TV stars appear for early voting

At first, the woman with the ghost in her front yard and tombstones all over the lawn didn't recognize the Holllywood star standing on her front porch, asking if Josh was home.

"Josh went to California this morning," 40-year-old Melissa McNichol said. Then she realized it was Patricia Arquette, star of the TV show "Medium" who has a long list of movie credits.

"Oh my gosh -- I just got out of bed -- I love 'Medium,' it's my favorite show," she gushed.

Arquette complimented her on the Halloween decorations that festooned the lawn in a middle-class neighborhood of Henderson, and asked McNichol if she planned to vote.

She said she did, and the petite blonde Arquette, who is modest and polite to a fault, thanked her and moved on, along with a local canvasser, Juanita Turner.

Arquette wouldn't have been thrilled to hear who McNichol plans to vote for: Republican nominee John McCain. Arquette, an ardent supporter of Democrat Barack Obama, was looking for Democrats and independents, seeking to persuade them to get out to the polls on the first day of early voting Saturday.

That's why Josh, McNichol's 19-year-old son, was on the list Arquette and Turner were carrying on a handheld computer.

Voting kicked off in Nevada on Saturday, sounding the starting gun for political campaigns to start getting their voters to the polls.

Turnout was heavy in Clark County. By early afternoon, 2004's record of 14,000 voters on the first day had been surpassed.

And as of about 7 p.m., more than 25,000 people had voted in Clark County, according to county Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax. That's about 3 percent of the county electorate.

The early voting period lasts until Oct. 31. Election Day is Nov. 4. Officials expect at least half of Nevada voters to cast early ballots.

A group called America Votes brought Arquette and a busload of other mostly B-list actors from Los Angeles to walk from house to house in local neighborhoods with union organizers like Turner. They came here because their home state of California is not a swing state, but Nevada is.

Even though she wasn't voting Arquette's way, McNichol was impressed. "You don't expect somebody like that to come to your neighborhood and walk around," she said. "It's fabulous."

McNichol said she doesn't particularly like either candidate, "but I'm a Republican and I think I'm going to stay Republican."

Arquette had better luck finding who she was looking for at the next house, which had an "I Love My Ferret" sticker on the door.

Kathi Stickler, a science teacher in her 50s, said she is still undecided but leaning toward Obama. "I look at McCain and I just think, 'Four more years,'" she said. "That's what goes through my head."

Arquette talked about Obama's plans to improve education. "You're going to have to make your own decision as a voter, but I just think this is the most crucial time," she said.

Stickler, holding Hannah, one of her five pet ferrets, said she planned to wait until Election Day but would definitely vote.

"I'm so tired of the negativeness," she said of the campaign. "I saw that Obama got on television and he didn't say anything about McCain, and I was so impressed. Don't tell me about the other person, I want to know what you're going to do."

Obama, whose campaign has a big cash advantage over McCain's, has been airing both positive and negative commercials on Nevada television in recent weeks. Some are longer spots in which the Democrat speaks directly to the camera, touts his economic plans and does not mention his opponent.

At an Albertson's in Henderson where early voting was taking place, a line 10 deep snaked out the door. Kay Allison, 63, said she was there because she didn't want to procrastinate.

"I'm not likely to get it done if I don't get it done early," she said. A registered Democrat, Allison said she was voting "Palin-McCain" because "I think we're going to have problems if the other one gets in."

Priscilla Dea, 59, said she came out to vote on the first day because "I'm so excited I can hardly stand it." She couldn't wait to vote for Obama.

Dea has been to see Obama three times and on Friday night went to a rally in Henderson for his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden. An Air Force veteran, grandmother and unemployed hotel worker, Dea said the thousands of like-minded people at the rally were itching to cast their ballots.

"We couldn't wait until today," she said. "We were so ready to go."

Contact political reporter Molly Ball at 387-2919 or MBall@reviewjournal.com.