Tuesday, February 05, 2008

No Excuses on Election Day

From Balkanization:

[T]here is no excuse for election administrators not to have enough ballots on hand this Tuesday. Everyone knows that turnout is likely to be huge. In the South Carolina primary, 530,000 Democrats cast ballots, up from 290,000 in 2004 (a number that was itself a record). Fifteen thousand people showed up for an Obama rally in Boise, Idaho, roughly three times the number of Democrats who caucused in Idaho four years ago. Given that I'm affiliated with Senator Obama's campaign, I'll hasten to add that Hillary Clinton is drawing large crowds wherever she goes and is similarly turning out huge numbers of voters. Republican turnout has also been high, though not nearly in the range of Democratic turnout. It's one of those amazing years where the nation is paying attention.

More importantly, different people are turning out than in prior years. Young people and African Americans have turned out at extraordinarily high rates. That means that the people running polling places in university towns and predominantly black neighborhoods should be particularly worried about turnout.

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