The most epic night in politics in my generation (I’m mid-30’s ish) deserves some photo documentation. Thoughts from me on this election and Obama’s speech in an upcoming post. In the meantime, one pic of me and what I wore to an election night party in jest. The other of downtown Boulder, Colorado at midnight. This was Broadway and Pearl and the Boulder PD had to close down Broadway (the main street in Boulder).
v* with (Todd!!) Palin for prez sign
Boulder CO downtown midnight Nov 4
My shocker so far is this: the Indiana exit polls (with 2336 respondants) show 9% of voters decided whom to vote for TODAY. Today. Really. Ok, that’s — well, maybe not shocking, but close to it. But more suprising is that people who decided for whom to vote today or within the past week are going strong for Obama. I expected McCain to shore up in the waning days, not Obama. I see it as very good news for O. In addition, independents are also going very strong for Obama. If the Indiana exit polls are prescient Obama will “upset” McCain there on his way to a major national victory.
I am hesitant to believe that widespread voting “irregularities” are as bad as the media wants to portray. That said, if even 0.1% of stories like this are true
VIRGINIA: Dozens of polling places are experiencing varying degrees of machine malfunctions. Some polling places are either completely closed or have been closed for hours. Thousands of voters may have been turned away illegally by polling workers. Voters have illegally been issued with provisional ballets where machines have been broken.
Students at Virginia Tech, previously the victims of misinformation, have seen their polling place suddenly and unexpectedly moved six miles to a location with little parking.
PENNSYLVANIA: Voting machine malfunctions are widespread and at least a dozen locations, mainly focused on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Election Protection has received reports of campaign materials being illegally distributed at polling locations in Pittsburgh. Voters across the state are reporting that they never received their absentee ballots, which is creating additional chaos at the polls.
Several other states like Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Michigan are reporting long lines due to problems with registration lists and poll locations.
we really have to ask “why?” Why does this happen in the most technically advanced country in the world, one that beat China to the moon by four decades? Why does an interested populace tolerate this? We have a long history of certain groups trying to suppress votes of other groups. Why do we continue to allow it to happen? To allow partisan state elections officials to “manage” elections in a way favorable to one side? To allow local officials to blindly grope along without replacing them when their incompetence directly affects voters?
Four things will get us past this mess:
1- Compulsory voting. You vote by law and you’re fined for not voting. If we can even approach a constitutional amendment outlawing flag-burning, then we can certainly discuss forcing everybody to vote as a price of citizenship in the USA. Compulsory voting automatically removes the completely artificial “eligible” and “ineligible” voter fraud. (And by “fraud” I mean the fact that ordinary citizens who have registered to vote at some time or another are arbitrarily declared ineligible for technical reasons. This situation is a travesty.)
2- The Oregon model of 100% vote-by-mail. No polling lines, no malfunctioning machines.
3- The Boulder County (Colorado) model of voter-verifiable ballot approval. Here in Boulder County you input your name and birth date on the county clerk’s website and find out whether they’ve received and approved your ballot.
4- Unique, randomized ballot verification number that allows you to make sure that the people and issues you voted for were recorded correctly. The county clerk posts election results publicly with the votes listed by unique random ID number. Only you have your random number, which you can then match to the listed vote. This also allows anybody to verify that the clerk actually summed the votes correctly (assuming enough people are going to check to keep the clerk honest).
(Not surprisingly, the CO Springs Gazette would respectfully disagree with me.)
Enough is enough. Why we put up with “irregularities” election after election baffles me. Let’s move on.
Assuming not much changes between today and tomorrow, here are the “predicted” outcomes in the key states by poll averager. I’ll update on Wednesday what the actual outcome was in that state. “538″ is fivethirtyeight.com, “RCP” is realclearpolitics.com, and “Pollster” is pollster.com. You’ll see each has its own number for every state. That’s because each does its own blend of averaging or other statistical massaging.
Here’s one guess from me: the traditionally red non-midwestern states will go closer for McCain than the poll averages suggest. My guess is that Obama will win Colorado by 2-3 and that McCain will win North Dakota by 5-8. The midwestern states are harder to see. McCain probably pulls out Ohio but Obama’s machine there may be way underappreciated, McCain probably pulls Indiana by 5-ish and Missouri will be too close to call into Wednesday morning. I have no idea how to handicap NC, but it is another state where Obama’s ground game may be underestimated and if it is, he could win by 2-3. Florida is setting itself up for another fiasco with how close it is. All in all I see the poll averages overpredicting for Obama by a tad, but in all he should still be able to get into the 300+ EV realm.
[UPDATE: prelim results by state below and will be updated with new results. I was wrong about CO and right about ND. I was right about Missouri and wrong about IN and OH, probably right about NC. The states that were furthest off in poll averages were North Dakota and Nevada, with Pennsylvania also a few points off.]
