Someone named "eastside93" (real name Boyd Reed) tells a good story about his voting booth experience:

http://tinyurl.com/5k8yfz

As someone who pulled a a bunch of levers shortly after 6AM in Brooklyn as well, this video captures what's so wonderful not only about the fact that we are are hours away from making history in this country, but also about the type of campaign that Obama and Biden have run. All of these children sound so positive and optimistic and clearly haven't been fed the "So-and-so is a bad man because he pals around with terrorists."-types of lines by their parents or candidates.

I truly hope that tonight's results will be a stinging indictment on the petty, divisive campaigns that the GOP has poisoned our political discourse with over the past decade. These children, and all Americans, deserve better.

p.s. Was this shot in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill? It looks an awful lot like my old polling place.

Oh great. Now the Washington Beltway gasbags will spend the next four years before an election solemnly nodding their heads as they talk about "the Bullwinkle effect."

"and then we press this button, and vote to bomb people on the other side of the world, that have never harmed us. usa! usa! usa!"

if americans were presented with this choice, would this be their response? perhaps you can see why i urge democracy over oligarchy.

My wife and I took our 5 year old to vote this morning in St. Louis. He had a great time. He sat on the floor while we waited in line and drew a picture of himself voting and he asked how to spell Barack Obama. He sat with my wife as she filled out a paper ballot (no one trusts the electronic voting around here) and decided to fill out his own on his own piece of paper. When he got to his Kindergarden class (a little late) he told his class he voted. Most of the kids yelled "Obama". Pretty good for a small parochial Catholic school in St. Louis MO, even if we are in the 'blue' city.

I've taken my kids into the voting booth for years, and today my oldest cast his first vote. Proud moment!

oh my god, that video was fantastic. that was so uplifting. i need to figure out how to share it on facebook with people!!

thanks, rebecca!!!!!

We like to pretend they have all the wisdom, clarity and innocent virtue in the world concentrated in their little hands. If that's true, why don't we let them vote?

Why is that?

And if that doesn't give you hope for the future, what would?

One of my earliest memories, when I was about four, my mother took me with her to vote. I started to follow her into the booth, but one of the voting officials took my hand and said that that was one place where no one could join her; her vote was hers alone to decide and cast. This was about 1937, when booths had short curtains that left the back of the legs exposed. I remember gravely waiting for my mom to finish, reassured by the sight of her legs, and gaining my first lesson about the sanctity of the voting booth and the importance of the act.

My nieces "voted" in their swing state elementary school, the same one I attended as a child. The school always went heavily Democratic. This year, Obama won by a huge margin.

I think the girls liked the fact that they're the same age as Obama's little girls. But they were also voting the same way their parents, grandmother, aunt, and two uncles voted.

It's not that children have some sort of special well of wisdom and innocence--most children are little repositories of fear and misinformation and their parents' bigotries, a lot like low-information adult voters. (I like moose but have no problem with hunting them, as long as you're sporting about it.)

But it's because I was involved in the political process early on that for me voting is a kind of civic sacrament and I can't imagine sitting out an election.

This past Sunday, I was camped out at the kitchen table watching the morning shows, while my 4 year old wandered in and out of the den. Pretty much every time he came in, Rick Davis was on the TV talking about how McCain was going to win. By his third visit to me, he pretty much parroted what I had been saying all along, "that guy thinks his guy is going to win. He's crazy!"

Since I took the day off for voting today, I took him with me to the polls. I picked him up and told him to press the screen for the person we wanted to win. He looked at it for a long time, and touched Obama's name. I suspect he recognized it from my car magnet. After I punched in my Congress vote, and the endless, endless proposition votes (oh, please, let the early voting prop win!), I let him hit the green button to officially cast my vote.

When my son grows up, I won't interfere with his voting or try to dictate his choices. However, on this one he voted for Mom's choice because I wanted him to be a part of history. I hope he remembers this when he grows up.

My mother, still kicking at 88, was born in October, 1920.

*She was born less than two months after the 19th Amendment was ratified in August 1920 giving woman the right to vote.

*She born just one month before the Presidential election in November 1920, the first election in which women were allowed to vote.

*My Grandmother voted for the first time in her life in that election, carrying her brand new baby daughter, my mother, into that voting booth.

*88 years later, November 2008, my mother voted for the first African American president.

In 1980 my 4th grade class had an "election" the night before. It was a Catholic school and I from what I remember we all voted like our parents. Carter won 38-1-1. One vote for Reagan and one vote for Anderson. The Reagan kid was instantly cooler for being savier than the rest of us. Sadly, I was the Anderson vote and instantly weirder. Thanks Dad!!