I headed over to the polling place to vote this morning. As of 8:30am or so, there were no lines at our precinct. But then, that’s not too surprising for a small precinct in a non-populous county. Chronological observations:
- There were a fair number of cars parked at the polling place. I took one of only about 4 or 5 free spots
- The Obama people were prepared for the rain – they had decent sized open sided tents set up to stand under while handing out literature and talking to voters
- There were about 10-15 people voting when I arrived
- The elections officials were prepared for crowds. Instead of the usual split of the alphabet into 3 or 4 lines, I think there were 6. They also seemed to have extra help on hand, including some high school students.
- The folks handing out the ballots mentioned that polling had been steady so far.
- When I left around 8:45/8:50, I was only the 161st voter 🙂
I suspect that across NC, things will be similar. We had such a huge number of people cast ballots early (some 35-40% of all registered voters) that I would imagine we won’t have too many problems with lines, etc.
Here’s hoping.