The election polls opened at 6 am in Indiana. I am within walking distance to my polling stations, so I decided to walk over in case there was a line of cars. There wasn’t. I had heard stories of 2-3 hour lines in Downtown Indianapolis on Monday. Some friends said it looked like a party.

Behind me in line was a active duty soldier in the army and in front of me was a man about to join the Air Force. Talk about picking your boss! One man said that the station had twice as many booths as they did four years ago. The general consensus of those around me was that either McCain or Obama were better than Bush–although nobody discussed any details. No matter whether you can photograph the polling stations or not, I’m sure there will be plenty of personal documentation. I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter went down at least a few times today.

In case you were interested in taking photographs or video recording this “historic election” as many say. Read the Indiana statutes below. Or read them from your state at PhotoPrez.

Indiana Voting Statutes

IC 3-11-11-8 states that only one person may be in a voting booth at a time. IC 3-11-11-9 states that a “voter shall mark all ballots while screened from observation, and IC 3-11-11-16 states that a voter may not submit a ballot that has been disclosed to another person. Together, these statutes could prevent a person from photographing someone else voting, but they do not appear to affect the ability of a person to record himself/herself when voting. Hypothecially, it would be possible if they could trace your ballot to remove it if once you marked it, photographed it, then showed your ballot to other voters. There doesn’t appear to be a law preventing the photographing of an unmarked ballot in the state of Indiana. It is illegal in many other states though–even if it isn’t marked. You can photograph or interview others as long as you are a distance away from the polls and on public land.

So if you are trying to past the he said/she said (hey, I can actually say that now) and base your vote on consistency (what politicians were saying and voting for before they were running–yes, I know some of you may say that some candidates were always planning on running this year), I recommend issue oriented websites. One of my favorites is OnTheIssues.org. It’s been around since 2000. Actually, coverage of the 2000 election and a large amount of information on the 2004 election is still on the site. The conclusions and scale/chart at the bottom is a little over the top as if a vote on one issue makes one +/- 3 points on a scale.

Do you have a better political issue comparison web site to recommend? How do you get around the political rhetoric without letting the candidates or interest groups influence you?