If the request goes through, there will be a thorough recount of all votes in Ohio due to “voting irregularities.” The party candidate statement:

“Due to widespread reports of irregularities in the Ohio voting process, we are compelled to demand a recount of the Ohio presidential vote. Voting is the heart of the democratic process in which we as a nation put our faith. When people stand in line for hours to exercise their right to vote, they need to know that all votes will be counted fairly and accurately. We must protect the rights of the people of Ohio, as well as all Americans, and stand up for the right to vote and the right for people’s votes to be counted. The integrity of the democratic process is at stake.”

So, you might think that Republicans are going to go nuts on this one and call John Kerry a sore loser, right? Except that it’s not John Kerry demanding the recount. It is, in fact not just one, but two other presidential candidates: David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the candidates for the Green Part and Libertarian Party, respectively. And it’s legal.

What this means is that we’re going to see a real, honest-to-god recount here, and if Bush tries to stop it, he’ll look really bad–since Kerry already conceded and he’s claiming to have won by a comfortable margin. But the recount might include factors not taken into effect in the original count–like paper trails, and possibly discarded punch-card votes–heavily uncounted in Democratic districts. Wait, you might say–punch cards? Didn’t Ohio get $113 million to replace those? Yes, but the Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell decided not to spend the money, claiming that none of the other voting techniques were “more secure.” Just coincidence that punch cards get more Democratic votes thrown out.

Not that I expect things to change. But it will be interesting.

23 American soldiers dead in the last three days. November–post-election day–becoming one of the bloodiest months of the war. How would you like to be ordered to fight and die on a political schedule? At least the anguish families of the fallen soldiers can be assuaged by the knowledge that their sons’ deaths did not inconvenience George W. Bush. But they certainly didn’t advertise this during the election; I don’t recall hearing Bush on the stump saying, “when I am elected, I will stop holding back the troops from experiencing politically embarrassing deaths and send them into a bloodbath in Fallujah.” Well, you could have gotten that by reading between the lines. But he didn’t exactly make it clear.

In addition, there will likely be drilling in ANWR, despite concerns for the impact on the fragile environment and the fact that it will do little or nothing to help our energy crisis–and may actually hurt because some people will see it as an excuse to push back the initiative for finding alternate energy sources. So much for Bush being a “good steward” of the environment.

In other news, the economy continues to falter; at least this has a good side for me–a weaker dollar driven by fear of a Bush economy gives me a better exchange rate when I go back home for the holidays. And had Kerry been elected, Arafat’s passing would have seemed a momentous opportunity for a new peace in the Middle East. But with Bush in office? If a peace happens from this, Bush will have nothing to do with it–though he would, of course, take full credit for it, naturally.

This from the Republican Party Platform:

Federal government should not interfere with states’ rights

We must acknowledge that the federal government’s role should be to set expectations in policies, then get out of the way and let the states implement and operate those policies as they best know how. Washington must respect that one size does not fit all states and must not overburden states with red tape attached to its policies.

–Republican Platform adopted at GOP National Convention Aug 12, 2000

Of course, like so many other “principles” of the GOP, this one is not as much a principle as it is a facade justification for a wide range of issues. Many GOP stands have little or no widely accepted justification, so to look legitimate, the GOP resorts to the old standard of states’ rights. Abortion? It’s a religious issue, but they can’t frame it that way because it won’t appeal to most Americans, who want separation of church and state. State’s rights to the rescue! The states should decide, that’s the justification.

But because it is a facade, it is not applied universally: whenever there is an issue which the GOP thinks can or should be banned nationally, or when a state decides that it wants to take a stance that the GOP doesn’t want them to take, then the states’ rights suddenly vanish and the federal government overrules them:

The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court yesterday to block the nation’s only law that allows physicians to help terminally ill patients die more quickly.

The appeal from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft had been expected since May, when a lower court ruled that the federal government could not punish Oregon doctors who prescribed lethal doses of federally controlled drugs.

Oregon voters approved the law, and since 1998 more than 170 people have used it to end their lives. Most had cancer.

