Bush has won Texas, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska (at least 4 of the 5 electoral votes there), Virginia and North & South Dakota, and North & South Carolina. Kerry wins New York and Rhode Island.

No surprises there. All as predicted.

Tom Daschle is fighting for his life in South Dakota. Coburn seems to have lost his Senate challenge in Oklahoma, bad news all around–even the Republicans don’t really want him in the Senate.

CNN is finally reporting that their report about Alleghany Country polls being open an extra hour and a half are wrong; it was just one precinct, and only for voters who had been turned away so they can cast provisional ballots. Tucker Carlson was whining about it, of course. Josh Marshall reported on this half an hour ago. Real swift there, CNN.

OK, the hour has turned and now a large number of states (and D.C.) have fallen into Kerry’s column: Maine, Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Washington D.C., Maryland, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Bush, meanwhile, picks up Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Most of these are still deep red or blue states, but a few races are telling: New Jersey, which had been even in the polls, has been projected for Kerry even before any official numbers are reported. Meanwhile, South Carolina, considered a heavily pro-Bush state, is not being called for Bush, indicating the possibility of weak support for the president in his heartland. Exit polls in New Jersey say that a majority of voters worried about terrorism are voting for Kerry!

At the current tally, Kerry has 77 electoral votes to Bush’s 66.

Polls are closing throughout the East, but remember that anyone in line by the time the polls close can still vote, so the numbers will still be coming in well past closing time for some of the polling places with longer lines.

Zogby is calling the election for Kerry, 311 to 213, with 14 (Colorado and Nevada) too close to call. As you may recall, my own projection is for 308 to 230.

One thing to remember: some states will probably not be reporting final numbers for some time. Florida will not report on all the absentee ballots until Thursday, and Pennsylvania may not have final numbers for a week. If neither candidate wins by a reasonable margin in those states, we could be some time waiting for the results; if the electoral count is too close to call without those states, we may not know who wins the election for several days at least–and that’s without legal challenges.

By the way, my vote for best running-tally electoral map is from ABC, located here.

Awake again! I am very glad to hear reports that voting is going relatively smoothly, mostly upset just by long lines due to turnout. I am also delighted to have been wrong about the GOP “observers” not abusing their power to the Nth degree and jamming up polling places–so far, at least–and instead we’re just hearing scattered reports of some abuse. Extremely glad to hear it.

I’d like to take the chance to say it–since February I’ve been saying it!–turnout is huge, and that alone could win it for Kerry, and perhaps even swing the Senate for the Democrats.

So far, Indiana, Kentucky and Georgia have been called for Bush, and Vermont for Kerry; although everyone is reporting that Bush is “ahead” 39 to 3, all of those states were heavily for one candidate or the other, so no one is really “ahead” so far. Hell, I’ll call New York and California for Kerry and Texas and Louisiana for Bush, right now. None of those states will provide any surprises.

The interesting thing here is that, unlike in 2000 and prior elections, the news organizations will put more emphasis on getting it right than on getting it first. Well, all except Fox, probably. I wonder if Bush’s cousin is still in charge of their Florida news desk?

At some point, I’ve got to get some sleep, so I figure earlier is better. It’s now about 11 hours before the first polls close, so I’ll catch some shuteye then be back for the full action early in the morning, Japan time. Well, early for me.

Voters are coming out to the polls as I write this. They opened a little more than an hour ago on the east coast, at 6 am. Turnout is expected to be at record numbers today, although it is raining in Ohio and western Pennsylvania. High turnout is usually good for the Democrats.

A look at www.electoral-vote.com at the start of election day paints an excellent picture for Kerry: he wins, 298 to 231. His leads in Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa have solidified beyond a 5-point lead, much more of the northeast has gone dark blue, and Ohio and Pennsylvania are both leaning his way, by 2 and 4 points respectively.

Ohio, however, got a setback as the 6th Circuit Court overturned by 2-1 a prior decision to block GOP “observers” from issuing tens of thousands of challenges at Democrat-heavy polling places, potentially allowing them to abuse their power and jam up the polling places where Kerry is most heavily supported. Democrats hope to get the Supreme Court to act on this, and fast. I wouldn’t have thought there would be enough time for that, but then again I did not think the GOP would have enough time to appeal, either. We can only pray that the GOP won’t be successful in their attempts at intimidation or polling-place slowdowns. Meanwhile, you can keep up with all the Ohio vote suppression news at this site.

