Election Day, Part Two: ELECTION NIGHT!!!

So, this was what all of the work was all about: Electing a new President of the United States, US Congressmen and Senators, Governors and State Legislators, mayors and city councils. We went to a hotel downtown to watch the election returns come in. At 9PM (after all of the polls across the United States had closed), the newsmen on the big screens in the ball room told us that Barack Obama was predicted to have been elected the President of the United States.

I think the happiest person in the whole room was the blonde woman in the picture above. Her name is Suzanne Gelderman and she was the Utah State Director for the Obama for America campaign. The girl with the red hair is a friend of mine from school, Maggie Flanigan. She's only a ninth grader, but she was the volunteer coordinator for the Obama campaign for the entire state of Utah! She was pretty happy, too. And she proves that you really don't have to be old enough to vote to make a difference in an election.

Another very happy person in the room was our congressman, Representative Jim Matheson, who was elected to serve another term in the US House of Representatives in DC. Congressman Matheson's son Will is only a couple of years younger than me, so he and Wes and I hung out while his dad was being interviewed by the tv stations and our parents were talking.

There were so many parties on election night that we could have stayed out all night and still not made it to all of them. But we were really tired, so we decided to go home after we stopped by a couple of parties that were at the same hotel where we were. On our way out the door, we ran into the Salt Lake City Mayor, Ralph Becker. We talked to him for a minute, then called it a night. It was a fun and exhausting day.