From The Trenches: Thoughts From Center Township
A friend of Hoosier Access had this to write about the turnout on Election Day for a precinct located within Center Township, Marion County, Indiana.
I was in my precinct from an hour before opening until the Inspector left with my Judge to turn-in the stuff. We had 602 votes cast of 1700 on the rolls, 35.41%. Unofficially the tallies were Obama - 470, McCain - 116, Barr - 8 and write-ins - 5. Between the Special Election in March and this election, there were only 150 new registrations. If we can trust the poll book, every new voter, and there were only a few, ponied up the additional identification required. We used only three provisional ballots and they are likely to be disqualified by the Election Board for various reasons.
It appears that 10% of non-democrat voters went for other than McCain. If this held true throughout the State, we conservatives gave Indiana to Obama. I believe it would have been worse without Palin.
I made a comment to this individual asking if he thought Marion County’s 53% turnout means that we conservatives did not turn out, as liberal Democrats had every reason to turn out and they did, or is 47% of the voter rolls garbage and filled with unpurged dead voters
As to the rolls, since my precinct picked up, geographically, most of another during the 2008 reduction, and that precinct’s polling place was in the same place as mine, I had a very good idea of comparative turn-out. Considering that we now have two polling places in my location rather than the previous three, yet the geographical area is the same, this turn-out was not remarkably larger than previous Presidential elections at my polling place and did not include a lot of new voters. I am not sure if 47% of the voter roll is garbage; but, it is a larger percentage than it should be. White has not used the information available to her to purge the rolls as have other counties.
On a cheerful note, we have done well electing our Governor, and others on the State level. Marion County continues to fail.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Interesting. So every Republican is a conservative and every Democrat is a liberal? Being conservative is good. Being liberal is bad?
I’m a registered Democrat who voted for Obama, Daniels and Campo. As a Quaker, I vote my values. I campaigned for both Obama and Campo. Our world is so much larger than labels.
Pres.-Elect Obama is our president. Roll up our sleeves, dig in and lets all get to work to fix this, not continue divisiveness based upon philosophy.
I didn’t vote for Bush, I gave him a pass for a year or so. I supported him after 9/11. I’ve never broken off a friendship with anyone because of who they supported, which has happened to me this week. And forgive me for being happy that we’ve transcended our past. The Republican party was the party of Lincoln! They led the fight against Southern Democrats instituting the poll tax. Then something happened. There was a quantum shift. At the Obama rally or speeches, you see people of all colors, ethnicity and backgrounds. It’s a microcosm of our society. At McCain rally’s and at his concession speech? Just different shades of pale to tan white people?
Obama, for the first time in my adult life, is speaking to me on a wave-length that connects right to me. My parents, both 73 Shelby County retired blue collar folks voted for Obama, My 96 year old granny voted for Obama. My ex-wife, a life-long Republican who worked in the Hudnut Administration voted for Obama.
We have a real chance here. If we all just forget the stuff we know to be lies. I knew McCain wasn’t going to be 4 more years of Bush. I disliked that argument. If he had campaigned as he really is, he probably would have lost his base support. Picking Palin just made people realize he wasn’t putting country first. But election first. Each President enters office with a one in six chance of dying before their term ends. His odds had to be higher as a 73 year old cancer survivor. Personally I want my President to be the smartest person in the room. This time, that person is a Center right Democrat who is a Constitutional Scholar. Not a bad choice. We needed Sen. McCain in 2000 but he was sandbagged in North Carolina. Today we need him even more in the Senate as a voice of experience, reason, unity and even balance.
Our Country needs all of us.
November 7th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“Personally I want my President to be the smartest person in the room. This time, that person is a Center right Democrat who is a Constitutional Scholar”
Who is that? The President-Elect is a far left-wing tax-and-spend socialist who only got elected to the Senate a couple of years ago, and only got there because the Chicago Tribune smears his superior opponent by printing his divorce papers on the front page of the Trib. Constitutional Scholar - yeah - how to strip out the 2nd Amendment, and kill children (he opposed BAIPA for crissakes!!)
November 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Thanks for commenting seeker65. I appreciate your thoughts on this. No, not every Republican is conservative and not every Democrat is liberal–though that is how it tends to be. I would not argue that being conservative is good and liberal is bad, but I would argue that being conservative leads to better governance and liberalism leads to bad governance and an expansion of that government.
There were a couple of things that you said that are curious to me:
1. lets all get to work to fix this. First we would have to agree on what is broken. I suspect that you and I would disagree significantly on what that is. What I think is broken is that the government is messing up the economy and our freedoms by being too involved in every aspect of our life. What do you think is broken?
2. Personally I want my President to be the smartest person in the room. I don’t. I want my President to be the wisest man in the room. You may think that is the same thing, but it is not. But beyond that, there are smart people (and wise for that matter) who disagree on operating principles. If you are the smartest or wisest man in the room, but you have the wrong principles, you will end up in the wrong place.
3. This time, that person is a Center right Democrat who is a Constitutional Scholar. I personally think you have had the wool pulled over your eyes on all of these characteristics: Obama is not Center Right. He is not even Center Left. He is Radical Left. He was a Constitutional law instructor. That does not make him a scholar. He IS a Democrat, however.
Time will only tell how Obama will visibly govern.