will post again soon -

The Whole World was Watching

from SFGate

The Chronicle reports that Ulyssies Moore, 92, has waited his entire life for this election. "I never in my lifetime thought I would live long enough to see an African American become the president, even to be nominated by a major party," said the former World War II Buffalo soldier as he cast his vote Tuesday. "A soldier's eyes never cries, but my heart cried for joy when I cast my vote for Obama."

The world's heart cries for joy. What a moment.

President Obama!

Liking these odds

Betfair provides real-time betting odds (below). But first I have to get you smiling today, so watch this;

And MSNBC will have live results as they roll in;

Every Vote Counts

Homer's back, voting in Springfield.

Election eve poll analysis from fivethirtyeight.com

According to Nate Silver -

"With fewer than six hours until voting begins in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, the national polling picture has cleared up considerably. Barack Obama is on the verge of a victory, perhaps a decisive victory, in the race for the White House.

The national polls have all consolidated into a range of roughly Obama +7. That is right about where our model sees the race as well, giving Obama a 6.8 point advantage in its composite of state and national polling. Our model notes, however, that candidates with large leads in the polls have had some tendency to underperform marginally on election day, and so projects an Obama win of 6.0 points tomorrow.

Far more important, of course, is the race for 270 electors. It appears almost certain that Obama will capture all of the states won by John Kerry in 2008. Pennsylvania, while certainly having tightened somewhat over the course of the past two weeks, appears to be holding at a margin of about +8 for Obama, with very few remaining undecideds. Obama also appears almost certain to capture Iowa and New Mexico, which were won by Al Gore in 2000. Collectively, these states total 264 electoral votes, leaving Obama just 5 votes shy of a tie and 6 of a win.

Obama has any number of states to collect those 5 or 6 votes. In inverse order of difficulty, these include Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana. Obama is the signficant favorite in several of these states; winning any one of them may be fairly difficult for John McCain, but winning all of them at once, as John McCain probably must do, is nearly impossible.

McCain's chances, in essence, boil down to the polling being significantly wrong, for such reasons as a Bradley Effect or "Shy Tory" Effect, or extreme complacency among Democratic voters. Our model recognizes that the actual margins of error in polling are much larger than the purported ones, and that when polls are wrong, they are often wrong in the same direction.

However, even if these phenomenon are manifest to some extent, it is unlikely that they are worth a full 6-7 points for McCain. Moreover, there are at least as many reasons to think that the polls are understating Obama's support, because of such factors as the cellphone problem, his superior groundgame operation, and the substantial lead that he has built up among early voters.

McCain's chances of victory are estimated at 1.9 percent, their lowest total of the year."

For the record

It is striking to consider, in this paradigm shifting election, that the dirty deeds of the GOP candidate have gotten so little coverage.

The sordid Keating 5 history got some coverage before and after the Obama campaign released a video on the subject at KeatingEconomics.com, but the story never got the traction it deserved, especially in the context of the economic meltdown.

Then there was the pesky revelation that McCain had Iran Contra ties.

And on October 24th, John Dinges revealed in the Huffington Post that; “John McCain, who has harshly criticized the idea of sitting down with dictators without pre-conditions, appears to have done just that. In 1985, McCain traveled to Chile for a friendly meeting with Chile's military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, one of the world's most notorious violators of human rights credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians and jailing tens of thousands of others.” (Spanish language version.)

Yet to be questioned (to my knowledge) is McCain’s “heroic duty” in Vietnam, where he participated in an air war that blanket bombed North Vietnam.

The Obama campaign apparently decided not to confront McCain's misdeeds, perhaps determining that it would hurt the campaign more than it helped. Considering the nearly flawless conduct of the Obama campaign, I can only guess they made the right call.

Still, it is troubling to think that a presidential candidate can avoid facing up to such a record.

Obama's Quiet Hero - a sad day before triumph

Huffington Post links to live coverage of Obama talking about his grandmother.

Here's a page from the family "scrapbook";

Shades of 2000?

Fox reports Florida Voter information found on Interstate 4.

The Desperado does QVC

I've got to hand it to McCain - he can be funny as evidenced last night on SNL. There have been other funny bits that I haven't had a chance to post. If you haven't seen it, Sarah Palin in the Oval Office is a must see. Click on every item in the room. And doing homage to Evita, try this.

For those of us addicted to the polls, check out fivethirtyeight's analysis of what to expect on Tuesday. For more analyis of the prospects Tuesday, see the Washington Post or the Chicago Tribune who says McCain needs perfect day to best Obama.

Slate's Power Recap

From the Last Debate to the Final Week in Two Minutes

3 days to go - Making Every Vote Count

The LA Times reports that "voting rights watchdogs are sounding the alarm that a repeat of the Florida fiasco of 2000 could occur in any of a dozen battleground states."

The article cites the purging of 30,000 new registrations from Colorado's voter registry and 10,000 from Florida's, along with irregularities in other states.

The Times quoted Rick Haseen, a professor of election law at Loyola Law School, "I think we're going to see alot of problems, in part because some voters aren't going to find out until election day that they've been dropped from the rolls. I expect this to happen in Florida, where they had a very aggressive, no match, no vote policy."

The Miami Herald explained the "no match" policy - "The ID check spits out voter registrations that don't match driver's license or social security records. It has left voters on a list dominated by blacks, Hispanics and Democrats in a legal limbo -- unless they supply elections officials with additional proof they are who they say they are."

Under Florida state law, voters whose registrations have been questioned can be forced to cast a "provisional" ballot on Nov. 4th, that will only be counted if the voter can provide proper identification by 5 p.m. on Nov. 6.

Some counties, including Miami Dade, are providing regular ballots to "no match" voters if they show up at the polls with matching identification. But this is not required under the law.

Counties that still refuse to grant a regular ballot are required, under the Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning's latest reading of the law, to allow "no-match" voters to turn in photocopies of their ID at the polls.

With new registrations favoring the Democrats by 2 - 1, disenfranchisement of a large numbers of voters would appear to be an obstruction of fair voting practice by Republican voting officials using the cover of law. With so much attention paid to the issue this time around, election officials have an opportunity to prove their fairness by demonstration of fair practice. And it might just improve their political future.