Parties: The Democrats will assemble at the Westin on Fifth Avenue in Seattle; the Republicans at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue. BtC will be at the latter.
The long lines have already begun. If you're a Republican, you may be thanking the Lord for the rain sweeping across the country and pounding the Puget Sound region. Republicans like low turnout, and rain keeps people at home. Not just voters, but also volunteers, who are a big part of the Democratic effort, especially this year.
Washington Citizen Action, a nonpartisan group that's seeking to turn out less affluent voters, has 150 volunteers poised to knock on thousands of doors in poor neighborhoods, likely Democratic voters. How many of them won't show because of the rain? When BtC was at their offices one day, he noted that many of the volunteers are seniors. And without flu shots this year....
But this year isn't your typical election.
Weather nationally:
Associated Press: "Voters trying to beat the rush turned out early to cast ballots in many precincts as Election Day opened, forming long lines that snaked out the doors, waiting in rain and even taking along chairs for expected long waits.
Umbrellas and raincoats were needed today fromTexas to the lower Great Lakes, and snow-covered roads were a problem in the Texas Panhandle. In some places, voters were standing in line before the polling place doors opened."
Also, problems voting already:
"Long lines greeted voters in many big cities in closely contested states, and some polls opened late.
At one New Orleans precinct, all three voting machines were broken and voters were told to come back later, said Bill Quigley, an attorney working for the NAACP.
In South Carolina, problems were reported in a handful of precincts in two counties using electronic machines. Officials said voters were forced to switch to paper ballots while technicians got the iVotronic touch screens from Electronic Systems & Software up and running within about 90 minutes.
Voters in one Richmond, Va., precinct using an old-style machine briefly cast ballots in the wrong congressional race.
And in Volusia County, Fla., a memory card in an optical-scan voting machine failed Monday at an early voting site and didn't count 13,000 ballots. Officials planned to feed the uncounted ballots in to the voting machines.
Tension was high at some Ohio polling places, including at one in Cleveland where a Democratic official claimed he was thrown out by a screaming poll judge before another told him he could return to the church basement."
Here's a great compilation of New York Times election photos.
An appeals court judge in Ohio overturned the ruling of two lower court judges and is allowing party poll watchers, although Republican Gov. Bob Taft said his understanding was that they could observe, but not challenge voters, The Washington Post reports.
This has been a big issue in Ohio, where Republicans planned to have more than 3,000 poll watchers on election day, all in minority neighborhoods, to challenge the eligibility of voters. Democrats charged that this amounted to intimidation.
Early reports are that people are behaving themselves, despite long lines.
"The Republican monitors declined to answer questions about what they were told to do. One of the workers brought two elderly voters cups of water and offered his chair to another. He shared leftover Halloween candy with election judges. And when two of the voting machines broke down, a judge asked the GOP volunteer to help.
After looking at the machine, he declined, joking to a reporter, 'The last thing I need is to be accused of breaking a voting machine.' The GOP worker only identified himself as 'Jeff.'
A Democrat challenger who sat nearby expressed relief that the GOP monitors did not challenge voters. 'I had anticipated more challenges,' said Kim Singleton-Filio, a special education teacher volunteering for Democrat John F. Kerry's campaign. 'It is more like good-ole-boys.' "
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