Ground Round

I've gotten kind of roped in to Obama's ground game out here in California, and I have to say that Roger Simon is right. There is no comparison between this effort and similar efforts in 2004. Democrats are most definitely not complacent, no matter the polls, and they are amped up to get a part of this ground effort. The numbers I'm hearing at these local phone banks are through the roof today. Apparently if you went on BarackObama.com today, on the front page would be an announcement of the closest local phone bank in your area. That's very slick, and I can only imagine how that's working in the battleground states.

This AP report is kind of tepid and looks for balance, but believe me, what's going on out here for Obama is completely ridiculous. The other addition to this is the work that Obama volunteers have already done getting out the early vote. They may have put away Nevada already, and put up a big number in a lot of battleground states.

48 hours to go and there's no reason to get your foot off the pedal, but be proud of this Democratic campaign. It's really coming together.

And this final ad is icing on the cake. Great work, Obama campaign.



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CA Campaign Update: CA-04, CA-45, CA-46, AD-78

A few odds and ends:

• CA-04: Tom McClintock is bringing out the big guns to help his cash-strapped campaign - Ron Paul is all in!

Paul, the libertarian-Republican congressman from Texas who raised more than $34 million for his presidential race, sent out an e-mail last week urging his massive donor base to contribute to McClintock.

"Tom McClintock is one of the most promising warriors in the fight against big government we have seen in a long time, and the special interests and big bankers know it. ... You have stood with me as....

...I campaigned for the Presidency to return our federal government to its proper role. Will you help me bring a reliable ally to Congress?"

This brings up some interesting questions. Does Tom McClintock think we should withdraw from Iraq and dozens of other military bases around the world? Does he believe in abolishing the Federal Reserve? The coinage of free silver?

They do have one thing in common, however - white supremacist supporters.

• CA-45: New voter registration statistics have not been released by the Secretary of State's office, but I think they will show good news for Democrats across the state. One statistic that is measurable is the early voting number, and in CA-45, it's good news for Julie Bornstein.

Democrats have significantly narrowed the early voting gap in the 45th Congressional District, an encouraging sign for challenger Julie Bornstein in her battle to unseat Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (R-Palm Springs), according to Bornstein campaign manager Walter Ludwig.

In both 2004 and 2006, registered Republicans accounted for about 54 percent of early voters, compared with just 34 percent for Democrats. Mack, now a four-term incumbent, cruised to re-election both years by more than 20 points.

This year, early voting is much more evenly split. The latest numbers from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters show that registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by just five percent among early voters.

It's like the entire Republican machine all collapsed at once. They used to be MASTERS at getting absentee votes out. This year, there's either no such effort, or it's being matched by Democrats. CA-45 is under the radar, but these numbers suggest that it shouldn't be.

• CA-46: At the Great Orange Satan, Devilstower has a great piece that could start a new meme about Debbie Cook - the anti-Palin.

Suppose there was a candidate who was as bright and as capable as Sarah Palin is confused and incompetent.

Someone who had a record of working with environmental groups, and who had a real understanding of the threat posed by our dependence on fossil fuels. Someone with a degree in earth science and the long experience to make the claim of being a genuine energy expert.

Someone who not only knew science, but also had a law degree, and was a graduate of the leadership program at the Kennedy School of Government. Someone who has held positions of honor in state and national commissions. Someone who was well respected for both her intellect and her passion.

Suppose there was a candidate who had been mayor of, not a tiny town, but a medium-sized city. And suppose she took that position as a Democrat in the midst of a heavily Republican district.

Suppose there was someone who was everything that Sarah Palin is not.

Fortunately for us, there's Debbie Cook.

Read the whole thing. And help Debbie if you can.

• AD-78: Bill Cavala, who worked the last close race in this district, took a peek at some new registration numbers which show a real advantage for Marty Block:

This year the new registration ‘close’ figures show the Democrats with 101, 131 registrants, an increase of about 4100 from the last Presidential year. DTS registrations are 49,855, an increase of about 5800 from 2004. Most remarkably, however, Republican registration has fallen by almost 8000 – from 82,615 four years ago to 74,700 today.

This means the net change is Dems up 4100 and Reps down 8000 or 12,100 in favor of the Democrat over 2004.

Forget the increase in DTS registrations – which vote more Democratic than Republican in San Diego. Starting out down 12,000 in a seat where they won by 2000 with an incumbent – it’s open this year – puts the Republican candidate squarely behind the 8 ball.

Just one of the many Assembly races where this is so.

