Victory in Sleepy Hollow

There's a genteel buzz to the Democrats victory party at Conte's pizzeria in Princeton. Although CNN is calling for Menendez, there are no champagne corks popping. Rather the news is suffusing this crowd with a warm glow, as is the fine wine they're drinking on this chilly November evening.

The township's votes are being tallied on a whiteboard. It's clear that Princeton is a solidly Democratic town. Ruth Miller, a retiree who enjoying the party for the party, is laughing at the result for one of the Districts. "29 votes for Kean? That's 29 more than he deserved!"

Chad Goerner, a fresh-faced young Democrat and consultant at Merrill Lynch, is looking pretty happy - he's just been voted in as chair of Princeton Township Democratic Committee, one of the many side-races happening in this election. He tells me that the 8th District in Princeton has tended to be more Republican in the past, but this time Menendez has 314 votes to Kean's 248. One polling station is hardly representative of the entire State, I hear you object. "But it's a good sign that we've been able to get the township's Democratic grassroots out to vote", says Goerner.

Arielle Lutwick GS, a poll monitor for the Democrats, has just rushed in her poll results from Princeton Township's 12th District, where she's spent the day observing and getting on the phone to students who failed to get out of bed for the election.

I watched the polls close with her over at the 12th District's polling station in Jadwin, the physics lab. Compared to previous elections I've observed -- in Kosovo, Macedonia and Iraq -- American democracy is looking decidedly, wonderfully sleepy. There are no armed men wearing balaclavas, just fine upstanding citizens Paul Andersen '79 and George Hansen (Democrat and Republican respectively) manning the desk and explaining to confused undergrads how to fill in a provisional ballot. So far, so good.

-- Victoria Whitford