Sluggish traffic at polling sites

filed at 3:19 p.m.

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The voting precincts in the immediate vicinity of Duke's campus saw only a slow trickle of voters this afternoon.

After the lines of the morning rush dissipated, made up of mostly those who wanted to cast their ballots before heading off to work, it has been a relatively slow day, election workers said.

Most attributed the light traffic not to the rainy weather, but rather to the massive turnout during early voting, in which 42 percent of registered voters in the state cast their ballots. More lines are expected at the end of the day, when people stop to vote after work.

The drizzle also did not deter volunteers from standing out in the rain since the polls opened at 7:30 this morning to usher voters into the sites and answer questions about the ballot.

Mikel Harris and Harold Stilley spent the morning in front of the W.I. Patterson Recreation Center, the site for West and Central Campus residents near Duke Hospital, getting slightly soaked while they discussed Obama's prospective presidency. Both expressed some anxiety about possible election fraud and malfunctions with the voting system.

"We don't want to get stiffed again," said Mikel Harris, a volunteer for B.J. Lawson, speaking of the mangled election results from 2000. "History has replayed itself from time to time, but we're going to fight 'til the end this time."