Charlie Crist Rises To The Occasion, Albeit A Little Late

At my Obama phone bank we talked to Florida voters over the weekend, and they uniformly described the difficulties with early voting. The lines were very long, some up to 3 hours. And people were getting frustrated and turning away. This was because of a state law mandating that the polls would only be open for 8 hours a day during the week and 8 hours total on the two weekend days. There are far less early voting sites than normal polling places on Election Day, and apparently every voter has to be matched to that early site in kind of a grueling, DMV-like process, so the lines were long.

Well, Charlie Crist, the Republican Governor of Florida, finally responded to the resultant cries of anger by increasing the hours that early voting sites can be open.

Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday extended early voting hours across Florida to 12 hours a day.

The executive order comes after record early voting turnout has contributed to long lines at polling sites.

Current Florida law allows for early voting to be conducted eight hours a day each weekday and for a total of eight hours during the weekends.

I think it'll be 12 hours total on the weekends now, still not great but better.

Of course, this is the last week for early voting. And so this is something Crist could have done quite a bit earlier.

Still, I'm glad he did it. "Bottlenecking" is a key element of the GOP voter suppression plan - they mean to get people frustrated with waiting in line and finally give up. Anything that alleviates that even a little is positive.

Nevada

A Suffolk poll shows Obama up 10 in Nevada. I've been doing a lot of grasssroots work, mostly with Nevada, and the great thing about that state is that their early voting stations are plentiful (practically at every Albertson's) and Obama's people have made early voting a priority. Pretty much every Democrat you talk to out there says they're voting early. One estimate, based on 2004 numbers, is that 40% of Nevada has already voted. Now, that'll be less because I think turnout will eclipse 2004. But the point is that McCain will have LOTS of ground to make up on Election Day, probably too much.

And adding Nevada to Iowa, New Mexico and the Kerry states gives Obama 269 electoral votes, which would give him a tie in the Electoral College. Plus there's Virginia, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota, that extra electoral vote in Nebraska....

Let me remind you, however, with an assist from the Obama campaign, not to get overconfident:

Tools You Can Use

One of the biggest ways you can impact this election is to disseminate information to your circle of friends. A couple organizations have stepped up in a big way to make that process smooth and easy.

Google noticed that millions of people were searching through their site for voting information - where their polling place is, when the last day for early voting is, etc. Google created this great tool as a one-stop shop to answer all of those questions.

It's hard to believe that in 2008, information so important to U.S. citizens and the democratic process isn't well organized on the web. To solve this problem, we've released our US Voter Info site, an effort to simplify and centralize voting locations and registration information.

Are you registered to vote? What's the best way to obtain an absentee ballot? When people visit the site, answers to these questions appear. And anyone with a website can provide the same information. The US Voter Info gadget places a simple search box that expands to show a full set of voter information when someone enters an address.

We are also offering a simpler way to find out where to vote. By entering a home address, citizens across the country will be able to find their polling place for election day.

The tool is super-easy and effective. Tell your friends.

Another incredible tool comes from our friends at CREDO mobile. It's called TXT Out The Vote, and it enabled you to send targeted text messages in California opposing Prop. 4 (parental notification for abortion) and Prop. 8 (eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry). The messages, which you can send to any friend or family member with a cell phone, will be delivered on Election Day. This kind of "personal phone banking" is one of the best ways to get out the vote. Check it out at TXT Out The Vote. Standard text messaging rates apply.

Today In Election Fraud

There's been something of a pattern in recent GOP voter suppression schemes - Republican officials press their claims, and the courts smack them down. This was true when the Supreme Court backed up the Secretary of State of Ohio a week ago, saying she didn't need to match 220,000 new voter registration forms to a federal document. It's happened in Wisconsin, where a similar scheme to verify forms, pushed by the Republican Attorney General (and McCain campaign co-chair), has been tossed out. And it's happened in Indiana as well.

The Indiana Supreme Court has declined to approve a bid by the GOP to shut down early voting centers in Democratic strongholds of a key county.

A lower court had similarly rejected the effort earlier this week. The Supreme Court ruled today that the case had to first be heard by an appeals court, rather than going straight to the state's high court as the Republican plaintiffs wanted.

The appeals court may yet get involved in this, but I think we'll see early voting sites remain open there. Now we have to worry about the people counting the votes:

FRANKLIN, Ind. (AP) -- A Republican county election clerk said Friday she has apologized to two employees for distributing copies of Internet blog posting referring to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as a "young, black Adolf Hitler."

The employees, who had voted for Obama in Indiana's Democratic primary, discovered the printouts at their desks after returning from Labor Day weekend, sheriff's Deputy Doug Cox said in a police report made public this week. One of the workers complained, and surveillance video showed Johnson County Clerk Jill Jackson placing an item on one worker's desk at 5:27 p.m. on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Cox said.

"She admitted to being responsible for the letter, but only did it as a joke," Cox said. Jackson told Cox she had intended to speak with the workers upon returning to work but forgot.

