So I hopped on my bicycle after teaching my class yesterday, and stopped by the early voting location on the Indiana University campus. It was the second of 3 early voting days on campus. I thought I could hop in line and get my voting out of the way pretty quickly. Boy, was I wrong!
After working my way to the dungeon where the polls were set up, deep in the bowels of the old gym, it was then that I saw the line. Amazing! Standing in an uncomfortablly warm hall were a line of students as long as I could see. I worked my way toward the front of the line and asked some kiddos "How long have you been here?"
"A long time"
"About 50 minutes or so"
Dayum.
I asked one of the local politicians outside, and she said "it has been like this all day today and yesterday!"
I ran into someone who had voted earlier, and he said his wait was 75 minutes; the line stretched out the door when arrived.
So I gave up on yesterday and thought if I showed up 15 minutes before the polls opened (at 11:30) I could beat most of the line again Wrong again!
The line was almost as long as yesterday, before the polls had even opened!
So, I got a ride with an Obama volunteer (great ground game here) over to the city early voting location. Thought there might be less of a line there. Wrong again!
A lot of the locals came by on their lunch hour, but it was 40-50% students there, easy. It took me an hour to vote and I couldn't be happier!
I asked one of the poll workers about turnout and she said:
"About 1200 the last two days, looks like that again today, at least, and at least 800 every day since early voting began"
Early voting at that location began Oct. 6 and continues until Nov. 3.
What an energized, young electorate! What a great job by Obama to register folks and GOTV in Indiana! I guarantee that 80% plus of those people in line were voting for Obama. As an Obama fellow said to me:
You don't stand in line for an hour three weeks before the election because you want to register your fear of 'that one'.
Especially when 'that one' has all the momentum.
Finally, I will make 2 predictions based on what I saw:
- Indiana will be blue
- Turnout will be unprecedented for modern elections. And it will be driven by the 18-30 year olds and African-Americans.
GOBAMA!!
UPDATE: OMG! The Rec List! Thanks, all!!
UPDATE2: Interesting news from Hoosiervic HERE. Lots of voting in Indiana. Still lots of work to do!
UPDATE3: For background, a quick use of teh googles shows that Indiana went for W. in '04 1,479,438 votes to 969,011. Monroe County (Bloomington) went for Kerry 26,965 to 22,834. I think we can get 40,000+ votes for Obama in Monroe alone. Source: http://uselectionatlas.org/...