I just talked to Steve Shapiro again in Florida. He's understandably depressed and wasn't really in much of a talking mood.

Questions in bold are from me. Answers are from Steve.

Were there any problems yesterday?

None that were apparent or significant. There weren't even long lines. The pattern had always been crowded from 7-11am and 4-7pm and only half of that was true yesterday. Nobody showed up in the afternoon.

So your project was a success? They had all voted early?

Yes. When we got back tothe church that night. Everyone said it was the same pattern. I mean it was steady, but the early voting really seems to have made a big difference in reducing the number of mishaps.

Were there a lot of Provisional Ballots used that you could see?

No, actually. Not many Provisional Ballots that we could tell. But we weren't inside the polls, but we were talking to the lawyers inside the polls and they were sort of giving us updates. It didn't seem like there were many Provisional Ballots being used, or at least certainly not in numbers that were out of the ordinary.

There was only one "challenge," and it was a legit one. Somebody really did try to vote twice.

How exactly was it that all the lawyers were allowed to be inside the polls?

Each candidate, party, or ballot initiative is allowed to have one there on their behalf. In many cases, there were committies of lawyers there on behalf of the various campaigns.

We talked to some of them who noted that, for the most part, there didn't seem to be any kind of Republican strategy or anything. Conflicts between lawyers and citizens/poll workers/volunteers really seemed to depend on the personality of the lawyers.

For instance, at one of the precincts we were at, the Republican lawyer was a really nice guy, and the Democrat lawyer was really a jerk!