I know that if I was in Indiana, I'd feel safe knowing my vote was in her hands.

Elsewhere, it's amazing to me that we still deal with faulty ballot design in this day and age, but that's what's happening in North Carolina, where their "straight-party voting" option does NOT generate a vote for President. Why the heck would that be? And this isn't a new flaw, but was in place in 2004 as well, and 3% of voters cast no ballot for President. That's absurd.

And finally, we have your good old-fashioned voter intimidation.

Minority voters in New Mexico report to TPMmuckraker that a private investigator working with Republican party lawyer Pat Rogers has appeared in person at the homes of their family members, intimidating and confusing them about their right to vote in the general election [...]

Guadalupe Bojorquez, who works in law enforcement in Albuquerque, told TPMmuckraker today that her mother, Dora Escobedo, was one of the ten voters whose names were released by the GOP. After this happened, said Bojorquez, her mother had been contacted by the voter registration group ACORN. Bojorquez, with ACORN's help, confirmed with the county clerk that her mother, who does not speak English, is indeed eligible to vote, and had been when she voted in June.

Nonetheless, Bojorquez said that her mother yesterday received a visit from a man who asked for her personal information, including an ID, in reference to her eligibility to vote. Bojorquez told TPMmuckraker that according to her mother, at one point the man asked what she would do if immigration authorities contacted her.

Read the whole thing. But if you don't, suffice to say that the GOP preys upon weakness and fear to stop people from voting.

They Don't Want You To Vote

Josh Marshall found this gem from a news item about the early voting sites in the heavily African-American Lake County in Indiana:

CROWN POINT, Ind. (AP) — A judge weighing whether to close down early voting sites in Lake County’s Democratic strongholds questioned local officials about the absentee voting process during visits to the disputed sites.

Lake County Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias-Schneider toured the Gary, Hammond and East Chicago satellite voting sites Monday and heard hours of testimony and arguments on whether they are legal and fair.

Republicans want to shut down the centers in the largely Democratic county on the grounds that they will increase the likelihood of vote fraud in the Nov. 4 election.

Kavadias-Schneider, who was appointed a special judge in the case by the Indiana Supreme Court, questioned county elections board director Sally LaSota on Monday about the process of early voting and safeguards against vote fraud.

LaSota assured the judge that the elections board staff ensures voters are registered and don’t vote more than once.
When Kavadias-Schneider asked, “What of those who have already voted?” R. Lawrence Steele, a GOP lawyer, replied, “Maybe those votes should be discarded.”

And well, there you have it. For decades this has essentially been the Republican strategy, since they can't run the country the way they'd like with all these pesky voters running around. From 1980 when Paul Weyrich famously said "I don't want everybody to vote...our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up, as the voting populace goes down, right up until today.

So this is, ultimately, why the right is making ACORN famous, calling for defunding and investigations and the like. It's to cover their real agenda of trying to disenfranchise voters. It's been the GOP ground game for a long time. And every time you think you've got it tamped down, it rises up somewhere else. Particularly slippery this year has been the "lose your house, lose your vote" effort to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters. Even after it was revealed and part of a lawsuit in Michigan, where the GOP was forced to surrender its effort, it has popped back up around the country. This is in Volusia County, Florida:

Thanks to a new law passed by the Florida Legislature, she explained, groups interested in challenging voters now may do so up to 30 days before an election.

Once a voter's right to cast a ballot is challenged, McFall's office must attempt to notify the voter, and must flag the voter's name in the statewide database.

If the problem can't be straightened out at the supervisor's office before Election Day, the challenged voter will be required to vote a provisional ballot, then visit the Elections Office within 48 hours after the election to disprove the allegations of the challenge.

"One party, that we know of, is going to challenge every voter that's being foreclosed on," McFall said.

Foreclosure-related caging is just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, they don't want you to vote.

Brave New Films created this great piece that everybody should take a look at. We have to recognize this pattern when we see it.

Follow The Bouncing Ball

One thing spending a lot of time on the blogs can do is make the connections between events much easier to recognize.

For example, this:

Palin may not have been able to smell it in the Reno-Sparks Convention Center or the beautiful Henderson Pavilion, but that scent in the Nevada air for the GOP is desperation. You can see it in the numbers, on the airwaves, in the mailboxes.

Perhaps the most telling sign of the Republican straw-grasping occurring came from one of the warm-up speakers for Palin, state Sen. Bob Beers, who can play more tricks with numbers than most magicians can with rabbits and hats. Beers urged the crowd to go out and vote because Democrats are beating Republicans in the early vote, but told them to take heart that fewer Democrats had voted each day and more Republicans were going to the polls each day.

