Why are you reading this? GET OUT THE VOTE, DAMMIT!
Open Thread, Now With Frowny Bee
I’m sure this is redundant here, but take a look anyway
I got this in email from Mike Joba, who reads the site:
On first glance it looks like it’s pretty useful. I don’t have a lot of time this morning to get into it too deeply. You may find something useful in there. I won’t be around much today. Too much to do at work, and then I’m going to go vote afterwards. I’ll see you all at the Coveritlive chat tonight.
Don’t forget, if you are a Fed, you can take up to two hours of paid time off that won’t count against your vacation bank to vote if your tour begins or ends within 3 hours of the polls opening or closing. Many states have similar policies. My wife, who works HR for the state of Oklahoma tried to explain their policy to me, and it just went over my head. Something about travel distance, time to poll closure, how many cousins have intermarried in your family and so on.
If you can, do some GOTV. This is my son’s first election, and he and a bunch of his friends are going to vote and then have a pizza party. He was telling me about it and how his girlfriend organized it, but I just got stuck on “when did you get a girlfriend? Who is this girl? What do her parents do?”
UPDATE: THIS from Tbogg is just fucking epic (which I know is a redundant phrase but there you are)– Help True The Vote!
It goes without saying that most of the True The Vote people are either angry shut-ins or frustrated recently divorced housewives who have yet to get any nibbles on their Hannidate profiles (shhh, don’t tell them) so maybe you could bring a little sunshine and excitement into their lives by reaching out and describing in exquisite and elaborate detail, stories of busloads of sombrero-wearing ai-yi-yi-ing Zapatistas being dropped off at Nathan Bedford Forrest Elementary where they shoved their way to the front of the line line and told the frightened poll workers that “they don’ need no steenkin’ ID” to vote.
This will probably happen and you should report it right away just in case!
And, fortunately for you, actual real live True The Vote operators are standing by RIGHT NOW toll free at 855-444-6100.
That is 855-444-6100.
I’m sure this is redundant here, but take a look anywayPost + Comments (100)
Early Morning Open Thread: Election Day
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H/t commentor TaMara. Yup, too long to watch over coffee, but now you’ve got something to keep you entertained while you’re waiting in line to vote. For the impatient, Michelle Obama is announced at approximately the 2:10 mark, and President Obama comes on at 11:10 (and starts speaking at approximately 12:30).
Meanwhile, all your early-morning lamestream media pundits will be gumming over OMG DIXVILLE NOTCH, tied 5-5, not bad for a precinct that skews Republican. But let’s hear a little love for the other tiny NH bellwether, Harts Location:
President/Vice President
Barack Obama/Joe Biden (D) 23
Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan (R) 9
Gary Johnson/James Gray (L) 1
Virgil Goode/James Clymer (C) 0
So… final prediction time! Nate Silver at 538 calls it 315.2 for President Obama, 92% chance of winning. Latest word from Sam Wang at the Princeton Electoral Consortium:
I make two electoral predictions.
ELECTORAL PREDICTION (mode): Barack Obama 332 EV, Mitt Romney 206 EV. The mode is the single most frequent value on the histogram. It corresponds to the map below, and has a chance of being exactly correct.
ELECTORAL PREDICTION (median): Obama 309 EV, Romney 229 EV, Popular Vote Meta-Margin Obama +2.34%. This is the automatically-generated snapshot for November 5th 8:00pm. This prediction is almost guaranteed to be off, since 309 EV is not a common combination.
And here is the prediction of our own PsiFighter37:
Obama gets 332 EVs. I think the popular vote will come in between 3-4%, with rounding causing it to be 4%.
Mitt gets 47% of the vote and will forever have that tattooed onto the magic underpants.
Democrats will pick up Senate seats relative to the 53 they have now. Joe Lieberman will wonderfully be but an irrelevant assclown in less than 2 months when Chris Murphy takes his seat.
But we don’t take the House, but I predict Eric Cantor makes his move and sticks a shiv deep into Orange Julius’ back to become Speaker. God help us all.
So… what are your predictions for close of day tonight?
Early Morning Open Thread: Election DayPost + Comments (124)
With an Obama 2nd term now extremely likely, it’s time to get this out of the way.
Nate Silver over at 538 has probability of re-elect at 92.2%. Sam Wang has probability of re-elect at 98.2% by random distribution and 99.8% by Bayesian Prediction.
If you haven’t already done so, make certain that you vote tomorrow. Run the score up on the bastards. Make sure you know your fucking polling place.
And now, with apologies to Pastor Dan, it’s time to ask “Is it too early to start speculating on all the ways Obama is going to sell out progressives in his second term?”
Oh, and Open Thread, also too.
Monday Evening Open Thread: Oh-Hell-No
(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)
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Kay might never forgive me for this, but in fond memory of my late father-in-law, fellow Ohio escapee Walter Kirn explains to TNR why “Ohio Doesn’t Deserve to Pick Our President“:
In my new, more realistic understanding of American democracy, gained just this year from a thousand expert sources, the role of all but a portion of the electorate is to show up at their polling places tomorrow and dutifully cancel out one another’s votes so that Ohio can choose our president.
And why has this privilege fallen to Ohio? The prevailing view, voiced by columnists and pundits and even some very fancy political scientists, is that Ohio is a national microcosm, blending diverse demographic and cultural groups in a way that reflects America at large. In other words, it’s a state with lots of rednecks that also has plenty of poor urban minorities balanced by a certain magic number of college-educated professionals. Add in a lot of struggling factory workers, stay-at-home moms, Roman Catholics, evangelicals, college students, military veterans, Latino immigrants, and nursing home residents, and there you have it: our republic in a can.
The situation disturbs me even so. That any one state should posses such outsize power over the country’s political destiny strikes me as outrageous on its face, but that this state should be my own birthplace, the very cradle of American mediocrity and overzealous lawn ornamentation, is positively terrifying…
Human beings of vision and vitality will do almost anything to leave Ohio. This urge has benefited America’s space program. John Glenn got as far from Ohio as he could. Neil Armstrong, with better technology, got further…
In fact, the only extraordinary individuals who rush toward Ohio, and not away from it, are presidential candidates. For the last few months—and as you read this, probably—Obama and Romney have lavished on the Buckeye State the sort of hyperbolic praise, feigned fascination, and craven devotion usually reserved for elderly parents with multi-million dollar fortunes.
If Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have succeeded in making the state’s residents feel wise and important and special, like agents of fate, it cannot have been easy…
By Upper Midwestern standards, Kirn is a moderate. Bob, during the period before I got around to marrying his son, once told me that Ohio was shaped like a chamber pot so that Michigan & Pennsylvania would always know where to aim…
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Apart from insulting our neighbors and other GOTV activities, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
How Low Will They Go? (Open Thread)
Romney is telling voters that it’s a nice little country they’ve got there, and it would be a shame if something were to, you know, happen to it. Ryan told an evangelical group founded by uber-crook Ralph Reid that the president’s policies undermine “Judeo-Christian” values.
What other whoppers will they lob before the day is out? Perhaps we can gauge their desperation by how close they come to screeching about a Mandingo eating their baby…
[X-posted at Rumproast]