This hypocritical use of states’ rights as a false justification is bad enough, but it becomes somewhat laughable when the GOP tries to restrict states’ rights more often than it pretends to defend them.

I’ve been refraining from blogging political for the past several days, partly out of disappointment and disgust, and partly from burning out–I posted 13 times on election day, and 33 times in the four days preceding, over 50 posts for the week leading up to the election results. That’s easily five times more than my usual rate, and considering that most recent news is bad–not to mention that I’ve had more than the usual amount of work at school lately–I’ve simply stepped back from the grindstone a bit, give the old nose a break.

Soon after declaring victory in the election Bush did a speed-dial version of what he did in 2000: promised to reach out to Democrats, almost immediately followed by his producing an agenda even farther to the right than before: an agenda he failed to present clearly before the election, wouldn’t you know. And now that the election is over and dying soldiers can’t hurt his political standing so much, Bush has unleashed an all-out attack on Fallujah, with casualties expected to be very high (an unconfirmed report says that 35 U.S. troops have been captured by the insurgents).

Conservative politicians made no excuses about their extreme partisanship in the wake of the election. Crowing about their “mandate,” their claim to “moral values, and how more people voted for Bush than for any other president in any other election, they instantly discarded their false facade of bipartisanship and cooperation and announced gleefully that they would be forcefully pursuing an even more one-sided agenda, threatening to divide the country further still:

The majority Republicans said strongly that they intended to move ahead with President Bush’s agenda and wouldn’t go out of their way to be conciliatory toward the minority Democrats.

Of course, the “mandate” may be one of the weakest ever heard of. While more people voted for Bush than for any other president, more people voted against him than any other president as well. He won the popular vote by a slim margin. The Congress remains Republican, but they gained only one Senate seat for a 3-seat advantage; the House gains were even slimmer, just four more seats out of 435, and that paltry gain was due to DeLay’s illegal gerrymandering in states like Texas–redistricting that may soon be overturned (a bit too late, natch). If not for the outlaw redistricting, the Democrats would have gained seats, and might even have regained control.

So the claims of a mandate are no more then chest-puffing, posturing for the press, and an excuse to be even more partisan and divisive than ever before.

Meanwhile, we still wait to see what investigations into voting fraud may yet reveal. Numbers are being looked at, results tested. The problem with the voting machines is that if they did have a hack to give Bush more votes, it was likely self-erasing by the end of election day, and without proof of programming, no amount of statistics proving rigged voting machines will push any real action forward. Which is why I say that unless they’ve already been snagged by Diebold or ES&S, somebody better get a hold of their voting machines that broke down on election day–they may still hold the suspicious code, if it lay in the machines. Else it could be in tabulators, little more than glorified PCs.

And though you may not be hearing much about it right now, be certain that there are a lot of people checking and re-checking results, especially in contentious states. I don’t know if fraud tipped the election or not, but it is pretty certain there was fraud: the numbers don’t lie, and it is just a little bit more than fishy that just about every case of miscounted votes, glitches and “malfunctions” just happens to favor Bush. We’ll probably hear more by this weekend, when states like Ohio start counting provisional votes; if those votes take away from Bush’s advantage enough to make fraud a possible make-or-break issue, then there will be more of a fight. Right now, people are patiently investigating, and those aware of that fact are still holding their collective breath.

Something happened to me tonight that rarely ever happens in Japan: I got panhandled. When I lived in San Francisco, and especially when I went downtown, panhandling was a daily nuisance–and you quickly learned never to give them anything, unless you enjoy being followed around for ten minutes by an annoyingly persistent bum making ever-increasing demands for larger denominations to be handed over. I once tried to give a guy what spare change I had, and he kept upping the ante with slick sob stories and lies about when local eateries closed, until he finally tried to convince me to give him $20, but he’d pay me back–he actually told me that he’d just been released from prison and so he really needed the money, but if I gave him my address he’d be sure to mail me back the money. Really, he actually tried that on me. I don’t know if he was an idiot, or if he thought I was.

