CHESAPEAKE — Marilyn Bradley has worked the polls in Lawrence County for 47 years and this morning turnout was a first for her.
“I have never seen this,” said Bradley who was manning the Union 5 precinct, one of two polls at the Chesapeake Elementary School. “This is totally new. I expected it to be heavy, but not this.”
About a half-hour after the polls opened at 6:30 a.m., 34 had voted. Normally, in those early hours, the count would be five or six, Bradley said.
Virginia Carroll, her counterpart at Union 2, reported a turnout just as heavy for that precinct with a turnout at least twice the number normally anticipated.
At the end of one of the lines was Steve Harris of Chesapeake who always votes early before he heads to work. Watching three lines snake across the gym floor and down the front wall, he just shook his head.
“This is the most I have seen. This blows me away,” he said.
Campaigning out in front of the school was County Commission hopeful Les Boggs on the Republican ticket. Boggs, who got there just before the doors opened, said about 40 were outside waiting to get in, with the line going into the parking lot.
Record turnouts are expected across the country as the fiercely fought presidential race between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama comes to an end. The race has been labeled historic and whoever is the victor, he will wear the mantle of being the first. It will be either the first African American to become the country’s leader or the oldest man to win the presidency. Another historic factor is the possibility of the first woman to become vice president.
Ohio remains a battleground state that both candidates deluged with campaign rallies, door-to-door stumping and sound bytes. Last minute polls debated the outcome with either candidate claiming the state.
About an hour into the day that will make history, the rush to vote had momentarily slowed at the two precincts stationed at Ohio University Southern in Ironton. But poll workers were counting it as a temporary lull.
“This is the first time we’ve been this quiet (today),” Eva Drummond said as she looked at a room with less than a half-dozen voting. “We’ve been busy here. We just got a break.”
Kandee Hamilton estimated the turnout was at least double what is normal for that time of day.
“It has been really steady, continual,” Hamilton said.
Long lines are expected throughout the day until the polls close at 7:30 tonight.
At that time a worker from each precinct will stand in line as the cutoff for voting. However, anyone still in line can still cast a ballot.
Pittsburgh Steelers beat Washington Redskins in the NFL on Monday night for a dominant victory that Barack Obama will see as a good omen.
For all but one of the last 17 presidential ballots, since 1937, a Redskins victory has signaled a win for the party currently in power.
Pittsburgh held Redskins runner Clinton Portis and sacked quarterback Jason Campbell seven times for a 23-6 win.
Interviews with Obama and rival John McCain aired on US TV at half-time.
Democrat candidate Obama – a senator from Illinois, home of the NFL’s Chicago Bears – mixed American football and basketball analogies into his interview.
“At this point, not to use sports metaphors, but you’ve left everything on the field, and now you just gotta see how it turns out,” he said.
“I think we’ve got a great shot, but you don’t know until the buzzer sounds.”
Obama was pictured last week at a rally with a Steelers jersey bearing his name, given to him by team owner Dan Rooney.
His Republican rival McCain, from Arizona, has had the backing of former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs.
In his 1999 memoir, Faith of My Fathers, he described being under interrogation pressure while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
“I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron,” he wrote.
In Monday’s recorded interview McCain suggested the formation of a union to protect the interests of professional boxers.
“These are for individuals who usually come from the lowest rung on our economic ladder, their careers are not very long, and I think that there’s been too many cases of exploitation by… unsavoury individuals,” McCain said.
At the first game hosted by the Redskins on the eve of a presidential election since 1984, election fever was in the air.
One fan alternately waved a white towel with Barack Obama’s image in the left hand and an all-burgundy Redskins towel in the right hand.
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger scored on a one-yard run at the end of the first half but a right shoulder injury knocked him out of the game.
Willie Parker added a one-yard touchdown run before Byron Leftwich, Roethlisberger’s replacement, connected with Santonio Holmes to boost Pittsburgh’s victory margin.
The “Redskin Rule” has held true for 71 years, since the team moved from Boston to the US capital.
There was a caveat in 2004, when a Green Bay win should have signalled defeat for George W Bush, but some rule-backers note that Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, so his re-election was not a true repeat.
Barack Obama and John McCain will be carefully watching Virginia early tonight. Television viewers should, too. The state is in the first wave to close polling places, at 7 pm Washington DC time. The results will be telling. Obama has pushed hard to flip the state, which hasn’t backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, and he led in pre-election polls.
“An Obama win in Virginia would be a sign the race is over,” said John Fortier, a research fellow at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute who wrote a book about the U.S. Electoral College. “If he wins Virginia, he is likely to be doing well elsewhere.”
