{"id":456,"date":"2008-11-04T11:35:24","date_gmt":"2008-11-04T11:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html"},"modified":"2008-11-04T11:35:24","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T11:35:24","slug":"my-voting-experience-serious-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html","title":{"rendered":"My Voting Experience &#8212; &#8220;Thank You, Jesus&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished voting. My neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York is mostly Carribean-American and strongly Obama.<br \/>\nA few observations.<br \/>\nVery few signs.  On most election days, all up and down Rogers Ave, you see signs for various candidates.  This time, no.  You wouldn&#8217;t even know there&#8217;s an election. (Life in a non-battleground state!)<br \/>\nThe lines coming out of the elementary school stretched around three city blocks. The tone was not ecstatic.  It was serious.  People were friendly but definitely not jubilant. It had more the feeling that they were doing important work.<br \/>\nHard not to get emotional as very old, or handicapped, black voters shuffled up the front of the line.<br \/>\nFinally, perhaps sensing the strangely quiet nature of the line, someone jumped out of a building screaming at the top of her lungs in joy. Everyone laughed nervously. &#8220;Let it out,&#8221; she said.<br \/>\nAnother older woman walked up and down the street, declaring. &#8220;Thank you. Thank you. We&#8217;ve suffered too long. Thank you for being here.  Praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus.&#8221;  Some quiet Amens were whispered back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just finished voting. My neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York is mostly Carribean-American and strongly Obama. A few observations. Very few signs. On most election days, all up and down Rogers Ave, you see signs for various candidates. This time, no. You wouldn&#8217;t even know there&#8217;s an election. (Life in a non-battleground state!) The lines&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>My Voting Experience - &quot;Thank You, Jesus&quot; - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Voting Experience - &quot;Thank You, Jesus&quot; - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I just finished voting. My neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York is mostly Carribean-American and strongly Obama. A few observations. Very few signs. On most election days, all up and down Rogers Ave, you see signs for various candidates. This time, no. You wouldn&#8217;t even know there&#8217;s an election. (Life in a non-battleground state!) The lines&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-04T11:35:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"My Voting Experience - \"Thank You, Jesus\" - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"My Voting Experience - \"Thank You, Jesus\" - Steven Waldman","og_description":"I just finished voting. My neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York is mostly Carribean-American and strongly Obama. A few observations. Very few signs. On most election days, all up and down Rogers Ave, you see signs for various candidates. This time, no. You wouldn&#8217;t even know there&#8217;s an election. (Life in a non-battleground state!) The lines&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2008-11-04T11:35:24+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html","name":"My Voting Experience - \"Thank You, Jesus\" - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-11-04T11:35:24+00:00","dateModified":"2008-11-04T11:35:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/my-voting-experience-serious-b.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"My Voting Experience &#8212; &#8220;Thank You, Jesus&#8221;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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