As many voters have taken the opportunity to vote early in Florida, some libraries/polling places have had to put up with partisan intensity and craziness.
Love the bit in this article about the magazine rack at an Orlando (FL) library, where a Bush supporter lined up all the magazines to show the President’s picture and a Kerry supporter removed them all to check them out.
Ed: Check out the comment section below- opaqueentity (from the UK) asked how many US public libraries are used as polling places? If anyone has that info let us know.
And what happened to this person?
I found this bit interesting:
At another library, one campaigner was blocking a children’s reading area. When a parent spoke up, the woman said that “what she was doing was more important than kids reading books,” Tanko said.
Didn’t say which candidate they were touting though. Hope they got thrown out.
Are Libraries commonly used as voting stations in the US? Don’t know of any that are used that way here in the UK, they are mainly schools and churches (ie different public places) in my experience.
depressing
It is pretty depressing when scumbags on both sides pull this sort of stuff. It seems to me that the media, which is stroking this hate, have helped to create and atmosphere of complete and utter hostility.
Hot dog vendors, too!
A friend of mine who works at a Broward County branch wrote today to say, “We are swamped with chaos right now (we’re connected to the courthouse, where early voting is going on. Cops, barricades, hot dog vendors, and thousands of angry democrats. . . ).
Update
More on the early voting in (today’s) Friday’s New York Times