The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:

-- After a contentious couple of hours -- during which Karl Rove attempted to get Fox News to rescind its call of Ohio and the subsequent re-election of President Obama -- Mitt Romney conceded just before midnight, Central time. The electoral college turned almost exactly as I projected two weeks ago. The only exception would be Florida, which is leaning to Obama.

-- In the US Senate: Chris Murphy, (CT), Sherrod Brown (OH), Joe Donnelly (IN), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Claire McCaskill (MO), Angus King (ME), Tim Kaine (VA), Tammy Baldwin (WI), and Martin Heinrich (NM) represent a significant progressive upgrade, and an upper chamber shaping up as 53-47 if Jon Tester in MT hangs on, a net gain of two for the Blue team.

As The Great Orange Satan summarized, over the past two election cycles...

7:32 PM PT: Teabaggers have now cost Republicans Senate seats in Missouri, Indiana, Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada.

Those five seats would've given the GOP the majority.

-- In the US House: Tammy Duckworth (IL), Alan Grayson (FL), Beto O'Rourke (TX-16), Pete Gallego (TX-23), and maybe even the fellow running against Michele Bachmann -- we'll see in the morning -- clean up some trash in the Congress. Update: Nope, but just barely.

-- Wendy Davis prevails in her state Senate race. In the Texas House, Joe Moody (HD-78), Mary Ann Perez (HD-144), Phillip Cortez (HD-117), and Abel Herrero (HD-34) represent Democratic flips.

The Bad:

-- The winning margin in statewide Texas races is still in the neighborhood of 55-41, with Romney and Ted Cruz performing slightly over than that and the Republican statewide judicials slightly under.

-- Ann Johnson came up well short of Sarah Davis in HD-134, 55-45.

The Ugly:

-- Randy Weber over Nick Lampson in CD-14, Steve Stockman over Max Martin in CD-36.

I'll have more tomorrow.

These toons close at 7 p.m. this evening

Obama 303, Romney 235 and last-minute details

-- The only changes from October 23 are giving the two remaining tossups, CO and NH, to the President. Here's what the map will look like later on this evening. This site has it the same. So does this one. Or you can go with Dick Morris' version. If you're on LSD.

-- Senate prognostications are gelling around a pickup of one to three seats for Democrats. Nobody is predicting the House changes hands. Republicans will feel justified in continuing obstruction if the President doesn't win the nationwide popular vote. They will obstruct anyway, naturally.

-- Outside of Harris County, the two Congressional races most worth following are Nick Lampson's and Pete Gallego's. I never mentioned them before because I focused on the county and statewides here, but if there's a small blue wave as in '08, they will be carried into office. Hope that happens; they'll both be outstanding Congressmen as compared with their counterparts.

Here again -- if anyone still needs some progressive bipartisan suggestions -- are the Brainy Endorsements, Part I for federal and statewide races, and Part II for the statehouse and the courthouse. Thanks to Neil Aquino at Texas Liberal for linking to them frequently as well. Update: Charles has a good aggregation of late breaking local news to note, none of which is duplicated here.

Speaking of Harris County... the news gets better. I am not attributing this source for confidentiality, but am excerpting his e-mail.

The numbers (from Harris County VAN data, of EV and mail ballots)  look quite good -- especially if our people voted Straight-D or at least went through the ballot and if VAN correctly scored people as Democrat vs. Republican.  The "hard" and "soft" Democrats accounted for 43.9%, the "hard" and "soft" Republicans accounted for 30.6%, and the "non-partisans" accounted for 25.5% of the early voting/mail-in ballots.  The Democrats outvoted the Republicans by nearly 100,000 and there are not enough Republican voters left in Harris County who haven't voted (~70,000) to make up the difference.

And if this news doesn't soothe you, then -- as the therapist suggested here -- practice your breathing exercises, draw a hot bath, have a Xanax and a glass of wine, and read Nate Silver again. Reality has a pronounced liberal bias.

-- I would like to see Jill Stein get to 3% in Texas and 5% nationally. That last number will qualify the GP's presidential nominee for federal matching funds in 2016, an important and historical milestone. Five percent for any statewide Green earns the party ballot access again in two years, and I think that's assured.

-- Also can't wait to see what effect Libertarians have on a few races locally, in Texas, and across the country. When the GOP melts down after their losses hit them, it could spell the end of the Republican Party as anything except a fringe far-right movement, and the Libertarians stand to benefit the most. Oh well, I suppose some moderate Republicans might become Democrats, too. A consolidation of conservative corporatists in the mushy middle.