Forget accuracy for a moment — more than 15,000 Democrats voted the first day, then about 12,000 the second and 13,000 the third. More important, for Beers and the GOP, everything is relative — 5,700 Republicans voted Saturday, a little more than 5,000 on Sunday and about 6,000 on Monday. If that pathetic pace continues — though it seems unlikely — by the end of the 14-day early voting period, Republicans will be far enough behind to make Nov. 4 an afterthought.

Begets this.

The GOP effort to suppress the vote has reared its head in Nevada.

Yesterday, Sue Lowden, the state Republican chair, sent a letter to Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller, asking him to prevent some from voting, because their registrations are incomplete.

How may peope are we talking about? Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun reports: "I understand that 2,300 forms have been identified in urban counties."

"Urban" counties. How droll.

And this:

It looks like one of the numerous tricks pulled by Republicans to make it harder for black people to vote isn't going to work.

A judge in Lake County, Indiana ruled today against a GOP effort to shut down early voting centers set up in predominantly low-income African-American areas of the county.

Begets this.

13 days before the election, the McCain campaign has decided to spend several hundred thousands dollars on a last-minute television buy in the state of Indiana.

This is the first time in a month that the campaign has spent its own money on television in the Hoosier state.

It happens quite a lot. The information is open enough that you can just follow along.

McCain Concedes

I know we're supposed to be somber and work like we're 10 points down, but I don't know how else you can characterize this strategy, if it's accurate:

Most people top in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.

So they are now finishing with a very risky strategy. Win Florida. Win Nevada ... And here is the biggest risk of all -- yes they have to win North Carolina, yes they have to win Ohio, yes they have to win Virginia, trailing or dead-even in all those states right now. But they are betting Wolf on coming back and taking the state of Pennsylvania. It has become the critical state now in the McCain electoral scenario. And they are down 10, 12, and even 14 points in some polls there. But they say as Colorado, Iowa and other states drift away, they think they have to take a big state. 21 electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Wolf, watch that state over the next few weeks.

New Mexico and Iowa were always done; it's fine for McCain to concede those. But it doesn't leave him much of a path to victory, and giving up on Colorado leaves him with basically one path. The Upper Midwest is fine for Obama, and the Pacific Coast is fine. He's really sinking everything into Pennsylvania. And not ONLY Pennsylvania. McCain has to in addition pull off wins in 7 states that are tight right now:

Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia

If he took Pennsylvania he could afford to lose one or maybe even two of those - but the idea that McCain's going to come back in Pennsylvania doesn't seem plausible. The polling is extremely static:



Here's Markos:

That's remarkable consistency between the pollsters -- Obama between 52-54, and McCain between 38-41. There's nothing here to give McCain's campaign, or his supporters, hope that this strategy will pay off. Not to mention that they're investing so much time and money into Pennsylvania that it has given Obama an opening in places like Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, and so on. And Nevada is looking increasingly good -- pair up the Silver State with Missouri, Virginia, or North Carolina, and it matters little (for electoral purposes) what happens in Pennsylvania.

Indeed, the Nevada early voting is looking fantastic - 59% of the ballots have been filled out by Democrats, compared to 27% for Republicans.

I'm just not seeing what makes Pennsylvania the firewall state - perhaps it's this:

The state Republican Party filed an injunction Friday against Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes and ACORN, alleging a fair vote on Nov. 4 is impossible because of rampant voter fraud.

The injunction signals a step up in action against ACORN, which for weeks has been the recipient of attacks from the state GOP and John McCain's presidential campaign.

At a press conference in the Capitol, state GOP Chairman Bob Gleason Jr. said the sheer number of registrations submitted by ACORN has overwhelmed many county election offices and the state department has not provided the local bureaus with enough support.

"I am not confident we can trust the results of this election," Gleason said.

We all know this is absurd, completely absurd. But maybe it's the last thing McCain can cling to.

...considering Obama outdrew McCain by roughly 99,985 in Missouri, I don't think the Show-Me State is so safe, either. What an embarrassment of advance work two weeks before an election.

Sen. John McCain stopped in Columbia on Monday afternoon.

The Republican presidential nominee from Arizona landed at the Columbia Regional Airport around 12:30 p.m. As McCain disembarked from the plane, a man yelled, "Go get 'em, John."

McCain shook a few hands and embraced Christine Ellinger, the campaign's fourth congressional district co-chair.

Ellinger said McCain is going to tour Columbia businesses "and get to know people and what they're doing and daily life."

A crowd of about 15 people assembled outside the airport's fence to see him descend from the plane.

Always Left To Right

Obama is kicking tail in early voting, clearly because they're making it a priority and they have better ground organizing. This will mean that McCain will have to swamp the polls on Election Day, and every vote you already have before then is a win. The question is whether or not we will have those votes.

