I GUESS THE BOGUS DRAFT RUMORS WORKED: NBC is showing Kerry doing very well among 18-29 year old voters.

DON’T MISS THE COMMAND POST: They’ve got open chat, too.

SOLIDARITY: Filmmaker Theo van Gogh’s murder was loudly protested by 20,000 people, including some of his political enemies, in the streets of Amsterdam today. (Hat tip: Eric the Unread, who really does deserve to be read.)

BUSH HAS WEST VIRGINIA: This is news only in the sense that if he didn’t have it, it would strongly suggest a Kerry win.

ZELL MILLER did not seek re-election this year. His former seat was won today by Johnny Isakson, a Republican.

IF YOU ASSUME THAT THE MOST PERVERSE POSSIBLE OUTCOME IS THE MOST LIKELY, we’ll see Bush win the popular vote while Kerry wins the Electoral College. If that happens, I promise not to say that Kerry was “selected not elected” except occasionally in an ironic, annoy-Atrios kind of way.

KENTUCKY, INDIANA, GEORGIA called for Bush by NBC; Vermont for Kerry. Not much news there.

YOU ARE LUCKY TO BE READING THIS. And I’m lucky to post it. 601am says we’re under denial-of-service attack.

UPDATE: Then again, Hosting Matters says it’s a bandwidth problem that should settle down shortly.

I’M AT WBIR TV IN KNOXVILLE, where I’m doing some TV commentary, and where I’ll be guestblogging on their election-night blog.

I remember that the last election I ignored the early exit poll results, and didn’t really start paying attention until 8 o’clock. I’m a bit more immersed in things, this time around.

WHAT DO THE MARKETS SAY? Since this afternoon, Bush has gotten the crap whacked out of him; he’s down to 25% on Tradesports. Might be an attractive time to buy, since Drudge has the Ohio exit polls tightening.

(Full disclosure: I’m not allowed to bet on the election on Tradesports, any more than I can buy a stock I write about. So this advice is all being given by someone who isn’t putting any money on it.)

VOTE SAVE ERROR NUMBER 9 I consider myself vindicated.

DID I DO THAT? “Bloggers Spook Market.” Actually, I think it was Drudge.

WHAT DO THE EXIT POLLS MEAN? If you’re a news junkie like me, you’ve probably seen the exit poll results showing Kerry up in battleground states. The trend is definitely Kerry, but in the key states, the margin is small, meaning that Florida and Ohio could easily swing Bush, throwing him the election. So Republicans, don’t despair; Democrats, don’t break out your party hats just yet. And if you want your guy to win, then GO VOTE, because there’s still a very good chance he can.

TAKE THE PLEDGE: Jeff Jarvises pledge, which Michael Totten links below, is a welcome breath of sanity. So, no matter who wins:

I will not proclaim that the president is incompetent for failing to magically resolve some tough geopolitical situation, such as North Korea’s nukes or the Israel/Palestine problem, unless I can propose something with stronger logic to recommend it than the fact that the president isn’t doing it right now.

I will not obsess about trivial details of the president’s demeanor, speech patterns, or long-past personal history.

I will not secretly hope that he fails at important goals so that I can elect someone from the other party four years hence.

I will not pretend that the president’s budget is better, or worse, than it is, which is to say terrible.

I will not attribute magical powers to the president to heal the economy, large-scale social problems, or the growing rift between my boyfriend and myself on the matter of green vegetables. I will neither praise the president for improvement in these situations, nor criticise him for failing to mend them.

I will not point out all the bad news, or all the good news, while hoping no one notices the other sort.

I will ruthlessly make fun of the president’s verbal tics, extravagent promises, and useless programmes.

I will not use my one semester of Psych 101 to make speculative diagnoses of mental disease or defect in the president.

I will assume, until proven otherwise, that the president, like most politicians, is making stupid laws because he wants to appease key interest groups (a.k.a. The American People), not because He Is Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil.

