Looking Good, But Still Some Storm Clouds

With 8 days to go, the news out of the polling world is stable and solid. Obama leads measurably in enough states to win the election, and even the toss-up states are moving his way. The election is being played out on red state turf, and with New Mexico and Iowa looking great, and Colorado and Virginia close to it, there is simply a lot to be excited about if you're the Obama campaign. Though the traditional media wants to inflate their ratings by continuing to call this a close race, they're deluding themselves.

Worried about "the tightening?"

Well, Obama's national lead has been stable at 7% for a month now. The national campaign is not tightening, and we are just seeing statistical noise.

Even if the campaign were tightening, Obama would still have a comfortable national lead. According to polling conducted over the weekend during the tracking poll "tightening," Obama reaches 264 electoral votes in states where he leads by 9.5% or more, passes 277 in Virginia where he leads by 8.0%, and hits 286 in states where he leads by 7.3% or more. So, he is actually doing even better in the Electoral College, where 270 votes are needed to win, than he is doing in national polls where he leads by 7%.

However, don't underestimate the ability of the powers that be, the gatekeepers, to desperately try to keep a hold on power, on a number of fronts, outside the normal electoral process. We have retailers telling their managers that there will be negative consequences to a Democratic victory. They are particularly frightened about the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers at a company to unionize. This is extra-legal, to indoctrinate your own employees politically, and it shows why EFCA is needed, actually, because this type of union-busting happens during a "free" election in the workplace. But it's not going to stop.

Neither are the efforts of committed Republicans to game the system in order to save the election:

"5,000 Coloradans whose voter status is in limbo because of [a] controversial check box...The registration form asks for a driver's license or state ID number. If applicants don't have that, they're supposed to check a box and then put down at least the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. But thousands of people didn't check the box. According to a policy adopted last year by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, these applications are supposed to be listed as incomplete...National and local voting-rights organizations criticize Coffman's policy, saying it violates other federal laws. They say Coffman is unfairly putting up barriers for people who are eligible to vote and want him to change his policy."

The check box is "controversial" because you are asked to check it on the form if you don't "have" a driver's license or ID card [...] So, here's the thing - what's the definition of "have?" I may have one at my house or in my car, but not with me at the very moment I am filling out the registration form. In that case, it would be logical - and, in fact, honest - for me to not check that box, while also putting down the last four digits of my social security number as my selected method of verifying my registration. Alternately, for whatever reason (privacy, etc.), I may simply feel more comfortable listing the last 4 digits of my social security number, rather than my entire driver's license number. So therefore, I might have listed my social security number and not checked the box.

And yet, if you made any of those logical choices - if you gave all the social security information required by law, but simply didn't check the box - Coffman is attempting to use that choice to potentially invalidate your registration and prevent you from voting.

And this kind of suppression is not just happening at the state level, but at the federal level as well, as George Bush has ordered the Justice Department to step into the Ohio voter registration controversy, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that the Secretary of State need not verify hundreds of thousands of registration forms against federal documents and throw out even those which have a typo on either side.

6 million or so people are going to go to the polls on Election Day and be told that they can't vote. There may be legitimate reasons for that, like lack of registration, or completely illegitimate ones, like them being purged from the rolls. But they won't be voting. And that is likely to hurt the Democrats.

I'm still more worried about November 5 than November 4. But you should educate yourself on the potential problems with your vote and be prepared to fight for it. The Election Protection wiki is a good source of information, and there's also 866-OUR-VOTE, a number you can call if you have problems on Election Day.