You'll recall that prior to the Nov. 4 US Presidential election, many predicted that voter turnout would soar and that perhaps 135 million ballots would be cast. Keep in mind that only about 122 million people voted in 2004.

But then on Nov. 5, with what appeared to be nearly all the votes counted, there were only about 125 million cast. What happened? Where were all the votes? Well, after three weeks of endless vote-counting, it appears that the earlier predictions of high turnout may have been right after all, and although not quite fully realized, they did accurately capture a surge in voter interest and a substantially higher turnout than in 2004.

A nationwide county-by-county tally as of this morning now gives these totals:

source:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/26/0639/6454/612/666542

Total votes: 130,222,663
Obama: 68,724,397
McCain: 59,599,875
Margin: 9,124,522
Percent margin: 7.00% (52.77% to 45.77%)

So what happened? Actually, there's nothing sinister at all going on here, apparently. It's just that the huge number of absentee/early voters in this election left local clerks across the country swamped under, quite literally, millions of paper ballots that had to be opened and tallied one by one, in a laborious process that has taken weeks. As of today most people believe that there are only a few hundred thousand left to be counted, mainly in Illinois, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and California.

So it looks like the final vote total will come in at around 131 million. Not a huge increase over 2004, but an impressively strong turnout nonetheless.