Early voting in Los Angeles county used to be a breeze. There were touch-screen locations throughout the city, but that came to an end in 2007. Now there is but one place to cast an early ballot, a government building about 15 miles southeast of downtown.

It takes a certain amount of fortitude to vote early in LA this year. The process can consume 3-4 hours, exclusive of travel time. When we went yesterday afternoon, there was an long line just to get into the official waiting area. In there, a large tent with rows of folding chairs that seat 500 people or more, poll workers give out strips of paper with three digits. You get to vote when your number is called. Our guess is that maybe 400 people an hour vote. (Our advice is: bring a book; we read the entire novel Rebecca while waiting.)

It was an interesting demographic mix. Though there were a few more young people than we expected, the crowd seemed to be mostly in their 30′s and 40′s. Some people brought their young kids. Perhaps half the voters were African Americans (apologies to La Shawn Barber). The crowd seemed less Hispanic than LA is generally. (Our demographic was a bit underrepresented.) The atmosphere was friendly and somewhat subdued. It was a little like waiting in church for a very long time for the service to begin.

Occasionally there was a bit of joking. Once in a while someone would say Bingo! or otherwise celebrate when the woman calling out numbers finally ended some voter’s long wait. There was quite a lot of laughter when the announcer called out “666,” but otherwise people were quiet or chatted in low voices.

There was a freak thunderstorm in the middle of the afternoon, a very unusual occurrence in LA, where the rainy season doesn’t begin for another month. People continued to wait in the long line in the rain, with or without umbrellas.

We suppose that it would be hard to generalize from voting in Los Angeles, a blue city in a very blue state. But early voting in LA this year required an extra amount of commitment and intensity, because it killed a whole day. Senator Obama seemed to be the beneficiary of this commitment and intensity, at least in Los Angeles. We saw nothing to suggest that the polls are not correct.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, Polling, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.