Decision Virginia

Former Gov. Mark Warner made a brief appearance in the main ballroom and took some time to talk with reporters. Conventional wisdom says that Warner may be the most comfortable of all the candidates running tonight. Most polls show him with a lead of anywhere from 20 to 30 percentage points.

When asked if this race has been an “easy one”, Warner wouldn’t take the bait saying that he has never been in an easy race and in fact he is “still looking for one”. As any candidate waiting to see the returns come in with his name in play, Warner displayed a bit of nervous energy. It may take a while for him to learn of his victory, not because it will be close, but because voting may not wrap up in Virginia until well after 8pm. That is because long lines are still expected at many polling places and if anyone is in line at 7, they will get the chance to cast their ballot.

Governor Tim Kaine just made a sweep through reporter row, talking about how the polls aren’t closed yet and Virginians still need to take advantage of their right to vote.

Rob Richardson talked to the Governor who seemed pretty buoyant about the Democrats chances of a clean sweep tonight. He wouldn’t go as far as to predict a win, but it was clear that he is optimistic. Remember a Barack Obama win in Virginia will say a lot about Gov. Kaine’s clout. He was one of Obama’s earliest supporters and is the co-chair of his national campaign.

Here is what he had to say:
“The turnout has been very very, high, great, great for democracy and I’m proud Virginia is truly competitive, my goal for myself was to make Virginia competitive in presidential politics and obviously a lot of us worked on that goal, the focus on Virginia has demonstrated we are competitive.”

Rob will have more of his conversation with the Governor during our 5:30pm news.

(That is photographer Dwight Nixon shooting the interview with the Governor. He is part of our crack road crew that also includes Sat truck operator Matt Neese and photographer Matt Butner.)

I have just arrived in McLean in anticipation of the end of this long campaign. Rob Richardson and I will be live with the Virginia Democrats who are optimistic of double victory tonight. They feel confident that they will see a big win for Mark Warner and a come from behind win in the commonwealth for Barack Obama.

I will have updates throughout the night here and starting at 7pm, we will have a liveblog on decisionvirginia.com where all of us contributing to NBC12 election night coverage will interact with you about the election.

Here is the view from inside our satellite truck from just a few minutes ago. Our first live report will be during out 5:30pm newscast and then we will have cut ins every half hour beginning at 7pm.

Here is a quick update from across the region. Many of you have sent me updates of your experience and even some pictures.

Here is my polling place at Midlothian High School which went very smoothly. I was in and out in 35 minutes. I arrived at 9:35am.

I got an email from Dawn who voted at the Phillips Fire Station, she said everything was well organized and the lines moved quickly.

Erica voted at Dumbarton Elementary School this morning and sent me this picture. She was there at 7:45am and waited for an hour and a half. It seems that at this point, most of the really long lines were before work.

I have had a few emails from people concerned about some of the voting techniques and complaints that machines were malfunctioning. But Board of Elections is doing regular media updates and they say that overall those complaints are few and far between.

Finally I will leave you with this picture of Joe Biden in Richmond. Sunni Blevins took this picture. Yes, astonishingly, his “secret” location somehow leaked to the media.

Keep up with me on my twitter page. I am shuffling of to Northern Virginia now, I will update on my blog once I get my internet set up there.

I have officially voted in the 2008 election. My experience was an easy one. We got there at 9:35am and were out the door by 10:10am. The whole thing would’ve been even quicker but the machine got stuck because of the moisture on people’s hands (that was according to an election worker).

I think our quick experience was in part due to the time of day that we went. We were between the before work rush and before the lunch time crowd.

We saw NBC12’s Tom Patton there. He said he went before 9am and the wait was much longer. He decided to come back later, which turned out to be a wise decision.

Ryan Nobles - bio | email

It has all come down to this.

For the next few hours or so the stories will be about long lines at polling places. Feel free to e-mail me pictures of your experience. 

I am heading to vote in Midlothian around 9am. After that I will head off to Tyson’s Corner where Rob Richardson and I will watch the returns with Virginia Democrats. Former Governor Mark Warner, a candidate for Senate, current Governor Tim Kaine and Sen. Jim Webb will all be there.

I will have updates all day long on my twitter page and here when I can get access to it the internet.

Good luck voting! Be patient and enjoy the day. It is the one time where we can almost instantly see just how fortunate we are to live in a free country.

The Obama campaign, hoping for an additional little press hit, just announced that Joe Biden is coming to Richmond tomorrow for an informal meet and greet with supporters to help encourage their get out the vote efforts.

They announced the visit, but said that Biden’s exact whereabouts are a secret so he can meet with the supporters without the glare of the media spotlight.