Today is the big day that we change the course of our country’s government. Somehow I managed to screw it up and not get my absentee ballot in time to vote in Alaska. Luckily, our current delegate system makes that okay because no matter which way I would have voted, the outcome for Alaska would be the same. It’s a notoriously conservative state.

It’s a bit disconcerting to see the popular vote not represented by the Electoral College. CNN is reporting that both candidates have over 21 million votes, yet Obama has 199 electoral votes versus McCain’s 78 electoral votes. So no matter who you want to win, it seems a bit odd that the majority of Americans are not represented by the Electoral College. Every election season people bitch about this inconsistency in our system, yet it never seems to get corrected.

It’s also a bit more socially acceptable at the CouchSurfing house since almost every person here is registered to vote in another state or comes from a foreign country. Ben and Triple are the only two CSers registered to vote in California and Laura is the only person I know who had herself together enough to get her absentee ballot in on time.

It makes me wonder what the statistics are for American CouchSurfers who vote regularly. Or CouchSurfers at all for that matter. I don’t feel that CouchSurfers are a particularly political crowd of people in general. I think of CouchSurfers as individuals who prefer action to rhetoric and probably have such a 40,000 foot level view of world politics that perhaps local, or even national, politics just don’t show up on their radar.

At the moment we are all hunkered down in the Berkeley house monitoring the election coverage while we wait for dinner. Once dinner is over we plan to head into San Francisco and show our patriotism the San Fran way, with a party! I’m sure the city is all abuzz tonight with the coverage and, of course, most of the venues include dancing and other activities. So no matter who wins tonight, at least we’ll have some fun!