The 44th U.S. presidential election started Tuesday morning. The poll will continue until 1 am on Wednesday (Korean time Wednesday 3 pm) when Alaska and Guam close their polls. The result will be announced 10 pm on Tuesday at the earliest. Regardless of the result, in terms of composition and voter participation, the event has rewritten the history of U.S. presidential election campaigning, with various media including the Internet and text messages, waning Republican strongholds.
AP estimated that some 44 million out of 137 million registered voters in 31 states had already finished voting before Tuesday. This figure accounts for 32 percent of all voters, far exceeding 15 percent and 22 percent of early turnout in 2000 and 2004, respectively. In addition, since telephone voting is available in five states, U.S. media forecast that the turnout will be higher than that of the 1960 election, when the John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon race draw 63.1 percent of all voters, the highest figure during the past five decades.
Voters cast their ballots on Election Day at Centreville High School in Clifton, Virginia. Americans crowded polling stations Tuesday to vote in their historic election, with front-running Democrat Barack Obama seeking to become the first black U.S. president and Republican rival John McCain battling for a comeback. /AFP
The first black-and-white election attracted active participation of minorities, including African Americans and Hispanics. The New York Times reported that the size and makeup of the electorate could be changed because of efforts by Democrats to register and turn out new ethnic minority voters whose voting rate had amounted to less than 20 percent, though they comprise 33 percent of the population. The newspaper also reported that the 2008 race for the White House fundamentally upended the way presidential campaigns are fought in this country.
Meanwhile Obama came back from Florida, where he had a last campaign Monday night, to Chicago, his political hometown. McCain wooed support from voters in Pennsylvania and Nevada, campaigning late at night.
