Check this lovely vid on youtube.com, it won't embed.

I voted today. For the second time since I moved to New Orleans over a decade ago, I live around the block from my polling place. I like walking to vote, on a brisk fall day, turning over the choices in my mind as I smile and greet my civic-minded neighbors. How American?

I ended up in a long line behind a broken polling machine. Since I work for a "local media outlet," as a fellow member, some scruffy newspaper guy with a bad sweater remarked to a potential interviewee in line beside me, I wanted to hang out and see what shook down. An ex-coworker arrived, with camera and reporter in tow, to find out where the broken machine was. I told him I thought it was my precinct, that'd be just my luck.



It was not my precinct, so I was able to move into a line about one voter deep. There were some tired looks on people's faces, but no one was anywhere near frustration, because the poll workers were well informed, well behaved and well intentioned, even though their hands were tied in waiting for the repair guy to show up. They all worked together, I saw two ladies who were probably a grandmother and her granddaughter learning the family tradition, and they offered to let folks read over the amendments. Again, everyone was in a decent mood, even with the Kodak factor present, with media and election monitors all over the place as a willing audience to any grandstanding of failed representation or folks being taken advantage of.

I picturemailed the photo to our News Director and contacted our assignment desk who sent out our crew to get what we refer to as "good sound" with the voters and poll workers.

There was one guy there who was doing a bit of grandstanding, and he made me smile. He told the badly sweatered reporter to, "write this down... this part of the country has come a long way since the end of the Civil War." He repeated it slowly, then added, "that was 1865..."

Vote Dammit.