Polling Place Race
Election night at Lark and Lake Street in Albany, NY
Gregory Jones
Issue date: 11/10/08 Section: Election night
As one of the most important elections this country has seen came to a close Tuesday night, there seemed to be an overwhelming feeling that John McCain stood no chance. Anand and I were assigned to two polling locations in Albany to report voting numbers to a local news station.
We volunteered to report from two different locations; one on North Lake Street and another on North Lark Street. The north lark location had four different districts while the north lake location only had one. We wisely decided to report to north lark first, since that had four of our five polling places. Located in a charter school gymnasium, twenty some odd people were sitting, lying and walking around as they waited for the last ten minutes of voting to pass by. Once nine o'clock hit, everyone instantly got over their laziness and jumped up like they just spilt hot coffee on themselves. Several volunteers read off their results to someone recording them. They allowed me to sit next to them so I could record the numbers I needed to report. People were helpful, but obviously in a hurry to get out of there. I didn't mind since we had to fly to our second location.
As we drove to our second location on North Lake the clock read 9:18 p.m. Judging by how quickly the volunteers at the last place wanted to leave, we knew it would be fortunate if these volunteers were still around. The drive there was less than three miles. However, catching every red light on the way didn't help us. We got there at 9:26 p.m. and no one was left. While we considered simply making up the numbers and calling them in so we could get another eight dollars, we decided that four out of five places would have to be good enough.
Our experience was fun and other than being rushed, the volunteers were helpful. After calling in the numbers we already knew that Obama was well ahead of McCain. I personally recorded only one McCain voter. We ended the night stuffing our faces at Bombers and watching Obama supporters get wasted at Lark Tavern. "Hell yeah," yelled an Obama supporter.
We volunteered to report from two different locations; one on North Lake Street and another on North Lark Street. The north lark location had four different districts while the north lake location only had one. We wisely decided to report to north lark first, since that had four of our five polling places. Located in a charter school gymnasium, twenty some odd people were sitting, lying and walking around as they waited for the last ten minutes of voting to pass by. Once nine o'clock hit, everyone instantly got over their laziness and jumped up like they just spilt hot coffee on themselves. Several volunteers read off their results to someone recording them. They allowed me to sit next to them so I could record the numbers I needed to report. People were helpful, but obviously in a hurry to get out of there. I didn't mind since we had to fly to our second location.
As we drove to our second location on North Lake the clock read 9:18 p.m. Judging by how quickly the volunteers at the last place wanted to leave, we knew it would be fortunate if these volunteers were still around. The drive there was less than three miles. However, catching every red light on the way didn't help us. We got there at 9:26 p.m. and no one was left. While we considered simply making up the numbers and calling them in so we could get another eight dollars, we decided that four out of five places would have to be good enough.
Our experience was fun and other than being rushed, the volunteers were helpful. After calling in the numbers we already knew that Obama was well ahead of McCain. I personally recorded only one McCain voter. We ended the night stuffing our faces at Bombers and watching Obama supporters get wasted at Lark Tavern. "Hell yeah," yelled an Obama supporter.
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