Thank you.

Against the back wall stood six tripod-mounted TV cameras. Two guys with shoulder-mounted cameras were closer in.

CNN got their version posted at 12:19. Go Making Light!

What was funny was afterward, after this post was up, when I was chatting with my friend Sonya (who runs a little B&B on East Colebrook Road) watching the wire-service guys running around calling "Any voters over there?"

For those interested, there are four registered Republicans, five registered Democrats, and twelve Independents in Dixville Notch.

Before the thing started I watched one of the reporters practicing his stand-up, about how this was going to show how the Independent vote would break in New Hampshire. Then he and his camera man went into the Ballot Room to film.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. Polls close in the rest of the state at 7:00 pm.

Personally, I mailed my vote today, so it's likely not to even be opened by the time the national race is decided.

That's ok though, I don't really need to be the one that puts him in the white house. Also, there's a bunch of important local stuff on it too.

Thanks for the update. I'm going to be completely distracted for the next 36 hours.

Obama 17, McCain 10, and 2 for Ron Paul as a write-in. No tallies on the other races yet.

They didn't stay around for the announcement of the governor's race or the congressional races.

15 to 6; I like the sound of that.

How did I not hear about this before?

Never mind, I'm going to listen to Mr. Hentges, who is lecturing me by instant message to go to sleep. He's right; I have to get up and vote in the morning. Whee!

Yep. As soon as all the results were announced.

And yes, Boston Tea is just about the best party name I've ever heard.

I am now going to try to ignore TV and internet punditry, and concentrate on NaNoWriMo.

It's furry '30s pulp fiction.

My hero has just pitched a Nazi white rabbit called "Harvey" out of a speeding train.

Don't worry, I shall get around to the romance.

And the soft-boiled eggs.

(Well, how do you plan on staying sane?}

"You must remember this..." (link to YouTube) "Hearts full of passion, jealousy, and hate."

There are still things it feels good to weep over.

I should be long asleep, but the excitement of voting in the morning is keeping me awake. I'll just have a little wine, I think, that'll help take the edge off....

Gonna go vote as soon as the polls are open....

Sign up now and start calling right after you vote!

Drove past two polling areas this morning coming to work; both had people lined up with umbrellas even though they didn't start voting until 6:30 am. Looks like it's going to be a long day for the poll area workers.

Side note: my assistant has apparently decided to work at the downtown Raleigh election office on her own vacation time this morning. She's not in yet and is usually here by now (we start work at 6:30). She had sent me an email last night saying the department supervisor was unwilling to overrule my manager on whether she could use community leave time to volunteer for election day work, but she said she wouldn't decide for sure until this morning if she'd still do it.

Got to my polling place 10 minutes before it was to open at 6am. There were already 50 people in line before me.

They aren't kidding about the lines, folks. Get there early and plan on waiting for as long as it takes. If you are voting in New York, figure out your Election District number before you go to the polling place. You will still have to wait to get into the polling place, but once you are in the room you might be able to spot and go directly to your Election District's machine. Might save you 10 or 15 minutes.

Of those five, two were first-time voters, and three were African-American; normally, the people I see voting at that hour are all as white as me despite the district I'm in being about 20% A-A. (And I wasn't the youngest one in line at 6 am; normally I'm the youngest by at least 20 years)

Wow, blast from the past.

It figures that denizens of Making Light would be familiar with Pail and Shovel. Been a while since I've heard somebody else raise their name.

[I lived in Madison during their reign]

Is the Pail and Shovel Party like the Stick and Bucket Dance?

(Back to NaNoWriMo for me too.)

Good luck America, anyway.

I'm fired up. I'm ready.

... oops, gotta go vote. I'll come back and tell you the rest later. It involves alcohol and high offices, or something like that.

I'm almost envious of you all; voting in my bindery at night, on an absentee ballot, was not as staggering as what you guys on-site are doing (and have been since early voting started).