But here in Japan, it almost never happens. The first time it did was way back in the 80’s when I was traveling in Japan, and a street person approached me as I finished buying a train ticket and asked for change–a good perch for him, people could not easily deny they had change after collecting it from the machine. There may have been one other time in the intervening years, but if so it has receded far enough into distant memory that I cannot recall the specifics. So it was a bit of a jar to have someone come up to me tonight and ask for money. I don’t know if the panhandlers target foreigners, but I suspect they do–I have the feeling that other Japanese would probably simply ignore him. Not from callousness, but rather because his behavior is unusual and strange, and the automatic reflex is to ignore such things, pretend they aren’t happening. As for me, I had just finished dealing with an enormously frustrating situation (another story) and did not feel quite so generous–regretted in hindsight, actually. But not too much. Just like some elderly people on the train tend to spot me on the rare case I get a seat and come to stand right in front of me because they’ll know I’m most likely to give it up, I often tend to resent it when I feel I’m being hit up because of my ethnicity.

Fortunately, I don’t have to deal with the panhandling every day here. It’s something you don’t even realize is missing until you see it like I did today. But you really don’t miss it.

My last post got a comment which seemed legit at first, pointing out that I had been mentioned in a Daily Kos diary. When I checked my stats, it indeed seems that I was mentioned–but the link did not lead to any real story. That means that the story which referenced me was deleted for some reason–or this was perhaps one of the most clever spam attacks I have experienced.

Already I am pretty sure that the comment itself was spam: the link was to a commercial news site, and the text was terse and standardized enough to seem automated–it mentioned my “research,” which is an awkward way of referring to what I wrote, but is general enough to apply to a wide variety of situations. Not to mention that what I wrote wasn’t much as “research” goes. And the compliment “Great work” is a classic standard in spam comments. So I get the impression that spammers are now scouring the popular sites for links to individual blogs, and leaving spam links to themselves in the form of notifications about how people have been mentioned on popular sites. Pretty clever just at that, you have to admit: such links will be appreciated by bloggers, who like to know when they get mentioned somewhere else, especially somewhere in the spotlight. They usually won’t question that kind of comment, and won’t delete it as spam. So the link gets preserved instead of deleted, and that’s a great plus for the spammer.

But the broken link to the Daily Kos diary makes me wonder if there ever was a Daily Kos link to my page in the first place. How many Daily Kos diaries get deleted like that? Maybe it was just that, but my recent headaches with referral spam suggested something different. Referral spam can pretend that people are coming to your site from a link that does not exist. They simply tell your referral logs, “I’m coming from this address,” and your logs accept it. Which means that the 39 visits from the Daily Kos address could just as easily have been referral spam generated by the same entity that spammed the comment. If that is the case, and I’m not just being overly paranoid, you would have a combination spam that would generate a very convincing illusion of legitimacy to a blogger.

I’ll have to keep my eyes open to see if this kind of thing occurs elsewhere. In the meantime, the comment still stands, though the spam link has been removed.

This web site chronicles the fact that while one type of voting machine in Florida (E-Touch) recorded similar heightened turnout numbers for both Republicans and Democrats, another voting machine type (Op-Scan) almost universally recorded unbelievable turnout for Republicans–as high as 433% increases–while at the same time had Democratic turnout fall by large amounts–as much as 70%.

The Op-Scan machines made by Diebold and ES&S–both corporations with strong Bush connections–had voter turnout for Republicans increase an average of 135%, while Democratic turnout averaged a 22% decrease. The E-Touch machines recorded a turnout increase of 27% for Republicans, 23% for Democrats.

Sorry, but you can’t tell me that’s a coincidence. While the numbers I am looking at have not been confirmed, this is exactly the kind of thing I mentioned before about evaluating the voting machine results. If these numbers bear out, then this is virtual proof of vote-rigging on the part of Republicans.

While I have more or less accepted the reported results of the election and do not hold out much more than an iota of hope that anything could change, I nevertheless stand by my earlier statement that we should not simply throw up our hands and let things go. There is still much to look at.

Case in point: Some precincts in Ohio are reporting erroneous vote count results. Commenter Sam alerted me to the story, and the San Francisco Chronicle carries a full account:

An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.

Franklin County’s unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry’s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush’s total should have been recorded as 365.

