The votes are stacking up in the mayor's race already.

About 821 of them as of noon Monday. That's the number of mailed in ballots and in-office absentee ballots already turned in, according to City Clerk Janice Johnson-Martin.

Is that a hint of a big turnout? That's hard to say since the city hasn't had a special election like this in recent memory.

Asked for a guess on turnout, Johnson-Martin gave an honest answer: "I have no clue. This is of those elections you don't know what the vote is going to be."

But the city is doing its best to be ready for you. Johnson-Martin said her office has ordered somewhere between 43,000 and 45,000 ballots for today's run-off between mayoral candidates John Dickert and Robert Turner.

That's enough to accommodate about 70 percent of the registered voters in the city - and that should be plenty given that the voter turnout in the most recent contested mayoral race, in 2003, was a smidgen over 13,300 voters. That was only 25 percent of the city's registered voters. That, too, was a hotly contested race in which now ex-mayor Gary Becker defeated Alderman Ron Thomas and write-in candidate Jim Smith, a former mayor.

Today's matchup at the polls pits longtime legislator and alderman Turner and Racine real estate broker and former government affairs consultant and lobbyist Dickert - the top vote-getters in the April 7 primary horse race of 11 mayoral candidates.

The table is set, the ballots are ready and now, the only thing left is for you to get to the polls, do your civic duty and help pick the city's next mayor. There's a chance of a few showers today, but that shouldn't be enough to discourage you from casting your ballot. Remember, it's not only a right, it's a privilege, and part of our country's history of participatory democracy. The more who participate today, the stronger that gets.