This afternoon's rally at Five Corners begins at 2 p.m. on the final day of registration for the Nov. 3 election.
The nation may be split down the middle after Tuesday's presidential election, but the Vineyard was anything but divided when it came to casting ballots for Democrats.
Voters on Martha's Vineyard came out in droves Tuesday, and by margins as wide as three to one, they threw their support behind Sen. John Kerry, the unsuccessful presidential contender, and sent incumbent Democrats back to the Massachusetts Legislature in the face of Republican challenges.
Sturdy brown envelopes, some of them mailed from as far away as the Netherlands, Italy and Russia, are stacked up tall on the desk of Wanda Williams, the town clerk in Edgartown.
Ask Ms. Williams or any of the Island's other five town clerks how things are going the week before Election Day, and you'll hear a deep sigh. They are swamped, not only with a surge of those brown envelopes containing absentee ballots but also with tallying up new voters.
School costs are driving budget increases across the Island, but in Chilmark, one expense forcing voters to dig into their wallets for education spending may come as a shock.
The Menemsha School, barely four years old, already needs $100,000 in repairs that include replacing moldy floors and rotten doors. Voters will be asked Monday night at annual town meeting to foot the bill. The meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Chilmark Community Center.
The annual town election takes place Wednesday and will feature five override questions, but no contested races.
While the election of Mr. Vanderhoop last Tuesday was not unexpected, the size of the majority by which that result was secured was probably hardly anticipated even by his friends. The campaign for Mr. Vanderhoop developed into a regular craze as it progressed; he became a sort of Buffalo Bill-among-the-British-nobility. People began to glory in the notion of elevating a Gay Head Indian to in some respects the highest place in the gift of the county.
