- The library: a recession sanctuary?
- Nutter should get credit where credit's due
- Thursday Counter-Protest at "We Stand with Israel" Rally
- This Saturday: hearing of Mayor's Task force on Ethics
- Why do we fund this?
- ABC debuts "Homeland Security USA"
- Library Closings: They Have Never Really Been About The Budget Crisis
- DA's Job to Prosecute Environmental Crime
- Is the number of branch libraries in Philly significantly out of line with cities of comparable size?
- Nutter Doesn't Have to Follow the Law says Seventy
Do It!
Submitted by Dan U-A on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 6:33am.
Vote for Barack, or these children will cry.
And, you can STILL find a place to volunteer:
Hell, if you have only a few minutes tonight, go buy some cookies, and walk to a polling place with a long line, and hand them out.
I will be checking in the middle of the day when I come home to vote. Consider this an open thread for what you see today.
Let's do it.
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We're the Swing State to beat
I always said taht the birthplace of democracy was no place to try to steal an election. Thankfully everything else has transpired and now we will probably win by 5-6 pts (national). Shit!
Anyone want to start a Philly turnout pool? Winner get free cheeseburgers, loser gets to drive a Daylin Leach soundtruck through Bryn Mawr with a scratchy rap about the Supreme Court.
All joking aside, I consider myself utterly honored to have worked in politics during this year. I feel lucky to have been here this year, at this place, at this time. It won't be like this again for a long long time, I don't think. (At least until January.)
Republican Turnout Machine!
So far, all six of the Republicans in my division have voted.
Should we be worried?
what about voting conditions in various parts o' the city?
In Germantown, it was quiet. No line at all - although reports that there was a long line earlier in the morning (I voted around 10:00).
I am working in North
I am working in North Philly. I got there at 630AM, and there was a line of 30 or 40 people. Turnout is very strong.
I had to have a picture of
I had to have a picture of this:
I have never felt better about a vote.
Great picture
I took a few seconds for extra reflection before pushing the "vote" button. I agree - although I still have reservations about Obama's politics, voting for him was incredibly significant.
info on the Philly bruhaha getting attention in rightwing press?
Drudge and the like are reporting that Republican poll workers were "thrown out" of polling stations, illegally, due to party status.
Chicago will be running America!
The Keystone State...building a bridge to somewhere!
For Studs Terkel: one seiu organizer spotted a volunteer sign-up sheet at one of our nursing homes for volunteers to 'help Bush pack his shit and get the hell out of there.'...across the world, people have organized parties...and Palin warns that the left is taking over. You bet your boots, missy!
from CBS news:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/04/cbsnews_investigates/main45695...
- In Pennsylvania, Bethlehem, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have reported a number of problems with voting machine malfunctions in, as well as major breakdowns at three precincts in Allegheny County.
CBS Newshas confirmed with state officials that there have been machine malfunctions throughout the state.
- There have been reports of a few precincts in Philadelphia running out of paper ballots. People have been given provisional ballots in these cases. (If 50 percent or fewer of the voting machines are working, polling officials must provide paper ballots to voters, according to a recent ruling by a judge.) State guidelines also dictate that these provisional ballots must be marked “emergency,” so they will be counted with the rest of the ballots today.
- The McCain/Palin campaign has sent out an email stating that Republican election board workers in at least six precincts in Philadelphia have been tossed by the Democrat judge of elections. The reason provided was that they are the “minority party.” They are seeking an injunction in court today for the improper removal of “credentialed” poll workers.
Voting
* Big lines at GJC. When Ilana + I got there to vote, the line went back practically from the playground to McCallum St. We voted after ~ 1 hr.
* Major BS on the Drudge sludge. Lynn Abraham was quite explicit in asking people to report any problems which they had voting. Perhaps that's why the Rethugs are complaining: b/c they *can't* suppress the vote.
Regime change begins at home!
-Z
At 2:30 PM 645 of about 963 have voted
I have a very high turnout division. we did over 85% four years ago (and slightly higher if you discount 10% for people who moved or died). But if I recall correctly we are running at a little higher rate than four years ago.
There was a long line with an hour and a half wait at 7:00 and about a 40 minute wait at 10:00. Now there is just a five minute wait with a steady stream of voters.
I suspect that, like 2004, there will be no crush at the end but that we will hit the stream will get slightly heavier and we will end up with a bit over 200 voters.
It was so heavy this morning that we are running far behind in doing our strike list. But when we catch up it looks like we will only be hunting for ten holdouts or so.
I'm working with the Obama id list as well as my own knowlege of the division. They done a good job IDing voters here. But so far they probably missed about 30 people who have showed up who I'm sure are voting for Obama. And I have a list in my head of a few people I'll call if they are not here by 6 who are not on the Obama list. That shows you that a combination of volunteer energy and a little experience in the division strengthens our hand.
But, at least in my division and I suspect in most, turnout is mostly about enthusiasm for Obama and / or relief to be rid of Bush! Field helps but in a presidential race it is secondary.
