Team Zimbio Heads to the Polls

(Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images North America)

Like the rest of America, team Zimbio headed to the polls today to vote in the most-hyped election ever.

We've compiled the accounts of our voting experiences to create a window into what's happening on the ground. Obviously there is some selection bias since we're a Silicon Valley-based company, but our accounts represent several parts of the greater Bay Area.

Polling Station: 1045 Capp St., San Francisco, CA 94110
Time: 7:55 a.m.

For me, voting was the exact opposite of pimping – it was easy. (However, like pimping, it is necessary.) At my polling station in the Mission in San Francisco, there was a quick-moving line of professionals scrolling through emails on iPhones and Blackberrys, Latino mothers with kids, and young hipsters wiping the hangover out of their eyes.

It was more like a visit to the Post Office than the biggest political decision my generation has faced. Incidents were few. A woman behind me had just moved to the neighborhood and wasn’t registered for that particular polling station. She got a provisional ballot. Problem solved. The ballot machine started to jam up on a guy’s ballot, and the machine spit out a receipt reading Defective Ballot. I got a little excited. Stolen election! To the barricades! Instead the poll worker took the ballot out, smoothed it down, and ran it through again. Easy.
...I got a sticker and a sheaf of ballot receipts to prove that I had indeed participated in the democratic process. After an election cycle that seems to have been going on for two years, it was an oddly bloodless and anti-climatic event, more like a visit to the Post Office than the biggest political decision my generation has faced... (Continue reading )

Polling Station: 1446 Francisco Street, San Francisco, CA 94123
Time: 8:00 am

For a highly anticipated day of a landmark election, the line that I joined this morning seemed filled with bored professionals. It was 8 a.m., and there were pinstriped business suits, yoga clothes, and a lone Obama T-shirt queued for the length of half a block outside a filthy garage.

A young man and woman behind me made casual conversation, mostly complaining about the line.  “Is it moving slow?” he asked, and she nodded. “Why didn't I vote absentee? I'm going to be late for work.” She agreed that the process was taking forever: “And there are like 50 different things people can vote on.” After five more minutes, they both left the line, deciding to come back during lunch... (Continue reading)


Polling Station: St. Francis of Assissi; 145 Guerrerro St. San Francisco, CA 94103
Time: 7:45 a.m.

Voting is the ultimate anticlimax.

After a full year of the most intense political campaigning most of us have ever seen, completing the arrows on three sheets of paper does not embody the energy and emotion poured into this election. It doesn't help that everything went so smoothly.

I didn't feel intimidated. I didn't see any signs of voter fraud. I didn't even have to wait in line. It would have helped to have waited in line. Making voting feel like an inconvenience would have at least made me feel like I was going out of my way to participate in the democratic process... (Continue reading)


Polling Station: Emery High School, 1100 47th Street Emeryville, CA 94608
Time: 7:45 AM

I voted a week ago. I drew the lines, signed my name, placed two stamps in the envelope’s corner. I dropped it in a mailbox across the street from my apartment and wondered why it felt, already, that the world had changed.

I'm ashamed to admit this was my first vote in a Presidential election. I'd been registered in Texas four years ago, which allowed me an apathetic certainty that my vote wouldn't make much difference. Now I'm registered in Alameda County, California, and one vote means everything... (Continue reading )


Polling Station: First Baptist Church, Monte Sereno, California
Time: 7:04 a.m.

I have to admit, I’m more than a bit nervous and confused about this election. I was sure the polls would be mobbed. Maybe they’re all waiting to vote at the last minute. I don’t know. All I know is that so much is on the line. Standing there outside the church, my wife and I chatted about the consequences of this election.

Then it dawned on me:

What if he doesn’t win? No presidential candidate has ever come back from such a deficit in the pre-election polls. It hasn’t happened. But what if it does? What will happen to race relations if McCain magically reverses an 11-point lead in one day? How will black people – who are registering in record numbers – ever trust the system again? Furthermore, how will I ever trust the system again? We talk about this Bradley Effect as an abstraction in California. But if it’s real, could it result in a wholesale rejection of the American dream in a way we haven’t seen since the 60s? (Continue reading)

Polling Station: Ventura School, Palo Alto, California
Time: 8:17 a.m.

My 9 month-old daughter likes to vote.  She enjoys flipping through the voter information book, staring at the volunteers, sucking on the paper ballot, and then playing with the little "I voted" sticker.

We voted with an absentee ballot, but dropped it off in person at the voting station.  My hope was to avoid long lines.  Turns out, there were no lines.

My daughter is a proud Obama supporter.  She voted for Obama on Super Tuesday back in February when she was only 3 days old.  She's a lot bigger now so we didn't get as many incredulous looks from old ladies who don't approve of dads who drag their infants out on cold rainy days. (Continue reading)

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