Early Voting

Vote early last week was very similar to the experience of buying an iPhone last summer. Although I chose a strategic time - the middle of the day on a weekday - the line stretched right out of the city hall, and an elaborate system of queues kept the parade of people moving forward. Ten at a time, people standing in the line outside the building were ushered in and taken to yet another network of lines inside. Just as all of us poor Applephiles in the hot sun had nothing to talk about but the virtues of the new iPhone last summer, conversation in the voting line inevitably turned to politics.

My conversation partner was a middle-aged black American who works as a waiter at Miami's poshest and most famous restaurant. He told me about his 96 year old mother in Indianapolis and her giddiness at being able to vote for a black man this year. Overhearing our conversation, a wizened lady of 70-80 approached us to say, with a heavy Cuban accent: "I came here in 1959 and I always vote for the Republican. But guess what I just did?" She smiled broadly and mischievously. "I voted for Barack Obama."