Election Day

Just from my observations and from speaking with students, the polls could start getting clogged following the end of late afternoon classes and the general working day.

Many students said they would wait until after classes ended to head to the polls, considering the polls close at 8 p.m. and there might not be enough time in between classes to vote.

So far, it seems as if things have been running smoothly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if sleep-cherishing college students who didn’t want to wake up at the crack of dawn to vote put off their ballot casting until the end of the day. For off-campus precincts, people who get off work at 5 p.m. could add to congestion. The 5 p.m. hour is another one of those peak hours, similar to the lunch period.

Luckily, all you have to do is be in line before 8 p.m. rolls around to get a chance to vote.

But don’t take that chance.

Just vote.

Today surely feels like a holiday.

It’s odd to me that in this nation of ours, the one that loves democracy so much that it’s willing to kill other people to show how great it actually is, that our election day isn’t a national holiday.

True, it’s our “civic duty” to go out and vote, whereas it’s not our civic duty to eat turkey on Thanksgiving or make the pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument on President’s Day.

But who actually could tell me when Columbus Day is (or was, since it already occurred this year)? Yet we know that every first Tuesday of November is election day.

It’s sometimes too difficult for people to vote with class and work and all these other daily obligations. With an election like this, it’s even more difficult given some of the long lines.

I understand this is a somewhat strange election, being that people actually like the candidates rather than picking between the lesser of two evils (or several evils for all those U.S. Taxpayers and Green Party supporters). It’s also a celebration of the end of eight years of the Bush administration, which some would say deserves a whole month of religious dedication and worship.

In a country with some of the most deplorable voter participation numbers, making election day a national holiday would improve those statistics.

There is the flip side to this, of course. By making it a national holiday, you create more opportunities for less passionate, less educated voters to head to the polls. By keeping election day just a regular day, it could be argued that only those who really care about politics and our nation in general will vote.

I disagree with this, though. There are plenty of informed voters who simply cannot fit voting into their regular work day.

Yes, it’s a duty to vote. But our nation is making it a chore.

Political campaigns have used social networking Web sites such as www.facebook.com to their advantage, and anyone who logs onto Facebook today will likely see a page that has been usurped by the election.

Politically passionate people have passed presidential pins to each other as free “gifts” on the social networking Web site for several weeks. Friends have urged each other to vote via wall posts. Facebook itself has promoted the election by displaying the 2008 election event on its home page.

Today, my friends’ statuses are mainly dedicated to voting — either in general or for the candidates they support. Facebook has established an option to donate your status to the election at http://causes.com/election.

As much as I want people to vote, I’m not donating my status (instead I am doing some shameless self-promotion by telling everybody to check www.statenews.com for updated election coverage).

But in case you didn’t know who your friends were voting for (or I guess “friends” considering it’s Facebook), check their status updates. I know I am — how else will I know who to laugh at tomorrow?

The TV networks want your viewership for tonight’s election coverage. But who wins in a politically-split house?

A few of my friends live in the same house, and given their political ideologies, I’m not quite sure how both of them have survived during this election year. Every time I pass by their house, I half expect a hollowed out crater signifying that a nuclear war had indeed occurred.

The fight for control over the remote tonight will earn praise from Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

One friend wants Fox News. The other wants just about anything else.

Election coverage has become a staple in my life ever since I stayed up into the early morning hours in 2000, switching from station to station to see who had been pegged as president.

Everybody had their own take.

The one that called the vote right first, however, was Fox News. For all the people who decry the network’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan, they at least got the facts straight.

But then again, watching election coverage is just as much about the personalities as it is the information. When I’m watching election night, Wolf Blitzer of CNN and Tom Brokaw of NBC come to mind.

My friends probably won’t agree on which channel to watch. One of them probably won’t be alive tomorrow. But I’ll at least give them credit for waiting this long to act on a murderous political rage. All this can be avoided, though.

My solution — buy a second TV.

When Starbucks offered the nation a free tall coffee for voting, it must have understood the type of response it considering many customers need to take out a loan to purchase one of their drinks.

And on a cash-strapped college campus, the reception has been “crazy,” said Emily Butterfield, a supply chain management junior and employee at the 401 E. Grand River Ave. Starbucks.

While there wasn’t a line at 10:45 a.m., Butterfield said the line has been out the door several times, usually when classes end.

Originally, Buttefield was accompanied by just one co-worker. The store has added workers to adjust to the lines.

Although backups have been expected, East Lansing City Clerk Nicole Evans said the polls have been running smoothly today.

Evans said some backups have occurred because the state voter database system is operating slowly, but problems have been insignificant.

As 12 p.m. approaches, Evans said she anticipates large crowds. She advised students avoid the lunch hour and instead vote at off-peak times.

If gas weren’t $2.18 per gallon, driving home to vote would have been more painful.

Admittedly, not registering to vote in East Lansing was the wrong decision. If I weren’t lazy, maybe I would have filed for an absentee ballot or registered here. But my numerous unpaid parking tickets and the fact that I am writing this blog from my bed because my desk has been invaded by textbooks, old papers, empty plastic cups and a complimentary Captain Morgan’s winter hat should tell you I’m not exactly somebody who is on top of things.

My dad gave me a sample ballot last night to look over, and I did my research on the candidates before I voted. Still, there is not enough time in one night to learn about the candidates compared to the weeks students at MSU have been buzzing about people such as state Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing and his Republican challenger Frank Lambert, or U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton and his Democratic opponent Bob Alexander. I robbed myself of the thrill of voting for people I actually cared about.

The reason I missed out on this opportunity is because I was initially blinded by the allure of the presidential race. We have to remember, though, that we are deciding more than just the leader of our nation for the next four years.

It’s interesting to think how little emphasis we place on our local representatives. When James Madison and the other founding fathers set the framework for our nation’s political institutions, they thought people would be most passionate about the local governments in which citizens could have the most direct impact. With town hall style governments so popular in colonial New England, I guess this is the only evidence they had for this theory.

Now, we are more invested in the White House than the town hall. It’s only natural, given everybody has the opportunity to vote for president but I can’t vote for the Michigan’s 7th District U.S. representative. Still, we need to think about why we’re voting, and that is to get our voices heard. Our local and most direct representatives can do that best.

And if I had thought about that before, I would have saved some gas money.