NaBloPoMo Meets Election Day

I've been so antsy the last day or so, I can barely concentrate on other things unless it's to escape into fiction or a little stress eating.

I voted early this year because I could, because I felt like I should *because* I could.



I voted on a sunny fall day in the early afternoon at my closest early voting polling place, which happened to be the offices of county board of elections. The place was hopping with workers and voters of all colors & ages. A short line in front of me to get in the door, I only waited five or ten minutes to reach a check-in station. I looked around, and took a deep breath, finding myself nearly overcome with emotion, feeling "These are my people," my city, my fellow citizens. Poll workers cheered every time a first-time voter finally slid their optical paper ballot into the machine.

So duty accomplished. I even sorted out all the state and local races. Lots to consider this year.

But I miss the energy of visiting the polls on the day itself. I miss not walking around, canvassing to GOTV the way I did four years ago. I'm not so much into walking or standing these days. Waddling slowly is more my speed. So I feel guilty for not doing more. I'm so grateful that the people who can do more are doing it. I know many friends who are (and have been!) up to their ears in activism or community service. All I feel I can do now is send positive energy and encouragement out into the universe and all my fellow voters and Obama-supporters.









Here are some sites to help track and predict the results of the election:

FiveThirtyEight specializes in electoral projections. Lots of great graphs and maps and analysis.

MyDD (My Direct Democracy) has a poll watcher graphic tracking electoral votes for Obama. I like this one partly because the size of each state is proportionate to the number of EVs is has. It's even in grid format, one square per EV.

The Swing State Project has a great graphic to help track poll closing times for November 4th, 2008. Note that all times are listed in EST, not necessarily local time.

FireDogLake has a great post compiling loads of election day information, a veritable resource guide. Includes links to find your polling place, polling hours, voters rights links, weather reports, places to report your voting experience, places to report voting suppression or irregularities, and more.

The DailyKOS is always good for pre-, present-, and post- election discussion and analysis.

The DailyKOS also has a cool Electoral Scoreboard.
You can toggle the tags to see results in presidential, senate, house and governor races. You can also look at results/distribution from the previous 8 years of elections.

A couple other sites for progressive election-watching:
Booman Tribute

Crooks and Liars

My Direct Democracy

Huffington Post (now with a big tracking graphic)

As always, the BagNewsNotes has lots of discussion about visuals.


Happy Election Day! May it all go as smoothly as possible! No vote stealing allowed.