The View From Your Election: Santa Monica

A reader writes:

In past years at this polling place, which is in a park, there was never a line, but the wait was about an hour. Well, it wasn't really a line, because it wound around a small playground, forming something approximating an "O." At one point, an African-American woman wearing a beautiful leopard-print scarf around her head came out of the polling station and walked along the circle saying "In the White House, In the White House, In the White House." No other words needed to be said. For her, and for all of us watching her expression of sheer joy, hope had arrived.