That machine was apparently the only of its kind in Ohio, but irregularities abound elsewhere. 1,100 e-voting “glitches” were found in Florida, with a majority of them just ‘happening’ to take votes away from Kerry and give them to Bush. In each state, we have to examine things to death–especially in Ohio, where the margin is slimmest. We should not simply or meekly accept the idea that this is a one-shot error. There are thousands of precincts in Ohio, and all of them must be checked for this type of discrepancy before the tally is made official.

For those of you who would say that the election is officially over: it’s not. The vote must be certified starting in mid-November and lasting until December 13th. Until then, Bush declaration of victory or not, Kerry concession or not, the vote is not official. That means that if miscounts are found and reported, the corrected count can be adjusted–and if, say, 100 Ohio precincts out of the thousands reporting have a 4000-vote surplus for Bush, the state would, by law, be required to go for Kerry, who would become president.

Like I said, it’s a way-off unlikely possibility, but it should be checked into. Every precinct, and not just in Ohio, but in all of the six states that used electronic voting machines this time around. Fortunately, there are advocates out there unwilling to give up yet: Black Box Voting (www.blackboxvoting.org) is making a huge FOI inquiry to gain access to voting machine records.

We may not pull this one out of a hat, but we damned well better scrutinize the results as well as we can.

I found out where all the referral spam is coming from, by the way. Curious, I followed one of the links to the people who are spamming the living hell out of me, and lo, it led me to a page which contained almost every single spammer on my list. Their individual sites appear different from each other at first glance, but a quick investigation reveals that they are all linked through the mother site. It’s all the same company. And the name of these lowlifes is “Burnham.”

More specifically, “Burnham Internet Sales.” Not a chance that I am linking to them, of course. But by mentioning their name in this entry, maybe some people will be routed here by the search engines so they can hear about what scum these lowlifes are.

Last month, they spammed my site over 4000 times. Just in the first week of this month, their spam is all over my referral pages again (the referral pages are password-protected, so no, I don’t encourage them that way). When I blocked them with a .htaccess file, they were deterred for all of one day, after which they started spamming me again full-force–meaning that they have people checking on how successfully they spam, and when they see themselves blocked, they take direct action to ram right through the block and spam the site anyway.

They are by far the most egregiously obnoxious referral spammers I have yet heard of. And you’ll love this: on the contact page of all of their domains, they actually have the gall to print:

Due to the fact that there are people who want to ruin the internet by harvesting e-mail address from website for sending spam we have been forced to use a contact form.

Isn’t that just precious? The worst spammers on the net whining about others trying to ruin things for them. What scum-sucking rodents these people are.

Here is their contact information:

Burnham Internet Sales
2793 Bechelli Lane
Redding, California 96002
Phone: 877-430-3716
Fax: 530-221-2321

Don’t buy any damned thing from them at all. No matter what.

But I am far from conceding that this was a clean race. For my tastes, Kerry went noble far too soon, before any indications or evidence of voter machine fraud could be investigated–and there were thousands of reports.

So now we have four more years–of massive deficits, stolen civil liberties, corporate and government corruption, a weaker economy, a stacked Supreme Court, unchecked growth of al Qaeda, global alienation and disdain, environmental destruction and bitter partisanship, among what will undoubtedly be a host of other maladies.

So the Democrats have two choices: lie down and get kicked some more in the gut in the name of a bipartisanship that will never be returned by the other side… or spend the next four years fighting as bitterly and as sharply as the GOP has all these years. We discovered that if the other guys have all the responsibility and turn the country to crap, they can still win by lying their asses off–and if you give them even an inch and don’t call them out and pin them to the wall as hard as possible, they’ll get away with it.

The Democrats tried cooperating, tried working with the opposition, tried bipartisanship for the good of the country, and at every turn the GOP has screwed them thoroughly. Well, enough. The GOP has never been bipartisan, they show no signs of it, so to hell with that. Time to be as viciously bloodthirsty as the other guys. Howard Dean taught us that the people respond best when you unabashedly and unashamedly call a lying bastard a lying bastard. So the gloves come off.

Next stop: taking back the Congress in two years.