In the meantime, conservatives are already positioning themselves to blame a variety of people and/or factors for Bush’s possible defeat. The right-wing Washington Times is already blaming the U.N. for releasing the information about the looted explosives. Instapundit, a right-wing blogger is already blaming the mythical “liberal media” (yeah, right, that’s a laugh). My own suspicion is that the right-wingnuts are going to use those bogus “undeliverable mail” lists, claiming that if Kerry wins key swing states by less than 35,000 votes, it’ll be because Democrats cheated, and so the election would be stolen.

So let’s hope for a Kerry to win big through unexpectedly high–and relatively under-polled–youth, minority, and general Democratic votes.

Get out there and vote! I shouldn’t have to tell you to vote for Kerry, if you’ve been reading this blog and keeping an eye on reality lately, it should be blindingly obvious by now.

What if the recent tape released by bin Laden is indeed a message to sleeper cells inside the U.S., and their mission is to suicide-bomb voting places throughout the day? That would not be nearly as hard to pull off as a 9/11–all it would require is some home-made explosives and a triggering device, almost ridiculously easy to make–and yet the impact could be, in many ways, even more jarring and far-reaching than 9/11 was.

First of all, there would be no way to stop such attacks. Explosives could be hidden under clothing. All a terrorist would have to do would be to walk into a polling place, shout “Allahu Akbar!” and detonate. One of these would be bad enough, but I would expect that there would be many, at least a dozen, all over the United States. Whether they would be simultaneous or spread throughout the day is questionable–simultaneous would make it impossible to stop subsequent attacks, but would make everyone feel like “it’s over,” while attacks throughout the day would allow security to be enforced, but that security might not mean anything and the idea that the attacks were ongoing would frighten people away from the polls.

The effect would be devastating: people would stop going to the polls. People would be afraid to go out and vote, meaning that turnout would dwindle to a slow trickle–and the results of the election, if it is carried to its end that night, will be absolutely in question. And it could go both ways: low turnout from attacks could favor Republicans in addition to bringing to mind security issues (people would be frightened for their lives as they voted, Bush could not ask for more than that); on the other hand, a lot of advance voting has been done, and much of that is pro-Kerry in the swing states, so a low election-day turnout could hand the election to Kerry (bin Laden may not have considered early voting in planning such an attack).

Then there is the question of whether or not the election would go forward. Condi Rice sent up a trial balloon some months back about postponing the election day in the case of a terrorist attack; if the attack is aimed at polling places and is devastating enough, such a possibility could materialize–as could a constitutional crisis.

In short, it would be an unholy mess.

Let’s hope it does not happen.

Like calling Michigan voters masquerading as a Kerry caller urging voters to support John Kerry if they support gay marriage (Kerry has voiced opposition to gay marriage). Or Bush administration reports on how they are “really close” to catching bin Laden. Or Florida State and Florida A&M university students who “signed petitions to legalize medicinal marijuana or impose stiffer penalties for child molesters, unknowingly had their party registration switched to Republican and their addresses changed.” So now they’re counted in records as the GOP faithful and their addresses are incorrect, fueling the GOP list of people to challenge with affidavits at the polls (a trick also done in Pennsylvania), while fliers have been found in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other states urging minority voters to vote on November 3 or 4, claiming draconian ID requirements and telling them that they will be arrested at the polls if they have parking tickets or other infractions on their records.

Not surprisingly, almost all the dirty tricks reported are Republican in origin.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that the outlier CNN/Gallup poll went from Bush +5 to a 49-49 tie between Bush and Kerry, primarily by using the 9-1 ration for the challenger formula, which is usually how it works. But that’s not the only good polling news for Kerry.

A newly released Marist poll of likely voters has Kerry ahead, 49% to 48%, the poll including Sunday calls only.

FOX News (PDF file), of all sources, has Kerry up by two, with half their calls from Sunday.

TIPP, which had been calling the race for Bush by 5 points, changed to Bush by 2 points–a 3-point gain for Kerry–when they added Sunday calls.

CBS/NYT, similarly, had Bush over Kerry by three, but by adding Sunday callers, Kerry gained two points to cut the Bush lead to one point.

The only major poll that didn’t go Kerry’s way was Zogby, which switched from a tie to a one-point lead for Bush.

In short, almost all the polls show a surge for Kerry over the weekend in one for or another, this after a slow turn for Kerry over the past several days. The trend is your friend, or in this case, Kerry’s.

