‘em?”
Poll Worker: “No, I wish I did. But I’m not allowed to say anything about the people on the ballot anyway.”
Voter: (enraged) “How am I supposed to know if they’re socialists, like that–”
Poll Worker: “I know, I feel the same way–”
Voter: “How do I know if they’re pro-American, or pro-life, pro-death…? Well, then, I guess none of ‘em are gettin’ my vote either way.”
November 4th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
“Whew, a white person almost voted! That sure was a close one, Matt.
Seriously, what the hell?”
Christ, people, it was a joke — and it made me laugh.
Yeah, sure, every aspect of the story is very upsetting to the
“every vote is sacred,
every vote is good,
every vote is needed
in your neighborhood”
crowd. But for those of us who live in the real world, and who are well aware of the limitations of EVERY method of preference aggregation, it’s an amusing anecdote. There IS NO PERFECT METHOD OF PREFERENCE AGGREGATION. Get over it. WTF … you think the existing majority voting plus electoral college scheme is perfect? And if it’s not perfect then, you know what, one vote means nothing.
November 4th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I saw the very same thing at my polling place in Fairfax. The white guy in front of me turned around as soon as he saw the line; but the black family in front of him, including the toddler, stayed put. Even though it was 5:45am.
It was his loss for leaving. Even though the line was long, my wait was only 40 minutes total. The polling place was actually well-organized and efficient. The line moved super fast.
I do hope that the white guy found time later in the day to vote, but damn he annoyed me. If a frigging toddler can wait in line, so can you.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:10 am
@Maynard Handley:
I must be a dumb rube. Why don’t you explain in very small words who is it ok to encourage to vote, and who we should be happy to see disenfranchised.
Of course, I’m not enough of a rube to buy that Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem somehow implies we should be cheering when some folks can’t afford to wait in line- I mean, even a hill person knows it doesn’t say that at all!
So let’s drop the reliance on your faux-understanding of a mathematical bauble, and explain to us why it’s so funny to see people decide that voting is too expensive for them. We’re all waiting.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
What is the purpose of an election? To discover “the will of the people” presumably.
The problem is that there IS no “will of the people”, or, to be more precise, the exact details of how an election is conducted (FPP, runoff, condorcet, borda, electoral college vs popular vote, etc etc) can (and occasionally have) determined the outcome.
This means that, when there is an especially close election, there is no MORAL weight to one outcome vs the other. The situation is clearly that the population is split; and that a different method of voting might very probably have produced a different outcome.
The fact that one vote (or some miniscule number of votes) could have swayed an election has obvious legal and political significance, but how can you claim that is has MORAL significance? What is your argument?
- That the “will of the people” is not being correctly gauged? But there is no such will, especially if the vote is so closely contested.
- That the particular voting method utilized is the one honest and true voting method in the universe, and so it’s results need to be deified? So what is your feeling about all the other places on earth that use different voting methods? You believe that places that use, for example, proportional representation, are not democracies?
OK, I explained myself. Ball’s now in your court.
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