KEENE, N.H. (Main Street, Coffee Shops, My Car)— What follows are some very rough notes from Granite State Primary Day. Sate slogan: “Live Free or Die!” Do the Republicans know that, I wonder. Does Mitt “the most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive” Romney know that?

2:00pm
I park my car on Main Street and am immediately swarmed by a group of rabid politicos. No, not volunteers from one of the campaigns nor from one of the get-out-the-vote local precinct groups. It’s a group of tweens from Keene Middle School conducting an experiment in civics or something, trying to find out why people choose to support one candidate over another.

Sample questions being hurled at me include: “What amazes you about a person?” “Who would you vote for if your favorite candidate wasn’t running?” “Who do you like least?” and of course “Who are you voting for?”

After watching the pollsters barrage some Hillary sign-bearers, I turn the tables and ask them a few questions of my own. Who would they vote for if they were old enough?

“I would vote for Hillary Clinton because of her husband,” Addie, who will be 13 tomorrow, said. “He did a really good job and so the two of them together would just be good, working together, like, as a pair.”

Addie also liked Obama.

“I saw him and he was with his daughter. He’s really good with kids and I think he would take down the [cost of school] and college.”

Jasmine, 12, would vote for Hillary, but not just because of Bill. Earlier in the campaign she heard a radio spot in which Hillary talked about supporting research about Type II Diabetes. “One of my family members has diabetes and it’s really hard for her because she has kids, and none of them can eat anything with sugar because of it,” she explained.

Where do they all get their information?

Anna, 11, says from an afterschool program that connects kids from different classrooms to talk about “stuff off the topic of school.” “With the primaries, we talk a lot about politics,” she said.

For Addie, a household rule led to political education.

“My dad watches a lot about politics on TV. Me and my sister only get one hour of TV time a day where we get to pick what to watch. So I watch a lot of politics with my dad,” she said.

2:10 pm
I get with the Hillary sign bearers the tweens attacked. Twenty-somethings Amarelys Nieves and Josefa Lopez have arrived from New York with a group of thirty to forty Clinton supporters to help rally the vote for the Hill. Nieves likes Hillary for her stance in favor of an immigrant “path to citizenship.” “Hillary promises a lot of things for the Hispanic community.”

What they make of Hillary’s emotional eye-misting yesterday?

Translating for Lopez, Nieve says, “She looked like a regular person. A sweet person. She is sure about herself in everything she does.”

What’s the main message they want to convey to New Hampshire voters about Hill?

“¡Triunfante!” “¡Numere uno!”

2:30pm
I stop to chat with Matt Taclof, 20, and Captain Patrioticism, a.k.a, Jeremy Broshahan, 23, who are drawing ranging responses from passerbys about the captain’s colorful costume and a large Ron Paul banner they admit to appropriating from the side of the road somewhere.

Taclof, who was waiting for his girlfriend to get off work so they could vote together, said he was rooting for Ron Paul because of Paul’s opposition to the “erosion of personal liberty.”

“The total disregard of the Constitution is appalling,” he said. “It’s not the government’s role to tell me that I can’t smoke pot … or that I have to register at the Post Office each time I move.”

Unsurprisingly, Taclof came to be a Paul fan via the internet. Paul’s popularity online makes perfect sense to Taclof, given internet user demographics: “We’re young, tech-savvy and independent-minded.” Taclof says he’s never really been politically active before and finds all of the candidates apart from Paul and Kucinich “lackluster.” He also criticized MSM coverage of the election, including the exclusion from or unequal talking time provided at network-sponsored debates.

“They just don’t even let them talk… It’s not even a debate. It’s who can put out the best political soundbytes,” he says.

“[This election] is about a change in American politics that young people are trying to make,” he said. “All these other people are progressive; they’re trying to take the policy that we have and make it a little better… but what we need is an overhall.”

Broshahan, who supports Paul because “he has integrity unmatched by any candidate but Kucinich,” was out waving his sign because it was nice out and there was nothing better to do. He agreed with Taclof that the country would benefit from sweeping change, but the two quickly set into a fiery debate about the apathy of young people and what it’s going to take to “get the ball rolling.”

Broshahan: “[We live] in a culture of instant gratification and fast food where less is more… we live in a disposable society!”

They agree that they don’t like out-of-staters coming in to influence independent-minded New Hampshire voters.

“[People from out of town] are cheating the authenticity of local politics,” Taclof says.

3:00 pm
Brian and Clare Toobey, a couple from North Hampton, Mass., are two such out-of-towners. They set up shop just a few feet away from the Ron Paul camp. Both were won over by Obama’s message and delivery.

Clare says Obama seems trustworthy and that he has demonstrated that he is more than able to lead the country. Brian says he likes Obama’s ability to pump up the public—especially young, first-time voters—about politics.

“People are so disgruntled with the American political system,” he says. “Obama’s getting people excited.”

I ask about Obama’s position as an “agent of change”— why, that is, has his proposition of change been embraced so much more emphatically than those of some of the other candidates?

“The whole change thing is being really whipped to the ground,” says Clare. “I would advise him, if I were one of his advisers, to find a new word.”

I ask them about Edwards, who has also been a “change” candidate the whole time.

Clare says something about a “perception of being a slick, trial lawyer.” “If any one [of the candidates] were [to seem] inauthentic, it would be Edwards,” she says.

3:20 pm
J. Riggieri, who lives in Massachusetts but currently works and votes in New Hampshire is talking to some Ron Paul fans before he moves to ask the Toobeys a few questions about Obama’s ability to “deliver the goods.”

Riggieri says he supports “anybody but John McCain” and plans to vote for Mitt Romney later in the day, because of Romney’s executive experience, his demonstrated ability to “get things done.”

He tells the Obama supporters, however, that he could see himself crossing over and voting for Obama in the general election if the “excellent orator” can quell his fears that “[Obama] is all about rhetoric.” “I want Obama to [be more than] just happy to be elected,” he says. He wants to see Obama and Romney win the nominations and go head-to-head in national debates. The election, he said, is like the Super Bowl. “I want to see two well-balanced teams and one come out as the victor.”

4:10 pm
while trying, fruitlessly, to get my beat-up laptop to connect to the local Wi-Fi, I run into one of the young voters I spoke to at a John Edwards event this weekend. He had been undecided on Sunday but tells me he was just coming from voting for Obama. After seeing both candidates speak, he says he thinks Obama was a lot more exciting and inspiring. Edwards was more focused on policy.

I ask him if that means he had decided that a promise of change outweighed a promise of achieving results on specific issues.

Actually, he says, he went back and watched the ABC/Facebook debates, which he had on tape, and thought Obama addressed a more diverse pool of issues and ideas.

He hasnt written off Edwards altogether, however. He says he wrote in Edwards for vice-president. “I’d really like to see the two of them on a ticket together.”

5:30 pm
I ask a girl working at TJ Max (don’t ask) if she’s going to vote. She says she wanted to but she just turned 18 and hadn’t registered. The registration office in the small town where she lives is only open during hours she’s in school and today she had to go straight to work from school so wasn’t going to be able to take the time to go register and then vote!

I think: Online registration now via Blackberry!

Addition 7:00 pm
I’m talking to Anne Moyle at the 5th Ward. She says they’ve seen up to 2000 voters come through and close to 200 newly registered voters, greater turnout than she remembers ever. She says there’s been steady traffic all day. The internet, meantime, says half a million voters came out, a record. Yahoo or somebody says Democrats came out “giddily happy” with the selection of candidates this time around and that the sunny weather didn’t hurt, either.