Today’s the big day — get out there and vote! If you haven’t already filled out your absentee ballot, set aside a few minutes, color in your favorite ovals, and drop it in the mail today. Be sure to fill out the security envelope correctly.

If you’re more of a traditionalist, polling places staffed by real live people are open until 8 pm today. Not sure where to go? Check out the King County Polling Place Lookup, find your designated location, and remember to take your ID with you. They also have a video voter’s guide [#] in case you’ve misplaced the paper copy or prefer watching to reading.

Despite it being an “off year” election, there are still some important decisions on the ballot like whether you want to ban smoking in the workplace, save (or kill) the monorail, keep the gas tax, or cast a protest vote against Mayor Nickels. Not to mention the host of other thrilling issues and candidate contests. In case you need further guidance, I’ve re-posted the vote-o-matic local paper endorsement summary chart after the jump.

When it’s all over, crash an election party or two [argo] or get on the election party bus [betterdonkey] and hit all of them.

notes: despite our national fixation on red-state/blue-state, the color coding is mostly meaningless and is not intended to indicate party affiliation or candidate alliances; table summarizes endorsements listed on the linked websites, typographical errors are likely the fault of this author and not the newspaper.
nostalgia preparation drill: this might be the last four-way comparison if the New Times purchase of Village Voice Media meets Justice Department approval and leaves the Seattle Weekly owned by a proprietor that isn’t keen on political endorsements.