Yet again, voting problems in WV. Early voters in West Virginia have reported vote switching on electronic machines. Both counties where problems have occurred have Republicans in charge of voting, along with our GOP secretary of state.

The first was a report from multiple voters in Jackson County, one of the few GOP-leaning counties in WV:

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney...the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

The second occurred over the weekend, for voters in Putnam County, WV:

"I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican," she said. "I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.

"I asked them for a printout of my votes," Ketchum said. "But they said it was in the machine and I could not get it. I did not feel right when I left the courthouse. My son felt the same way."

Funny how every single one of these stories I've heard results in the votes switching from Democrats to Republicans. Never the other way around.

Yep, just funny how that goes.

X Marks The Spot

(via Markos.)

The worst part of this collapse for McCain is that early voting has begun in a lot of states, and people are getting their absentee ballots, and estimates are that 1/3 of all votes will be cast before Nov. 4, so he'll be heading into Election Day well behind. Though the Obama campaign appears to have not taken advantage of the early voting window in Ohio the way that they should have, other states are showing much better results for them, and the voter registration numbers are even better.

Since January, the Florida Democratic Party has had a net gain of 415,580 voters, while the Republican Party of Florida has only gained 169,841. This shows that the gap between Democrats and Republicans in Florida has grown by 245,739 voters this year alone.

I don't think that one debate has the power to swing this tide, though I'll still watch it and obsess over it, of course.

Finally, let's give some credit to the behind-the-scenes players doing the ground work for Obama in the battlegrounds. It's really paying off. The WSJ profiles Working America today.

The little-noticed group formed by the AFL-CIO has no role in workplaces or contract bargaining and collects no mandatory dues. What it does is sign up members, 2.5 million so far, and persuade them to vote Democratic.

Working-class whites are important because they make up just about half of the electorate. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows Sen. Obama has built a six-point lead over Sen. John McCain in part by cutting his deficit among these voters to 11 points.

Two weeks ago, when Sen. Obama trailed Sen. McCain by 18 points among this group, the presidential race was essentially tied, according to the WSJ/NBC poll [...]

Organized labor has much at stake in this election, as its leaders are hoping a Democratic president and Congress would push through legislation that could help reverse unions' long membership slide. Roughly 70% of Working America members have voted Democratic since the group was formed in 2003, the same percentage as union members, according to the AFL-CIO. The group says it has been signing up an average 50,000 new members a week for its database as the election approaches, up from 20,000 weekly during 2007. In its biggest state, the pivotal electoral battleground of Ohio, Working America's 800,000 members could make up more than 10% of the vote on Election Day.

Wow. Those are incredible numbers. And a third-party validator is probably more impactful for these groups than the Obama campaign.

This Is No Longer An Election

It's a fight that should be called.

John McCain went nasty today in New Mexico, basically arguing that his opponent is a shiftless and lazy hustler who will appoint Stevie Wonder Secretary of Fine Arts and Miss Aretha Franklin First Lady. He somehow also accused Obama of not being committed ENOUGH to the bailout, and today seems like the complete wrong day to bring that up.

McCain is fighting like a cornered animal, and his right hand is bringing forth the fearmongering as well. Suddenly we've gone from "I'm suspending my campaign to focus on this financial crisis" to "screw the financial crisis, Barack knows a guy who knows a guy who hates America!" in the space of two weeks. That's because the trend lines are awful, and McCain's people know it. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose," said an aide today.

But if you think you can forget about the economy at a time with this much economic pain out there, just look at the polls. Obama is up by double digits in New Hampshire, and incredibly, he has the same kind of lead in Virginia, according to two polls.

As McCain's Lead Among White Virginians Shrinks, So Too His Chances of Holding The State's 13 Electoral Votes: 29 days until votes are counted in Virginia, Democrat Barack Obama is ahead 53% to 43%, according to this SurveyUSA poll conducted exclusively for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, WJLA-TV in Washington DC, WTVR-TV in Richmond, and WJHL-TV in the Tri-Cities. In 4 tracking polls conducted since the Republican Convention, McCain has gone from up by 2 to down by 10.

There is movement among men, where immediately after the GOP convention, McCain led by 10, and where today Obama leads by 11.
There is movement among whites, where McCain's once 22-point lead is today reduced to single digits.
There is movement among the well-to-do, where today for the first time Obama leads.
There is movement among pro-choice voters, where Obama's lead has doubled since August.

The attempts to bring Obama into question may work at the margins, but the fundamentals make this a nearly impossible task for McCain.

And this is impacting the Congressional picture as well. Kay Hagan is now well out in front of Elizabeth Dole, and in Georgia, Jim Martin has pulled even with Saxby Chambliss.

