To the polls!

Johnson County officials expect a record turnout today, but things were slow when I stopped by Iowa City Precinct 5 in the University of Iowa Main Library.

There's not a single contested local race on the ballot in this heavily Democratic county, but that doesn't mean the election is without controversy, as Iowa City voters decide whether to keep or repeal a city ordinance that bans 19- and 20-year-olds from the city's bars after 10 p.m.

A slow stream of voters queued up to cast their ballots as I talked with Precinct Chair Charles Seberg at 10:30 a.m.

"It's picking up by now," he said, but when Seberg made his 9 a.m. call to the county auditor's office, only one voter had cast a ballot. Three and a half hours into Election Day, that number still was only 13. Pretty slow, considering.

Iowa City 5 includes all the UI's dorms east of the Iowa River -- prime ground for students interested in repealing the city's 21-ordinance. But this time around, Seberg thinks, many of those students already have voted -- thanks to an aggressive dorm-based early voting schedule prompted by groups opposed to the ban.

That doesn't mean his pollworkers are sitting idle. The library location -- which catches a lot of foot traffic as students cut through to study or on their way to class -- is infamous among insiders as being a de facto voter information center. Already this morning, Seberg's staff has been busy helping young voters figure out what precinct they live in and where their polling stations are.

Most of them step up and say: 'I'm not sure if I'm in the right place,'" he told me. "And usually they're right, they're not in the right place."

But every once in a while, those voters get lucky -- of the 13 ballots actually cast in IC 5, Seberg said, only two were voters who already registered.