Election Day open thread

/ Historiann

What’s going on in your neck of the woods, edge of the holler, or side of the crick?  I’ll be posting updates through the day about what I see and hear in Potterville, Colorado (if anyone cares!)  I voted last Thursday, and the traffic at the early vote center was steady and strong.  I prefer to observe the ritual of voting on Election Day itself, but I suppose I was effectively intimidated out of waiting until today to vote by all of the early vote propaganda this year.  Until we make Election Day a day off of work again, then I suppose we’ll have to live with “election season,” such as it is now.  It’s a democratizing improvement over Tuesday-only election days.

Did you vote early or vote by mail?  If not, what were the lines like at your polling place?  (PLEASE VOTE FIRST, then comment at Historiann.com!)  Did you witness or suspect any voter intimidation or voter fraud?  How about fisticuffs or partisan scraps at the polls?  (You can just make something up if you think it will be more entertaining for us to read!)  Stick your head out the window to get a whiff of the fresh breezes of change, slice yourself a nice big piece of Election Cake, and fill us in on what you know.  (Check out Erica’s adventures baking an Election Cake!)

Images by Thomas Nast, of the Dem donkey (above left) and Republican elephant (below right.  This image also includes the Dem donkey dressed in a lion’s coat.)  Maybe we should send Lion costumes to the Congressional dems to make them more intimidating?

UPDATE, 12:15 MST:  Colorado Pols has an interesting commentary on why U.S. Senate Candidate Bob Schaffer may be sitting on a pile of dough instead of spending it:  he’s given up the Senate race to Mark Udall, and is plotting to seize back his former seat in congress from Betsy Markey if she succeeds in beating Marilyn Musgrave tonight.  Good thinking, Bob!  Yeah, if Musgrave loses, it’s because she wasn’t insanely right-wing enough.  Bob, if you lose tonight and Markey wins, just spend that money on a moving van and head on down to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama.  Or, head on back to Ohio.  Maybe, just maybe, Colorado ain’t the same state you moved to 20 years ago.

UPDATE, 3:45 MST:  The headline story on the Rocky Mountain News website now is “So far, so good:  evening voting looking up.”  Come on, people–I’ve got an international readership that wants to see long lines, fisticuffs, and world-class clusterfracks!  Can’t someone report some bad news here for a change?  Who’s going to be the first to report the “hanging chad” of 2008?

UPDATE, 3:50 MST:  CNN’s exit polling (as reported at TalkLeft) looks good for Obama–really good.

UPDATE, 5:15 MST:  The local NPR affiliate (KUNC) is reporting that there were problems in Weld County, Colorado with insufficient numbers of translators at polling places.  Also, KUNC reported that here in Potterville, the Colorado branch of the ACLU is investigating charges that a uniformed Potterville police officer was checking photo I.D.s at the polling station at Moo Moo U.  (Gee, d’you think that the fact that the President of Moo Moo U. is a Republican appointee who was widely rumored to have wanted to run for the 4th CD in 2002, might have something to do with wanting to harrass the college student vote?  I’ll keep an eye on this story, for sure.) 

On the bright side, my local polling place looked like it had a busy parking lot, but no lines out the door.  (I just ran by on my afternoon run.)

UPDATE, 8:00 MST:  I found this video, in which poll watcher Jeff Blum at Trinity Church in Potterville who alleges that a police officer arrived and stood at the door of the polling place.  He says that everything looked to be going smoothly otherwise, and doesn’t say that the police officer was behaving in an intimidating fashion.

UPDATE, 9:02 MST:  Betsy Markey has defeated Marilyn Musgrave.  YESSSS!  And by a humiliating 58 to 42 percent, with 59% of the vote counted.  (That lead won’t hold–but you can see why they’ve stuck a fork in Musgrave–she’s done.)  It’s getting worse:  the Denver Post has this race at 60 to 39.  UPDATE, 4:40 a.m. 11/5/08–the margin has narrowed to a mere 11 points, 55 to 44, with 79% of the vote counted.  What a humiliation for Musgrave. 

UPDATE, 9:09 MST:  Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States.

0 thoughts on “Election Day open thread”

  1. PA District 11 (the Barletta-Kanjorski race I was referring to earlier in the week) is still too close to call, with Barletta currently leading 51% to 49%. Given that Barletta policies embody the worst caricatures of Republicans, a victory for him would be a humiliation all around.

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  2. Nebraska to McCain, but as Chuck Todd just pointed out, one of the five electoral votes could go to Obama since three of the five are allocated according to votes in congressional districts – Obama is up 52-48% is one of them.

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  7. Wow–Virginia is impressive. Big news here is that we’ve dumped Marilyn Musgrave by some impressive numbers: with 59% of the vote counted, it’s Betsy Markey with 58% and Musgrave with 42%. Yee-haw!

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  13. Kanjorski 119,904
    Barletta 109,936
    93%

    Kanjorski is now projected to win, so in the battle of corruption versus bigotry, corruption triumphs. At least I do not have ANOTHER reason to hold my nose when I cross the Susquehanna on my way to work tomorrow.

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  14. Here’s how my predictions stand: every state that CBS has called, I predicted. All of those they haven’t called I predicted for McCain, but Obama leads in four. The difference between CBS’s 338 and my 339 is one vote in Nebraska. I thought Obama would take Omaha.

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  18. Daschle? Well, he’s done a great job of buddying up with Obama, although he was sh*tcanned in 2002. I don’t think Obama wants to track that mess into the house, do you?

    And, Nicole: ain’t it grand?

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  20. Pennsylvania really kicked it some tonight. Philadelphia went by something like 83%. The four inner-ring suburban counties were blowout Obama victories and it looks like the Republicans are damaged goods there for a long time. Out here in the west it was not-so-blue, but Cambria County (Johnstown) came through as usual, and Murtha survived with no major scratches.

    The whole Northeast is looking good, and if Indiana falls the Old Northwest will be a huge sweep. (I thought the West Coast sort of got an easy ride and the implicit credit for putting Obama over the top at 11 p.m. EST, while Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida were waiting to finalize). Good news in the Mountains.

    I was coincidentally showing state by state maps of the elections of 1824-1840 to my U.S. Survey class today, and it made for an interesting teachable moment. Obama’s speech was just right, and things are looking nice for the time being.

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  21. Interesting take on the election at Inside Higher Ed:

    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/05/polisci

    “As it turns out, some of the models political scientists have been using for years to predict the outcomes of national elections — taking into account factors like the popularity of the incumbent, party identification and economic indicators — weren’t tossed aside along with the many other fragments of conventional wisdom that were upended during the campaign. In fact, they were validated.”

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  23. Pingback: Waaaaaahhhhhh! I wanted to be a Congwesswoman again!!! : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

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