Portland Mercury on Twitter Portland Mercury on Facebook Portland Mercury on Instagram

This Week in the Mercury

Four Hits from Hell and Beyond

Food and Drink

Four Hits from Hell and Beyond

Food Finds on the Fringes of the City


Get to Work!

Feature

Get to Work!

What Straight Allies (Or Actually Everybody) Can Do for Gay Marriage



  |  

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election 2008 I'm Going to Be a Mess Today

Posted by Amy J. Ruiz on Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 8:13 AM

It's just 8 am, and already I've had tears in my eyes a few times. I'm trolling around the Internets, and finding dozens of stories: Long lines of excited people at polling places, Americans abroad awaiting the results, youth voting for the first time, etc.

This one got to me, via Andrew Sullivan about Dartmouth College:

Those who are wondering if the youth will turn out ought to see what I saw this morning.

One well-known government professor here told me that she has never seen so many students vote in the first hour of voting as she saw this morning. And I've never seen so many students up and alert at this hour. They're normally stumbling out of bed to make it to their 10 a.m. courses. Today, the campus has been buzzing for hours this morning. It appears that many of them decided to go to the polls as groups of twos, threes, fours and more when the polls opened at 7 a.m. The number of students I saw by 8 a.m. walking around with "I voted" stickers on is astonishing.

At breakfast, I sat next to a table of four black students, all of whom had voted. The three men were wearing ties. I asked them why. The answer: It was their first election, and they wanted to mark the occasion.

Tell us your story.

Comments (3)

Showing 1-3 of 3

 
Subscribe to this thread:
By Email
With RSS
Showing 1-3 of 3

Comments are closed.

Our Friends

Our Enemies

All contents © Index Newspapers, LLC

115 SW Ash St. Suite 600
Portland, OR 97204

Contact Info | Privacy Policy | Production Guidelines | Terms of Use | Takedown Policy