Election Day

So I voted today.  The church in Silver Spring was pretty crowded; took me about an hour from start to finish.  Hopefully the folks in those parts will continue to pack the church... seeing as folks in my neighborhood are more likely to vote with their crispy moderate liberal minds and go with Cardin and O'Malley.

Random observations about voting:

1) There was a 13 month-old toddler behind me walking around and looking generally thrilled by life.  That made the time pass a little quicker.

2) I was expecting some Diebold-related chicanery, but it was even crazier than I expected.  Every time I checked a Democrat's name, the voting machine popped up a warning that read, "Are you sure you want to vote for the Homocrat?"  How nuts is that???  Maybe it's a bug or something... after all, everyone knows the Homocrat warning was supposed to come up for the Republicans.

3) There was a shortage of voter access cards in the polling area.  The church broke into two different lines... one for checking in to get an access card, and one for the Diebold Republ-o-matic machines.  But just like 2004, the second line grew too long, which meant that the first line couldn't move until enough access cards were returned.  While I realize that the rate-limiting step is the people in the booths, is it really that difficult to have a shitload of plastic cards lying around?  Given how easily the machines can be hacked, the little plastic doohickeys can't be that expensive.

3a) The word "doohickey" just made it through my spell-checker.  That's not about voting, that's just interesting to me.

4) I'm probably not the first to ask this question, but I wonder whether the Republicans' perpetual resistance to "facts" and "evidence" when discussing their policies has anything to do with their religion.  Christianity is a matter of faith; evidence is not just irrelevant, but frowned-upon.  Anyone know any prominent Republicans with a distaste for facts and evidence?  It could just be a matter of debate skills, but Bush is probably better at practicing blind faith than he is at arguing.