And Florida is staying firmly in Kerry’s column, by the way, while Kerry’s electoral lead in the state polls consolidates to 298 votes to Bush 231 as Ohio leans towards Kerry. Freepers, meanwhile, after dropping their beloved Gallup poll and embracing Pew, which had numbers they like, are now similarly eschewing FOX for calling it for Kerry–having Kerry 5 points ahead in Florida, too–and after searching, found that the little-known Quinnipiac University polls were far more accurate because they show a big lead for Bush in Florida.

Probably you’ve heard Republicans for Bush telling about what a kind, decent, generous, caring, loving person he is. Yes, he had a few “youthful indiscretions,” but that was the alcohol acting, not sweet, gentle George. And since he’s gone clean and sober, he’s a good Christian and a kindhearted soul.

Well, usually.

QuickTime movie, 1 MB; Click photo to play

And let’s not mention that time Bush cruelly mocked the woman on death row in Texas who had become a born-again Christian and was doing good works, with religious leaders begging Bush to reduce her sentence to life imprisonment. How he joked about her dying with reporter Tucker Carlson while using the word “f***” repeatedly.

This instance was well after Bush “recovered,” when he was Governor of Texas. Just like he was in the video clip above.

You see, when someone takes on the appearance of a saint but every so often you see a sinner’s face, it is the saintly face that is almost certainly the facade. There not really much getting around that.

If you would like to see what Bush and Kerry were both doing throughout their lives and compare them side by side, visit this site. They’ve done a pretty good job, and it is not hard to see where Kerry is the far more competent, honorable, and accomplished man.

I have my own Bush Record page, visited 559 times in October despite the fact that I don’t advertise it–at least, not until now. People just found it. It takes you through a lot of Bush’s history up to his being elected president.

While Kerry, in the Naval Reserves, is regarded a “top-notch officer in every measurable trait,” Bush gets a 25% on his pilot aptitude test and yet is accepted into a champaign unit of the National Guard; while Kerry earns his rank of Lieutenant and goes off to the Mekong Delta where he earns a Silver Star, Bush is promoted without merit and stays at home. While Bush goes AWOL and then is given an easy early out from the guard, Kerry, back at home, is district attorney putting organized crime figures behind bars. Meanwhile, Bush gets arrested for drunk driving. As Bush drives his first family-money-backed business into the ground and begins his second failed business with Saudis funding him, Kerry gets elected to the Senate without even using PAC money.

While Kerry gets appointed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supports deficit reduction and stops a Dick-Cheney sponsored oil tax, Bush gets involved in a variety of insider trading and other questionable activities; this is also about when he drunkenly explodes in a hail of obscenities and threats against newspaper editor Al Hunt, his wife and their four-year-old child. Kerry, meanwhile, is on the job rooting out corruption as he chairs the Senate subcommittee on the Iran-Contra hearings. The same year Kerry saved the life of Republican Senator Jacob “Chic” Hecht by using the Heimlich maneuver, Bush buys the Texas Rangers in a sweetheart deal and trades away Sammy Sosa. Bush violates the law at least three times in insider trading, tax law violations, and other financial scandals, but as the son of the President is not investigated by the SEC. Soon afterward, Kerry works closely with John McCain to investigate US soldiers still missing in Vietnam, eventually working to normalize relations with Vietnam.

Bush gets elected Governor of Texas and immediately gets a new driver license number to wipe the public records of his criminal past. He accepts a call to jury duty and leaves the legal forms referring to his criminal record blank; he soon has his staff finagle him out of jury duty when he gets assigned to a drunk driving case and will be asked under oath if he was ever arrested on that charge. Kerry, meanwhile, co-sponsors the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Bill, and fights for better pay and benefits for soldiers, veterans, police, and teachers. Bush, on the other hand, gets involved in a corporate scandal and lies under oath to get out of having to testify.

This is just a partial list. Read the two pages and get a better idea of how the two men spent their lives. An alcoholic, draft-dodging three-time-loser in business with an abusive character and a criminal record, versus a decorated Vietnam War vet with a conscience, spending his life putting bad guys behind bars and rooting out corruption.

Not really much of a challenge to pick the better man.

Sometimes it is both amusing and scary reading what the Freepers put up there:

KERRY MOVES TO SOLIDIFY CONTROL AND POWER

January 21, 2005 (the day after inauguration day)

One day after being sworn in as President of the United States, John Kerry moved to solidify his power and influence on every day America. Just two months after the Democrats stunned Republicans, conservatives and libertarians by winning the White House and regaining control of both the Senate and House of Representatives, Kerry announced massive changes to happen in the next 30 days. Among the many items that Kerry moved on were:

Immediately signed an executive order outlawing conservative talk radio. In that order, any talk deemed anti-democrat by the newly appointed Czar of the Airways, Al Frankton, and the stations would be immediately shut down and the show hosts arrested for hate speech. Targets include Rush, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Dr. Laura.

