Voting, Part Lots

There's an episode of The West Wing (what? You must have known I couldn't write an entire series on my voting experience without mentioning TWW!), which deals with the little town in New Hampshire that has the nation's first primary. (Okay, after I started blogging, I did go look it up. Hartsfield's Landing is the name of the town in the episode.)

The details were changed for the show, but this town does exist, and they all gather at 12:00 AM the day of the NH primary to ensure that they are the first in the nation. Okay, so actually several small towns in NH do this (all small enough that all the voters fit into the town hall or the high school gymnasium or whatever), but the one with the most media attention is Dixville Notch. If you really want to know more, go to Wikipedia; I refuse to reprint the article here.

So, back to the fictional Hartsfield's Landing in TWW. At the very end of the episode, the camera focused on a TV showing CNN's coverage of the Hartsfield's Landing vote. Someone was calling roll, and each person stepped forward to put his/her ballot in the box as he/she was called.

I don't remember the girl's name, but we're going to call her Sarah. The man called her name, then announced, "Sarah's 18, everybody! This is her first vote!" Then he said to the smiling Sarah, "Step up and cast your vote," while the rest of the town applauded. That is possibly my favourite TWW moment ever. I can't watch it without tearing up. In fact, I can't blog about it without tearing up.

And I mention it here because that amazing day after I received my very first ballot and walked to my very first voting booth, I was so overcome with emotion that I nearly cried on my ballot.