Election Eve.

     I'm excited and nervous tonight.

     Excited at the prospect that this historic campaign may culminate tomorrow night with an intelligent, forward-thinking, inclusive ticket headed to the White House.

     Nervous because I don't trust electronic voting machines and I refuse to underestimate the abilities of desperate Republican operatives willing to do anything to suppress votes or otherwise rig results.

     Stalin said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

     I'm nervous tonight because I remember Florida and the Supreme Court of the United States  in 2000.   

     Both a lot and too little has changed since.

     It's eight years later, the republic has (barely) survived, and the always-on-message Obama campaign has urged their supporters to both vote and to be vigilant at their polling places. Still, reports of shenanigans are out there and with an unprecedented turnout expected, the potential for chaos surely exists.

     But I'll focus on my excitement for now, and spend tonight imagining the national repudiation tomorrow of Bush/Cheney incompetence and criminality, McCain/Palin incoherent divisiveness, and the tuning out of the right-wing echo chamber of FOX/Limbaugh/Coulter, et al.

     I salivate at the prospect of senators such as Mitch McConnell, Norm Coleman, Saxby Chambliss, and Elizabeth Dole getting their butts handed to them, and reprehensible representatives like Michelle Bachmann finally being found out.

     These people are not our best and brightest.

     I want to see live footage of Sarah Palin boarding a plane back to Alaska, and I never want to see her again.

     That's too much to ask, I know.

     And John McCain?

     Though I've never been one of those political junkies who bought into his cult of personality--I always saw a self-aggrandizing grand-stander--it would be inhumane not to be struck by the sadness of watching a man sell out for all the world to see.

     I love this country and criticize it often; that's my role as a citizen. I also have many friends from around the world who moved here because of the idea of America, and I am aware of what this place means to them, too. It's really a beautiful thing to behold. 

     So first thing tomorrow morning, I'll walk the block or two over to my polling place at the Knights of Columbus hall in the Riviera Village. And for the first time ever, I hope that I will have to wait in a long line.

     That will mean my neighbors care, too.

     I'm excited and nervous tonight, but I'll walk in that booth in the morning and proudly cast my vote for Barack Obama.

     Then I'll walk back home, hoping that the world is about to change.