election 2008
The votes are counted and the Barack Obama is president-elect. What are your thoughts about the historic 2008 election? Start a dialogue here about the changes that Americans, and the world, now face.
I watched the election results intently last night, like most Americans. As the evening progressed, my thoughts about the outcome darted quickly and almost randomly to my life in America the past 50 years and election nights.
Last night seemed different.
Yes, I listened to reports on exit polls, watched the map of the U.S. change colors, heard pundits offer “insight” into the numbers and trends, and jumped between stations when some political “insider” irritated me.
According to first-hand reports, balloting was running smoothly Tuesday in Williamsburg, Virginia, a town that has been going to the polls since about 1632.
Election officials carefully monitored the contests for president, senator, and representative to be sure there were no irregularities, and that all was fair and above board.
It wasn’t ever thus. During the past 370 years, voting has one or two times, perhaps, been, shall we say, below board.
I landed in the first batch of voters turned loose on the ballot box following the lowering of the voting age to 18.
Amendment 26, ratified in 1971, got me my first vote at age 20.
I recall spirited debates in high school classes in the 1970s about the proposed change from age 21 to 18. I recall a lot of classmates talking excitedly about getting the right to vote. They believed and I believed that a single vote could make a difference in a national election, even though mathematicians tell us otherwise.
