Good job! I'm always happy to vote even when my candidates rarely win. It makes it easy to say, I didn't vote for him/her when things go wrong.

I had one winner out of the first five times I voted for President.
I've had three winners (two were Clinton) out of the nine times I've voted for President.

Keep that in mind ya'll when selecting your candidates. Of course, I'm not sure if you should just make sure you don't vote for who I have selected or was there something similar to all of those Democratic candidates that made them not win.

Great photo essay, Brian!

Bizgrrl: or was there something similar to all of those Democratic candidates that made them not win

Yeah, they were all Democrats. We are genetically programmed to lose.

Is there a good reason why voters can vote at any location during the early voting period, but must vote in a specific precinct on election day? One would think voting machine technology has made that requirement obsolete.

I'm sure they could. One line of reasoning may be to spread out the voters so that a few popular locations would not be overwhelmed. Good theory, but not in practice. My location in Loudon County is notorious for long lines. I was in line an hour on Tuesday, in Nov04 it was closer to two hours. And that was with eight machines.

Is there a good reason why voters can vote at any location during the early voting period, but must vote in a specific precinct on election day? One would think voting machine technology has made that requirement obsolete.

Knox Co. got a grant and approval from the State to try a pilot program for this, calling it "convenience voting". It's basically eliminiating the 94 precincts and expanding the early voting setup and extending it through election day. Anderson Co. and Loudon Co. are also participating.

Greg Mackay explains how it would work.

Here's some info on the study and grant.

Not sure what the specific plans are for when this will first be tried out, but I seem to recall discussion of maybe the next city election.