GREETINGS FROM PRESCOTT

I'm writing this from upstate - well, upstate from Phoenix. Prescott is in central Arizona just west of Sedona on the way up to Flagstaff. This should be a nice four-day weekend with Veterans Day next Tuesday, but ASU has inconveniently scheduled normal classes on Monday. Still, I felt the need for a get-away. Prescott is one of the older (American) towns in Arizona, settled in 1862. I'm told it has a very cool historic district. But that'll have to wait till tomorrow when it's light. I just drove in after dark tonight!

Election Day last Tuesday was interesting. My neighborhood, not exactly a high-rent district, a gentrifying old Tempe area, is mainly Democratic (so I assume). Since I teach at 9:00 and heard horror stories of potentially long lines on election day, I decided to get there at the opening of the polls at 6:00 am. In fact, I arrived 20 minutes till still in the dark. A small line was already there at the very plain neighborhood Church of God that serves as our neighborhood polling station. Inside, it looked like the poll workers had things well in hand. At 6:00, the door was opened, but the poll workers apologized that no one could vote yet because the official poll official hadn't arrived to certify (or something) the ballot box. So, we waited, and I commiserated with the African-American ex-army wife who had been stationed in Alaska and a gregarious local white woman whose front lawn is decorated with bowling balls!

The minutes passed, and the little line we had been in began to back up around the block. One poll worker admitted that all efforts to contact the official had failed - he wasn't answering his phone, he wasn't even at home when someone drove there! One baseball cap-wearing young black man commented, "He has to show up for work one day out of four years, and he can't even make that!" One of my neighbors wondered darkly which party the official belonged to! Arizona is McCain's home state, after all! (Conspiracy theory #469) So, 6:10, 6:15, 6:20, finally by 6:40 a back-up official arrived looking harried. By 6:45, the first voter was allowed to begin - 45 minutes late. The workers said that the state had given our polling station a special dispensation to stay open 45 minutes past the appointed time that evening.

The Arizona voting system is interesting. No levers, no hole punch machines. It's like an SAT test. You use a black marker to connect two black circles next to the name you are voting for to create a complete line. The cardboard form is finally fed into a secure ballot box.

Anyway, Obama won, in case anyone on Mars hasn't heard yet!