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Residents of two tiny villages in northern New Hampshire headed to the polls at midnight, casting the first Election Day votes in the nation.

After 43 seconds of voting, President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney each had 5 votes in Dixville Notch.

In Hart's Location, Obama had won with 23 votes, Romney received 9 and Libertarian Gary Johnson received 1 vote. Thirty-three votes were cast in 5 minutes, 42 seconds.

The towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948 and it's a matter of pride to get everyone to the polls.

Hart's Location Selectman Mark Dindorf says you could call it a friendly competition to see who gets votes tallied first, although he says Hart's Location is a town and Dixville Notch is a precinct.

Before the Syrian uprising, Aleppo was many things: Syria's largest city, its economic hub and cultural capital, one of the oldest, continuously occupied cities in the world.

Now, Aleppo has a more ominous distinction: a city that's seen some of the worst destruction, not only in Syria, but of any battleground in many years.

It's been more than three months since rebels in Syria launched an offensive to take Aleppo. In the early days of the offensive, the rebels were able to take about half the city.

But since then, neither the rebels nor government forces have managed to gain the upper hand, leaving many to declare the battle for Aleppo — and the battle for Syria — a stalemate.

Front Lines In The Old City

You can see this in what was once a popular destination for tourists in the Middle East: the narrow winding alleyways of Aleppo's old city, built around the 12th and 13th centuries.

Narciso Contreras/AP

Rebel fighters watch as smoke rises after Syrian government forces fired an artillery round at a rebel position during heavy clashes in the Jedida district of Aleppo, Syria, on Sun., Nov. 4.

Could a united Syrian opposition be the game changer that finally topples President Bashar Assad, after almost 20 months of revolt and more than 30,000 dead?

"You need a game changer, either military or political, and hope it will break the stalemate," says Amr Azm, a Syrian-born professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio.

The Obama administration appears to embrace this view, and last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the surprise announcement that the U.S. backed a plan to overhaul the Syrian opposition.

Hundreds of Syrian dissidents began five days of intense talks Sunday in Doha, Qatar. Clinton added urgency by also withdrawing support for the Syrian National Council, the exile-led group that has claimed to represent Syria's revolution for more than a year.

The SNC is widely seen as dysfunctional and has lost legitimacy with young activists as well as front-line militias. The group also has failed to convince Syria's minorities that it is a credible political alternative to Assad, who has ruled the country for 12 years, succeeding his father, who was in power for three decades.

A Rough Beginning

The so-called makeover meeting in Qatar got off to a rocky start Sunday as U.S. hopes clashed with the reality of fractious opposition politics.

Divisions quickly emerged. SNC leaders complained about a reduced role; Islamists disagreed with secularists; young activists charged that longtime exiles are out of touch. And the goal to build an alternative leadership could be infected with the same "virus" that sunk unity within the SNC, says Randa Slim, with the New America Foundation.

Enlarge Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images

Syrian rebel fighters prepare to launch a rocket in the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday. The rebels say they have launched a major assault on a government air base in northern Syria.

After pundit Ann Coulter called Barack Obama a "retard" on Twitter, John Franklin Stephens, a Special Olympian with Down syndrome, responded with an open letter in which he wrote, "You, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor."