I’ve been telling everyone around here that I talk to “Watch Ohio.” I told them that all they had to do was watch the Ohio returns and they’d see how the nation was going. I swear we could just have skipped everyone else voting and just had Ohio vote for us and you’d get the results of the nation. Ohio is key in every election so when it is going to be this close? That’s who you watch. The dynamic there represents our nation so well. Liberal north, conservative south. You get the highly religious elements and you get very agnostic elements. You have an extremely large homosexual population. The percentages stick right with the national percents. Every time one of the candidates would shift nationally you’d see them shift percentage points in Ohio. When Ohio vote, they vote for the winner.

I stayed up until 3:30. I was going to try to sleep on the sofa but that sofa is just so uncomfortable I decided that the way things looked nothing was going to happen until morning so I came to bed. Of course the insomnia kept me up for another half hour/45 minutes. Then the kids in their infinite wisdom woke me up at 7:15? WHY????? Grrrr. So I think I’m ditching Institute and just staying here and watching the election returns.

I wore those kids out yesterday. You’d THINK they would have slept and slept long and hard. Not my kids. Where on EARTH did they get that morning person gene???? If I find the person who gave us that gene they are getting a stern talking to.

So I’ve got MSNBC back on, my eye is killing me, and I’m just waiting to send the kids to school at this point. I won’t be able to fall back asleep easily so I gues it is just sit and wait for Kerry to give up or something impressive to happen.

Some things I was not happy about. I think some channels were far too fast to call Florida. They said early on in the evening they had all these absentee ballots to count and they would be counting until Thursday. The margin looked good, but slim. Due to the insanity in Florida last year, I expected the news to be a little slower to jump on the Florida bandwagon. Though it seemed that MSNBC waited the longest of the three major news networks. Especially considering all those absentee ballots.

I was also not happy that people called Ohio so early. People were voting there until all hours of the night. The results were exceedingly narrow. And Ohio was going to be the deciding factor. When I went to bed, CBS still had not called Ohio. I totally agreed with them. I think the major networks should have held off another hour at least if not two. I went to bed with them still saying that while it was unlikely it was possible that Kerry could still take Ohio. That state was too key to let a candidate take it with only a margin of 120k with so many votes still out. Heck CBS still has Ohio as too close to call. I think they are the smartest of people, they’ve been way burned on this type of stuff and they are using their heads.

I almost couldn’t believe the lines in Columbus. But I could. The people there have no sense of urgency. I’ll tell you what happened. Even though the polls opened first thing in the morning and people could easily go before work or on lunch or in a lot of cases at any time through the day virtually they wanted, even though every year it is said all over the news “VOTE EARLY TO AVOID LINES”, even though it was going to be insanity with as close as this election was and Ohio being the true beat of the nation (and even more so Columbus for some reason), people all said “Eh, I’ll go after I get off of work.” So they got off work at 5. They went home, grabbed food. Then they went to vote adn ooops… everyone else did too! This kind of stuff happens there. It ticks me off because I think they bring it on themselves but they complain about it. It isn’t like here where the majority of people drive 50 or more miles one way to work. My husband had to drive 65 miles yesterday to Dulles to work at the company office. Because of the route, it takes at best an hour and a half. He has to plan on it taking two hours because of how bad the traffic is. Which meant he had to leave here before the polls were open. He left early at 3:30 in an effort to make it home before the polls closed at 7. But that’s too far to jaunt home at lunch or whatever. Because of traffic it was actually possible he would have missed the window. It’s not like that in Columbus at all. I miss the traffic (lack of) there! Half an hour to cross town, 45 minutes if the traffic is bad.. ooooooh. *SIGH*

I am happy to see that more people voted this year. Last election Bush had more votes than Clinton had in both his elections. Last year it was so close but more people turned out. Even more turned out this time. It’s a good sign. People are realizing if they want a say they need to get out and vote. Excellent! Now keep going to the polls people!