Early votes go to Obama

DIXVILLE NOTCH, New Hampshire – Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, New Hampshire, where the tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.

Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in Tuesday’s first minutes. The town of Hart’s Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns’ ballots but got no votes.

“I’m not going to say I wasn’t surprised,” said Obama supporter Tanner Nelson Tillotson, whose name was drawn from a bowl to make him Dixville Notch’s first voter.

With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at midnight on Election Day. Between them, the towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948.

Being first means something to residents of the Granite State, home of the nation’s earliest presidential primary and the central focus – however briefly – of the vote-watching nation’s attention every four years.

Town Clerk Rick Erwin said Dixville Notch is proud of its tradition, but added, “The most important thing is that we exemplify a 100 percent vote.”

Dixville Notch resident Peter Johnson said the early bird electoral exercise “is fun.” A former naval aviator, Johnson said he was voting for McCain, but added, “I think both candidates are excellent people.”

Voting was carried out in a room in a local hotel festooned with political memorabilia from campaigns long past. Each voter gets an individual booth so there are no lines at the magic hour. The votes were quickly counted, announced and recorded on a posterboard that proclaims, “First in the Nation, Dixville Notch.”

The tradition drew spectators, including Tim McKenna, who drove with his wife 16 miles from nearby Cambridge to witness the event.

“Living in New Hampshire, you hear so much about it in the news,” said McKenna. “I think it’s a very historic election this year.”

Ed Butler, a Democratic state representative who runs the Notchland Inn in Hart’s Location, said, “Being this small and being able to be first just makes it that much more special.”

Although scores of states have voted early, the two villages are the first to officially announce the results on Election Day.

New Hampshire law requires polls to open at 11 a.m., but that doesn’t stop towns from opening earlier. It also allows towns to close their polls once all registered and eligible voters have cast ballots.

Hart’s Location started opening its polls early in 1948, the year Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey, to accommodate railroad workers who had to get to work early. Hart’s Location got out of the early voting business in 1964 after some residents grew weary of all the publicity, but brought it back in 1996.

Dixville Notch, nestled in a mountain pass 1,800 feet up and about halfway between the White Mountain National Forest and the Canadian border, followed suit in 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, the Republican, swept all nine votes cast in Dixville that year, and before Tuesday, the town had gone for a Democrat only once since then. That was in 1968, when the tally was Democrat Hubert Humphrey eight, Nixon four.

Record turnout in early voting favors Obama

A record number of Americans have cast their ballots in pivotal US states ahead of Tuesday’s election, with surveys suggesting many of the early voters backed Democrat Barack Obama.

Often waiting in lines for hours at polling stations, about 28.9 million people have already voted in states across the country, according to a university researcher’s website, citing figures from states across the country.

The figures shattered records in several crucial states – including Georgia, Iowa and North Carolina – and were likely to set a new record for the country as a whole compared to the last presidential election four years ago, said Michael McDonald, associate professor at George Mason University in Virginia.

“Tens of millions of people have already cast their ballot for the 2008 presidential election,” McDonald wrote on his website.

“The question remains if this means a greater share of the 2008 vote will be cast early, if turnout will be up overall, or – as I suspect – a combination of these two factors are in play.”

Figures showed more Democrats than Republicans had voted early and polls over the past week indicated Obama enjoyed a lead over Republican rival John McCain among early voters, many of whom were African-Americans.

“What we are seeing is that Obama supporters do tend to be voting early more than McCain supporters, which is showing up in the polls and the partisan registration numbers,” McDonald said Monday in an online discussion on the Washington Post website.

In Ohio, amateur videos posted on the web showed long lines stretching for several city blocks in Cleveland during early voting over the weekend.

University students in Columbus voting for the first time said they had waited in lines for more than six hours to cast their ballots.

With about 1.4 million people having already voted in the Midwestern state – a traditional battleground in the state-by-state presidential election – Obama has jumped ahead of McCain among early voters by double digits, according to several polls, including a Columbus Dispatch newspaper survey.

In Florida – coveted by both campaigns – about 4.1 million people had voted early in person or by absentee ballot. Officials said that figure was equivalent to about half the state’s expected overall voter turnout.

While party affiliation did not guarantee uniform support for each party’s nominee, numerous polls showed Obama enjoying a lead over McCain among early voters in states deemed crucial to the election outcome, including Colorado, Indiana, Nevada and North Carolina.

With front-runner Obama vying to be the country’s first black president, his aides say he has built up a hefty lead in early voting that will make it difficult for McCain to close the gap on election day.

Turnout results showed African-Americans were voting early “at really unprecedented levels,” according to McDonald.

“If these numbers hold through election day, their turnout percentage could exceed that of white voters,” McDonald said.

“We’re not seeing young people vote early – and that actually follows a trend we’ve seen in the past 20 years, where the early voters are older than the election day voters,” he said.

But he said final figures could show a surge of young voters in early voting or that turnout for all age groups would increase. – AP