My wife and I voted today. The poll was open from 9 to 2 and we arrived at about 12:45 to find over a dozen people in line. It took about 20 minutes to get through the line and vote and when we left, the line was even longer than when we got there.
During my little snapshot of time at the poll, I saw very few older voters and quite a few younger voters and people of color. I hope that generally reflects the composition of the electorate given that this is a pretty affluent district on balance, extending up Chicago's North Shore suburbs to the Wisconsin line and extending West to encompass Chicago's Northwest suburbs in Cook and Lake counties.
My observations are consistent with local reports about early voting turnout.
Let's look at early voting, for instance, and the fact that for the first time since its inception, the suburbs are surpassing the city in turnout. In some cases, the ratio is 3-1.
"I'm not seeing the early voting numbers pop yet," Allen said. "This will be a first if the trend continues."
With just one more week of early voting left, Cook County Clerk David Orr, a Democrat, doesn't mince words: "There is certainly a scare here for the Democrats."
So, turnout is high in suburban areas like the IL-10, and that's fine with me. High turnout is good and will help our Congressional candidate, Dan Seals (sorry folks, he'll apparently be a Blue Dog on the Bush tax cuts for the rich), replace the execrable Mark Kirk who is vying with our guy, Alexi Giannoulias, for the Senate seat formerly occupied by the President.
So, it looks like the key to the Democratic state wide ticket might be the President's visit to the Windy City the last weekend before Election Day, as he energizes the ground troops for the final 72 hours. If you are in Chicago Land, this is a great time to get involved with OFA's GOTV program in your area or any of the several competitive House races or Alexi's or Pat's campaign's GOTV programs.
David Plouffe has explained that the whole idea of the Democratic campaign this year is to utilize GOTV to turn out the largest possible percentage of those new voters who were drawn into the historic 2008 campaign. Here he explains that OFA knows who we have to reach to win and knows how many we have to reach. What they still need are volunteers to put boots on the ground and voices into the dialogue plus contributors to keep the field offices open, etc.
So there has never been a better time to throw in your two cents. Contribute something, whether your time, your money, your voice, your feet, your car, whatever you can. And if you threw that support specifically behind Dan Seals here in the IL-10, despite his lame ideas on income tax rates, I'd be much obliged.