-What we're seeing, really,
so far, centers heavily on Georgia,
where early voting started on Monday, October 12,
and the first day of voting there was truly epic.
People lined up hours before polls opened,
sometimes 4:00 in the morning, 5:00 in the morning.
It was Columbus Day, federal holiday,
which probably played a role
in how many people chose to vote on this particular day,
but it's also incredible that they wanted to do it
so badly on the first day
that they chose that day to do it.
In Georgia, election officials believe that the long lines
are almost exclusively the result of unprecedented
enthusiasm to participate in this election.
There were very few glitches on the first day of voting;
there were a couple, but they were minor,
they were nothing like what we saw
in the spring primary in Georgia.
And they were solved pretty quickly.
Polling -- electronic polling books didn't work,
and they were fixed, and everything was back up
and running within 45 minutes.
Voter suppression is a topic that comes up a lot
because it's real, it happens, it's happening this year,
it's happened historically,
it's happened particularly in strong ways in Southern states,
affecting people of color.
There's a lot of rightful fear
and misgiving about decisions that election officials
make about how many polling locations to open,
and equipment, and why the long lines
seem often to occur in cities with large minority populations.
So, it's understandable
that there are accusations of voter suppression,
but I also think that there's a certain amount
of misinformation that flies,
and I also think that our electorate is so divided.
I mean, there's so much unwillingness on both sides
to listen to the other side,
but there's just this presumption too often that,
if something goes wrong, or if something happens,
that's unusual, that it must be
because the other side did something underhanded.
And I don't think that's what happened in Georgia on Monday.
There's an interesting development in Texas
where early in-person voting began on Tuesday,
but where there was also this
really interesting court decision
with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
late Monday night, that basically bars counties
from having more than one drop box
for people to use to deposit their mail ballots
if they're not comfortable using the postal service.
Abbott said that he was doing it
to protect the security of the vote and the election,
although there really isn't any evidence
that drop boxes cause fraud, and most drop box programs
are under 24-hour surveillance and security.
And so lots of local election officials in Texas
were really upset about this decision
because they felt like it was a tool of voter suppression
that was meant to make it harder for people
who live in some of Texas's large --
very large counties -- from dropping their ballots off.
So, on Tuesday, the first day of early in-person voting,
the place where we saw the most notable long lines
was in Harris County, which is where Houston is,
and the line was a line of vehicles to drop ballots off
at the Harris County's sole drop box.
And I think it's really interesting
because it shows how much enthusiasm there is out
there not just to vote this year,
but there's enthusiasm among voters
to express how enthusiastic they are,
to express how excited they are to vote,
and to do so in a public way.
So, all these people turning out to vote in person
on the very first day, in Fairfax County, Virginia;
or in Atlanta, Georgia; or to deposit their ballot
on the very first day in Texas --
even though they could do so for the next 18 days --
says a lot about how much people want to vote,
as soon as they can, and it, to me,
suggests that they are making a statement by doing so,
and I think that's very interesting.
-Good morning!
Who's gonna vote today!
Whoo!