Door hanger hung by the pumpkin for change!

The scene where I picked up my marching orders.

Today I spent a couple of hours hoofing it around Alexandria, leaving hangers on doors. Today’s hangers were all about letting people know where their polling place will be and what to do in the event that you’re not on the rolls when you show up to vote. By pure happenstance, I was dispatched to work out of the house of a Virginia State Delegate, David Englin. Having learned the route there and home, I’ll likely return to the same spot for tomorrow’s late-afternoon and evening poll support work. For which I will be baking cookies, brewing coffee, loading up the car with chairs and umbrellas, and just generally preparing to be cheerful.

I can’t remember being so excited about an election since we were the Clinton youth vote. It’s funny to look back and see how increased youth turnout (and Ross Perot) were credited with handing Clinton that win, and how later elections just didn’t measure up. We’re hearing all the same rhetoric about young people voting and seeing all kinds of evidence of increased campaign participation. At the same time, I spoke just this weekend with a woman who was part of the youth vote for Truman, and volunteered as a poll watcher in Philadelphia while in college. I expect that the first time you vote for president is the time that defines you, but we of Clinton youth vote have been stepping up and doing our part in this cycle as well. I’d hazard a guess that a lot of the folks I’m seeing out volunteering were Kennedy youth voters in their time, too.

Maybe after tomorrow, though, we’ll all just be part of the Obama vote. It’s not often that you get a chance to be involved in something you’ve waited your whole life for, and that’s exciting. I, for one, was confident I’d live to see the day the U.S. elected a black president. I just didn’t expect to be this young.