Abigail M. Schilling

I did. It was my very! first! time! I started to get real giddy as the time drew near. I had my voter's guide all ready (well.. I made up my mind about a few of the props nearly at the last minute), met up with my voting buddies, and entered the church fellowship hall. For the first time! Those machines are a little tricky to use, but I figured it out eventually and got my sticker.

Then tonight we all gathered around CNN for a long time of precinct studies except that everything was over with so fast! My previous election memories only include the last two which, as you might recall, stretched on for days. This was over with before my polls closed. I bet CNN was pretty bummed about that because of all their technology, like the underused holograms.

A bunch of my friends came over and we have a million different opinions which made things fun. The real gritty stuff is the twenty million (twelve, actually) props that California puts voters in charge of deciding. Everything from sketchy bonds, to high-speed rails, to veteran stuff, to prison stuff. There are a lot of reasons for and against most of the props and so it's easy to find you and your friends disagreeing on whether getting to San Francisco in 4 hours or less is necessary.

However, both CNN and local station KCAL opted to not cover anything California related. In fact, CNN didn't even give us a courtesy "California projection" but instead jumped straight to a President-elect projection once our polls closed. And they didn't even credit us! They just used us for our 55 votes and left us out to dry. While the candidates gave lovely speeches and the pundits yakkity yakked about said speeches, we started relying on LA Times' slow-to-update reports. So we sat there trying to convince one another to change our views on the props despite it being too late to change our vote.

I'm so anxious to see what the prop outcome is--I'm very competitive and committed once I decide--but it's impossible to find out now. Dear election officials, count faster. Thanks!

We also spent some time reading aloud Facebook statuses from extremists on both sides. People are so dramatic.

The thing that has given me the most perspective on the election, said by someone I work with:

"People are thinking that this election is the center point of history. It really isn't. But that attitude is a symptom of a very strange disease from which we suffer: cultural narcissism."

I think that's true and I also think I'm going to have election hangover tomorrow.