I will not write long, stupid posts on how the man I voted for, and his party, are wonderful people–intelligent, sensitive, and well-informed–while the other party, and its voters, are a bunch of moronic thugs who want only to Destroy a Once Great Nation. Nor will I deliver such rants in person.

I will not write anything containing the sentence “The administration has hit a new low . . . ”

And if I have to listen to one more such, I’ll pull my hair out, really I will. And it’s such nice hair too, soft and shiny with natural ringlets. So can’t we all just get along?

UPDATE: (From Glenn) Spoons has a different kind of pledge: “I PLEDGE TO BITCH ABOUT WHOMEVER IS ELECTED PRESIDENT.” Always make promises you know you can keep!

He makes a good point here, though: “Don’t support a President just because “he’s President.” He’s a servant, not a king. Treat him like it. Give him exactly the support he earns — no more, no less. If you feel compelled to make some sort of feel-good pledge, pledge to treat whomever wins fairly, and to judge their actions without regard to whether you voted for him or not.”

I think that’s really the key point here, isn’t it?

WHEN WILL I KNOW? John Fund has a good summary of the election results schedule over on Opinion Journal.

TRAFFIC PROBLEMS: It’s really high, and it’s causing intermittent outages. The swell folks at Hosting Matters are working on it. If the site goes down completely, I’ll post on the backup site.

I’ll be on Kudlow & Cramer (CNBC) about 5:30 p.m. eastern today.

RED STATE/BLUE STATE WINE RECOMMENDATIONS for election night, from Prof. Bainbridge. So you can toast your victory or drown your sorrows, as the case may be.

BACK FROM VOTING. I finished my morning class, caught up on some email and blogging and headed out to the First Congregational Church that is my polling place. I pulled right into a space in the tiny church parking lot, went in, and walked right up to the table and got my ballot. One person was ahead of me in line. I was out of there in less than five minutes. The women working at the poll assured me they had been busy up until that point, and I did try to pick a good afternoon time window, but there was no leftover-from-lunch-hour, backed-up line. There was a group of people behind the four officials supervising them in some way. And there was another large group of people sitting at a big table on the other side of the room. The various poll watcher types in the room greatly outnumbered the voters. There was a big table of cookies and muffins and that sort of thing, but there was no time to get hungry, as I breezed right in and out of there.

MYSTERY P0LLSTER on leaked exit polls: “Listen, I understand human nature, and I’m not going to try to change it. We are all intensely curious about what is going to happen tonight, and most of us will find a way to peek at leaked exit polls at some point today. I just want you to know that those leaked exit polls really don’t tell us much more about the outcome of the race than the telephone polls we were obsessing over just a few hours ago.” We’ll know the result soon enough. Usually, I don’t even look at that stuff until the actual results come out. Of course, this is the first Presidential election I’ve blogged.

BLACKFIVE says that he’s been disenfranchised.

SOME ELECTION (AND POST-ELECTION) THOUGHTS, over at GlennReynolds.com. And, while I haven’t taken Jeff Jarvis’s pledge, I’ve taken the similar Dean Esmay pledge some time ago. I also encourage people to read this post by Michael Totten.

FOR THE RECORD, I take Jeff Jarvis’ post-election peace pledge.

SURELY NOT — THAT’S WHERE MY PAYCHECK COMES FROM! Robert Nagel writes that law schools are bad for democracy:

Legal education shapes lawyers’ thinking, and lawyers help to shape American culture — particularly the political culture. Unfortunately, this education breeds and dignifies some dangerous inclinations. It encourages people to favor constructed idealizations over real life. And it confuses the skills of argumentation with morality. The legions of lawyers encamped across the country to litigate their way to political victory are the embodiment of a more insidious process — the penetration of our society by a relentlessly adversarial mindset, one that is entirely ready to make our democracy unworkable.

I hope that the election won’t be close enough for that to matter. But his larger point, alas, seems sound.

JOE KATZMAN posts a Media Watch roundup at Winds of Change.

BILL QUICK is election-blogging full time today. And he’s not wearing pajamas.