in fact, my whole experience in new england has been amazingly different than down south, where you had to actively take the initiative to find out how and where to register. when i moved to NH almost 20 years ago, i went to the little town hall to register my car, and the lady handed me a voter registration card. simple as that. i nearly fell over!

it should be that easy everywhere, and the places where it is hard are the ones with a history of suppressing minority voters. we need all of us to take advantage of all this excitement and energy and get the many many problems wrt voting in this country corrected. now!

i’m starting with a campaign to revert to paper ballots and hand counting nationally. HANDS ON VOTING!!

spread the word.

Hawaii has plain vanilla “early voting:” all you have to do is go to the polling place. You don’t have to provide excuses about why you won’t be around on election day [a la Maryland] or request that a ballot be mailed to you. You just walk in, fill out a form, show your id. Clerk looks you up and gives you the option of paper or plastic, er paper ballot or electronic.

Even with a slight line, and a bunch of local elections, I was in & out in 30 minutes.

The Sec of State for WA predicts an 83% turnout for the state. Not sure about that, but it will be pretty high.

There are 2 shows on Amy Goodman’s http://www.democracynow.org/
about the rigging of the machines. The show on 10/28/08 is an interview with the author of the book, Loser Take All (forgot author’s name) which is about the methods used to steal elections. There is now a gimmick known as “the Middle Man” computer into which the votes are routed after the person votes. The flipping is done in the middle man.

Amy’s other show was 10/22/08.

Dif subject: At the Repub convention I could count only 5 persons of dark skin. I try to look for them in the clips of McCain/Palin speeches. Dark skinned persons are nearly non-existent. The early voting pictures show multitudes of black persons in the lines. So, if McCain turns out winning in those areas we will know it is Rove’s dirty work.

Compare the size of the crowds at Obama’s speeches with the consistently much smaller ones for McCain.

If Rove flips this election we voters should not just let it be as in 2000 and 2004. Those are our votes and it is we who should decide whether to fight to disclose the fraud.

http://www.gqrr.com/index.php?ID=2277

now, to my mind, the senate minority leader does not put out something like that if there is something to be ‘known’.

these suckers are scared poopless, folks. their party is literally falling apart. they’re looking at major defections at every turn; they’re hemorrhaging, for chrissake, and the prospects are horrifying.

this shrinking margins gambit is desperate and delusional. really, that’s about all they got anymore.

and take another look at those numbers. in fact, almost all the polls right now are projecting based on LIKELY voters, which means they have voted in the general election in the past one or two cycles. that leaves out ENORMOUS numbers of young voters, not to mention newly registered voters. add to that the fact that these polls can ONLY use landline phones, and you have yourself a serious setup for UNDERestimation of obama turnout.

in fact, as i’m talking to myself about all this, i’m revising my position. rove may be hoping he can insert some incredulity into the hearts of his base, but my suspicion is increasingly that his biggest hope is that, if they can make it look closer, at least some republicans will actually show up so this won’t be a totally disastrous and embarrassing rout.

rove just uttered a little belch the other day, and they jumped in exactly the height and velocity he indicated.

i don’t think they know anything or that rove knows anything; except rove knows if it’s within the margin of error going in, they can pull another 2000 kerfluffle no matter what the results tuesday night. so he’s getting the fox stooges to make the numbers say what would create that scenario.

i don’t think it’s because rove can steal the whole election; there’s just way too much scrutiny now, the media are even watching it (however nominally), and rove does not have either the power or thus the cover to hack into one county in OH and undo a tie.

the terrain is very different this time from before, and the best they can hope for is to delegitimize by claiming the polls are closer than is the case. but look again at all this scrutiny; the numbers don’t lie. they’ll be called on any such attempts come wednesday. they can do no more this time around than create anguish and bitterness in that pathetic lower tail of the bell curve that still thinks bush is a great prez and who will vote for mccain with their guns and their bibles.

but manipulating this crew has been what they’ve banked on all along, their ‘base’. well, that base will be getting even more confused as they keep losing their homes and livelihoods due to the bush guys.

besides, rove’s days are numbered. how many cases is he now implicated in? three? four? he’ll be forced to testify in the next year or so and his cred status will take another nose dive.

take heart, dude; times they are a changin’

well, guess what happened in the interim? rove happened to mention that 9 points would be an uphill battle for mccain, but if he could close in as tight as a 3 point spread, he just might pull it off.

the organ grinder and his monkey.

there is a new problem with this fox scenario, though. the rest of the media is getting more bold about calling them out on it, as are the political players, especially from the obama camp. our guys will be called upon to respond to allegations on 11/5, and they’ll be ready (one hopes).

and even if fox and friends aren’t successful in planting the stolen election seed enough for 2000 redux, it will serve to delegitimize obama’s win. at least, that’s rove’s prayer.

i’m still not as worried as perhaps i might need to be, for this reason. what i’ve been watching happen with the republicans over the past several weeks – most particularly since palin – is this sort of headlong dive into chaos and self-destruction. fascinating thing, really; they’re splintered, in-fighting, and desperate. no leadership at all, no one to keep them in line and on message, and so they’re bailing out, attacking each other, and running for cover. really, truly fascinating.

most importantly, just about every single strategy they’ve attempted has not only failed, and failed spectacularly (e.g., palin, suspended campaign, negativity, voter suppression), but all too often it’s backfired in their faces.

this is the fate of those who have had power for too long, having grabbed it for all the wrong reasons and kept it through entitlement and bullying. the tables have turned and they don’t have a clue what to cling to because none of their actions were ever based on principle in the first place.

hence fox massaging the numbers to fit rove the puppet maestro’s ‘wisdom.’ fox isn’t thinking about the agenda; that’s rove’s job. they’re just doing what they’ve always done.

it just isn’t working anymore.