President Barack Obama used a trip home to Chicago to cast an early ballot today, telling reporters traveling with him that early voting is a “wonderful opportunity.”
"I'm so glad I can early vote," Obama said, while getting his ballot. “That’s me,” he told a poll worker who asked if he was Barack Obama.
"I love voting,” he said at the Martin Luther King Jr., Community Center. “Everybody in Illinois, early vote.”
Obama wouldn’t tell reporters who he’d voted for, though he had announced it at a Sunday night rally for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn.
“I don't know about you, but the first thing I'm going to do tomorrow is cast my vote to reelect Dick Durbin, and give my friend Pat Quinn four more years as governor of the great state of Illinois,” Obama said at the rally. “That's what I'm going to do.”
He welcomed a few fellow early voters and doled out a few hugs before heading to his electronic voting machine.
“I will say this is made for folks who are a little short," Obama said, bending to cast his vote.
Obama, who campaigned for Gov. Pat Quinn at a Sunday night rally, stopped by a South Side field office for the Quinn campaign after casting his ballot.
Carrying boxes of donuts and pastries, he joked, "Michelle sent these. We got broccoli, carrots."
And he told the volunteers, “the way we win any election is making sure we turn out.”