Presidential Election

Harford County residents are registering to vote in record numbers, often as many as 500 daily in the days preceding the registration deadline at 9 p.m. Tuesday. The heightened interest has officials predicting an unprecedented 90 percent turnout on Nov. 4. The Board of Elections will remain open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow, the Columbus Day holiday, and Tuesday to accommodate what officials expect to be a crush of last-minute registrations. "Typically, registration goes up in a presidential election, when there is always more interest," said James E. Massey, director of Harford's Board of Elections.

James Massey, director of the Harford County Board of Elections, typically carries voter registration forms with him. They came in handy last week when he went to the barbershop. Before his trim was complete Thursday, he had given out all the forms - to the barber, the receptionist and a few other customers. "I call it voter outreach," said Massey, whose staff is handling nearly 500 new registration forms a day. "It has been frenetic. A lot of people are saying that they want to vote this year.

Derrick Martin spent part of his vacation swimming and snorkeling in the Bahamas. But the cornerback's mind was never far from the news in the United States. Q: If you could have dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be? A: Probably Barack Obama. Just to pick his head and see what he's thinking about going into this presidential election. Q: And what would you order for dinner? A: I'm going to get that steak and lobster because he's probably paying for it. So I'm going to get the most expensive thing on the bill.

With millions of new voters heading to the polls this November and many states introducing new voting technologies, election officials and voting monitors say they fear the combination is likely to create long lines, stressed-out poll workers and late tallies on Election Day. At least 11 states will use new voting equipment as the nation shifts away from touch-screen machines and to the paper ballots of optical scanners, which will be used by more than...

Republicans and Democrats in Howard County each held their annual party dinners last week, and they were a study in contrasts in this presidential election year. The GOP Lincoln Day Dinner at Turf Valley on May 18 drew about 160 people, who saw the featured speaker, former gubernatorial candidate and 16-year House of Delegates member Ellen R. Sauerbrey, give a nonpolitical presentation. Until her appointment expired in January, Sauerbrey had spent the past two years as assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.

Ah, how quickly time flies. My kid is 18 now, old enough to vote for the president of something much larger than his senior class in high school. With all due respect to the privacy that he guards everywhere except with his friends on the Internet, our conversation that followed his first trip into the voting booth went something like this. "How was it?" "Fine." "Did you have any questions?" "Yeah, what are delegates?" "Those are the folks who do the actual voting for the candidate you think you're voting for in the primary.

When the Founding Fathers first wrote the Constitution, only white men could vote. Since that time, extraordinary people have given up life and liberty to expand voting rights to all citizens so that the United States could try to become a government of the people. But some people encounter huge barriers to voting, and we must improve our record on that problem. No democracy is perfect, but it is certainly made less perfect if people who can engage choose not to. According to the Census, in the highly contested 2000 presidential election, national voter turnout was only 60 percent of the potential voters.

It's that time again. Every four years it creeps up on me like a colonoscopy: the presidential election. Campaign season produces symptoms in me that are similar to the medical examination: I can't eat, I feel as if I'm being hit from behind, and I need anesthesia to get me through it. Fear of polyps is nothing compared with fear of politics. Yes, I know - I am supposed to be grateful we are a free nation that enjoys such trappings of liberty. But I still dread it. What difference can it make who becomes president when I can't believe what any of them say?

Jan. 7 1789 The first U.S. presidential election was held. Americans voted for electors who, a month later, chose George Washington to be the nation's first president.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Postelection chaos swirled like a hurricane over this African capital yesterday, with a strange eye of calm reigning over an abandoned downtown while a storm of tear gas, hurled rocks and arsonists' smoke swept across the city's ring of slums. Heavily armed police blocked tens of thousands of angry marchers from attending an opposition rally in a central park, while the two leaders locked in the bitterest presidential election in Kenyan history showed no intention of negotiating their way out of a deepening political crisis that has killed at least 300 people.