Maybe there’s no great underhanded trickery going on, but let’s review a few points: all the indicators going in were pointing to Kerry. Bush lost the debates. His popularity never went above 50%. Voter turnout was high. Bush did not break over 48% in most of the polls, and undecideds almost always break from the challenger. Add to that the fact that the economy is poor and Iraq is in a quagmire. Hell, the Washington Redskins even lost.

All of these points favored Kerry, everything was trending towards him. And yet somehow Bush came out so far ahead in the popular vote, and very well may scramble away with the electoral votes of Ohio?

Now focus on Florida. In the last days of polling, Kerry was out ahead of Bush by 2% to 5% of the vote. 25% to 35% of all eligible voters in Florida voted in advance, favoring Kerry by 56% to Bush’s 40%. Turnout in Florida was record-breaking.

And yet somehow Bush runs away with a 5% lead. Against all indicators. In direct contradiction to early voting, he goes from 40% to 52%? He performs up to 10% better than some of the polls suggested? Even ‘just’ 7%? Now consider that huge chunks of Florida have had their votes counted by machines made by Bush’s campaign manager in Ohio. I know some will call me paranoid, but the differences between the results and everything that came before are just too damned big. Or am I misreading something major here?

Someone had better go get a microscopic evaluation of the new electronic voting machines. Start by finding the ones that leave paper trails and recount those. Look for statistical aberrations in the Bush vote in counties with the machines, and scrutinize the hell out of things. Find machines that broke down before the polls closed and examine their software. Do I expect that will happen or that evidence of fraud could be proven? Frankly, no; if fraud did take place, they’ll have been thorough enough to make sure it can’t be. I’m probably tilting at windmills here. But that doesn’t mean that all of this doesn’t sound like massive fraud, or that this doesn’t deserve some major scrutiny.

At the very least, the official declaration can be held up–probably by the 11-day Ohio lag–long enough for some digging to be done. Fortunately, it looks like Ohio, despite Republican control of the election, doesn’t have a Katherine Harris–though if things get tough and tight, if pressure is put on people, that could change.

Edwards just came out with a short message to the crowds, essentially telling the crowd that

CNN, CBS and ABC are holding back from calling Ohio for either candidate, though MSNBC jumped onto the Fox bandwagon and is calling it for Bush. Neither Fox nor MSNBC has had the cajones to call the whole election for Bush–a far bigger jump than calling Ohio, though they really equal the same thing. It will be interesting to see what happens when they project New Mexico for Bush and put him over the top. Will they say he won? Or will they backtrack and go “green” or some other color on Ohio?

CNN just called Michigan and Hawaii for Kerry, though they are latecomers for calling Minnesota for Kerry. (By the way, the reason I’m reporting on CNN so much despite my recent distaste for them is because they’re the only live TV network I can get here–Hobson’s choice).

One of CNN’s commentators put forth the possibility that people could go to sleep tonight with John Kerry being ahead in electoral votes but behind by 3 million votes in the popular count. Then he asked if his colleagues saw that happening.

“Depends on which network you watch,” retorted another.

…Which means it’s too close to call and will be for some time. Kind of surprising, kind of like them calling it “polka-dot” or something.

However, it does not look too good. If you look at Ohio county-by-county, it looks like most of the precincts not reporting in yet have gone more for Bush than Kerry–if CNN’s counting system is to be believed. They report that Cuyahoga County is 99% reported.

On the other hand, CNN is also reporting that as many as 600,000 votes are still uncounted in Ohio. And let’s not forget that Ohio is the Diebold State, where many of the voting machines were made by the Bush campaign manager. Challenges to those counts may be forthcoming, especially if there are apparent statistical irregularities.

CNN also just reported that due to broken optical-scanner counting machines and other factors, Iowa will not make an official report on their cote until tomorrow at best. Iowa currently is razor-thin, with Bush leading by 11,000 votes exactly with 94% of precincts reporting. Ohio is now at 95% of precincts reporting, bush still ahead of 100,000. New Mexico should be called for Bush soon, though Nevada is still in the air.

