Early Exit Poll

When I rode up to my polling place this morning, a lady asked if she could hold the door open for me while I wheeled my bike inside. I thanked her and rolled in behind her as I quickly glanced around for signage that would point me to the right station. I had read many of the sundry pre-election materials and recalled from my prior trips to the polls that I would be voting on "the B side". Because I place a good deal of pride on voting early, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the woman who had helped me get my bike in the door was a volunteer, not a voter. This meant I had fewer people to wait behind, and more people to wait on me.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried, since the volunteer to voter ratio was approximately twelve to one. I was the one. I got to see the wrapper come off a stack of ballots, and there was still a good deal of logistics to iron out before the first rush came. I was not the rush. I stood patiently as the precinct captain showed his crew how to find an address, check the name, and finally I was asked to sign on the line. As I was handed my ballot, I listened to an interesting discussion about what to do if there was some doubt about the true identity of the voter in question. Ah, voter fraud! This was getting dicey. But not really. The volunteer was told that they only needed to check identification if there was some conflict with the address.
It occurred to me then that the number of registered voters versus the number of people trying to sneak in to vote would create a ratio of even more impressive magnitude than the one previously mentioned. I felt that democratic surge I often get when I realize that I live in a country where we are encouraged to vote, and now we need to get all the people who can vote to get out and exercise that right. I was struck, not for the first time, that I was on the verge of an historic moment: a major political party in the United States will almost certainly run either a woman or an African-American man for president. It was all I could do to keep myself from bursting into a chorus of "America, the Beautiful."
When I had finished carefully marking my paper ballot, I walked back to the table, where I offered to tear the tab off the top myself in the midst of a crew that was still being introduced to the basics. Then I fed my ballot into the scanner and watched the number change from 001 to 002. I wasn't the first, but I was still plenty early. I thanked everyone for their time and dedication and rode off into the chilly Election Day morning.