Signed an executive order outlawing the NRA and like groups. The NRA is to be disbanded immediately.

Signed an executive order outlawing all political parties other than the newly renamed Democratic Party, which is now to be called: The National Socialist Democratic Party of America. …

You get the idea. You can read the rest if you want to. In short, Kerry becomes the new Adolf Hitler and Transforms the United States into the New Soviet Union overnight.

At first I decided not to post this because it seemed far too loony, way out there as half-crazed paranoia or over-the-top satire. It sat in my draft area for a while. And then on Talking Points Memo, I saw the following right-wing flier mailed out to Florida residents, and suddenly the Freeper post seemed a lot more in line with what the far-right wingnuts seem to take seriously:

Frankly, it is both amazing and alarming. I mean, I have strong fears about what will happen under Bush if he is re-elected, and I have real evidence to back that up, but I wouldn’t go nearly this far. All the right-wingers have is their paranoia and imagination–and their public smear campaigns quickly get disgustingly ugly.

When Kerry wins, Republicans will almost certainly get more and more ugly–perhaps even topping the destructiveness they displayed under Clinton for eight years.

The Los Angeles Times (subscription, but you should get one) has a much better article on the Ohio decision by Judge Dlott. You should read it.

It also reports on the fact that the Bush Justice Department is trying to interfere, urging Judge Dlott to change her mind so those poor honest Republicans can rightfully challenge those nasty, cheating urban minority voters.

Hopefully, it’s too late for the Bush administration to push this up to the same Supreme Court that selected him as president four years ago. With luck, the Ohio voters will be allowed to vote unmolested.

This out from the Associated Press:

A federal judge issued an order early Monday barring political party challengers from polling places throughout Ohio during Tuesday’s election.

U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott found that the application of Ohio’s statute allowing challengers at polling places is unconstitutional.

She said the presence of challengers inexperienced in the electoral process questioning voters about their eligibility would impede voting.

Dlott ruled on a lawsuit by a black Cincinnati couple who said Republican plans to deploy challengers to largely black precincts in Hamilton County was meant to intimidate and block black voters.

Republicans said they wanted to prevent voter fraud.

Dlott said in her preliminary injunction order that the evidence “does not indicate that the presence of additional challengers would serve Ohio’s interest in preventing voter fraud better than would the system of election judges …”

Just yesterday I posted on my greatest worry–that Republicans would abuse the “observer” loophole to the effect of jamming polling places–and wondered aloud as to who could stop them from doing it. Well, in Ohio at least, we now know. That state will be safe from the GOP’s biggest dirty trick. Florida and Wisconsin are still facing the GOP’s front-line election-stopping troops, but maybe courts in those states will follow suit. If they do, they’d better hurry…

A few days ago, Freepers were rejoicing about the Gallup numbers which had Bush up by 5%, and crowing about how accurate Gallup is:

Take Gallup for instance. Their final poll was actually amzingly accurate measuring George Bush. They came within 1/10th of 1 percent. But Gallup figured Nader would garner about 4%. That’s the norm for all pollsters: Nader would get 4%. Some had 3% (NBC, ABC); others had as high as 5%. Nader wound up with only 1.4 percent, losing 2.6%, or 2/3rds of his total, to Gore.
…
So before anyone panics, keep this in mind: In 2000, Gallup correctly predicted that Gore and Nader would receive 50% of the vote to Bush’s 48%. In 2004, Gallup (so far) has Bush leading by 5 percent. That amount may shrink with the release of today’s poll, but I would very definitely be surprised if the lead disappeared.

Well, guess what. The lead disappeared, and Gallup’s final poll has Bush and Kerry tied at 49% each–a 2-point loss for Bush and a 3-point gain for Kerry. And guess what else: Freepers suddenly flip-flop and find that Gallup is notoriously inaccurate about these things:

Beware the Gallup Poll (The Big Trick They Played to Get That Sudden Tie):

That 49-49 result is due to Gallup’s decision to allocate the remaining undecided voters based upon a tried-and-true formula — 9 to 1 for the challenger.

Pew, on the other hand, decided to allocate the undecideds they found equally. This is what Pew had to say: “Pew’s final survey suggests that the remaining undecided vote may break only slightly in Kerry’s favor.”