That means that we can now add the Georgia Senate seat to the ranks of top-tier races, in addition to the 10 existing ones (VA, NM, AK, CO, NH, NC, OR, KY, MN, and MS-B).

Suddenly, the wisdom of a real 50-state strategy becomes obvious yet again: the Obama camp set out to register 500,000 new voters in the state. And while Obama may not win this state this year (he will in 2012), we may pick up a Senate seat because of those efforts.

This is due to hard work, a 50-state strategy, and incredible gains in voter registration throughout the country, which was a major point of emphasis for the Obama campaign over the summer.

Virginia, for example, has logged more than 300,000 new voters since the year began. The state does not record party affiliation, but it says that 41% of the new registrants are under the age of 25, and an additional 20% are between the ages of 25 and 34.

The influx of young voters, a core part of Obama's voting coalition, is an encouraging sign for the Democratic nominee in a state that has not picked a Democrat for president in more than 40 years.

"This is exactly what we needed to do to change the electorate in Virginia in order to put Sen. Obama in a position where he could win the state," said Steve Hildebrand, Obama's deputy campaign manager.

In Nevada, another Republican state that Obama is trying to move into the Democratic column, Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 80,000, according to figures posted by the state in September, before the voter registration deadline last Saturday. Four years ago, Republicans held a registration edge of 4,431.

Democratic registration has ballooned in Pennsylvania, presenting a challenge to Republicans who hoped to swing the state to their column. Obama's party now outnumbers Republicans by nearly 1.15 million registered voters. In the 2004 election, the margin was about 580,000; in 2000, it was 486,000.

In Georgia's early voting, part of another key strategy of the Obama campaign to bank votes, 39 percent of the electorate is African-American thus far. These are tremendous numbers and the campaign must be very happy.

The headwinds are very rough for McCain. He's running a conventional Republican smear and fear campaign in an unconventional, disruptive year with crises roiling on unfavorable Republican territory. It's not so much that Obama is running a great campaign (it's great compared to recent Democratic history), but that there's a kind of regression to the mean of where this election is fated to go.

There's of course one caveat here, which I'll take up in a later post.

Golden Week Begins In Ohio

The most important week of the Presidential campaign has just begun. Despite Republican efforts to stop it, the state of Ohio opened their early voting stations this week, and they are one-stop polling places, where you can register and vote on the same day. Due to an overlap between voter registration deadlines and the beginning of the early voting period, this will only last from Sept. 30-Oct. 6. But turnout is expected to be large:

Election officials around Ohio prepared for a rush of early voting Tuesday, the first day absentee ballots are accepted in advance of the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Backed by the state Supreme Court and two federal judges, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, is allowing new voters to register and cast an absentee ballot on the same day from Tuesday through Oct. 6 [...]

In Columbus, voters wanting to cast ballots as soon as possible on Tuesday morning had set up tents Monday night to wait in line outside the Franklin County Board of Elections.

Obama's campaign organized car pools from college campuses to early voting sites. The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is ferrying voters from homeless shelters to polling sites in the Cleveland area. Other organizations that seek to increase poor and minority participation in elections are transporting voters from low-income neighborhoods.

The targeted voters have all traditionally had a harder time getting registered, and then getting to polling places on Election Day.

McCain's campaign is trying to organize around this as well, but Obama's campaign is placing an emphasis on it. The Democratic nominee created a message to voters in Ohio, and he's using text messaging to get out the word. (Text O-H to 62262 for more information). The campaign also has a wealth of resources for volunteers to come and help get out the vote. Obama's people are using the rallying cry that John Kerry lost Ohio, and the election, by 9 votes per precinct. The early voting golden week window can close that gap. And here's a great account of one voter's experience at an early voting station, which went very smooth. The difference between Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is stratospheric. The ability to win the state is very available if Obama gets out the vote.

It's important to note that McCain cannot win the election without Ohio. That's not just a political axiom, it's a fact. There's nowhere on the board he can make up the loss of 20 electoral votes there. If you know anyone in Ohio or even in the Midwest, you have to let them know that they can register and vote this week only.

Fighting For The Franchise In Ohio

In 2004, Ohio's election system was run by Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R-Crazytown). We know how that turned out. In 2006 Democrat Jennifer Brunner was elected, and we're already seeing the positives of that.

Ohio has created a window in the election calendar that would allow residents instant gratification — register one minute, vote the next. It's also given the campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain a chance to bank thousands of first-time voters during that Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 window.

The move will benefit Obama, who enjoys a 2-to-1 lead over McCain among 18- to 34-year-olds, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last month. If Obama's campaign were able to tap into college campuses with one-stop voting, it would add thousands of votes to his tally in a state where, in 2004, John Kerry lost to President Bush by only about 118,000 votes, putting Bush over the top in the electoral count.