If, however, we could put half this field effort into, say, building pressure for health care reform our capacity for political change would go up enormously.
Visited every poll in the 36th ward
South Philly, Broad to the S-kill, Washington to Snyder, trouble-shooting, on foot by the way.
By 9:00 turnout was at 33% everywhere we went.
By 1:00 we started hitting precincts that were at 50%.
This is a ward that turned out 58% in 2004, a good year.
Very few problems reported.
Seriously awesome Indonesian food on Snyder Ave.
All signs very, very good.
Back to the doors/polls!
OBAMA DO NOT CONCEDE , open letter
OBAMA DO NOT CONCEDE: Letter Signed By Gore Vidal & Others To Sen. Obama & Democratic Leadership
http://phillyimc.org/en/node/77043
Folks seen this yet?
Faithfully fighting the last war for 50 years
That's Gore Vidal for you.
CNN: Scattered problems reported in historic U.S. vote
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/voting.problems/?imw=Y&iref=m...
(CNN) -- Damp ballots caused problems in rainy weather Tuesday in Virginia and North Carolina, while other states reported minor glitches with long lines and mechanical breakdowns during the historic U.S. election..........
Gotta say, this kind of stuff on Drudge just plain hurts
Mind-numbingly stupid. Guys in "Black Panther" garb, holding a nightstick, standing outside a polling place. An actual video, and no, I'm not a right-wing troll. How can people be so stupid as to lend any credence to the notion that if Obama wins, his win would be tainted by this kind of garbage?
This couldn't be better for Repubs if they set it up themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neGbKHyGuHU
Waroeng Surabaya on Hicks St.?
That place is amazing. The shizzle, fer shizzle. Sooooo good.
Drat. Inserted in the wrong spot to Sam's comments on canvassing the 36th ward.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I was # 667 in my ward
at 12:30 p.m. or so.
With five minutes to go we have had 798 voters
Democrat and Republican comittee people are discussing lowering the voting age so that the two kids that just came in can vote and bring us to 800.
upadate 8:15--Obama received 89.78% of the vote.
My world view is forever changed
Phillies win the World Series. African American as president. Astounding.
One complaint
well two maybe but:
The County elections people didn't manage to handle all the new registrations. I had a good number of people showing up with their brand-new registration card, all official and with the correct polling place on it, who weren't on the rolls and had to vote provisionally. That's a bummer for a first-time vote, in an election like this.
Also, City Committee lawyer dudes can be jerks. But they were just mad because they were totally not running the show yesterday.
seconded
At the polling place I worked, we had the same problem. There were at least 20+ people who had to fill out provisional ballots because although they had registered, they did not appear in the book.
There was even a couple cases where the voters appeared on the little 2x3 inch pieces of paper (no idea what those things are called) but were not listed in the book.
third-ed
Admission tickets is what they were called by my judges.
Additionally, I would call up the Obama campaign, who had the actual voter file in hand. And they would say, oh yeah, so and so, they are registered there. But, they weren't in the book, and so had to vote provisionally.
How we dealt with it
There were supplementary pages to the registration books at each polling place. Some of the late registrants were there.
Unfortunately my judge of election couldn't find the damn pages. So i just called down to a friend in the Commissioner's office and asked them to check their computers. If the name showed up,we just let the person vote without a provision ballot.
Of course, you shouldn't really have to have a friend of a friend of a friend to vote easily. At some point, we just need to do check ins at the polling places with computers tied to the voter files.
Once people were trained to use the computers, that would speed up voting considerable. The long lines were not because people were taking a long time to vote. That happens when there is long ballot. But with a short ballot, voting was fast. The check in procedure is abysmally slow. I've never understood why they have to find a 3x5 card and ask people to sign the book. If you could just do a quick computer lookup, it would go much faster.
Yeah
People with cards were somehow not in the supplemental pages--my judge of elections had been down the day before to get the printouts. I don't know if pages were missing, or just had not been input.
What are the index cards for? I have always wondered.
Computers are soooo last year...
Speaking of technology, I was helping out with the Obama campaign and my principal responsibility was to monitor the Obama voter ID list for my division and keep track of which voters had voted. Well, the system the Obama campaign put in place quickly broke down as the automated call center was apparently not robust enough to handle all the calls it was getting.
Frustrated and intrigued by the voice message that made reference to a website "watchforobama.com", I pulled out my iPhone and looked up the site.
To make a long story short, I was soon entering the Obama voter ID #s in real time into their website from my phone. A voter would walk in, I'd get their name, find their ID# and immediately punch it into my phone. For my division, the Obama campaign (if they were even tracking this stuff) should have known a voter had voted long before that voter had even had a chance to sign the voter book, and long before they cast their ballot.
The whole experience really made it clear to me that while the Obama campaign made huge strides in applying technology to GOTV operations, they've really only scratched the surface in what can be done.