I finally voted early, with the same good feeling

If you haven’t voted yet, finish your coffee and go get in line.

I voted early, for the first time, though not by mail, but in person, which I still like.

So does Pearl Scaife who was ahead of me in the line outside the Tempe History Museum on Friday. It was her first time voting early, too.

Her friend Shawn Williams suggested they do it. Williams’ daughter has a school field trip on Tuesday.

Scaife hasn’t wanted to switch to a mail ballot.

“I love the ambiance of voting,” she said. Scaife likes getting to the polls at 6 a.m. and watching people. “You meet a lot of interesting people.”

Like him, she said, nodding at a man practicing his golf swing. “Mr. Cox,” she called him. He wore a Cox Communications ID.

His real name was Thomas Burgess, and he gave in to peer pressure to vote early, he said, pointing at his friend,

Adam Smith.

“I just wanted to make sure you had a plan to vote,” Smith said.

He asks everyone he knows. Are they going to vote before work or after? Can they go at lunch? People get busy at work. A child gets sick. You need a plan — and a backup plan.

“How are you going to make it work?” Smith asks. It’s that important.

I voted early because I’ll work on Election Day. My son Sawyer, who’s 19, has classes all day on Tuesdays, so he came, too.

We marked up our sample ballots in the days before, looking up the races and issues we didn’t know much about online.

There were about 20 people waiting when the doors opened at 10 a.m. We were in and out in 15 minutes.

Burgess was waiting outside for Smith. Williams and Scaife came out with him. And Burgess did a jig and sang, “I feel good,” James Brown-style.

It did feel good.