I have just come back from my second day of working early voting, both of which ran more than two hours overtime in order to get all the people who were standing in line voting.

This is the first time I have worked an election and come out of it feeling optimistic about the state of democracy. Everyone is cheerful and patient and cooperative and kind and genuinely enthusiastic about voting and democracy! It is bizarre. Even the people today who were standing in line in the rain and the wind and the dark for three and a half hours came in and weren't the least bit cranky. And despite some really divisive ballot issues, nobody in line was even getting in political fights - they were all having pleasant, reasonable discussions and listening to each other.

I don't understand.

Our theory yesterday was that all the cranky people threw tantrums after about an hour went home, so the only people the judges got to see were the naturally laid-back ones, plus the weather was one of those amazing pre-hurricane autumn days and the line snaked around some really pretty trees; but today the weather was miserable and a lot of the voters were people who had given up yesterday and then come back, and yet, still cheerful! Even the ones with screwed-up registration who had to vote provisional were all cheerful and helpful!

Maybe they just burned out their cranky after the first hour in line and by the time they got to us they had ascended to a plane beyond negative emotions? Except part of my job today was to walk down the line and reassure people that they would still get to vote no matter how long the line was, and they were cheerful all down the line.

I think the weird weather is doing something strange to the air. I don't even want to watch the rest of The Thick Of It, because I am all full of idealism and faith in the electorate all of a sudden! Maybe I'll save it for after the election when I really need some catharsis and tonighte I'll re-watch Captain America instead.

(Anyway, early voting - and pretty much everything else - is canceled for tomorrow, and we're just assuming that at some point we'll lose power indefinitely. Which probably means that we won't, but if I go dark, that's why. In a minute we are heading out to pull in the trash cans, since they've canceled tomorrow's trash pickup along with everything else.)