Voting has always been one of the most important things to me in my life. Despite my torn achilles and despite certain-record crowds for the 2008 Presidential Election, my wife and I braved the long lines on November 1 and went to Parkland Library about 20 minutes north of us to early vote. Thanks to some very nice poll workers and people in line, we were able to vote quicker than expected and everyone in line seemed to be full of pride no matter who they were supporting, and didn't mind waiting for hours at a time to vote.
I have always taken my right to vote very seriously. I remember pre-registering to vote in High School right before I turned 18 and then my first ever large scale election was the governor's race in Florida between Bob Martinez and Lawton Chiles. I voted that election (and all of the elections while I attened college) by absentee ballot.
I always understood how important it was to vote. I think part of that was because I had such a great American Government teacher like Mr. Kenneth Bass in high school. He was by far one of the best teachers I ever had and I gained an appreciation for the fine art of politics back then. Heck, one of my classmates from that very class is now the mayor of Hollywood, Florida, so he apparently gained the same appreciation!
Being off my feet as I will be, I'm looking for newer ways to follow Election Day without feeling out of touch. The Palm Beach Post (which is teaming up with many other Florida newspapers in this respect) is going to have a live, interactive Twitter Map that day, available at http://www.palmbeachpost.com/, often as the main art of on the home page, at least until polls close and maybe longer.
Reporters and observers will be at all the polling places, watching for problems, and a reporter from the Post will be tweeting what they see and hear (such as: broken printer, fainting, count problem, legal challenge, etc.) Each tweet (from a special account called PBP_votes) will appear on the map, with a bubble pointing to where the problem or news report comes from. As I am a tweet-a-holic, I can't wait to see how this all works (along with the other goodies at http://www.twitter.com/ that day as well).
So remember, no matter who you are supporting (whether it's Fred Armisten and Jason Sudekis or Darrell Hammond and Tina Fey), vote on Tuesday, November 4. There may be no right as an American more important than this.
