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Indiana's controversial photo identification rule may not have made a major dent in the state's high turnout, but it did frustrate a small group of voters more accustomed to divine law. About 12 elderly Roman Catholic nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph. Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, even though they had been told earlier that they would need to get such an ID to vote.

I heard Fred Barnes and Brit Hume use the term "Enthusiasm Gap" in describing how Dems are having RECORD TURNOUTS even in Red States. I think there are couple of reasons Dems are nearly doubling up our turnout (no particular order) - RECORD TURNOUTS 1) Split Party and nothing new to root for from our side. 2) Obama and his empty but impressive rhetoric. Something new. 3) Dems smelling victory. 4) Dems selling out to EXTREME left wing of their party. Moveon.org type rhetoric. Shamelessly rooting for surrender to Al Qaida. That sort of stuff sells well with extremists in...

With Tuesday's record-setting turnout, California Hispanics for the first time performed as well as any other racial group in a statewide election. The outpouring was especially strong on the Democratic side, with Hispanics accounting for 30 percent of Tuesday's presidential primary vote. Hispanic Democrats nearly doubled their percentage from the 2000 and 2004 primaries. And they matched their percentage among California adults, suggesting the state's fast-growing Hispanic population is finally being reflected at the polls. Analysts cited a variety of possible reasons for the uptick in Hispanic voting, from the voter registration drives that developed from the 2006 immigration protests...

Though the fate of the Democratic race to the nomination remains uncertain, one thing is for sure: voters are turning out for the Democratic primaries in number that absolutely shatter previous records — which may be a troubling sign for Republicans looking ahead to the general election. CNN looked at six states: Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Arizona. Even with the votes not fully tallied yet, the turnout numbers are still substantially higher than in the past. Arizona already has nearly 80,000 more voters than it ever had before, with only 67% of the precincts counted. The...

BY GARY FINEOUT Nearly one million Floridians have already cast early and absentee ballots in the state's primary, a sign that moving up the date of the presidential primary will likely yield a record turnout on Tuesday. The last time there was a contested presidential primary on both the Republican and Democratic sides, only about 19 percent of Florida voters, or 1.34 million, cast ballots. But numbers assembled by the political parties show that more than 988,000 people had voted by Sunday. And thousands more voted Sunday afternoon in the seven Florida counties, including Miami-Dade and Broward, that were still...

Turnout for the first primary election of the season has gotten so large that some precincts have run out of Democratic ballots. That bodes ill for both Hillary Clinton, who may see a rerun of Iowa's caucuses in a large independent turnout. It could also spell trouble for a Republican: New Hampshire Deputy Secretary of State Dave Scanlan told ABC News that turnout is "absolutely huge, and towns are starting to get concerned that they don't have enough ballots." Scanlan voted Tuesday morning, and said the line in his polling location in Concord, the state capital, was "out the door."...

More Republicans than Democrats and more white voters than black voters went to the polls on Oct. 20 for the statewide Louisiana election that made Bobby Jindal the governor-elect, according to information released by the secretary of state Wednesday.Orleans had the lowest voter turnout of any parish, at 27.5 percent, a figure based on the number of people who voted among those registered to vote.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranians turned out in heavy numbers Friday for local council elections that could be a gauge of popular dissatisfaction with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and liberals' potential to rebuild their suppressed movement. Farideh Borna, a student, said she voted for a "pro-Ahmadinejad" slate of candidates because "I wanted to help him to fulfill his promises." But Ahmadinejad was expected to lose the support of fellow conservatives who feel he has spent too much time confronting the West and failed to deal with Iran's struggling economy. Independent observers said the turnout appeared to be higher than in previous...

The Democratic share of the eligible vote casting ballots for the House of Representatives increased from 16.8 percent in 2002 to 17.9 in 2006. The Republican share declined sharply, from 19.2 percent in 2002 to 16.8 in 2006. This marks the first mid-term election since 1990 in which the Democrats garnered more votes that the GOP. In the ballots so far counted in 2006 (and again excluding California, Oregon and Washington), citizens cast 31,703,311 votes for Democratic candidates for U.S. House, compared to 28,749,023 in 2002. The Republican candidates received 29,920,240 votes in 2006 compared with 32,771,580 in 2002.

...A state elections official described early turnout as strong, predicting that as many as 65 percent of registered voters could cast ballots... Turnout was high across the Richmond metropolitan area. At Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, for example, more than 1,100 of the precinct?s 2,646 registered voters had cast ballots by 12:30 p.m.... ACROSS NORTHERN VIRGINIA: Northern Virginia officials reported heavy turnout in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties. Fairfax County officials said about 30 percent of the county's 626,000 registered voters had cast ballots as of about 2 p.m. Turnout ranged from about 25 percent to nearly 40 percent at...