The Texas iteration of Republicanism might be poised to exert itself nationally, given its strength here. Lone Star conservatives are under the impression they are doing everything right, and could decide to try to take over. That's a delicious recipe for electoral disaster, as the TeaBaggers -- from Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell in 2010 to Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin in 2012 -- have repeatedly demonstrated. Hope that happens, too.

-- Nick Anderson and Jeff Greenfield speak for me: "Hey undecided voters, how about you just sit this one out":

It’s a plea directed to those of you who are still uncertain about which way to vote. And it’s as simple as it is heartfelt: Stay home.

[...]

The overwhelmingly likely reason (you're still undecided) is this: You have the reasoning power of a baked potato.

OK, I grant that you may be of the small minority of concerned citizens who are genuinely torn and who have not yet evaluated the relative worth of health care reform notions, the vagaries of the tax proposals or the respective approaches to the increasing power of the renminbi.

But I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it.

The odds are you’ve just been too busy obsessing about the misfortunes of the Kardashians, or the quality of your ringtone, to spend any time thinking about who might be the better president.

Well, that’s your right. Unlike the Australians, we don’t compel people to vote, and it would likely be a First Amendment violation if we tried. A refusal to vote can be seen as a statement that the electoral system is rigged, meaningless or so thoroughly corrupt as to deserve contempt. (“I never vote,” one citizen said long ago. “It only encourages them.”)

Kris G, I'm looking at you.

Men and women in my lifetime have died fighting for the right to vote: people like James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered while registering black voters in Mississippi in 1964, and Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 during the Selma march for voting rights. In these days of early voting, we’ve seen people waiting in line for hours to exercise the franchise. Countless others, who have never had to fight for it, have spent real time either trying to decide how to cast their vote or donating their time to persuading others.

So if you’re one of those folks who have stayed utterly disengaged through all of this, do the honorable thing: Honor those for whom the vote really matters by staying home.

You’ll be doing yourself—and the country—a favor.

No shit.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance marks the end of another long election season with a reminder to cast your ballot tomorrow -- or to call your neighbor and remind them to do so -- as it brings you this week's roundup of the best of the left of Texas from last week.

Off the Kuff asks whether Texas Latinos are like Latinos elsewhere ... or not.

Harris County is a swing county based on the numbers from the experts, and whomever can get those who haven't voted early to the polls on Tuesday will likely eke out a very close win... if PDiddie at Brains and Eggs (and the two experts) can be believed.  

BossKitty at TruthHugger could not resist the significance of eye-opening events reinforcing climate change discussions along the east coast of the United States: URGENT: Impending Health Crisis After Sandy. And maybe the Tea-Publican mantra about "entitlements" can be redefined now: “Evil” Entitlements Soar As Hurricane Sandy Redraws America’s Map.  

WCNews at Eye on Williamson says the problem with education is not how we finance it, it's poverty, in Poverty and Public Education.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why it is that when mail-in ballots are so heavy, voters must be reassured that they will be delivered regardless of postage.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote that Texas House District 134 Republican incumbent Sarah Davis is a Tea Party extremist. Neil sure hopes that Ms. Davis will lose this Tuesday to Democrat Ann Johnson.

Day-before developments

-- Townhall.com and Drudge riled up the local True the Vote pasty thugs with this.

Friday afternoon at an early polling place located at 6719 W. Montgomery Road in Houston, NAACP members were seen advocating for President Barack Obama according to volunteer poll watchers on location at the time.

According to Eve Rockford, a poll watcher trained by voter integrity group True the Vote, three NAACP members showed up to the 139 precinct location with 50 cases of bottled water and began handing bottles out to people standing in line. While wearing NAACP labeled clothing, members were "stirring the crowd" and talking to voters about flying to Ohio to promote President Barack Obama.

The Houston Chronicle reported the following on Sunday.

A disturbance at the busy Acres Homes early voting location Friday night was related to representatives of the NAACP protesting long wait times for disabled voters, county officials said Sunday.

An article on the website Townhall.com, linked on the widely read Drudge Report, stated that people wearing NAACP shirts "took over" the Acres Homes polling place, electioneering and voicing support for President Barack Obama while poll workers "did nothing."

Assistant County Attorney Doug Ray disputed that account.

 "It wasn't like they were taking control of the place. It wasn't like we did nothing about it. That's just not true at all," Ray said. 

