It is 11pm on Election night. I spent the day at precinct 927 in Denver, Colorado. This was a voting place in a Town-Home club house. Most of the 500 some odd voters had already voted either by mail-in-ballot or at Early Voting. We had 64 voters (one lady was 97!); 5 poll watchers including a former Colorado first lady, Dottie Lamb; several Denver Election workers; the city councilwoman who brought us sweet rolls; a couple of UCD students doing a survey; a couple of other young people troubleshooting the election and 6 poll workers. The Election Commission is paying us for our time (a little better than minimum wage) and even gave us lunch this time. I spent the last two weeks working at an early voting center. I am very tired because I traded shifts and worked a number of doubles so that I wouldn't go 'under hours' during these two weeks. But it was worth it. I like working during the elections, I have done it for years. Even though there are always some problems, it is an American institution.
Tonite Senator McCain gave a very gracious speach when he conceeded the election. Senator (President-Elect!) Obama's speach was very inspiring. I sent a text to my daughter Becca who is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Albania. She texted back that she was watching the speech as we were. Rachael, her sister here in Colorado also called us and woke up Ismaat, our 10 year old Granddaughter, to hear President-elect Obama speak. Ismaat has been excited to watch the election. As she says, "This is a historic election." I will sleep well tonight.
Yesterday morning David and I received an invitation to go hear candidate, Barack Obama at a private event in Colorado Springs. Since I had the day off and David didn't have to go to work until the afternoon, we RSVP'd that we would attend the speech. We picked up our tickets outside the gym where the event would take place and while in line to enter the arena, we received green dots which allowed us to sit behind the candidate during the speech. (You can even see me in the photo from "thedenverchannel.com")