Okay, I don’t think that anything definitive will come before the 999th post becomes ridiculously long, so I’m steaming ahead to the 1000th post on this blog.

First of all, confirmation of the very bad news in the Congress: Republicans have solidly won majorities in both the House and the Senate, and they’re already talking about going even more aggressively for their partisan agenda, pushing for more tax cuts favoring the wealthy and more attacks on the environment, such as opening up with wildlife preserves in Alaska for oil drilling.

The only thing that can stop them is if Kerry pulls this one out of the hole, and gets Ohio with the rest of the inside straight. Bush’s lead in Ohio has jumped back up to 130,000 votes (and a few minutes later, jumped back down to 100,000), but now some are saying that as many as 250,000 provisional votes may exist. If Kerry can cut the Bush lead significantly enough, then it may come down to those provisional ballots and we may not see a final result for some time.

Fox has called 269 electoral votes for Bush, effectively pronouncing him president.

I’m still wondering what the hell happened down there–everything should have gone Kerry’s way there, with overall turnout and minority turnout working for Kerry to what should have been a strong degree. I suspect that there will be some very close looking-into of the electronic voting machines, but for the time being, Florida is in Bush’s column.

So that makes Bush and Kerry tied in the Three Big Ones, and makes things much darker for the Democrats–but Ohio is still in play, and despite Bush’s current razor-thin lead at present, missing Democratic districts could put the state into Kerry’s column. Kerry, however, will have to pull what James Carville called “an inside straight”–in other words, he has to win the north midwest, including Michigan, Minnesota (both very likely to go his way), Wisconsin, Iowa (leaning for Kerry now, but still too close for comfort), and, of course, Ohio. With 76% of precincts reporting, Bush maintains a 51% lead, with Kerry at 48% or 49%, depending on who you listen to. Predictably, if Ohio goes to Kerry by a small margin, Republicans will explode in a frenzy of fraud claims and legal challenges.

CNN just called Colorado and Montana for Bush, while Oregon has been called for Kerry on C-SPAN (which still has the best web page electoral map, by the way).

This is post #999 on this blog, by the way–I was hoping to reserve #1000 for a declaration of Kerry’s win, but it looks like I might go over the landmark before we can say either way. Nevertheless, I may simply add updates to this post unless it looks like this will go on a lot longer than just a few hours.

UPDATE 9:44 PM PST: Fox, of all networks, calls New Hampshire for Kerry, and Minnesota has been called for Kerry as well, but neither have settled into the maps by the bigs yet. Washington just predictably went for Kerry. However, it looks like Thune may have won over Daschle in South Dakota–but it seems pretty close still, as it’s within 1,000 votes, and from what is being reported on Political Animal, the Indian reservation votes–strongly for Daschle–have not been added to the tallies yet.

UPDATE 9:50 PM PST: Fox, echoing their scandalous Florida declaration four years ago, has called Ohio for Bush, and is more or less declaring Bush president again. Hopefully, the rest of the media will restrain themselves from slavishly following their lead–though spin, at this point, is pretty much moot. All that’s left to do is count.

We should also remember that a huge number of absentee and provisional ballots remain uncounted in both Florida and Ohio, and Ohio will not even count the provisionals for eleven days. Yikes. I am not going to give up hope, not by a long shot. But still, things are not exactly conducive to hope at the moment.

UPDATE 10:10 PM PST: Ohio is not out of the running for Kerry, folks–Bush had a 130,000 vote lead in Ohio with 84% of the precincts counted, but when 87% of the precincts were reported, Bush’s lead fell to 100,000 votes. This indicates that the Kerry-heavy urban areas can blow that Bush lead away as the final numbers tally up. But then there are still about 125,000 provisional ballots, which may not be counted until November 15th.

Will Florida go for Bush? CNN is reporting that “many” of the precincts from heavily Democratic counties in Florida have been counted, but they don’t say how many, or how many votes in total remain to be added to the tally. Bush retains a 52% to 47% lead with 95% of the precincts counted (remember, those are precincts, not total voters; the remaining 5% of precincts can contain far more than 5% of the population). Still, it is not looking all that good, and at best will be a squeaker. Kerry people are saying that they may indeed have not won Florida. One thing for sure: the networks are not going to be calling Florida until they’re damned sure this time.

