After several unseasonably cold days the skies were clear on Tuesday morning in Burlington, Vermont and the temperature climbed to about 8 degrees (centigrade). Driving through a sea of fall foliage I found my own polling place, the city electric department, surrounded by a sea of signs promoting candidates for every office from president to state representative to auditor of accounts.

At 8:30 am the early line had thinned out but a steady flow of people could be seen entering and leaving the building.

Eight kilometers to the south in tiny Shelburne, population 7000, around 500 people were lined up in the morning chill when the polls opened at 7am.

The lines were long despite the fact that Vermont is one of the states where it has been possible to vote for nearly a month. As I cast my own ballot at City Hall last week a line snaked through the building behind me. The clerk said she estimated a quarter of the city's voters cast ballots before the polls officially opened.

These crowds have been brought out solely by the presidential race. Vermont has no senate race this year. The state's lone congressman is unopposed for reelection, and the state's Republican governor is comfortably ahead in his bid for a fourth term.

Vermont is so solidly in Barack Obama's camp (he is expected to win here by 20 points or more) that the McCain campaign has not even bothered to open an office in the state. Yet the local Obama headquarters was packed all weekend with volunteers making phone calls to Ohio, Pennsylvania and now, on election day, to Florida.

Popular wisdom holds that the Obama campaign is run entirely by young people, but over the weekend the Burlington phone bank was staffed mostly by people in their 50's and 60's, though callers also included women in their 80's and teenagers still too young to vote. Every day it takes phone calls from Canadians asking if they can drive down from Montreal (160 km to the north) to help by making calls, or travelling to neighbouring New Hampshire to knock on doors (yes, they can).

The office is supposed to have twenty people making calls at all times, but at one point Monday more than 60 people were on phones, filling every corner of the small building, and dialing more than 15,000 numbers by day's end. Organizers expected an even bigger crowd Tuesday. Minutes after the ‘official' opening time of 10 am twenty-four people were already making calls, encouraging strangers in distant Florida to get out to the polls.

Gordon Robison is a journalist and consultant based in Burlington, Vermont. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades, including assignments in Baghdad for both CNN and Fox News.

By Gordon Robinson, Special to Gulf News

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Election Day in Vermont