IS ANYONE STILL UNDECIDED? My colleague Gordon Smith is! And he’s already gone to his polling place! He writes:

This morning I dropped by my local polling place at 6:30 am, intending to vote. While I knew that John Kerry would not get my vote …

Read the whole post to see why.

… I still did not know whether I could vote for George Bush. My plan was to look at the ballot and follow my gut. When I filled out the registration, I noticed that I had been given a red pen. “Deficits,” I thought. (I will be so happy when this election is over, and my dendrites stop firing election messages.) The line was already 30 people long, and it wasn’t moving. As it turned out, the polls wouldn’t open until 7 am. Crud! I had an early meeting at the office, and I couldn’t wait that long.

So I will be voting this afternoon, probably in an hour or two. And I am still undecided, not between the two candidates, but between George Bush and my protest vote. I still remember my complaints about George Bush, and I do not hold out much hope for change. That’s the thing about George Bush: he sticks to his guns. Though I wish he were a different president, he is not the evil man often portrayed by his opponents. But is he good enough that I should help him to win Wisconsin?

UPDATE: Gordon takes comments over there, so feel free to write out some advice, both for him and for the general public.

VOTING IN MONONA, WISCONSIN. An emailer sends thi:

Just voted in Monona. The atmosphere was something I’d never experienced here before. My husband and I had to walk past two elderly members of the odious group MoveOn.org who had set up a table in front of the Community Center. The lobby was crowded with tables full of baked goods for various local organizations. They reported brisk business since 7AM.

We didn’t have to wait in line but the place was the busiest I’ve ever seen in 26 years of voting. When we went to pick up our number, I noticed about four somber-looking women spread out amongst the poll workers sitting and taking notes on yellow legal pads. They didn’t have any identifying buttons like the rest of the poll workers and I suspect they were some sort of observers.

When the poll workers verified my address out loud, I was bothered that they were able to hear that information. It was disconcerting to watch them take notes during both our transactions with the polling volunteer. If they are observers, they should have to wear a badge identifying what organization that they represent.

The line to register new voters was about 10 deep at 9:30.

UPDATE: An emailer offers this (possibly nerve-calming) explanation:

What your correspondent was probably seeing was something of the Get Out The Vote effort in Wisconsin. Here in the Chicago area, the lists of
registered voters are public information. Who has or has not voted is
also public information. The people checking off names probably have a
list of people they believe will vote for their guy (developed through a
series of phone calls, door to door knocking, looking at what party
ballot was pulled during the primary, etc…) so that they can focus on
getting their people to the polls who haven’t done so already.

As the day progresses, other GOTV workers will follow up by calling the
identified supporters who haven’t voted yet. If they are really good,
they’ll offer a ride to the poll as well so that they can vote.

In short–what was seen there was probably pretty innocuous. It appears
to just be a well run precinct organization.

ELECTIONEERING CONTINUES IN KNOXVILLE: Meanwhile, Clayton Cramer is reporting unusually long lines in Idaho. Meanwhile, reader Mark Johnson, emailing from a “small rural logging community in western Montana,” reports unusually high turnout there, too: “parking lot jammed with pick-ups and suv’s — unprecedented!” And reader John Earnest, emailing from Birmingham, Alabama, wonders if there’s a trend toward huge turnout in red states:

FWIW, in the population-heavy overwhelmingly Republican Birmingham suburbs (yes, there are ‘burbs here, even city-center regentrification), the turnout is astounding. Radio buzz indicates historic turnout. My own experience was a 10-fold increase in early-morning voters. Other large conservative boxes report more votes in the first hour than in the entire day of the 2000 election. Could be wrong, could be a merely microscopic example. But even anecdotal evidence can occasionally be right, and it’s certainly first. What do readers in other states say?

As you can see, they say the same thing. And these states should all be safe for Bush, I’d think. I don’t know what this means, exactly, except that I guess Bush’s base is motivated.

UPDATE: On the other hand, exit-polling suggests a sudden Bernstein surge in Virginia. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Geraghty says that turnout is up in blue states, too.

GEORGE W. BUSH 17,264. JOHN KERRY 9,540. Not that it counts, but the polls are closed in Guam. My emailer says “I believe Guam has voted for the winner in every election for the past 20 plus years.”

GUANTANAMO IN FRANCE? OUI. You can’t make this stuff up.

