Ice, Polls, and Turnout
It seems that this is not the week for me to just be getting where I’m going without a little bit of effort. Saturday, I had lots fun trying to get to the Bethesda Photowalk. Last night getting to the polls and home proved to be a lot more work than normal.
I left work a half-hour earlier than normal, catching the early bus out of Crystal City. Normally, this bus hits a little bit of traffic on 66 west, but it usually moves along. Not yesterday. Like so much of the region, ice was causing major delays. Over the span of what is normally a 20 minute segment of the bus route, I managed to complete a Sudoku puzzle, write out a task list for the next day, and take a nap. Refreshed after my nap, I settled in for the second half of the bus ride.
This part was no better, as the driver inexplicably choose not to use the express lanes on the Dulles Toll Road, instead opting for the heavily congested toll lanes. As we sat in traffic while the express lanes screamed by, there were quite a few looks thrown about the bus. I sent a text to my wife letting her know that I was going to be late. I only just refrained from calling the bus driver an idiot in the message.
Turns out, that was a good omission, as the express lanes soon came to a complete stop. An accident on an icy overpass has completely stopped those lane. With no possible exit, the folks there were trapped for quite a while. We slowly puttered along and eventually made the bus depot. My leaving 30 minutes early had landed my less than 10 minutes ahead of my normal schedule. And that was before seeing my car.
There’s a really cool look to glass when ice has frozen over it. It gets a nice mottled look that is exceptionally pretty, when you don’t have to look through it and drive. Unfortunately, that what I had to do, so out came the ice scraper and five to ten minutes later, I was finally heading to vote.
The trip was uneventful (though I passed a few more accidents) and the polling place was fairly efficient. [Big thanks to the folks who brought the doughnuts for all the voters, by the way!] With about two hours to go before close there were ~480 votes in the Democratic primary and ~240 in the Republican. I was somewhat surprised at the 2:1 margin, but that margin held up statewide in Virginia. Even more impressive to me were the 973,221 voters in the Democratic primary (based on vote totals from the Washington Post, with 99% of precincts reporting). Almost one million voters in a primary with no local implications has to say something about the frustrations of a large group of people with the status quo.
Update: A little article from the Post on the ice and traffic yesterday. Just in case anyone thought I was exaggerating.
