Smiles ... and frowns

I voted yesterday at 2:00 (and drove the half mile to my polling place in spite of the fabulous -- 65 and sunny -- weather). There was only one person ahead of me (and she had problems because some pieces of ID had her name spelled wrong -- I did see her vote). We have paper ballots that are read by scanner and the supplied pens take a while to fill in the ovals (I timed one at 15 seconds, what, can't use a marker?). I caught myself filling in the wrong oval about halfway through so had to get a replacement ballot and it took a moment for them to decide how to do that. When done I took a moment to look at the ballot in satisfaction -- here I am a white guy in the suburbs of a racially charged city and I voted for the black guy because he'll serve my interests better than the white guy.

I heard a bit of news on the way home from bell rehearsal, though mostly it was blather. I got the TV on by about 10:15. I was annoyed that the West Coast was called just after the polls "closed" though I'm sure there were lots of people still in line. Even so that put Obama's acceptance speech at midnight. He did an excellent job! Quite the contrast to McCain's limp concession. This is definitely the smile. Here's a link to some of the newspaper headlines.


Since some of my readers will probably not look these up on their own…

A couple more smiles:
South Dakota abortion ban lost by 55%.
Colorado attempt to define personhood at conception lost by 73%.
Connecticut decided not to call a constitutional convention, slamming the door on using citizen led amendments to ban gay marriage.


And the frowns.
Florida gay marriage ban passed by 62% (it had to pass 60% and did).
Arizona gay marriage ban passed by 57% (don't like the first result? Do it again).
Californian gay marriage ban has not been officially called as of about 10:15 this morning, waiting for the count of a huge number of absentee and provisional ballots. Even so approval stands at 52%.
Now compare the last one to the Calif. proposal about ethical treatment of farm animals, which passed by 63% -- yep, rights of pigs comes before rights of gays.

What's next in gay marriage? Connecticut starts handing out marriage certificates to gay couples on Nov. 12. There are about 18 other states without constitutional gay marriage bans and they may legislate gay marriage or their supreme court may demand it.

But most of the other 30 states will require a visit to the US Supremes. And that will wait until Obama has a chance to appoint a few justices. But, given his views of gay marriage, he may not make a gay-marriage-friendly appointment.