Lines are already forming in some of the stations, but overall everything's going smoothly; the remarkable early voting turnout appears to have helped mitigate the huge crush that normally happens.

BTW, my jerk boss apologized to my engineer assistant this morning. It seems he did not read the newly updated policy on community leave that specifically authorized volunteering for elections, but of course now my assistant (she did come in this morning) isn't sure she will be able to volunteer at the election office.

When I left, the line wasn't any shorter, but some of that may be due to the polling place being fairly cramped for space. People were in good spirits, though, and the sun was just coming up.

http://www.kuam.com/decision2008/results/general/

(except I don't think they've got any electoral votes) :(

I was somewhat surprised to get a message from the Obama camp today: a reminder to vote. Up to now, it's been all McCain, Palin, McCain, Rick Davis, and so on, bombarding my Yahoo! account. Maybe they figure someone with "Yahoo" in the address must be likely to vote for their ticket.

Lines for my voting area were non-existent - but the apartment complex and immediate surroundings are filled with two types of people - retirees, and young professionals, both of whom are either Not Up Yet, or Already About (and will vote later, if at all). The other two voting areas had a line already at 7(mumble) in the morning - this is a remote suburb well-equipped with polling locations.

So I took a look at the new-fangled gol-durned digital scanny machines (which do, according to a friend who is working as a pollworker today, save the paper ballots for future reference and recounts, and do not, in fact, suck donut-eaters who vote for the wrong person into a disposal grinder...), and said goodbye to my old friend, the Sequoia mechanical machine.

I voted this morning before going to work... I pulled the lever at 6:55 A.M. for Obama and Biden. This year there was a flutter in my stomach and sense of importance that isn't usually there. Because my housing complex has its own poling center, it took about 10 minutes to get in and out. On the bus to work though, I saw long lines in Manhattan, lines that were going around the block. This is unusual. NYC, at least, was using the old voting machines.

Flipping the little levers and watching the X appear beside your choice of candidate was tangible proof of your decision, as was the big "thunk" when you pulled the lever that registered all your votes.

Filling out a paper ballot in a little two sided kiosk and feeding it in an optical reader just doesn't have the same feeling to me. It still counts, though!

Reports are coming in from all over of long lines and heavier than usual voter participation, in addition to the extraordinary early voter turnout. Let's hope that the youth vote turns out for once!

My understanding is that this year New York has both in most districts - there were a couple of the new ones, and the normal rack of older ones (the green light-weight ones, not the huge black cast iron ones(?) that I started with, oh so long ago) in my polling place.

Next election, we get to see if the scanny machines are reliable or not....

Everyone was very efficient and pleasant, and I was out of there around 7:20, having been the 37th ballot cast in the precinct.

Like Daniel Martin @#35, I noticed more younger voters (usually I'm the youngest one there!) and more minority voters.

Since the outcome here is a foregone conclusion (we're 90% Democrats), I can only assume people think it's important to rack up the popular vote. Go for it!

Now to look up the Pail and Shovel links so I can respond to Lis with that story....

John L -- Yeah, I like pulling levers too and seeing the "X" fall into the box.

Why were they called the Pail and Shovel Party? Because they suggested that student service fees be converted to pennies, and that students be given pails and shovels and told to go at it. There was, at that point, considerable dissatisfaction among some students with what the fees were going for, but as I was not a UW student, I can't say who had the right of it, In any case, the Pail and Shovel Party got into office and kept it for long enough to do some truly memorable pranks.

One of the things they did was declare war on the rest of the Big Ten. They did this intending to lose; it was their cunning plan then to ask for reparations. We at the U of M (University of Minnesota) heard that they went down to Iowa with the declaration of war and left some student government officers there locked in a closet or something. We heard the Pail and Shovelers phoned on their way out of town to make sure somebody let them out, though.) They decided they shouldn't declare war on us, though, because as they informed us by letter, the fallout patterns were wrong. Instead, they sent us a bribe -- one of their legendary checks for a million dollars, made out on a UW student government official bank check, which I myself saw -- and asked us to keep diplomatic relations open.

