Call to duty as public takes the centre stage in election

A POLITICAL battle built on an orgy of hyperbole ended yesterday in the quiet fulfillment of citizens’ civic duty.

The public had watched the 2008 election already secure a prominent place in history but it was now their time to decide what should be recorded.

And after spending the final months of his campaign trying reach across that divide Barack Obama spent most of yesterday among his own in his home city, Chicago.

Here the local result was not in doubt and one million people prepared to gather in Grant Park to watch the numbers come.

Supporters wore Obama t-shirts and did their best to ignore the most intense security operation of the election or the prospect of a John McCain victory.

Because, as the winds of history swept along Chicago’s canals, its citizens had to get their day’s work out of the way first.

A business woman strode through pedestrian traffic with a briefcase and a sticker badge proclaiming she had voted Republican.

A stall owner leaned on her board selling the last of her stock of Obama campaign buttons.

Meanwhile polling booths on the southside experienced long delays but in the inner city after the pre-work rush subsided voters could be in and out in five minutes.

The 2,536 voters of three wards in precinct 69 had more than two dozen booths to choose from and they were more than able to cope.

But the controversies aired in the buildup to the convention clearly had an effect.

Staff lined tables scrutinising identification and cross referencing it against thick pink registration logs — Republicans had accused Democratic surrogates of organised voter fraud.

And like the Ireland’s uncertainity on electronic voting the public could opt for the old pen and pencil just in case.

Joan Palinski spent the morning directing people to one booth or the other.

“Most people still prefer paper ballots so the electronic voting is just there for people with disabilities and in case others want it,” she said.

At the other end of the inner-city precinct Lenore Lewis was driven to her polling station set up in a dimly lit backroom of a pizzeria.

And even in a city desperate to have its former state senator elected to the country’s highest office the deep split between America’s political traditions was still evident.

“[Obama] is a wimp and I am worried. I am worried because I think he cannot do the job that we need.

“When he was a senator in Illinois he was non-existent, nobody heard of him until the election came,” she said before going into cast her vote for John McCain.