Primary fever hits NC on the last day of early voting [Politics Suck]

I, like apparently many others, figured that on this last day of early voting for the NC primaries, I should get off my butt and go vote with the hopes that the lines would be shorter for early voting than on primary day. Oh was I wrong, how very very wrong.

Because it’s a Saturday and because it’s the last day, the line to go vote was around the block as you can see from the image above. A couple reasons for this being that unlike primary day, where there are dozens of polling places all around the city, for early voting, there’s one place in Durham where everyone goes. And that one place has really bad parking.

Still, in a normal election year, the NC primaries are a non-issue. By the time they get around to use in May, both sides are usually decided and there’s really not much of a point other than to say you voted. This year on the Democratic side, the contest is still heavily contested and there’s a chance that Indiana and NC can land either finally land the knockout blow for Obama or solidify the fact that there will be punches thrown on the floor of the convention in Denver. Personally, I’m hoping for the former.

So I wake up at 10 to try and corral my wife to get ready to head downtown to go vote, since the polling place closes at 1 and for the next two hours I have to hear about how her hair is dirty and the cats need to be fed and the dog needs to be fed and she needs to clip her toenails and she needs to eat breakfast, all the while, the clock is ticking down and I’m saying things like “well god dammit if you don’t want to do it, I’m going to leave right now” because DEMOCRACY DOES NOT CARE ABOUT UNCLIPPED TOENAILS AND DIRTY HAIR.

Phew, got that out of my system. So we get down there, winding through the cramped, crappy streets of downtown Durham, only to finally get there and see that with only a half an hour left before the place closes, there’s a line around the block. Seeing as how we currently only have one car and she had to be at work soon and we’re already registered, I threaded my way through the circus of sign-waving idiots to head back home so she could get to work… meh… I guess I’ll have to go Tuesday afternoon after work anyway.

But I had no idea how crowded it would be– last week on Ben & Jerry’s Free Scoop Day there weren’t this many people! Free ice cream vs. voting in a primary and voting in a primary wins hands down– this is what I’m talking about. According to my neighbor, when he went in the middle of the day last Tuesday, there was almost no one there, so maybe I should have gone on my lunch during the week like I kept saying I was going to.

Anyway, so I rushed home, gave my wife half an hour to take a shower before she had to go to work so I could speed back down there with the camera to document the craziness.

It really was like a rock concert. I was talking to a guy there who was holding a sign for Freda Black, who is running for the Durham County DA spot– you know, the spot once held by Mike Nifong, the dick who made the Duke Lacross case into international news? He’s the one who said it looked like a rock concert. And it did– cars parked everywhere– in the grass, on the curb, in front of fire hydrants. There were even Hillary supporters singing folk songs and being all lesbiany. Well, not lesbiany in a good way:

It appeared that surprisingly, there were quite a few Hillary supporters down there– at least they had the biggest signs and were the most annoying and screamed the loudest. But with Obama still sitting on a huge lead in NC and Durham being the most liberal (and the most African-American) county in NC, I’m pretty sure that most people there were for Obama. The one really loud Obama supporter that I saw was oddly enough dressed sort of like Aunt Jemima.  I don’t really know how to interpret it other than perhaps it’s comfortable.  Who am I to say?

So I was disappointed that I didn’t get to vote early, but I will be out there on Tuesday evening and I’ll try to maybe get some more pictures at that time as well to share with you. Shortly after 1, when the polls were supposed to close, cops came by and started taping off the line so that no one else could get in. That’s when the Freda Black supporter I was talking to grabbed his daughter and sprinted towards the end of the line and so that seems like a good place to leave this til Tuesday… the line’s taped off, no one else can get in, time to go home: