Thank goodness.

It's been said -- how accurately, we can't personally attest -- that women's brains are wired in such as way as to forget just how painful childbirth really is, because if they truly remembered they would never do it again.

Maybe we're geared the same way regarding election campaigns. Maybe by the time the next one comes around we've forgotten just how wearying the last one was, and so we're surprised over and over again at how exhausting and occasionally unpleasant the whole experience is.

Even so, it's hard to avoid the impression that the 2009 local elections have been unsually bitterly contested. Especially in Chapel Hill, the campaign has been contentious. Personal politics, negative characterizations ... a lot of it's still pretty mild by comparison with a lot of other places, but distinctly harsher than we're accustomed to here.

The newspaper has received bins full -- virtually speaking; most of them are e-mails -- of endorsement letters for various candidates, more than we've ever gotten before. The local blogosphere has been ablaze with arguments and allegations.

That is due in part, we presume, to some clear differences between the candidates on matters of public policy and the direction their municipalities should move. Voters this year have distinct choices, and there's a lot at stake.

So by most indications, interest in this election would seem to be quite high.

And yet, as of Thursday, fewer than 1,500 people had voted during the early voting period in all of Orange County. That's less than 2 percent of the county's registered voters.

At the Chapel Hill early voting site, the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, only 823 people had voted early by Friday. At Carrboro Town Hall, the number was 570.

Those early voting numbers don't ring of an election that is galvanizing great masses of the electorate.

What to make of that? Is most of the light and heat being generated by a small number of political light- and heat-generators? Are most residents satisfied with the status quo? Are they just tired of the whole thing, or unaware of it? Is everybody just waiting for Tuesday?

Stay tuned.