Meanwhile, Kerry just inched ahead in New Hampshire, and now Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Michigan have Kerry out ahead by a small amount, while Ohio still gives Bush a lead (though Kerry-heavy precincts are mostly unreported). If Kerry can get Ohio, however, and if the Wisconsin-Minnesota-Michigan-Iowa block, that could give it to them.

But if Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico go for Bush, then that could set up Wisconsin to be the most important state–because if it goes to Bush, then an electoral tie could result, and if the Congress does indeed stay in Republican hands, then it would select Bush and Cheney.

The national popular vote is closing in, and will close in Kerry’s favor more as more west-coast votes come in.

The Keystone State Goes for Kerry! That’s one of the three big states, and with New Jersey, makes Kerry the winner in the only two important calls of the evening. Great news! So far, with about 2/3rds of the Pennsylvania precincts reporting, Kerry maintains a 15% lead.

Remember once again: The precincts reporting are mostly rural areas where there are fewer voters, and so they can close earlier and report earlier; urban precincts, heavily Democratic, have far more voters and so longer lines, and they’re reporting later.

On the less-encouraging side of the news, trends seem to indicate that the Democrats may not win back either house of Congress.

Montana, Missouri and Arkansas are going for Bush, again as expected. People seem to be fretting that Bush already has 193 electoral votes vs. Kerry’s 112. I don’t see why–they’re all expected turnouts for Bush, while Kerry got a state that was on the line. They only reason bush has so many EVs so far is because his heavy-duty states have been called so far. When the west coast reports in, Kerry will jump from 112 to at least 167, and possibly up to 185, with a probably Michigan win bringing him up to 202.

Keep your eyes on the ball, folks. Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania are the key states, with Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and New Hampshire being important as well.

So far, the states have been falling so predictably that they all agree with my own projection which has Kerry winning 308-230. In other words, while Bush’s numbers are high, it is because most of his safe states have been called, while many of Kerry’s have not yet been called–and the battleground states are still completely up in the air. Still quite a bit of time left to go.

Update: Excellent point made by Joe Lockhart on CNN just now: the numbers in Florida and Ohio look unnaturally leaning to Bush because of incredibly high turnout in Democratic precincts, some voter lines so long that polls will stay open until midnight–meaning those votes are not being added to the tallies yet, and they represent a very large chunk of the Democratic vote. CNN is also reporting that Ohio is going more for Kerry than it went for Gore in 2000, and that seniors in Florida have shifted from strong for Bush to leaning for Kerry.

Utah went for Bush. Again, no big surprise. Still, the only big info was New Jersey, because it defied the polls, in Kerry’s favor.

Republicans in Ohio are reportedly sending out lawyers to shut down voting at polls even for people who were in line by the time the deadline came.

C-SPAN has an electoral map that also presents the percentage of precincts reporting. However, which precincts are even more important, as with Florida, where heavily-Democratic areas are still not reporting, and the heaviest Democratic districts may not have the absentee ballots counted for a day or two yet.

Wait–Air America is reporting that some numbers are coming in from Miami-Dade, with the numbers heavily favoring Kerry. No returns from Palm Beach yet, either–and Bush is only holding onto a 4-point lead without these numbers.

Louisiana and Mississippi have gone to Bush, again no surprises. For Missouri, Kansas City is going stronger for Kerry, a surprising result. Republicans are “feeling the momentum” and are excited, but it seems to be lost on them that they’re seeing lopsided numbers. Florida, for example, is mainly reporting from heavily Republican areas, and from reports, the Florida numbers do not include early voting numbers, which constitute 30% of eligible voters and probably a higher percentage of the total number of people who will go to the polls, and those numbers were strongly for Kerry.

Josh Marshall is reporting that the “let the people vote and not the lawyers” Republican party is sending out lawyers across the nation to try to shut down voting at the polls as early as possible and fighting every attempt to let people vote where problems have arisen.

By the way: Ralph who?

It’s still wait-and-see, folks. Can’t get excited for either side yet.