My gorgeous wife and I decided to take advantage of our right to vote and do the deed today. Today was a designated early voting day. Actually today was the last day for the early voting in our town of Durham, NC. Voting was scheduled to close at 1:PM. It was about noon when we arrived. I estimated that there was in excess of 200 people in line at the time, which is the most that I can ever remember seeing in line for an election.
It was and hour and a half later that we emerged from the voting area and the line was as long as when we originally started. We found out that the Board of Elections had extended the voting time for an additional two hours because of the heavy turn out of voters.
While waiting in line, I decided to do a little unofficial statistical analysis of the voters.
You must understand that Durham is part of a metropolitan of over one and a halve million people and the City of Durham proper has a population of 300,000. The racial make up of Durham is equally divided between Anglo-American, African-American and Latino-American with a few other “Americans thrown in for good measure. In other words, we are a melting pot of Americans who were able to stand in the line together for an hour and a half without fighting. Actually most were actually conversing with each other in a friendly manner.
Now for my observations of today’s crowd. These are my unscientific observations and the results are totally my responsibility. I thought that the crowd was very interesting.
Surprisingly, at least to me, the crowd seemed to be about 60% of age 30 and below. Also blacks were absent. There seemed to be about 15% African-American present. This part, I was really surprised at if for no other reason than the racial mix of our town. Of the under 30 group, maybe half were of Latino descent with a smaller percent of Anglo and an ever smaller percent of African-Americans. The older folks were primarily of the Anglo-American group, a smaller percentage of African-American and very few Latino.
Another amazing thing is that…
This large group of folks actually talk to each other but did not discuss politics or religion.
Maybe there is hope for us all. As I said, this is just my observation of an early voting day with a group of Americans.