philly

I made it through thirty-eight hours before a beer and a half did me in last night. I'm sure it was a combination of simply being up for thirty-eight hours and all the election activity being finished so that I could mentally rest, but drinking that one annd a half beers felt like I was in a hot tub at 125°. One minute I was eating some late dinner. The next thing I know, I'm off a few rooms down in a spare bedroom snoozing. Lady came in to wake me up so that we could walk home and properly get some zzz's an hour later.

Chuck lost. I lost my committeeperson bid. It was a matter of getting out and meeting all the people and I just didn't have the time to do so. Peggy Banaszek did and she won for it. Peggy Segal won re-election, probably simply on people being confused at which Peggy came to their door, so they voted for both. Heh.

I got a pollwatcher's certificate from Babette Josephs [State Rep from 182nd District who won her re-election bid over Larry Farnese] [via Neighborhood Networks]and I was able to stay inside the polling place to see them tabulate the results. It was interesting to see what goes on behind closed doors after the election.

The judge of elections was right on top of everything in his work. In my division, the vote machines actually worked. I heard Zach Stalberg of Committee of 70 on WHYY at around 9p that over 100 voting machines malfunctioned here in the Philly five ring county area. That's a lot. It seems something went wrong with the actual receipts themselves. I saw the receipts at my polling place, I have a copy of them, everything seemed to be in order with them.

I was so deleriously tired that I forgot to take my home keys with me when I went home yesterday afternoon before voting. I then proceeded to go vote without my camera so I wasn't able to take a picture of my vote page with a red light lit up next to "Albert C Yee" which was a pretty cool thing to see up there. I was, however, able to get the big pink sample blowup ballot to keep. I'm proud to share that space with Chuck and Valerie McDonald Roberts who was another great progressive; she ran for Lt. Governor and unfortunately lost as well.

It's been an incredible experience this last year of incredible involvement in a truly grassroots campaign. We stood up to the establishment every step of the way. Looking back on it, I wouldn't have had it any other way. I made great friends in Chuck, Liz, Sabra, Danie, Kim, Dave, Ryan and a whole shitload of other people here in Philly and beyond in the last year and I'm thankful for the opportunity that brought us together. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of each other the future here in Philly.

There were some out and out victories in the area that I'm happy for. Chris Bowers won his bid for Democratic State Committeeperson. A friend of mine in the next division over won a very contested committeeperson seat! Two friends in the next ward over won seats on city committee as well. I also lost my race against Rep. Bob Brady, oh yeah. I forgot to announce that I was running a write-in campaign against him. I decided to run as I was in the booth. Couldn't bring myself to push the button for him. But blank slots lead to voting inaccuracies, so I wrote in. I wrote in a bunch of names actually; just couldn't bring myself to vote for some of those people.

I spent yesterday driving all over Philly from Germantown to West Oak Lane to South Philly to Bala Cynwood to Chestnut Hill and back and forth across Center City. Taping and staple gunning signs all along the way. My hand hurts from the metal gun and I have a small bruise from scaling a chain link fence leading to a stone wall to tape up a sign.

I'm going to be sleeping a lot in the next few weeks.

Thank you for all the kind words. I'll have more to say on what when on in the last forty-eight hours or so in the coming days. And needless to say, what transpired on Tuesday has not dissuaded me from my involvement in politics. And there' still a chance that I could be appointed to the position I was running for all along. Go figure :) And a special thanks to Lady for putting up with my craziness for the last few weeks culminated by me, apparently, taking up the entire bed. But it was a very good sound sleep that I sorely needed. I couldn't have done it without you! She even packed me some food to take along with me during the final thirty-six hour push.

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