Actually, the move will benefit America. Increased participation in the political process is a universally desired result, and same-day registration has been shown to increase turnout significantly. The same with early voting. And the same with permanent absentee balloting (a new feature in Ohio this year). Making the process easier benefits the country by allowing the widest possible range of voices to be heard.

Of course, Republicans don't want more voters, so they're trying to muddy the waters and raise fears of non-existent voter fraud.

In Ohio, Republicans are clearly not pleased with same-day registration and voting and have not ruled out a lawsuit against Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's office.

"You have to wonder, when they look at what they consider a loophole with such excitement," said Jason Mauk, the Ohio Republican Party's executive director. "That would suggest manipulating the process, and I think opens the door to suspicion."

What's hilarious is that state lawmakers created this early voting window in 2006. When the governor was a Republican. And he signed it into law. So it's not a loophole.

Republicans want to open the door to suspicion as a pretext to suppressing the vote. Amazingly, they're engaging in the same tactics at veterans homes.

WHAT is the secretary of Veterans Affairs thinking? On May 5, the department led by James B. Peake issued a directive that bans nonpartisan voter registration drives at federally financed nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and shelters for homeless veterans. As a result, too many of our most patriotic American citizens — our injured and ill military veterans — may not be able to vote this November.

I have witnessed the enforcement of this policy. On June 30, I visited the Veterans Affairs Hospital in West Haven, Conn., to distribute information on the state’s new voting machines and to register veterans to vote. I was not allowed inside the hospital.

Outside on the sidewalk, I met Martin O’Nieal, a 92-year-old man who lost a leg while fighting the Nazis in the mountains of Northern Italy during the harsh winter of 1944. Mr. O’Nieal has been a resident of the hospital since 2007. He wanted to vote last year, but he told me that there was no information about how to register to vote at the hospital and the nurses could not answer his questions about how or where to cast a ballot.

I carry around hundreds of blank voter registration cards in the trunk of my car for just such occasions, so I was able to register Mr. O’Nieal in November. I also registered a few more veterans — whoever I could find outside on the hospital’s sidewalk.

There are thousands of veterans of wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and the current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan who are isolated behind the walls of V.A. hospitals and nursing homes across the country. We have an obligation to make sure that every veteran has the opportunity to make his or her voice heard at the ballot box.

Connecticut’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, and I wrote to Secretary Peake in July to request that elections officials be let inside the department’s facilities to conduct voter education and registration. Our request was denied.

It's not such an incredible story, when you look at both candidates' record on veteran's funding issues (Obama is far better), and when you learn that troops deployed abroad have given money to Obama by a 6:1 margin.

This really is the electoral battleground: whether the organization of the Obama campaign can overcome the institutional barriers to participation thrown up by Republicans.

Texas Early Voting

Obama has a reverse-California effect going. Before the "kitchen sink" strategy went into high gear, he racked up a huge early voting lead:

Update 3--Obama jumps out to huge lead in Texas: It would appear that Obama dominated early voting in Texas. With over 800,000 votes already in, Obama holds a huge advantage of 13%, or about 110,000 votes. Functionally, it means that Clinton must win on Election Day by 4-5% just to tie Obama in Texas. This is a huge boost for Obama's chances to win the night on delegates, and possibly even to knock Clinton out of the campaign.

You could see this coming when you noticed what areas were voting early in big numbers. I don't think Clinton is going to be able to make up those numbers. I saw a lot of polls, but none of them had a very substantial lead for Clinton in Texas. Tonight is looking more and more like a split. And how fitting that it's the early vote, before the last-minute mudslinging, that could give it to Obama.

UPDATE: This is awesome:

An Obama source emails First Read that the campaign is expecting turnout between 3.6 to 3.8 million in the Texas Democratic primary.

Consider that John Kerry received 2.8 million votes in the Lone Star State in the 2004 general election.

"That's a lot of 'new' Democratic voters," the Obama source says. "Will be great for Texas Dem Party that's working to rebuild and only needs to pick up four seats to take back the state house."

We're going to give John Cornyn a run for his money in November.

Predictably, the Clinton campaign is pushing hard that the caucuses shouldn't count. You know, this system has been in place since 1968.

UPDATE: Rhode Island's been called for Clinton, BTW. Texas now is a very thin margin for Obama but I'm thinking the cities have yet to report in big numbers. I think Texas may follow Missouri, with a late surge for Obama. And then there's the caucus numbers to come.

UPDATE II: I think we're going to have to take a look at this whole primary system thing at the convention. Publius:

Good lord, what a mess. All of this is anecdotal, obviously, but the turnout in my precinct was huge. Crowds were overflowing from an elementary school auditorium out to the street. The site hosted two different precincts, so that in and of itself was messy.

