Politics is the art of controlling your environment. That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that "it doesn't matter who's President" has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World — or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property — or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons — or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.
— Hunter S. Thompson, from Hey Rube, 2004

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Voter suppression efforts have been all over the news, and rightfully so.

However, today is Election Day in the U.S., and in the end that means voters may be put in the position where they have to be strong advocates for themselves. Just be aware that if you live in a swing state, your chances of witnessing or being a victim of voter suppression at the polls increases exponentially.

So, here are a couple of helpful links should you run into static at the polls.

Before you go to the polls, make sure you're prepared. MSNBC has dedicated a Web page to making sure your vote counts. To bullet point the highlights:

• Make sure you know where your polling place is
  
• Vote early in the day if you can
  
• Bring ID that shows your correct name and address, especially if you're a first-time voter or recently moved (just in case)
  
• Don't give anyone an excuse to bar you from the polling place — so lay off partisan clothing and/or buttons
  
• Don't use a provisional ballot unless you absolutely have to
  

Pam's House Blend has a more extensive prep list, but here's the best one:

Bring a camera, whether it's the camera in your cell phone, or the little point-and-shoot you keep in the drawer at home. This could be especially important if you're one of the unlucky voters who are stuck with electronic voting. If your vote is not properly recorded, use your cell to take pictures so you will have a record or what happened. In addition, you can use that camera to make a record of any voter suppression effort you may witness.

Both You Tube and Video the Vote is asking citizen journalists (that means you) to use those cameras to record any voter suppression efforts you may witness or may happen to you. You can upload pictures and/or video to either the Video the Vote page, or You Tube's Video Your Vote page.

In addition, there are two Wikis dedicated to voters rights and what to do if you find yourself on the verge of disenfranchisement:

• The Election Protection Wiki
  
• Voter Suppression Wiki
  

Both the Obama and McCain campaigns have "incident report" Web pages and emergency phone numbers for voters in distress:

• Obama/Biden Campaign Incident Report: Report a Problem with Voting page; or call 1-877-US-4-OBAMA (1-877-874-6226)
  
• McCain/Palin Campaign Honest and Open Election Page: Report a Problem with Voting page; or call 1-866-976-VOTE
  

Twitter will be networking voters nationwide, with an eye to finding emerging patterns of voter suppressions efforts. Go to the Twitter Voter Report for more information.

Election Protection will also be collecting incident reports. You can report voting problems online, or you can call 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683). You can also download a flyer that will give you a helpful list if Web sites and phone numbers here (Warning! PDF!).

Voters Unite is keeping a running log of election problems here, and are encouraging people to report any election problems they experience or witness here.


Other phone numbers to register a voting rights violation:

• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Hotline: 1-877-523-2792
  
• CNN Voter Hotline: 1-877-GOCNN-08 (1-877-462-6608)
  
• The Velvet Revolution voter fraud tip line: 1-888-VOTE TIP
  

And that's all folks! Good hunting. And let's be careful out there.

For the first time in 40 years, Dixville Notch, New Hampshire has gone for the Democratic Presidential candidate.

Final tally:

Barack Obama: 15 votes
John McCain: 6 votes

Source for the above information

For you non-U.S. people who've never watched The West Wing, Dixville Notch, New Hampshire is the first place in the U.S. to vote. The town (electoral roll: 21, which means 100% voter turnout this year) opens the polls at midnight and less than 20 minutes later voting is done.

For more about Dixville Notch's history for first-in-the-nation voting, go here.


Hart's Location (electoral roll: 29, also 100% voter turnout this year) has announced its results.

Final tally:

Barack Obama: 17 votes
John McCain: 10 votes
Ron Paul: 2 votes

Source for the above information.

For more information about Hart's Location, go here.


Warning: Dixville Notch's results and Hart's Location's results are not necessarily indicative of New Hampshire, let alone the whole U.S.

But still: YES WE CAN!

For people looking for information about making sure your vote is safe when you go to the polls, check out my earlier post here.

The networks say they may call the election before voting is complete.

Gah! No! No! NO!

Listen to me (and Nate Silver over at FiveThrirtyEight):

Pay no attention to the networks or the exit polls!

If the networks once again try to play guessing games with the election outcome (just like they did 8 years ago), that could depress voter turnout in the Western and Pacific states, which could ultimately affect not just the presidential outcome, but also the downticket races for House and Senate.

Ignore the networks, assume the exit polling is in error (Nate Silver outlines why exit polls are usually wrong), and make sure you vote even if every network screams that your guy/party won it.

In addition, be aware that as long as you get in line to vote before the polls close, they cannot prevent you from voting. It make take you 2 to 3 hours after the polls close to get to the head of the line, but they can't stop you from voting. It doesn't matter if you get in line an hour before the polls close or 5 minutes before they close. As long as you are in line before the polls close, you have the right to cast a ballot.

If you want further information about how to make sure your vote counts (and that your trip to the polls isn't in vain), visit this round-up I posted shortly after midnight.

Wish me luck, everyone. I'll be manning the phones to GOTV for Obama/Biden and chasing the closing polls across the country all evening.

Yes We Can!

Jimmy Smits who played the fictional senator and presidential candidate Matthew Santos with the very real Sen. Barack Obama in 2005.
— Photo taken fromThe (U.K.) Guardian

The above photo is from a fun little story from The Guardian about last two seasons of The West Wing and its coincidental resemblance to Sen. Barack Obama's run for the presidency. (Read the whole thing.)

Except the "coincidence" may not be as coincidental as you think. When TWW writers were laying out the storyline for Santos's campaign, they did what they always do: They called on a real-life person working in politics to get some pointers and to consult on the storyline.

The consultant they called in? David Axelrod. Yes, that David Axelrod, Sen. Obama's long-time top political adviser and the guy who ran Sen. Obama's 2004 run for the Senate and his current run for president.

Here's a little snippet:

In the TV show, Santos begins as the rank outsider up against a national figure famous for standing at the side of a popular Democratic president. There are doubts about Santos's inexperience, having served just a few years in Congress, and about his ability to persuade voters to back an ethnic minority candidate - even as his own ethnic group harbour suspicions that he might not identify with them sufficiently.

But the soaring power of his rhetoric, his declaration that the old divisions belong in the past and his sheer magnetism, ensure that he comes from behind in a fiercely close primary campaign and draws level with his once all-commanding opponent. Every aspect of that storyline has come true for Barack Obama. Axelrod, now chief strategist for the Obama campaign, recently joked in an email to Attie: "We're living your scripts!"

What's more, the West Wing had the Republicans choose between a Christian preacher - a pre-echo of Mike Huckabee - and an older, maverick senator from the American west whose liberal positions on some issues had earned the distrust of the party's conservative base: a dead ringer for John McCain.

In the West Wing, the McCain figure emerges comfortably as the party's choice. Apparently the character was not based on the current Republican frontrunner, but was simply a function of the casting of Alan Alda.

Read the rest here.

I've only started S5 of The West Wing (thanks to judicious lending by kurukami), so I can't speak to the similarities.

So for you, a little video where the fictional Santos announces his candidacy for president. The theme of his announcement? Hope. And if the school behind Jimmy Smits looks kind of familiar, it should.

Well, I'm off to GOTV by annoying my fellow Americans nationwide tonight. I will resuming spamming the lot of you after a get home from the phonebank.

Yes We Can!

It's been called for Obama!

Now the real work begins...

Awwww. There are African-American news people and politicians on the verge of tears they're so happy. ♥

Damn it...I'm starting to cry again.

President-elect Obama. Goddamn. I'm crying again.