Let's make a deal. I won't complain about waiting in a long Douglas County election line, if you don't castigate me for not voting early or absentee.

I am not crazy for voting on Election Day. That is why it is called Election Day. It is not called Whenever You Can Drop By Week or Mail-In Month.

This morning I heard a Douglas County official say on the radio that the long ballot caused long lines. Shame on her for telling a fib. She's going to give politics a bad name.

The endless ballot may have contributed, but the main reason I waited for an hour and a half (9-10:30 a.m. at the fire station) and my neighbor waited for 3 hours (2-5 p.m. at the Wildlife Center) was the check-in process.

Consolidating the number of polling places to 29 Voting Centers, allowing residents to vote anywhere in the county, might have sounded like a good idea to somebody. Personally, I think trying out a new system during a high-profile election, mid-term or not, might be overly optimistic.

Previously, when you checked in, somebody looked you up on a huge, accordian-folded computer printout. The County Clerk printed up one list of every registered voter, then divided the printout by area, distributing the relevant section to the appropriate precinct. Voting Centers would have required the full printout at each and every location. As a result, there was no hard copy of registered voters at Voting Centers. Voters were checked in on computers.

Here's the part that caught everyone unaware. With so many computers accessing the registered voter list to check people in, servers went down and computers crashed. Who would have figured? How could anyone who ever used a computer have seen that one coming?

Without the computer check-in, election volunteers had to phone in to check off the voter. Many people reported seeing voting machines sit idle while checking in.

I am not breaking the deal by complaining. It isn't Election Day without some kind of craziness. That's why I love it.

My oldest son, born the day George Bush I was elected, turned eighteen today, barely missing the action. Just to get a rise out of me, he launched into the futility of one person's vote. I eagerly took the bait.

The future of the Senate and a complete reversal of party dominance hangs on 2000+ votes in Virginia. The last two presidential elections came down to one state. With the U.S. population tipping 300 million, it's astounding just how much one vote counts.

I related to another son this morning how one young man in his twenties, exiting the polling place as the mostly middle-aged crowd shuffled their feet, pumped his fists in the air, barking, "Voting! Yeah! Feels good!"

"It does feel good," I told my son. "Even if politicians let you down and in the end, nothing changes. There's just something about choosing. I love to vote."

"So how come you don't like American Idol?" he asked.