Journey to the East Coast
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
I headed to the east coast of Massachusetts to vote in my home town of Bedford today. At 6 p.m. there were still a steady number of people streaming in, though there were no lines in the town of about 13,000 people.
While at the polls I was able to speak with Town Clerk Doreen Tremblay.
Tremblay said that as of 6:30 p.m. ET about 7,000 people had voted, out of the 9,000 registered voters. Tremblay said she expected close to a 90 percent voter turnout by the end of the night, up from around an 85 percent turnout in 2004.
A number of factors were bringing voters out to the polls in Bedford.
Resident Wieslaw Brys said security in Eastern Europe and the Ukraine, as well as the Middle East was what brought him to the polls. He said he was pretty much against all of the ballot measures.
Lawrence Pruyne said Question 2 was the most important ballot question for him "Decriminalization of Marijuana? Forget it, it's a gateway drug."
Noreen O'Gara said Question 1 was on her mind as she went into the polls. "I'm an advocate for education, it's the safety net that we all need, for libraries, for public health, so that question was very important to me." O'Gara said she thought we were losing income as a state by not having fewer penalties for marijuana possession, and by making it legal and taxing it the state could tap into a new source of revenue.
"I also care about the dogs too," she added
- Ben Williams
Labels: Bedford, Dodge Neon, East Coast