Virginia’s results may signal a tidal wave of states turning Democratic after backing Republican President George W. Bush in 2004.
Another on the watch list at 7 pm is Indiana, which also hasn’t backed a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson won in a nationwide landslide 44 years ago.
Ohio follows Virginia and Indiana with a scheduled poll closing time of 7:30 pm Washington DC time. In 2004, the state and its 20 electoral votes remained too close to call until the next day, when Democrat John Kerry conceded. For McCain, the state is critical: No Republican has ever won the White House without claiming Ohio.
North Carolina and West Virginia, two other states Obama is contesting that went Republican in the last two elections, close at the same time as Ohio.
Half an hour later, at 8 pm, the biggest of the battleground states, Florida, is slated to close all its polls, along with those in Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
“It is nearly impossible for McCain to win without winning Ohio, Virginia, and Florida,” Fortier said. Bush won all three in 2004, ending up with 286 Electoral College votes. A candidate needs 270 to get to the White House.
The first poll closings may also offer early clues on Senate and House races. Kentucky’s balloting is due to finish by 7 pm and attention will be on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s efforts to hold his seat. A loss for the Republican would bolster Senate Democrats’ chances of getting to the 60 seats they need to block a filibuster.
WASHINGTON – (DPA) In a departure from 40 years of Republican loyalty, 21 voters in remote northern New Hampshire gave a resounding “yes” to Democrat Barack Obama early Tuesday.
With 15 votes for Obama and six for McCain reported by broadcasters, the opening of the Dixville Notch polling station Tuesday just after midnight marked the opening of US elections that could produce the first-ever African-American president.
By tradition since 1960, voters in Dixville Notch near the Canadian border cast the first votes in presidential elections. The only Democrat who took the precinct since then was Hubert Humphrey, who lost the 1968 national election to Richard Nixon.
Voters in nearby Hart’s Location were also to have voted soon after midnight, a tradition the town started in the 1990s.
Other polls around New Hampshire will open at 6 a.m. (1100 GMT) Tuesday, as will polls in Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Maine and Vermont. The last polls will close in Alaska at 0500 Wednesday.
Obama is favoured to win Tuesday’s vote. An aggregate of major national polls compiled by realclearpolitics.com gave Obama 51.2 percent to Republican Senator John McCain’s 44.2 percent on Monday.
Dixville voters assembled in the historic ballot room of the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel, an old-fashioned establishment where men must wear suits and ties to dine.
The voting room, just next to the billiard room, is a panorama of presidential history that includes photos of most presidents since Dwight Eisenhower, 1953-61, began visiting the hotel.
Tally boards dating back to the 1960 contest between Democrat John Kennedy and Republican Nixon are on display.
In January’s intra-party votes, Democrats in Dixville chose Obama and Republicans chose McCain. New Hampshire is considered a swing state today.
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has won in the two US towns that traditionally open US election voting.
In Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, he won 15 votes to his Republican rival John McCain’s six, becoming the first Democrat to win there since 1968.
In Hart’s Location he won 17 votes, while Mr McCain won 10, and Ron Paul two, showing 100% voter turnout.
Results from the rest of the US are expected from 2300 GMT as citizens elect their 44th president.
Hart’s Location began the practice of voting early in 1948 so that railroad employees could vote before going to work.
The nation’s first 18-year-old to cast his vote, Arron Dindorf of Hart’s Location, said: “It’s one of the few times the town gets together all at once.
“It’s neat to see how into it people are, and they want to keep the tradition alive.”
Obama supporter Tanner Nelson Tillotson became Dixville Notch’s first voter when his name was drawn from a bowl.
Of his chosen candidate’s win, he said: “I’m not going to say I wasn’t surprised.”
Dixville Notch began its tradition of midnight voting soon after Hart’s Location, but with increasing media attention the practice was stopped in 1964. It resumed for the 1996 election.
ABC News‘ Tahman Bradley, Rigel Anderson and Arnab Datta Report:
While Sen. Barack Obama’s late grandmother Madelyn Dunham will not live to see the outcome of this historic election, her 2008 vote will count.
Hawaii Chief Elections Officer Kevin Cronin told ABC News this evening that the absentee ballot cast by Dunham before she passed away will count. Cronin said Dunham’s absentee ballot was received on October 27 and found to meet the requirements of a valid absentee ballot and will therefore be counted with the rest of the state’s ballots tomorrow.
Obama learned that his grandmother lost her battle with cancer early Monday. She was 86.