You can read more about the he said/she said bullshit at the link (and don't miss the comments). Here's Rep. Sylvester Turner's account, via Carl Whitmarsh's e-list.

On Friday, the last day of early polling, I received several calls from people at the Acres Homes Multi-Service Center that seniors and disabled persons who were not physically able to walk and stand in the voting line and who requested a portable voting machine be brought to their cars were told to go to another voting location or come inside because the clerks were too busy. I had my chief of staff call the Secretary of State's office for them to advise those persons at the Acres Home Multii-service Center that the law required them to offer curb-side service to those persons unable to come inside to vote. Once I got there, I was also told that poll watchers with True the Vote raised complaints about persons wearing NAACP shirts being inside the polls giving people water and assisting those elderly persons who did come inside. The True the Vote poll watchers argued that the NAACP was a political organization that endorsed candidates and demanded that they remove or cover up their shirts.

Those of you familiar with the NAACP know that it has never endorsed political candidates and neither were the persons at the center advocating for any candidate or party. These so-called poll watchers also had problems with me being outside talking to voters. True the Vote is a political entity with a political agenda who has trained individuals to come into areas like Acres Homes, in my district, to attempt to intimidate and harass voters be they young or old.

Tuesday is the final day to vote. I am asking voters in Acres Homes and across Harris County to exercise your democratic right to vote and not allow anyone to intimidate or prevent you from voting. 

And so it goes...

Update: Isiah Carey reports that the HCGOP has filed suit. This should be as much fun as Gerry Birnberg's attempt to get Lloyd Oliver off the Harris County ballot.

-- Mailed ballots are likely to be 2012's hanging chads.

Sloppy signatures on mail-in ballots might prove to be the hanging chads of the 2012 election.

As Republicans and Democrats raise alarms about potential voter fraud and voter suppression, mail-in ballots have boomed as an uncontroversial form of convenient, inexpensive voting.

In the critical swing states of Ohio and Florida, more than a fifth of voters chose the mail-in option 2010. In Colorado, another battleground, the number was nearly two-thirds.

But there may be controversy to come. For a variety of reasons, mail-in ballots are much more likely to be rejected than conventional, in-person votes.

With the razor-close presidential election Tuesday between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney potentially riding on a few tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states, the election could be decided by election officials' judgments about mail-in ballot signatures.

"You would worry that in Florida, in particular, the new hanging chad becomes whether you count this absentee ballot or not based on whether the signature is right," said Charles Stewart III, co-director of the Voting Technology Project and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.

I have a personal account about this to share.

I was appointed by the Harris County Green Party to serve on the Early Voting Ballot Board last month, but the presiding judge (a Democrat) had me (and other Greens) removed in a parliamentary procedure. He called a vote on our fitness to serve based on the fact that we voted in the Democratic primary. When the County Clerk informed him that the Texas Election Code deemed that procedure illegal, the presiding judge resorted to having us dismissed because there "wasn't enough work for us to be needed".

You may recall that I mentioned Charles Kuffner's (and the County Clerk's) numbers here for Harris County mailed ballots: a total in excess of 66,000, almost 14,000 more than in 2008. That's as of last Friday; more are arriving in the mail over the weekend, today, and tomorrow. The ballot board's charge is to have these all counted by Election Day. Some ballots arrive afterwards and are added in the final canvass, but all votes arriving before ED must be counted by ED.

Normally an EVBB judge like myself would be bound by oath not to reveal deliberations of the board like this. The reason I am writing about it is because the presiding judge neglected to have me sworn in.

I'll have more to say about this in the future, but it's going to have to wind its way through a handful of lawyers first.

-- On a last and lighter note, here's a slideshow of some of the memes of the 2012 campaign. They left several out IMHO so it's hard to pick a favorite among these, but I'll go with this...

Johnson, Stein, Goode, and Anderson debate tonight

The candidates from four political parties – Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Jill Stein (Green), Virgil Goode (Constitution) and Rocky Anderson (Justice) – will meet for a two-hour debate on Sunday, November 4, 6:30 p.m. CDT in Washington, DC.

The debate will be moderated by Ralph Nader, and will focus on subjects and issues that have largely been ignored or avoided, as they are too controversial, by the 2012 Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.

The mere mention of Ralph Nader should set blue partisans to grinding their teeth. You are invited to stop doing that.

Watch this debate tonight on the Green Party's streaming channel, or below.

