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I just finished a visit to the polling location at Henry Hoover Middle School in Livonia, Michigan. The turnout seemed lite, but after speaking with the captain of Precinct 17, she assured me it was actually a little larger than normal. But she cautioned, that a lot of the people who had turned out early this morning were people who normally vote in the evenings (I think she has done this for years.) The precinct aptain had already voted via absentee a couple weeks ago.

So far, she reported, about 133 people have voted, and people keep trickling in at a steady pace.

The way it works is this: she is precinct captain in charge of her precinct. There are two precincts at this specific polling location, but the precincts are not affiliated with a specific party. Working under her are election inspectors, who hand out the ballots and make sure all the rules are followed properly. All are paid positions.

I asked her, how many Dems vs. Rep's ballots had been cast, and she replied she wasn't allowed to report this. I asked her, if people who were around during George Romney's era remember him fondly and if their memories left them more or less likely to vote for Mitt- she was an elderly lady. Her reply to that was that most of them do remember him fondly, but she couldn't say how it would effect their votes.

A couple other observations, today I have seen a near drop off of ads from the Romney and McCain camps on TV. I have seen plenty of Mike Huckabee ads, including about 5 repeats of Trust Huckabee showing videos of Romney in 94 and 2002.