The sun is barely up, but I'm headed out the door in a few minutes, ready to travel around our region and speak to voters. Check back throughout the day, as I'll be posting live updates here from each of my stops along the route. Then, read the all-inclusive story in tomorrow's edition of the Poughkeepsie Journal!

The morning’s frost has put an icy sheen on both the green grass and fallen leaves, providing voters a reminder: It’s November; it’s Election Day.

Inside the school’s gymnasium, orange lights overhead illuminate the voting area, where a pair of workers tinker with a handicapped-accessible voting machine, while on old, reliable (pull the handle, the curtain slides across) machine stands idle underneath a basketball hoop.

Through the first 80 minutes since the polls opened exactly one dozen voters have walked through the door here, casting their ballot.

“I don’t think so,” election inspector Helen Dilworth says, when asked if she thinks today’s turnout will be robust. “That’s because it’s not a presidential or gubernatorial election. Usually for just a local (election), we’ll get more than a primary, but we won’t get as much as we usually get. We’ll be lucky if we get, maybe, one-third (of the turnout for a presidential election).”

While Dilworth and three other elections workers wait to sign voters in, a box of white cheddar Cheez-Its sit alongside fun-size packages of Raisinets and Nestle Crunch bars.

“When are you serving breakfast?” a local resident jokes as he enters the gym, ready to vote.With that, the curtain closed....

Walk past the firefighters’ kitchen, where coffee’s being brewed, into a hotbed of democracy: within these four walls, four different districts cast their votes.

“Everyone votes here,” says Didi Barrett, a poll watcher. “This is a very civic-minded community. There’s usually a decent turnout.”

To your left, District 1’s voting machine sits. In front of you, to either side, voters from District 2 and District 3 find their machines. Along the right wall, with cases displaying countless firefighting trophies, District 4 ballots can be cast.

On another wall, the New York State Voter’s Bill of Rights hangs next to a shadowbox containing a piece of steel recovered from the fallen World Trade Center.

“We usually get a decent turnout,” says Barrett, as icicle holiday lights hang from the ceiling toward the corner to your right. “This is home to lots of different meetings.”

A dozen or so election workers are scattered about —  three or four per district —  as this room, usually used as a meeting space, is transformed for one of its other purposes, this one an annual rite.

With chairs clustered to the left and the town seal on the wall to the right, those workers (not to mention a few in the foyer, raffling off baskets of cheer) wait for voters to trickle in.

Three orange pylons form a small barrier to separate the lines of voters expected later to use the voting machines for Districts 10 and 11, which sit side-by-side.

While neon-colored art projects, masterpieces crafted by the school’s students, line the walls in the atrium just to the right of the lobby, local voters have their say behind a curtained booth.

Small talk turns to the cold weather, as, just steps from the front door, a small space heater sits idle.

Across the hall from the school’s library, Dorothy Koch surveys the action as the 79^th voter of the morning signs in.

“It’s normal. It’s wonderful, I think,” Koch, the chairman of the election inspectors here, says of the turnout.

Averaging 20 or so voters per hour since polls opened at 6 a.m., this spot will likely see a surge in action later in the day, Koch says.

“Usually in the evening, when people are eating dinner and they get out of work,” she explains, adding the opening moments of Election Day also bustle with activity. “Early in the morning, when they get going. That’s about it.”

WAPPINGERS FALLS —  Bruce Beasimer can hear his words reflect off the wooden walls of S.W. Johnson Engine Company No. 2.

“Local elections, people just don’t vote,” says Beasimer, the senior election official overseeing the sparse turnout. No voters come through the door while he speaks. “It’s a shame.”

The traffic light at the end of School Street blinks red, though there is little traffic on the short thoroughfare this morn.

Almost five hours after polls opened, 56 local residents have cast their votes at this firehouse, that out of a total of 571 voters who call this their polling place.

In the 2008 election, which selected a new president (among other races) drew 80 percent of those 571 voters.

“This year, we’ll be lucky if we get 30 percent,” says Beasimer, pointing out the irony of a low turnout for local elections he said affect voters more directly than last year’s. “When something goes wrong with your garbage pick-up, you don’t call the White House.”

TOWN OF POUGHKEEPSIE —  Voters who came out to Nassau Spackenkill School couldn’t have made Terri Sheehan happier.

An election inspector for the Town of Poughkeepsie’s 5^th Ward, 3^rd District — one of two districts represented here — Sheehan was thrilled with the numbers she saw when looking at her sign-in sheet.

“It’s not even noontime, and we’ve already got 10 percent,” said Sheehan, whose district is home to 756 registered voters. “I’m impressed with the turnout. It means the candidates were working.”

While Election Day is not a national holiday, several other school districts around the are are closed today; the Spackenkill Union Free School District isn’t one of them.

Instead, schoolchildren share their lobby with a pair of voting machines, one at each end of the vestibule right outside the main office.

Sheehan said the physical layout of this polling place, coupled with the fact that youngsters can see voting up close and personal, is beneficial for both students and their parents.

“We had a second-grade teacher who wanted to bring her class out here to look at the booth,” said Sheehan, adding voting numbers could likely swell following today’s final class. “Then parents pick up the kids, they can remember, ‘Oh! I can vote, too.' ”