万花筒 2008-11-04&11-05 美国选民提前投票（在线收听）

Even before Election Day, records are being set in this year's presidential race. Officials are reporting record turnout in early voting with many locations extending hours to handle the numbers.

NBC’s Kerry Sanders has been watching the long lines in Florida today; he joins us now from outside Orlando. Kerry good evening!

Good evening, Lester. It is unprecedented. The line here three hours’ long. It will continue well into the night. Nationwide, it’s estimated 30%, that’s 40 million voters will have cast their votes early.

By the time the sun was up lines at some Florida early voting sites extended three hours, and the wait only got longer. Still, five-hour-long lines turned few voters away.

The lines are this long on Saturday, they are gonna be terrible on Tuesday. In this battleground state, it's  estimated more than 3 million voters have already cast ballots. 30% of Florida's registered voters.

Both parties here acknowledge more Democrats than Republicans have voted early. “The McCain supporters are little more quiet with how they support him. So you definitely can’t draw a conclusion from that, cause that’s just inaccurate, it doesn’t say anything about who’s voting for who.”

More than 30 states have early voting, experts say at this rate, one in three voters will have cast their choices before Tuesday, from Georgia, to South Carolina to across the nation. Election observers say this year’s early voters are decidedly younger and African American.

“That’s worth the wait, if I had to wait all day long, if I had to wait two days, I still will wait.”

With lines this long, a good question might be why not just use an absentee ballot, stick it in an envelope and mail it in, here in Florida voters say, because human errors in the past have caused some absentee ballots to be missed. They wanted to stand in line no matter how long to make sure their votes are counted. Lester.

Kerry Sanders in Florida's event, Kerry ,thank you.