Heather's Adventures in Lesotho

Today, of course, my thought are distracted by the elections in the U.S. I voted a few weeks ago by email and have been anxiously following Nate Silver’s predictions at the NYTimes. (I said it on FB, but I’ll say it again he has kept me sane this election cycle.)

I’m also thinking about how I’ve spent election days/nights in the past. It’s a pretty wide variety and some good memories:

In 2000 I was a college student volunteering on the campaign of Scott Howell for U.S. Senate. I drove up to Salt Lake the night before, took the GRE in the morning and then volunteered that afternoon and went to the results party that night. (Side note: Scott is running again and I was really pleased to get to vote for him again. It’s too bad that Utah is entrenched in one party.)

On the night of the 2002 primary elections in Maryland (September) I was sobbing in living room of the candidate whose campaign I had managed when he lost.

A few months later I got a speeding ticket while hurrying back from Valentine, South Dakota where I had been doing GOTV (get-out-the-vote) activities and then observing at a polling station on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. The candidate I was supporting won by 524 votes. (Another side note: Ben Mcadams – who I worked with on the reservation in South Dakota and had met previously as the Utah Democratic Party convention in 2000 – is running for Utah County Mayor. I was also really pleased to cast my vote for him a few weeks ago.)

In 2004 I worked for several weeks on Labor 2004’s support for John Kerry in eastern Iowa. I learned where I would be going for Peace Corps while at a rally with John Edwards in Iowa City and then met someone who would eventually end up in my Peace Corps training group at a union hall on election night (while we were commiserating our loss.)

In 2008 I watched the results with my friend/former candidate from the 2002 primaries. No sobbing this time.

Tomorrow the US Embassy is hosting a get together starting at 6am to watch the results. Somebody asked me if we’ll know who won by then and I don’t think so but it will be fun to be together.