Turnout is very high.  We have about 2500 registered in our precinct, which has been trending Dem and went about 60-40 for Kerry.  700 voted prior to today, either absentee or early voting. 

At 6 am the line extended another 100 feet beyond the 100+ feet line inside the elementary school polling place.  An opscan vote tabulator broke down and the line barely moved during the 45 minutes or so it took to get a tech in to fix it.  I was outside more than I was inside during that time and did not see anyone leave the line.  Once the problem was fixed the line moved well and by late AM folks were smiling as they left, pleasantly surprised at how short the wait was at that point. 

By 10 am roughly 1600 votes had been cast, total, about 65% turnout already.  The word from our poll watcher was that we were doing very well with our folks turning out.  Someone speculated we could see 90% turnout.  There is ongoing targeted, well organized activity to try to get as many as possible of the rest of our folks out.

Levels of incivility towards those of us offering sample ballots were low, consisting entirely of semi-obnoxious body language from a minority of Republican voters.  I'd estimate 90% of it came from white men ages 35 and up.

I try to make a point of engaging Republican counterparts when I do this work.  Two years ago, during a lightly trafficked shift, I met a 55-ish Republican attorney from Kansas whose brother lives in the precinct.  He was peddling the anti-evolution line to me.  Very civil, pleasant gentleman.

Two of our counterparts for part of my shift were 18 and 15 year old boys.  Out of curiosity I asked them if they had some serious concern re whether Obama was really patriotic or not.  The 18 year old said no, he didn't buy into that rhetoric.  The 15 year old answered by saying he was not going to answer because his experience has taught him that if he answers truthfully he will be called a racist.  I chose not to further engage the 15 year old on the matter. If I honestly believed that someone with a chance to win a presidential election might have terrorist inclinations I'd be seriously alarmed.     

An elderly white woman with limited mobility declined to have her ballot brought to her outside the polling place for casting and witnessing by an election official.  She said she was afraid her vote would not be counted if that happened and insisted on making her way inside instead.  She said she just wasn't going to let anything get in the way of her casting a vote that counted on this historic day which she said she never thought she would live to see.   

Only slept about 3 hours last night as a result of being much too wound up.  At least the SNL 2-hour special last night helped me let go of the worry a little and do some laughing.