Well, what could we do when faced with such a major political crisis? We did the only sensible thing: got our student body president (Sue Gjemse) tipsy, and had her sign a paper making a certain unnamed person Ambassador Plenipotentiary from the U of M to the UW. (I think that part was really Jamie's fault. Wonder what he's up to these days....)

We did dither about cashing the check, but decided we didn't want to embarrass them, especially after they were so nice and all.

I wonder if I still have that ambassadorial authorization around here somewhere.

Ah, those were the days.

Tonight we'll be watching the closing of the polls and hoping all goes well.

[I compiled a list of giveaways on my blog last night, sadly, few of them are in my area]

Now, many of these (though not Starbucks or Ben & Jerry's) require customers to show an "I Voted" sticker.

I have never gotten a sticker at my polling place.
So I'm wondering whether that's something specific to our precinct, our city, county, or state (Massachusetts).
So, do you get stickers when you vote?

PS: Regarding turnout, I voted @ about the same time as I did in 2006 (before work). Then, mine was the 111th ballot dropped in the scanner. This year, #233, meaning over twice the turnout. [And over thrice the turnout of the February primary, where I was #84.]

I slept okay last night but woke at 5:30 am, totally wired, no need for coffee.

I voted by mail, so I don't have to stand in line today. I am very curious to see what the lines in the local polling places are like. I considered phonebanking today, but I called Ohio all last weekend, and by Monday a lot of people were just hanging up the phone, and the ones I did manage to reach were totally sick of getting calls. If they don't know who they're voting for by now, the hell with it, let 'em toss a coin.

The polls just opened in California. Go Obama!

We're going to win this thing.

I didn't have to wait to vote at my precinct, but I went after I figured the morning rush would be over, and in any case our ballot was devoid of excitement except for the ballot questions - Obama, Kerry, and Tierney are certain to win, and none of the other races was even contested.

Oh, I remember the Pail & Shovel party.
I was still young, but we lived in Madison for their antics.
Once I moved to New England, I discovered few locals heard of them, so I'm usually the one having to explain their backstory.
Of course, I've only heard some of their exploits, and never heard about your tale.
Somebody (possibly somebody in the party) really ought to write the definitive history of their administration. I believe one of them "grew up" to become one of the founders of MST3K.

[PS: Though out of date and out-of-print, Neil Steinberg's book If at all possible, involve a cow is a fun history of college pranks, including a chapter on the Pail and Shovel party.]

While googling, I found a Pail and Shovel Party archive site

Good news -- they scan/count the paper ballots before they load the data from the touch-screen machines.

Whole process took about 2 hours, and the line waiting to get in to vote was as long when I left as it was when I arrived.

*Giving people free stuff to get them to vote. Or not to vote.

Ma Connors and the daughter both voted early by mail: Ma can't stand in line long, and the daughter lives in New Zealand.

I am tempted to go down to Dem HQ for the party's party tonight, but I have school, so it'll be late-night Olbermann and the web for us.

* including a homemade McCain/Palin one, with big photos taped to it. I was tempted to do a midnight run and replace the Palin picture with Tina Fey and see if anyone noticed, but I never got around to doing it, besides which tampering with campaign signs is illegal here in AZ.

** by Phoenix standards, anyway.

Serge, #59: Congratulations! Given what people have been posting, to have been first in line was a notable feat.

Ours in SF are similar, but also say it in Spanish and Chinese. A nice touch, I think.

I am (legally) old enough to be President.

Yes, because honesty counts. Democracy is important.

And following the strings to who's pulling them could yield some very interesting information.

Voted at 10:30 AM, and it took me about 15 minutes.

(Normally I take Election day as a vacation day/holiday. This year, not working, so not an issue. )

Details here.

NBC just called the race for Obama!

Cat, #54, here in Manassas we had the lever machines until we got the touch screens a few years ago.