Vote early, vote often.

It's Primary Day in Virginia.

I went out to work the polling place for my precinct. When I went to Kerry headquarters yesterday to volunteer to work a polling place - any polling place, wherever they needed me - they were happy to let me work the precinct where I vote, and gave me a sign on a four-foot stick to hold, but were otherwise a little disorganized. No assignment of a particular shift to be there, no additional signs to put along the driveway to the polling place.

I showed up at my polling place - the neighborhood elementary school - around 6:40 this morning, the polls having opened at 6:00. The only signs I saw posted were a couple for Dean, and there was no one from any of the campaigns greeting voters. It turns out I was the first person to vote at the precinct today, and the election officials did everything but hug me. They insisted on showing me how to vote a butterfly ballot, and on pointing out each step (here's where you show your driver's license, there's where you actually vote, there's where you put the ballot into the machine). Very helpful, I suppose, and exactly the same procedure as the last two times I voted there.

After I finished voting -and it didn't take all that long, as there was only the one race on the ballot and I couldn't write my own name in - I went to the car and got the Kerry sign, and returned to the electioneering area through which all voters must pass (and which is marked off with the invisible dog collar line beyond which I could not legally carry my sign) and waited for people to show up.

And I was prepared to wait quite a while. I live in a very conservative, very Republican precinct. Which pretty much explains why the first vote cast in the Democratic primary didn't occur until 40 minutes after the polls opened. I also understand that my presence was unlikely to sway any votes - when there's only one race on the ballot, I'd expect that anyone who showed up to vote had already made up his mind. But I figured I was there to show the colors, to lend support to any Kerry voter, to assist them in running the unfriendly gauntlet of, well, this empty elementary school parking lot.

After a couple of minutes, someone showed. Three or four minutes later, another voter arrived. Five minutes later, someone else. "Good morning!" I'd chirp. "How are you doing today?" as I show them the sign. "Fine," was the usual response, "how are you?" "Chilly!" which usually got a chuckle. And two minutes later, after they'd voted, we'd have a short conversation about how nice it was to not have to wait in line to vote. Perhaps one person in three volunteered that they'd voted for Kerry - and no one volunteered that they'd voted for anyone else.

Around 7:00, an SUV pulled up, and a kid with an enormous backpack got out, and went into the school. Car drives off. Five minutes later, another SUV, another kid dropped off. Five minutes later, another one, and another one five minutes after that. And during that fifteen-minute period? No one voted.

The trickle of SUVs disgorging children with huge backpacks became a torrent of them, and a line of 25 SUVs appeared, waiting to drop off their kids. By the time school started at 8:00, probably 200 vehicles - mostly giant, gas-guzzling SUVs, although there were a couple of Jeeps, a few minivans, and a couple of real cars as well - had dropped children off at this entrance. Maybe another 10 to 20 vehicles went to the teachers' parking lot, close to this entrance, and the parent accompanied the child to the school. Out of all those parents who brought their children to school, only three then went in to vote. I suppose a good argument could be made that someone driving a Ford Expedition or a Toyota Land Cruiser isn't likely to want to vote in a Democratic primary.

When the school day started, I once again became the only person standing outside in the cold. Here's a person, there's another, five minutes later one more arrives. It's telling, I think, that in the time I was there this morning - during the "morning rush" - there was only one time when there were as many as four voters inside the polling place at the same time. And as they had four booths to vote in, there could never have been a line.

By 9:00, a grand total of 59 people had voted, the time between voters had lengthened back to about 10 minutes, and my fingers were the same shade of blue as my shirt. So I went home to warm up, and I'll probably return for the afternoon rush (5:00 to 6:00).

And tonight? I'll watch election results at the state headquarters.