I've been mulling over the likely scene in SD 61 on November 4, 2008.

7500 people registered and voted on election day November 2, 2004.
On the A side this amounted every third voter and on the B side close to one out of four. This year, that number might well rise to 9000 or more.

27663 votes were cast in the 2004 general election. The A side turnout was 57.66% and the B side a stout 78.99%. This year there may be -dunno- perhaps 30,000 votes cast.

I remember other banner years.

In 1996, my first as a chair election judge, there were so many people voting in the early evening that people were bracing their ballots against the walls and even on other voters' backs while filling out their ballots. I had to make an emergency run to a xerox machine a couple of blocks away three times, running off additional registration forms when the supply from downtown ran out. The ballot counter broke down and we had a hefty stack of finished ballots to safeguard and run through the ballot counter when the precinct support judge was eventually able to come to our assistance.

In 2002, the year that we lost our senator in a plane crash, we weren't able to wrap up the end of the evening in one of the big precincts until 5:30 the next morning. I had to go home at 1:30 am because I couldn't think straight any more and two other chair judges and a precinct support judge worked on into the night.

In 2004 our turnout was robust because we knew that the race for president was going to be close.

In 2006, we were energized because this was Congressman Keith Ellison's time to shine. I will always remember the scene at the Blue Nile after the polls closed. All kinds of people were holding their collective breath waiting for news. It was like the bar scene in Star Wars and when it became apparent from the one laptop tied into the internet that Keith would be Marty Sabo's successor the crowd was ecstatic. One young Somali fellow near me was just about overcome with joy that one of our own had been successful.

I can well imagine that records will be broken in 2008 in SD 61 just as they are being broken today in Indiana and North Carolina.

This is simply stunning at first blush. We certainly took an organizational bath at the precinct caucuses where participation was triple the previous record in 2004. Our modest preparations were simply overwhelmed.

Now I find myself writing to advise both my neighbors in SD 61 and the readership of this blog to take action such that the election process itself isn't crippled by THE WAVE. This is a quantum leap into the unknown and we will be talking about the coming election night in November for years afterward.

Work the numbers. This is going to be really something!