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On Election Day, Nov. 6, millions of Americans will cast their vote for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney for US President. But The Perfect Truffle, a chocolate shop in Frederick, Maryland, is giving customers an opportunity to vote ahead of time. Making chocolate is chef Randy Olmstead’s specialty and passion. And this election season, he has cooked up something special for his customers: a political truffle campaign. He came up with the idea during the 2008 presidential election, to see which candidate would get the chocolate vote. “We had our very first African-American candidate and it was a situation which I wanted to be part of, because it was historic for our country," Olmstead says. "So what we started doing, let’s find out how people really feel and what better way than to create a Democratic chocolate and a Republican chocolate?” The Democratic truffle has a donkey on its dark chocolate shell; the Republican truffle has an elephant - the emblems of the two major US political parties. Democratic truffles are on the left side of the display case, Republican truffles to the right, with a narrow aisle between them. Olmstead is often surprised by his customers’ reactions to his political chocolate. “We'll have a person come in, buys some Democratic chocolates and the person standing behind him will come and go, ‘How many did they just buy?’ ‘They just bought four.’ ‘OK, give me eight of the other party.'” | 
