Internal Monologue

Tuesday isn't only Election Day, in my neighborhood it's also the garbage/recycling pickup day. I hear the truck coming, so TIME TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH!

Here's a picture of my ballot. The Obama/Biden line is filled in.

It is morning here on the West Coast, and the polls are open across the country in those states that still have actual physical polling places. There isn't much to report yet. The next milestone will be the last pre-election polls coming out in about an hour or so. A quick check of the weather: popular wisdom says that bad weather favors Republicans, as it reduces voter turnout. It looks like the weather is in the tank for Obama today. There are very few major storm systems affecting the U.S. today. Western Colorado seems to be the one exception. They will get a foot or more of mountain snow in places, and near-blizzard conditions at times. The Pacific Northwest will be wet today, but nothing out of the ordinary for November. The first major mountain snow event of the year will bring up to a foot of snow in parts of the Cascades of Oregon and Washington. It's looking like a beautiful day coast-to-coast everywhere else, though.

Cancel what I said yesterday about not having up-to-the-minute election coverage. By special arrangement, Grishnash will be guest blogging here at Internal Monologue with election play-by-play throughout the day. Grishnash is a frequent commenter and contributor to Internal Monologue , and his grasp of the math involved is excellent. He has an extensive spreadsheet that tracks electoral votes, organized by poll-closing times, and will be able to tell us what results mean as far as each candidate's remaining chances in the electoral college. We are most fortunate to have Grishnash providing this kind of coverage. I know it will be superior to what's available from the talking heads on the TV news stations. Whatever Grishnash's prognostications and analysis, go out and vote today if you haven't already.

Well, right about now this is all that needs to be said: HT: Mad Latinist via email. This has been around already, but is now more relevant than ever. Get out and vote, phone bank, drive people to polls, provide food and entertainment for people in line, whatever you can. Basically, Polls have Obama ahead by 6-7 percent nationally, just like he has been for a few weeks now. The electoral college looks favorable to him as well. But a lot of people haven't voted yet, so don't anyone dare let up or not vote. I'm not going to obsessively update Internal Monologue all day with all the election data, because other sites will do that far better than I could.

At the bottom edge of this picutre I posted earlier you can see a little silver bell, the kind that a counter at a store might have so you can get the attention of a clerk in the back room. When you contact a voter who says they are going to vote for Obama, you ring the bell. The people in the room give a cheer for you. Or someone does: the bells get rung often enough that not everyone cheers for every ring. If the person you talk to mentions that they have other family or friends who are voting for Obama as well, you ring it once for each person. I sort of thought they should have whoopee cusions for when you got a McCain supporter. (I got a few during my calls). But maybe that would be too much of a downer. I had never seen this bell-ringing tradition before, but I rarely phone bank. Is this a new innovation of the Obama campaign, or is it done alot? Do all Obama phone banking areas do this, or was it unique to this office? All the bells were identical, which suggests that they we

Here's where I am.