Agreed.

They are still voting in ohio, almost 2 hours after the polls officially closed. Bush needs to be showing strong support in "White-hio" to counteract the fact that "Black-hio" is strongly for Kerry.

It is shaping up to be 4 years of gridlock and indecisions and a whole shitload of punditry.

Far out!

Is that legal?

Courts are keeping them open because problems with polls kept them from finishing on time. They must allow everyone to vote that showed up on time to vote.

when they've been waiting in line for 5 hours, yes.

I smell the scent of 10000 democrat lawyers closing into the Ohio area.

Don't tell me, computer glitches, right? Anything wrong with a ballot card and a marker? Bet they would have been home right now.

Shoot, the Republican and Democratic lawyers are already there. They have been filing crap all day.

I agree with you completely. We did the scan-tron type sheets in Alabama. People would still goof them, but not as much as the computer screen (not to mention it is easy to have a recount if the machines goof).

Some of the problem seems to stem from the fact that they wanted to allow paper ballots as well, but they disallowed that.

.

I don't think it has to do with computer clitches. Computers or no, if you're in line when the polls close you get to vote no matter how long it takes to get through everyone.

Well, now I can say that my picture has been on the fridge in the home of a US Senator.

Not looking good for Kerry. Even though it's fairly early in msot states he's trailing in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Is there a reasonable scenario for Kerry winning if he loses both Ohio and Florida?

I think that its way too early to be making judgements about Mich, Wis, or Minnesota, but loses in any of the gore states are bad news.

Now they're talking about not counting the absentee ballots in Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade until Thursday.

How do you have what happened in 2000, and then not be prepared to count these ballots as quickly as possible? This is like 200K+ votes!

Yes, he simply has to win almost every other state. Remember California is Kerry's, so that makes things as they stand right now almost dead even, all these middle ground stats are going to make things very interesting.....

Its really really early to say anything about michigan..


Detroit reports late, and trust me, there is not much love for Bush in the metro detroit area....

I work in detroit myself, since our shift started a 11 today, most of voted in the morning and we had our own lil mini-election at work.

Kerry-57
Bush-4
Nader-3

go figure eh?

P.S. the demographics break down something like 70 percent of the employess are african american, 20 percetn white, and i'd say ten percent hispanic.

That blows my mind too. I also was hearing some provisional ballots in Ohio wouldn't be counted until Friday.

CNN just gave Dubya Missouri and Arkansas (no surprise in AK). They're currently at 193-112.

"My baby dady...Barack Obama!"

Why does that blow your mind? That has always been the case (counting those ballots in the days and weeks following election day). In that case of one state in 2000, it made those critical but you still have to allow time to count them right. No need to rush or to do a half-ass job like what some FL counties did.

In 2000, even with all of the issues, they counted the absentee ballots the night of the election in South Florida. It was the chad issue, among others, that caused the problems.

It's mind blowing because if there was ever a time for Florida to go above and beyond the call of duty, now was that time. I assume they have some explanation, but it comes off as if they've learned nothing.

From the yahoo article about youth voting


I'm sure there are some here that would be highly offended at this statement. Something about this statement that doesn't sound right.

Bush up 52-47 Ohio.

It's further mind-blowing considering who the Governor is. Jeb ain't getting invited to Thanksgiving dinner with the family if he lets his brother lose his state.

I don't think you are recalling correctly. There was the issue of the overseas military ballots as well.

keep in mind that there are STILL people waiting in line to vote too :(

The last time I checked, a governor still only has one vote.

The Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach, the lady who invented the butterfly ballot and was a Democrat until after the 2000 fiasco, is handling her final election. She was forced to turn Independent after the Democratic Party did everything in their power to defeat her this year. She is so hated in Palm Beach County that the Dems put up a guy whose name is identical to the accounting firm linked to Enron, and he beat her handily. That's right - she lost to Arthur Andersen!

While that is true, were talking about two different types of ballots. Florida is simply not counting standard absentee ballots tonight.

I think it has to be considered ridiculous given the events of 2000.

Those always come in late. Someone on either Fox or CNN just discussed this issue, and said all of the absentee ballots were counted that night - as opposed to the 4,000 or so military overseas ballots that came in within the next few days.

You think he wasn't doing everything he possibly could down there to keep Dubya in office?

Shit, if I was governor of a state, and my brother was in the presidential election, I'd be plastering Vote For My Bro signs onto everything I could.

The amazing thing about tonight is that, despite how close everything looks, we haven't had one thing actually change from last year yet - just the timing of calling certain states is the only difference. This could still end up being a 300 EV night for one of the candidates (more than likely Kerry is either one was to reaach that number).

Given the 2000 election fiasco, Jeb has taken a secondary role in the Florida campaign. They brought in a co-chair, and he didn't do too much campaigning. He was in just one commercial that I saw and really wasn't on TV too much, either. In fact, I'd say he's been close to invisible. I think the thought is that he can help Dubya by concentrating on getting people back on their feet from the hurricane, rather than taking a partisan role in trying to get his brother elected.

Hearing from my in-laws, everyone had signs plastered everywhere. Remember in this era of central power, national political machines trump state political machines.

Bucc, computers are not the enemy. Many states use electronic polling and have flawless procedures (New Jersey is one example).

BTW, these numbers don't tell enough of the story to me. For example, just a second ago I looked at the list of counties and their percent having reported. While a number of rural counties with 15-20k people have been 100% reported (and mostly in favor of Bush predictably), Cleveland's county, where Kerry is leading Bush 60-40 percent, only had 17% reported.

NJ is not a battleground state so we don't hear of any problems because it wouldn't matter. Just like usual practice (pre-2000) of not even counting overseas and absentee ballots in various counties because they would not affect the outcome at all.

cnn says kerry has PA

PA finally given to Kerry

This wasn't my main point though. You just seem to think that anything beyond marker and a paper ballot is silly.

Fox still has not called PA - but looks good for Kerry. If Bush takes Florida and Ohio, this thing is over. Kerry would have to pull of Colorado and New Mexico as well get some help elsewhere. Bush could get as many as 316 votes.

And right as I post that Fox calls PA for Kerry.

One place in Lucas county(toledo area) said that they were out of ballots, only to later find that they were just misplaced. They found them an hour or 2 before the 7:30 deadline.

I should add that these are not the punch ballots, we use scantron like sheets that you just fill out with a pencil.

Florida looks to be Bush. Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach (Dem counties) are at least 70-90% counted and Bush is up by more than 300,000 in the state.