Watch live streaming video from greenpartyus at livestream.com

You may also watch Stein and Johnson again tomorrow night, Monday November 5, at the Free and Equal.org Debate, beginning at 8 p.m. Central time, at Free and Equal's website, Free Speech TV, Stitcher, Orion Radio Network,Yes Magazine, NextNewsNetwork, RT America’s YouTube channel, American Free Press, and UK-based Reciva Internet Radio. Political correspondents gathered in advance of that debate (7 p.m. Central) for discussion include Thom Hartmann, Sam Seder, and others.

Update: Watch the Stein-Johnson debate from Monday night below.

Closing Argument Funnies

Swingin'

Harris County, you sexy in purple. Charles gets to go first...

I have the in person total at 700,216, the total that was on the daily record of early voting that Kim sends out. In 2008, the in person total was 678,312, so the in person early vote total was 3.2% higher this year. There were also 66,310 mail ballots returned out of 92,290 sent (71.8% return rate) versus 52,502 ballots returned out of 76,187 mailed in 2008 (68.9% return rate).

Remember that Democrats usually perform batter at in-person turnout while Republicans get more mailed ballots.

What does this mean for final turnout? In 2008, a bit less than 62% of all ballots were cast as of the end of early voting. If the exact same percentage of ballots were cast early or via mail this year, final turnout will be over 1.24 million – 1,246,819, to be ridiculously precise. 

That will still be a little higher than 2008. Everyone remembers how 2008 turned out locally, right? Now Greg...

Based on every available metric I’m seeing, the opening bell for Harris County should be as close as close gets. That will take into consideration both Early In-Person and Mail-In ballots. It almost goes without saying that this comes down to how successful each side is on E-Day. Almost, because in 2008, it was over by this time.

[...]

Whether you believe E-Day bodes well for you depends on whether you think the new normal will look like 2008, when Dems banked two-thirds of their vote before Election Day … or just about every year prior to 2008, when Dems typically got a little bit of a boost on E-Day.

By all appearances, the GOP did a better job this cycle of catching up and even surpassing Dems in EV GOTV. But for all that improvement, the game is still essentially tied going into the 9th inning. 

I read this as cautious optimism on the part of these two go-to-guys for this sort of thing. But it's still tight as a tick, and if all of these Obama supporters will stop calling Ohio and start calling their neighbors in their respective precincts and Texas House districts, everyone will be happy on Wednesday morning. Particularly Harris County judicial candidates.

For the past couple of months I have received three e-mails a day from Barack Obama asking me for $3. On Friday I cleaned about eight messages to that effect out of the in-box, and went to dinner. When I got home 2 1/2 hours later, I had four more.

I am more than ready for that pan-handling, stalking bullshit to stop.

Last-day-to-vote-early Funnies

"Broccoli Obama, or Meat Romney?"



"It was as if millions of nerds suddenly cried out in terror..."

World-Series-winning San Francisco Giants pitcher Sergio Romo stating the obvious.

The Peace Pastor endorses Jill Stein for President

Several issues would rise unavoidably to the top of our own agenda: 1. poverty, 2. immigration, 3. health care, and 4. incarceration. And taking the same just posture as God does to these folks, our question would then inevitably need to be: which candidates are most passionate and skilled to get these people what they need, not treat both they and ourselves as we deem deserving? Secondarily, how are they addressing their intersection with racism, climate change, war and militarism, the war on drugs, joblessness due to Free Trade, and the economics of capitalism?

Neither major party candidate exhibits the level of concern that Jesus does for these vulnerable groups of people. And in driving through Houston’s upscale and impoverished neighborhoods it seems increasingly clear which party is viewed as showing more concern for the least of these.

Perhaps its time to consider a third party candidate such as Jill Stein of the Green party for President -- you live in Texas, your vote won’t change the outcome in this overwhelmingly red state. In platform, she more than any other candidate on your ballot exhibits a Matthew 25 (verses 31-46) approach to our community.

I'm not a Christian, as you perhaps already know. In fact I consider Christians much in the spirit of Mohandas Ghandi (disputed as to attribution, but still). I was raised by one devout Christian and one non-, and I have studied plenty of the various strains of Christianity such that while most of the Bible is fairy tale to me... who doesn't enjoy mythology, well-told?

If I were a Christian and still a Democrat or a Republican, then Marty Troyer (the Peace Pastor cited above) would present a compelling case for voting Green. But then we start to slip down that slope of modern-day Christians and hypocrisy and so on.

So just consider this in the spirit in which it is presented. If even Christians and agnostics can agree on some things, then perhaps Democrats and Republicans can as well.