Scene on the Road

I was assigned to wander the city shooting in a variety of polling places in as many differing neighborhoods as I could.
But because the polls opened in New Jersey an hour before they do in Pennsylvania, I started my day there shooting in the dark outside the Haddonfield Borough Hall. I went there instead of a busier location because I've always liked the way the building looks, and I figured I and our other photographers would be shooting long lines all day. I just wanted a quieter predawn image. There were only about a half dozen voters, lined up inside the building when the voting began. Public Works employee Mark Kokoszka arrived a few minutes later to place the American flag outside.

My first stop in Philadelphia was in the Kingsessing neighborhood in the southwest.
There was a line outside the Free Library branch on 51st Street, where Mildred Stilies waited in the chair her son Samuel brought for her.

Around the corner, at the polling place at the Kingsessing Rec Center, Willie and Revon Porter were walking away just as I approached.
They voted together as they have for the 42 years they've been married. They both recalled casting ballots for John F. Kennedy the very first time they each voted. Right after photographing them, I had an encounter with an Obama volunteer poll watcher outside the rec center. The post got a little long, so I created a separate entry for it here. That was the only problem I had all day.

Obama volunteer C'Anne Anderson used chalk to write in the street on 10th Street in Chinatown, outside the polling place at the Chinese Christian Church & Center, which also served her Callowhill neighborhood.

Volunteer Michael Mo from Hong Kong also worked outside. He is a political science major at City University of Hong Kong on a semester abroad at the College of Staten Island. He had been in Philadelphia for four days.

Alex Hing lives in New York's Chinatown. Like many other volunteers I met throughout the day, he said he was in Philadelphia because the Obama campaign was more concerned about Pennsylvania than New York. He showed off his watch, which he said was a gift from a fellow supporter. He and some other volunteers were eating lunch last week in the Italian Market when a passing vendor gave one to him and another worker. Hing called it his "Obama Bling-bling."

The lines in Chinatown were the most diverse I'd see all day.

Members of Peter Nero's Philly Pops Festival Brass entertained voters just before lunch.

In the Northeast's 58th Ward, in the polling place inside the Congregations of Share Shamayim synagogue, I met election minority inspector Brittany DeEmilio, who is 18 years old and voted this day for the first time. She held the curtain open for Jean Finnen who also recorded a voting first. This was her first vote since moving to Philadelphia. Finnen, who is almost ninety, is from New York City, where she was a lifelong member of the Eugene McManus Democratic Club - the McManus Midtown Democratic Association - since she turned 21 and voted for the Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt who was running for his third term. She tried unsuccessfully to locate a similar Democratic club here.

Nicole Cute was joined by her three sons, aged 4, 5, and 6 years. The youngest, at right, pushed the vote button before she'd finished casting her ballot. "At least I got the top of the ticket in," she said.

Up on Byberry Road, it was a real Greater Northeast Family Affair outside the polling place at the Comly School. The big race there was for the 170th Legislative District seat being vacated by retiring state Rep. George Kenney. His daughter, seventeen year old Devon Kenney was working the polls for Republican candidate Matt Taubenberger, right next to Jack Murphy who is the father of U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy. He was handing out literature for the Democratic candidate, Brendan Boyle.

Heading back toward Center City, I drove past Republican committeeman Charles Peter Boyle sitting by himself on Germantown Avenue outside the polling place at the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Kensington. Boyle, who has lived in the neighborhood for 60 years says he's "used to being lonely at the top." He explained that comment saying he worked as a security guard at the Vet in 1992 up on the 700 level. Once, during that losing Phillies season he appeared on the stadium Jumbotron, all alone, without one single spectator in his section. "You know what happened the next year," he reminded me (that was a year the Phillies won the pennant).

By mid afternoon, the pizza boxes had piled up outside the polling place in the Dendy Recreation Center at 10th and Oxford Streets.

Obama volunteer and Temple University architecture student Adam Cubbler worked outside the polls there, where a lot of fellow students also voted.

Gregory Mitchell, who lives right across the street, spent the day selling hot dogs from his charcoal grill - after he voted inside.