Yes we can, indeed.

But there is a segment of the population whose understanding of the basics of voting is minimal. As someone who's done voter registration and education work for years, it's important to remember that there are people who are basically illiterate and who are extremely intimidated by the voting process. I'm convinced that fear of humiliation is the number one reason people don't vote and that asking a question at a polling place brings the same fear as people have of public speaking. It's irrational and hard to explain to regular voters, yet it's there.

What we're hearing across the state though is that there were some inital lines in the hours before 9am, especially in the two largest counties of Wake (Raleigh) and Mecklenburg (Charlotte). But that since then it's been slow. There's rain across the state but most are attributing the lack of lines to the massive early vote turnout.

An interesting ancedote, several people have noted that they had to wait in line longer for a free Krispy Kreme doughnut (with an I voted sticker) that they did for voting.

I would suggest that the lack of massive turnout today probably bodes well for Democrats because they turned out in much higher numbers the in early voting (50% of early voters were Democrats and only 30% were Republicans).

Please add an update in this post that counties MAY opt out of the extended hours. We should expect to see extended hours in the largest population counties but it is possible that rural counties will opt to still close at 1pm.

People can contact their local boards of elections to find out what they've decided:
http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/content.aspx?id=13

Also - it was actually GOP members of the state board of election who wanted to open the extended hours to the entire state b/c they didn't want just blue counties opened longer. So while local GOP members have fought extended hours, the GOP members of the state board of elections made a pretty fair proposal to open all the sites (unless the local boards unanimously decide otherwise).

Obama is really enjoying himself - making some jokes and laughing as the crowd responds.