Rural returns come in first

I first visited the NYT webpage, with its cool map showing how each county is voting, an hour ago -- at 5:30 pm PST. At that point, about the only votes reported from west of the Mississippi were from rural counties in Oklahoma, Nebraska and the Texas panhandle. Needless to say, they were all red. I haven't checked out the few blue dots I saw at that point, but I suspect those were more urban locales. In any event, I'm thinking about the reason that some of these sparsely populated counties in the plains got their votes in so soon: not that many votes to count!

Speaking of rural places and the election, this photo of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, by Ed Reinke for the Associated Press, shows voters waiting in line at the Rabbit Hash General Store at about 6 a.m.