News-Record.com

Here in North Carolina, the polls will be closing in a few minutes after what everyone you ask is calling record voter turnout. I am skeptical, both by nature and because no one I've heard say this has actually gone back and looked at reports from presidential election days past. I recall an earlier election here -- '88 or '92, I forget which -- in which long lines made everyone say the same thing. Of course, we came to find out that turnout as a percentage of registered voters was pretty much at the historical average. We just had a lot more registered voters, and the number of voting machines hadn't kept pace. Hence the lines.

Still, I'm heartened by the reports, as well as by the fact that for all the blather about who did or didn't do what back in 1971, people seem to have been engaged on the issues during this campaign in a way they really haven't been since at least 1992 and possibly since 1980. I know we news types are supposed to be cynical and all, but you know what? That really does my heart good.

After the Constitutional Convention adjourned, someone shouted at Benjamin Franklin, asking what kind of government the delegates had created. Franklin famously replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." He knew what we had, and how much work keeping it would take. Today, and during this whole campaign, it looks like large numbers of us have done the hard work necessary to keep it. Regardless of the outcome, that's good news for the whole country.