From a reader: Jonah, I voted this morning in Colorado's 5th district at a polling center about 5 miles from the New Life Church where Ted Haggard used to preach. The MSM has tried to portray conservatives and especially evangelicals in the district as being so demoralized they wouldn't bother voting. I arrived at my polling place 15 minutes before it opened and the line was out door. By the time I voted and left, the line was 75 yards out the door. I live in an extremely conservative district and several people in the line with me were heading...

It just occurred to me the other day about Karl Rove nearly being rail-roaded into indictment by the Demoncrats. How much trouble did this cost him? How much in legal bills? How much in lost respect? How much in lost sleep and stress and torture to his family? It then occurred to me that I would not want to make THIS man mad at me. Could it be that ALL of the optimism on Rove's part, ALL of the confidence and bravado in what he knows versus what the Democrat liberal establishment knows, is due to the fact that DESTROYING...

Visiting a Republican call center in Chico, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger thanked volunteers and ebulliently assured them, "Things are going really well. The poll numbers show us up by 15 or 20 points." He worked to get out the Republican vote Saturday, appearing at GOP events in Chico, Pleasanton and Riverside, where he was accompanied by Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson. As he spoke with a Republican voter by phone from Chico, the governor exclaimed, "It's the people like you that create the action." He urged that the word be put out to "vote yes on our propositions and ......

SUMMARY: More Absentee Ballots were mailed to Republicans than Democrats in all three counties even though Charles and St. Mary’s have more registered Democrats. With the exception of Charles County, Republicans slightly more likely to Vote than Democrats. ---------------------------------------------------- This is the first year in Maryland where anyone can vote by absentee ballot without specifying a reason. In prior years, one needed to justify why they would be unable to make it to the polls on Election Day. Coinciding with the change in the law, many prominent political figures have been recommending to Maryland voters that they take advantage of...

More Republicans than Democrats have voted early in Mecklenburg County, a potentially crucial indicator for Tuesday's election. Election Day is still three days away, but more than 18,000 people have already voted. In the past two major elections in Mecklenburg, the party that dominated early voting controlled the board of county commissioners and chalked up victories in other major races. Through Wednesday, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats, 43.2 percent to 39.1 percent, according to an Observer analysis of in-person early voting. The strong Republican turnout bucks national predictions of Democratic success, and could leave power over property taxes, parks and school...

A hotly contested Senate race and an amendment on marriage have led tens of thousands of voters statewide to request absentee ballots before next week's election, an indicator that turnout could be abnormally high on Election Day. "It sounds more like a presidential than a midterm election," said Virginia Garrett, Chesapeake's voter registrar. Across the commonwealth, 102,852 people had requested absentee ballots as of Monday morning, said Jean Jensen, the secretary for the State Board of Elections. That's more than twice the number of absentee ballots received in 2002, when John Warner was re-elected to the Senate, and 35 percent...

For Democrats like these in tight races, black voter turnout will be crucial on Election Day. But despite a generally buoyant Democratic Party nationally, there are worries among Democratic strategists in some states that blacks may not turn up at the polls in big enough numbers because of disillusionment over past shenanigans. “This notion that elections are stolen and that elections are rigged is so common in the public sphere that we’re having to go out of our way to counter them this year,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist.

David Kuo, once an official of President Bush's faith-based initiative, published a book this month that attacks the White House for privately ridiculing evangelical Christians while cynically manipulating how they vote. The book arrived, cynically enough, just in time for the midterm election--an election Kuo says Christians should boycott. Meanwhile, the mainstream media, like sportswriters cheerleading for the home team, is predicting a landslide in the interest of promoting one. Their home team, of course, is the Democrats. As for Republican efforts to spur a big turnout on November 7, the press frowns on such cheap tactics. "GOP Aims to...

LOS ANGELES State Republicans are attempting to organize the largest mobilization of GOP election volunteers in state history to help deliver a re-election victory for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a strategy modeled on get-out-the-vote drives that President Bush used to capture Ohio and other swing states in 2004. Party insiders say as many as 90,000 people could be enlisted in the closing days of the race to knock on doors, plant yard signs or make telephone calls to connect with potential voters, an unprecedented figure in a state thick with Democrats. A record turnout by the state's 5.4 million Republicans could...

MANHATTAN BEACH -- Trying to fire up a lackluster crowd at a "get out the vote" rally, City Councilman Jim Aldinger asked who would be working over the weekend to get Californians to the polls on Tuesday. Only a handful of the 80 activists raised their hands at the rally Thursday for gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. Campaign consultants reported similarly tepid responses from volunteers around the state -- even though an expected low voter turnout and an extremely tight gubernatorial primary could make this year's "get out the vote" efforts more decisive than in past statewide campaigns. Secretary of State...