In Virginia this weekend there are leaflets being distributed informing voters that Republicans should vote on Tuesday while Democrats and Independents should wait until Wednesday. In other states miscalibrated voting machines have resulted in voters attempting to vote for Obama actually voting for McCain. Newly registered voters are are having their right to vote challenged throughout the US.

Gee, what a shock. Florida has the most complaints to CNN.

[ 03 November 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

The reason the campaign gave was that their internals showed the race as a lot closer then every other poll out there so they were going for it.

The general cynical explination is that that it is a desperate move based on the hope that the 'racial' factor can be played there for a win and/or it's just another showing of a rather incompetent campaign.

So in terms of the potential for shennanigins Pennsylvania I believe also does not have early voting. Therefore it there's no back-up comparison to be made on whatever happens on voting day if say the end results are widely different from the polling. I'm pretty sure they're also mostly on the 'machines' as well.

So lets say that somehow McCain does win it which would be shocking in reference to the poll numbers, the campaign can say, well I guess that final push and the 'coal' factor swung the vote at the final hour. Oh well thems the breaks Obama.

If McCain wins that state, plus Florida and Ohio and couple of the other toss-ups float his way he has a good shot at squeaking through.

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Originally posted by ElizaQ:
The Repubs end strategy of seriously going after this state is strategically down right weird

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Very true. There are much closer states that McCain needs to win to win overall. He can win without Pennsylvania, but he cannot win without Florida. I cannot come up with any realistic victory scenario for McCain that does not include Florida.

McCain can conceivably win without Ohio, but it would require him to win all the other Bush states and pick up New Hampshire. That scenario requires him to overcome double-digit Obama leads in New Hampshire, Iowa and New Mexico. Ain't gonna happen.

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Obamas polling numbers there have been pretty solid there, in the double digit range yet they're been pouring money into racial whistle blowing ads, blanketing it with anti-every smear propraganda that they've used this election and in the last couple of days added a new one that 'Obama's plan on coal will bankrupt' the states coal industry.

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The talking heads on CNN are saying that the tracking polls suggest those ads are having some impact in Western Pennsylvania, but it's probably too little, too late. Could tip the balance in Ohio, though.

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Originally posted by ghoris

I think Ohio is much more likely to be the source of election-night shenanigans. There were tons of irregularities in 2004, and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (the "Katherine Harris" of 2004) basically did everything he could to manipulate the rules to throw the state to Bush. There were huge lineups in Democratic precincts in Cuyahoga county and all sorts of other dirty tricks on election night. The Republicans had a much better ground game than the Democrats in 2004 in Ohio and I would imagine this is one state where the GOP machine will be a match for Obama's GOTV operation.[/QB]

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Yeah Ohio and Florida is just a given in the shennagins scenario. Even with diebold issues taken out of the equation there's already some pretty nasty stuff going on there in terms of voter suppression tactics and a concerted effort to disqualify votes on the most minor points. I lost track of the legal back and forth between the electoral commission and the RNC that's been happening for months.

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It's November 5 and the nation is in shock. Media blame it on the "Bradley effect": Americans supposedly turned into Klansmen inside the voting booth, and Barack Obama turned up with 6 million votes less than calculated from the exit polls. Florida came in for McCain and so did Indiana. Colorado, despite the Democrats' Rocky Mountain high after the Denver convention, stayed surprisingly Red. New Mexico, a state where Anglos are a minority, went McCain by 300 votes, as did Virginia.

That's the nightmare. Here's the cold reality. . .

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Yes Florida and Ohio are absolute must wins, but for McCain to have any chance of winning, it is with some kind of wave- which would carry FL and OH.

But to win McCain also has to take some of the swing states. Michigan is out. Conceded long ago. So however far behind they are in PA, they need to catch up.

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Here's an ugly little secret about American democracy: We don't count all the votes. In 2004, based on the data from the US Elections Assistance Commission, 3,006,080 votes were not counted: "spoiled," unreadable and blank ballots; "provisional" ballots rejected; mail-in ballots disqualified.

This Tuesday, it will be worse. Much worse.

That's what I found while traveling the nation over the last year for BBC Television and Rolling Stone Magazine, working with voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This we guarantee: there will be far more votes disappeared by Tuesday night than the three million lost in 2004. A six-million vote swipe, quite likely, shifts 4 percent of the ballots, within the margin of error of the tightest polls.

Begin with this harsh statistic: since the last election, more than ten million voters have been purged from the nation's vote registries. And that's just the start of the steal.

If the noncount were random, it wouldn't matter. But it's not random. A US Civil Rights Commission analysis shows that the chance a black voter's ballot will "spoil" or be blank is 900 percent higher than a white voter's.

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Originally posted by remind:
From fidel's link:

And I was just watching Global YVR and they were covering a story regarding voters lists being given to entirely wrong precincts and voters not being able to vote atall until the correct precinct lists were "found".

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In Virginia which is a major player this election there were reports of people lining up for several hours before the opening, only to have the machines not working when they got in. At one precinct only one machine actually worked. Luckily they have a paper ballot back up in that state.

[ 04 November 2008: Message edited by: ElizaQ ]

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Judge Orders Virginia Officials to Keep Late Ballots

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

A federal judge has ordered election officials in Virginia to preserve late-arriving absentee ballots that Republican John McCain's campaign claims should be counted.

The McCain campaign says in a lawsuit that absentee ballots weren't mailed on time to many military members serving overseas. The complaint asks the court to order the state to count absentee ballots from overseas troops postmarked by Tuesday and received by Nov. 14.

The deadline for ballots to be received is 7 p.m. on Election Day.

U.S. District Judge Richard Williams said Tuesday that he will hear the lawsuit on Nov. 10. He ordered election officials to keep the late-arriving ballots until then.

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As someone mentioned earlier, I seriously doubt whether Walmart workers are getting paid for the time off they have to take to vote. That's money out of their pocket, and they can least afford it.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Line ups really are a poll tax if you are losing a day's wages, or your job, in order to stand in line for hours on end.

As someone mentioned earlier, I seriously doubt whether Walmart workers are getting paid for the time off they have to take to vote. That's money out of their pocket, and they can least afford it.

People with middle-class office jobs just have to take a vacation day or whatever. Doesn't cost them a thing.

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