Election day in Benton, New Hampshire

My post about Barack Obama's election was getting a bit long, so I thought I'd break it up and get some more blog miles out of the story.

First of all, check out this election map from Google. A few things to notice. First of all,the outcome shows (as I said in the previous post) that Obama got a mere 9 votes less than McCain.

Given the comment that 'this is McCain country' we were pretty surprised and really gratified to see this.

There were other signs though. One of the poll workers offered to hold our sign while we went inside to get off our feet for a few minutes, saying "I'd be proud to hold Barack Obama's sign."

She also said how exciting it was to see some Obama presence at little old Benton -- this was the very first time either major candidate had a visibility presence in Benton on Election day.

Cool!

The other thing to notice is (and this is a traditional theme of mine) the miracle of technology. Within hours of the count by hand, by people in Benton (see previous post) and a phone call that they presumably made to the New Hampshire secretary of state) it appears on this web page, broken out by town and county, in color no less. That 's transparency!

Here are two more snapshots of the day. In the first one you cann see the Benton Town Office.

The reason that the sign that Chris is holding has all kinds of random additional names on it is that we got the very last sign that the campaign office in Plymouth had.

I wonder what would have happened if we arrived 5 minutes later!

The second snapshot is of the Barack Obama sign in wild apples that Chris constructed right next to the ramp into the building.

During a pleasant chat with the town moderator we learned a few things.

First of all, that no Barack Obama (or other signs) were allowed within 10 feet. We said we'd be glad to move or remove it if he said so (obviously we didn't want to get into trouble 🙂

Later on, explaining what the town moderator's duties are at the election he explained that he was in charge.

And for example he could kick out anyone he felt was disrupting or being inappropriate the polling place. Ouch!

Still though he never asked us to remove the Barack Obapple sign.