So, it appears that Pew’s data told them something that the CW of undecided voters, i.e. their breaking toward the incumbent, is off. Gallup just did what my 9th grade geometry called a “plug and chug.” As Polipundit notes, The New York Times survey indicates the same result as Pew. They found that undecideds do not seem to be breaking for Kerry.

Talk about infidelity. The first Freeper was not even comparing similar polls–he took a final poll from 2000 and compared it to a daily tracking poll 4 days before the 2004 election. But since it put Bush out ahead by 5 points, he was in love. Now Gallup is predicting a tie–and they were predicting a 2-point win for Bush in 2000, not surprising in light of the fact that they usually over-weight on the Republican side. And so suddenly Gallup is playing “big tricks” and can’t be trusted.

How consistent.

“Bloggermann” Keith Olbermann at MSNBC:

After six months telling us that Tuesday is going to be tighter than Britney Spears’ pants, ….

When I say that minority voters are making a point of going to the polls to vote this time (From Josh Marshall):

At today’s early vote in the College Hill district of East Tampa — a heavily democratic, 90% African American community — we had 879 voters wait an average of five hours to cast their vote. People were there until four hours after they closed (as long as they’re in line by 5, they can vote).

Here’s what was so moving:

We hardly lost anyone. People stood outside for an hour, in the blazing sun, then inside for another four hours as the line snaked around the library, slowly inching forward. It made Disneyland look like speed-walking. Some waited 6 hours. To cast one vote. And EVERYBODY felt that it was crucial, that their vote was important, and that they were important.
…
The best of all was an 80 year old African American man who said to me: “When I first started I wasn’t even allowed to vote. Then, when I did, they was trying to intimidate me. But now I see all these folks here to make sure that my vote counts. This is the first time in my life that I feel like when I cast my vote it’s actually gonna be heard.”

To see people coming out — elderly, disabled, blind, poor; people who have to hitch rides, take buses, etc — and then staying in line for hours and hours and hours… Well, it’s humbling. And it’s awesome. And it’s kind of beautiful.

Sometimes you forget what America is.

I think there’s hope.

This article from USA Today tells of “Ghost Ballots,” where people who are dying cast absentee ballots before election day die before the official day of counting (for the election, that is) comes around. The article implies that such ballots should not be counted, and seems to cast the idea of Ghost Ballots being counted as an unfavorable thing. The question is, why? What, these people didn’t earn the right to vote? You’re going to tell an American of so many years that they can’t have their vote counted because they couldn’t hold on a few more days? And as the article points out, what if the vote comes from a soldier in Iraq who dies before November 2?

Frankly, I don’t care if Ghost Ballots are more Republican than Democrat–it simply offends me that these people, having come so far and so close, should be denied one last chance to cast their vote. They’ve earned it.

Or at least so the prophecy says. Green Bay 28, Washington 14. Either Kerry will win, or a 75-year streak will end. Still, with all the other portentous indicators, such as the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series–and the more serious ones, like Bush’s approval being under 50 in most polls, the way Ohio is breaking and all the others–almost every indicator is pointing to a Kerry win. Hardly proof, of course, but comforting nonetheless.

For three-quarters of a century, the final home game played by the Washington Redskins before the election has, without fail, predicted who would win the election. If the Redskins win, the incumbent wins. If they lose, he loses.

In the second quarter, Green Bay leads. I’d love to stay up and follow this one, but I gotta get some sleep.

And they’re supporting Kerry, 55% to 40%. This from a poll by Zogby of those with mobile phones instead of land lines, revealing what the major polls have not to this point shown: the hidden young Americans’ block:

Polling firm Zogby International and partner Rock the Vote found Massachusetts Senator John Kerry leading President Bush 55% to 40% among 18-29 year-old likely voters in their first joint Rock the Vote Mobile political poll, conducted exclusively on mobile phones October 27 through 30, 2004. Independent Ralph Nader received 1.6%, while 4% remain undecided in the survey of 6,039 likely voters. The poll is centered on subscribers to the Rock the Vote Mobile (RTVMO) platform, a joint initiative of Rock the Vote and Motorola Inc. (for more information: http://www.rtvmo.com). The poll has margin of error of +/-1.2 percentage points.

The poll also found that only 2.3% of 18-29 year-old respondents said they did not plan to vote, and another .5% who were not sure if they would. The results of the survey are weighted for region, gender, and political party.

Right on. Especially that part about how many plan to vote.