Election Day Warm Fuzzies

Reposted from a Nov. 4 email:

Yay voting! Did mine this morning, first time ever actually going to the polls (instead of voting absentee). Got a sticker! Honestly, even if it weren't my "civic duty" to vote, and I weren't jaded-but-still-ultimately-a-believer in this whole democracy thing, I would do it just for the sticker (I was one of those kids who went to the dentist for the stickers and the cheap plastic trinkets you got to pick out of the "wishing well" at the end of your visit).

Pulled up into the Latimer Community Center (my local polling place) parking lot, which has never had more than 2 cars in it when I've driven by, to find it full to the brim. Short line inside (I waited until after 9am, thank you to bosses who are flexible about performing your civic duty!), got the above-mentioned sticker, thanked the poll workers, and voted in person for the first time in my young life--used a wide-out-there-in-the-open computer touch screen, somehow that seems anti-climactic, where are the little curtained polling booths with actual paper ballots of my youth when my mom worked election polls and brought me along to observe? (I spent most of the that day reading my new issue of Cricket magazine, but I think she knew that as an elementary-schooler I would soak up the whole thing like a sponge and it would become part of my civic make-up. Thanks, Mom, for the electoral osmosis--it worked!)

Walked around on a high all day, smiling at fellow sticker-sporters in a conspiratorial kind of way (Who cares how they voted! It doesn't matter, we shared in this mystical good-cheer-mongering communal act! It's like Christmas!).

From an fMh commenter:
"I always love voting in major elections. The whole process feels almost holy to me. It’s like a secular sacrament."

Ditto. Like I said, for better or worse, I'm a believer at heart.