At 4:35 a.m. I turn my alarm off. I have already hit snooze at 4:17 and 4:26. I wake up with an extreme lack of sleep over the past few days but I am not tired; in fact I can hardly contain my excitement. It’s Election Day. As a Seminole County Elections Official, this is my Super Bowl, my time to serve my fellow residents.
My mom slow-cooked pulled pork overnight for me and my fellow poll-workers. As I drive to my precinct, I have the radio tuned to the station that delivered the I-4 Corridor to President Barack Obama in 2008, WTKS 104.1 FM, the News Junkie, a program that airs in the early hour. I arrive at Precinct 45 at 5:49; the waning quarter moon smiles down on me.
I feel like Jim Kelly walking through the tunnel of Tampa Stadium for Super Bowl XXV as I walk into the United Methodist Church. I’ve been uneasy about using a church as a polling location, but continue to mask any misgivings. The smell of already brewed coffee in the air is soon joined by barbeque as I plug in the crock-pot.
I start running through my checklist as I set up my touch-screen voting booth. The inspectors set up the other polling stations and the clerk is overseeing the whole operation. By 6:21 my station is set up and I finish my second cup of coffee to start cup three. It tastes just as I want my coffee to taste: the burnt black stuff that has been sitting on a burner for five hours at the filling station off the interstate.
Polls opened at 7 a.m., and there were three people in line. The line grew. In a three-hour span, we had nearly 300 people come in to vote. Fortunately, most voters brought their sample ballots that were mailed out.
I’m the only person who came in contact with every voter at my precinct. There are mothers and fathers with their children showing them a part of their “civic responsibility”; a phrase I heard a number of times throughout the day.
I saw the last voters in my precinct at 7:37 p.m., and I left around quarter past eight. I tune my radio to WDBO 620 AM, a conservative radio station, for minute-by-minute results.
By the time I reach my home to drop off the crock-pot and before heading eastbound and down back to St. Petersburg, it’s announced Bill Nelson will be on in half hour to broadcast his victory. That was quick. Now it is time to get selfish; now I’m emotionally invested in President Obama’s re-election.
Each state closes its polls, bringing an avalanche of data; what counties flipped, who won which state, and the all-important electoral scoreboard in the sky, 270 to the finish.
I pull off at Exit 58 in Osceola County for some fries from McDonalds. I notice the Hispanics for Obama pin on the employee’s shirt and ask her if she wants to know what is going on in Florida, she does; Obama is up by 30,000 last I heard. This information gets translated to Spanish and yelled back into the kitchen. Cheers ring out.
As I rocket down I-4, Obama’s lead in the state comes within 1,000; at points Romney even takes the lead. By the time I pull off of I-275, NBC is the first network to call the election. I’m overcome with emotion: excitement, relief, no need to stress. Now it was time to celebrate, and celebrate I did.
fkurtz@mail.usf.edu