The Obama/Clinton caucus planning simply didn't contemplate numbers this large. The preparations I read about seem designed for smaller more intimate affairs. This was essentially a cattle call - people were herded in to sign their name, list their preference, and then most left. It was not like the Iowa caucuses at all - and we are all at the mercy of the eventual signature counters.

Contrary to what I heard earlier (and what I think the actual rules are), individuals couldn't sign for absent voters (e.g., if spouse is at home). But, there was really nothing stopping you if you wanted to get in another line and sign them in. The poor people at the various tables were overwhelmed and the verification system was virtually non-existent.

Clinton had more people there than I thought. But Obama had a clear majority on the sign-in sheets I saw. Again, there's nothing scientific here. I'm just trying to give you a sense of what it was like. It's quite possibly the worst delegate-selection system ever.

The Inspiration of Perspiration.

This is going to be an incredible year.

I spent two dollars making this video hitting the state Republican Party on the yacht loophole, and now there's anecdotal evidence that we got the CRP to turn off their phones, two days before their annual convention!

I got vm and then was transferred to an extension that had no vm. But I'm sending them an email. They can't get rid of me that easily!

Great idea, dday. We need to band together all over the country to fight these corrupt, incompetent politicians who are giving away our tax dollars to their cronies.

Two bucks, and a few hours of online organizing. And the Republican Party in California turned off their phones.

And really I'm the least successful one out there. At Blue Indiana Thomas is launching an effort to get John McCain kicked off the state primary ballot because he didn't get the required amount of signatures:

Now, I'm originally from the 4th District, so curiosity led me to check out who had made it (and by how much) in my old stomping ground. To my surprise, I noticed that John McCain -- the presumptive front-runner for the GOP nomination -- was just a little short in a few districts, including my precious 4th, despite the fact that Attorney General Steve Carter had already turned in their petitions. I made a few phone calls, and one by one I found out that the McCain camp had got the job done across the state.

Except in the 4th District.

In the 4th District, they are short.

By my latest count, they turned in 496 signatures for the 4th, and the latest IED report for this morning shows them with only 491.

So this afternoon, I filed a challenge with the Secretary of State's office to keep John McCain off of the ballot. You can check it out here. (I'll have a .pdf version up when I get back to Bloomington this evening.)

And these two online efforts pale in comparison to this incredible offline organizing effort by black college students to resist voter disenfranchisement.

Early voting starts today in Texas. In Waller County, a primarily rural county about 60 miles outside Houston, the county made the decision to offer only one early voting location: at the County Courthouse in Hempstead, TX, the county seat.

Prairie View A&M students organized to protest the decision, because they felt it hindered their ability to vote. For background, Prairie View A&M is one of Texas' historically Black universities. It has a very different demographic feel than the rest of the county. There has been a long history of dispute over what the students feel is disenfranchisement. There was a lot of outrage in 2006, when students felt they were unfairly denied the right to vote when their registrations somehow did not get processed [...]

1000 students, along with an additional 1000 friends and supporters, are this morning walking the 7.3 miles between Prairie View and Hempstead in order to vote today. According to the piece I saw on the news (there's no video up, so I can't link to it), the students plan to all vote today. There are only 2 machines available at the courthouse for early voting, so they hope to tie them up all day and into the night.

Here's video:



Incredible. And you're going to see organizing efforts like this all the way through to November.

As Sara Robinson explains (and I can't recommend that link enough), we are poised for a historical moment. Michelle Obama expressed her pride about what's happening right now because it's something different and new. People are engaged in their politics again, and they're using all kinds of new organizing strategies to turn that engagement into positive action. I hope it doesn't end up hitting a brick wall. But there's a feeling of unstoppable force going on right now. When you step away from the candidate wars it's really impressive what's happening out there.

Early Voting Do-Overs

Short of Instant Runoff Voting, this is a reform well worth making:

Voters in New Jersey who cast absentee ballots for a candidate who has dropped out of the presidential race can vote again, a state judge has ruled. The ruling by the judge, Vincent J. Grasso of State Superior Court in Ocean County, dealt specifically with the Ocean County Clerk but has bearing statewide, according to the New Jersey attorney general’s office.

The ballot for Tuesday’s presidential primary was printed about a month ago. Because the field of candidates has narrowed considerably since then in both parties, the ballot has the names of six candidates who are no longer running. The candidates include four Democrats, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, and two Republicans, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee.

Under Judge Grasso’s ruling, if someone cast their absentee ballot for one of those six candidates, they are allowed to request a new ballot from their county clerk’s office and revote.

With early voting so convenient and popular, and the primaries moving at a breakneck pace, you're getting a lot of disenfranchisement and voter remorse. It's worth doing this, and if people are concerned about double voting, IRV will do the trick by giving voters a second and third choice.