Voting Irregularities

So the sidestory (although, it should be a huge story!) of today is the massive amount of voting irregularities occuring throughout the country.

Republicans seem to be up to their old tricks on a nation-wide scale. We need to work today to make sure Americans are not disenfranchised.

If you know someone who has been hassled or disenfranchised, report it here: http://www.democrats.org/voterprotection/report.

Also, you can check out the map of voting irregularities being reported here: http://eirs.cs.net:8080/EIRS_WEB/Map/begin.do.

This is on top of those calls Republicans have been making across the country pretending to be Democrats and discouraging people from voting and the other calls where they blackmail people into voting for Republicans by telling them that the calls will stop if they promise to vote that way.

Let's take back our country today so that they can never do this again!

The Expectations Game- Post Yours!

Adam Nagourney, of the NY Times, meta-plays the expectations game by predicting that even if Democrats win today, we will lose: "For Democrats, Even a Gain May Feel Like a Failure."

The big 3 prognosticators, Charlie Cook, Stuart Rothenberg, and Larry Sabato, each have their own predictions for today, adding to the expectations game.

At this point, on a blog like this (don't get me wrong, I love us, but we aren't that important), we don't have to worry too much about the effects of the expectations game. Therefore, let's play the game!

I think we are going to get about 30 seats in the House, give or take two. At this point, I would say we are going to win 28 seats.

Obviously we are going to win 5 seats in the Senate, give or take 2. However, I will put myself out there and predict a gain of 6 seats, giving us Montana, Missouri, AND Virginia.

NOW, post your expectations!

Republicans Spam Calling As Dems, Attempt to Piss Off Voters

I just saw this and I can't say it any better:

In 53 Congressional campaigns across the country, including the Pennsylvania 6th, the Connecticut 4th, the North Carolina 11th, the New Hampshire 2nd, and the Illinois 6th and 8th (and possibly all races), the National Republican Congressional Committee is conducting a $2.1 million campaign to make it appear as if Democrats are spamming callers with telemarketing calls. The NRCC hired Conquest Communications Group to conduct a massive nationwide robocalling campaign with calls specifically scripted to appear as if they're coming from the Democratic candidate — in violation of FCC regulations on such 'robocalls,' which requires the identity of the caller to be stated at the beginning of the message [47 CFR 64.1200(b)(1)]. The call begins with 'Hello. I'm calling with information about,' and then says the name of the Democratic candidate. There is then a pause; if the recipient hangs up here, they will receive repeated calls back with the same message, potentially up to 18 times or more (according to one callee). If the callee doesn't hang up, they hear a smear message from the machine about the Democratic candidate. The NRCC thinks the legality of the calls is, conveniently, a 'complicated legal question that's not going to get adjudicated this weekend.'"

The NRCC makes me sick.

UPDATE: This went out over Dems-Talk, as I was blogging about it.

UPDATE x2: Google Video posted the full hour and a half HBO documentary called Hacking Democracy

Not Good.

DNC Iraq Ad

Time to pony up $26,288,418?

MyDD's Chris Bowers has an intriguing campaign he'd like to start, as he details in "Unopposed House Democrats Sitting On $26,288,418":

Amidst all of this talk about taking out loans to fund key races and newly emerging races, not enough attention has been given to the huge amount of money House Democrats who are unopposed for re-election are currently storing away in their campaign bank accounts. I just did a quick tallying using Open Secrets, and calculated that the 45 Democrats who are not facing a Republican opponent this November have $26,288,418 in their campaign bank accounts as of September 30th, 2006. I put together a web page that details the cahs on hand for each of the forty-five unopposed Democrats:

Read more »

COUNTDOWN: 3 Weeks Til Election Day

Would any American have imagined 2 years ago that anything like this could be happening? There is a reasonable chance that 40 (FORTY!!) seats in the House could end up being filled by Democrats after this election. In fact, experts are saying that it is more likely that we will win 30 seats than just the 15 needed for majority.

Seats like the Arizona 5th, currently held by J.D. Hayworth, are looking likely to change parties. On election day, if we see these seats turn over, we might actually be able to expect as many as 40-45 seats become held by Democrats. Of course, that is the next to highest possible outcome imaginable and the chance of it occurring is still slight, but in 1994 no one expected 54 seats to change hands yet they did (and I will also concede that gerrymandering has altered the landscape too, but I wouldn't bet too much on that!).

To put this into perspective, at the HEIGHT of the so-called "Republican Revolution" they controlled 236 seats in the House (the largest Republican total since the 1940s!). If we are looking at a possible gain of at least 34 seats (which we most definitely are) then Democrats will OUTPERFORM even that supposed huge shift in the American political landscape.

My question to you is: Are you ready for the Democratic Revolution?

Iraq At-a-Glance

There is a piece in the New York Times about Iraq.

The title is "U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Hits 53 So Far This Month." While I cringe when people use the death of our brave troops for political purposes (and both sides do it), I think it is imperative to keep the War in the front of people's minds so that they always think about what we are doing (and whether it is worth it to keep our kids over there). The article mentions that the current death rate for our soldiers this month is about 3.5 per day, which would end up making October 2006 the third bloodiest month of this 44 month long war. This would seem to play right into Democrats' hands for this election, since our calls for a change of course are resonating so strongly with Americans, but I doubt any candidate will refer to this tally for their own political gain.

Read more »

The Marriage Gap, Redux

A lot of people (okay, everyone) have been obsessively watching polls or polling analysis over the past few months to see how the country is going to vote on Election Day. Of course, people criticize these polls for any number of biases, but we all usually shrug those criticisms off. While the polls are useful, I think we need to be taking them with much more than just a grain of salt. Here is your tablespoon of salt:

While most polls control for race, gender, age, party ID, etc., they rarely control for marriage rate. However, marriage rate is a hugely important factor. With about half the country not married, we are divided in half. This comes out in politics. Republicans win in districts with high percentages of married people and Democrats win in districts with high percentages of unmarried people. USATODAY has some marriage figures for congressional districts.

However, polls still don't seem to take into account the political realities of the marriage gap. Even polls which show a big shift for Democrats going into the Midterms ignore the huge imbalance in their poll between married and unmarried (in the linked poll, the married rate was an astronomically high 68%).

I am not saying we should expect even more support than polls like this are showing, but it doesn't mean that these polls are accurate.