E-Day

12:45 am: With 62% reporting, the Yes on 8 side is still ahead 52% to 48%. It will be a narrow margin, but it looks like Prop 8 will pass. I'm quite tired now, so I'm going to bed now and will update more in the morning.

11:50 pm: With about half the precincts reporting, Prop 8 is currently passing 53% to 47%.

9:30 pm: Still too close to call on Prop 8. With about 10% of precincts reporting, Prop 8 is currently winning. BUT most of the early-reporting precincts are in rural, more conservative areas...so it's still very much up in the air.

8:20 pm: McCain is currently conceding defeat, although he seems a bit more gracious about it than his fans do. As the California polls only closed a few minutes ago, no word yet on Prop 8. Will update shortly.

2:33 pm: Done with volunteer shift, which was overwhelmingly positive.

I left the house at 10 am to take the bus to MacArthur Park, the designated meeting spot for my geographic area...only to wind up at Roger Williams Baptist Church on Adams & Ellendale...5 minutes from my house. But no complaints, really. This was primarily a USC student polling place (since Ellendale must have the highest density of student housing on the face of the planet) and the response was overwhelmingly for No on 8. We also got a good response from the "community members" (ie. mostly older Black residents of the neighborhood). The poll workers were really friendly and a couple of them even quietly told us they were voting No.

Best moment so far: one my first conversations was with two young African-American women who were not USC students. When I approached them, they both said, "Yeah, of course we're voting no!" and then one of them said, kind of quietly, "This is my girlfriend." As they walked away one of them briefly put her arm around the other's shoulder. It was a really sweet moment and a nice reminder that, hey, that why we're doing this, after all.

9:39 am: I am back from voting No on 8 (oh, yeah, and for president and stuff)!

Weirdest thing about voting in California: the scan-tron type paper ballots, which require insertion into a weird contraption to which plastic cards with the ballot contents are attached. I know this ensures accurate voting, but it was a little confusing for someone who's used to the clunky old New York voting machines, which look like a relic from Edison's lab.

My polling place (in a church--also weird) was pretty crowded, and as it's in a primarily Black neighborhood, people seemed pretty darn excited.

I'm off to volunteer for No on 8, but I'll try to post more updates throughout the day. Also, stay tuned for tonight, when I'll be attempting to live-blog the California election results.

GO VOTE!!!!