Armed with some of the strictest anti-terrorism laws and policies in Europe, the French government has aggressively targeted Islamic radicals and other people deemed a potential terrorist threat. While other Western countries debate the proper balance between security and individual rights, France has experienced scant public dissent over tactics that would be controversial, if not illegal, in the United States and some other countries.

JOHN KERRY’S chief pollster predicts a 3-point Bush victory.

STILL MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Will Michael Moore take up the cause of a fellow filmmaker?

BILL STUNTZ WRITES that it’s 1864 all over again:

George W. Bush is no Abraham Lincoln, and Iraq is not at all like the Petersburg trenches. But there are some important similarities. The American public is very poorly informed about the current military situation. We read of the daily bombings and hear about the endless quagmire. But we don’t read about the number of insurgents killed or captured, the number who remain, or the quality of their supplies and morale. Years from now when this war is chronicled, the past several months may look a little like Grant’s campaign against Lee in the summer of 1864, albeit without Grant’s casualty list. A steadily larger portion of Iraq has come under the control of the Iraqi government and the American forces that stand behind it. Insurgents have been pushed back into a few isolated pockets. Their political support, never high, seems to have vanished. It may well be that, if the President wins reelection, the insurgency will crumble as quickly as Confederate resistance crumbled once Lincoln won a second term. Certainly there is no reason to believe that the insurgents could prevail if Americans are determined to defeat them. There is very good reason to believe the opposite.

Nevertheless, we could yet lose in Iraq — by our own choice, not by any skill or power the enemy can bring to bear.

Or maybe it’s 1945 all over again. As I wrote last year: “And as for those Bush/Churchill analogies, remember what happened to Churchill the minute people felt safe.” Bush’s greatest success is that we haven’t been hit since 9/11. But that may be his greatest vulnerability, too. We’ll see.

UPDATE: A reader wonders if I’m predicting a Bush loss here. No. Actually, my gut suggests a Bush win, though my methodology is unscientific: I got the hardcopy version of The Australian with my column, from a week or so before their election. The stuff they were writing about Howard, who won big, sounded eerily like the stuff I’ve been reading about Bush the past week. But my prognostications don’t have an especially impressive track record, so take that to the bank — or to TradeSports — at your own risk. . ..

I’M NOT SURPRISED AT THIS:

Two polls released last week found that more people perceive the media tilting coverage in favor of Kerry than Bush. Gallup determined that 35 percent think coverage has tilted toward Kerry compared to just 16 percent who said it favored Bush. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press discovered that “half of voters (50 percent) say most newspaper and TV reporters would prefer to see John Kerry win the election, compared with just 22 percent who think that most journalists are pulling for George Bush.”

As I said: “People have noticed.”

UPDATE: A journalist reader emails:

In case you’re curious, journalists at the major metropolitan newspaper where I work in the Midwest (except for the silent, tiny minority) are giddily confident of a Kerry victory, based on “their faith in the American people” and “everything we’ve tried to do.” The city they cover straddles two red states that went Bush in 2000 and will do the same in 2004.

“Everything we’ve tried to do.” Indeed.

ELECTION DAY REMINDERS: Let’s get a couple of things out of the way before today’s votes are counted.

You have the right to vote. You do not have the right to see the man of your choice in the White House.

If George W. Bush wins the election, the world will still spin on its axis. Canada will not grant you asylum. If John Kerry wins the election, America will still be America. Australia will not grant you asylum.

People who vote for the other guy aren’t stupid, brainwashed, or evil. They are your friends and family. Someone you love will almost certainly cancel your vote. (My wife cancels out mine.)

If, by some chance, everyone you know votes for the loser it won’t mean the election was stolen. It will only show that you live in a bubble.

If this thing is close (the victor could easily win by 0.1 percent) try not to read too much into it. We’ll still be closely divided.

If the election doesn’t go your way, don’t pop off as though America were Guatemala under the generals. You’ll get lots of attention, but it won’t be the kind you want. People will laugh, not near you but at you.

PLUS ÇA CHANGE . . . According to Drudge, Philadelphia, my former home, is up to its old tricks: voting machines were found rigged with 2000 extra votes (presumably for Kerry) before the polls opened, and someone flashed a gun at pollwatchers.

UPDATE: (From Glenn): Here’s a report that it’s not fraud after all.

HERE’S MORE ON THE TOM DASCHLE LAWSUIT, which seems like a big mistake to me, too.

ACT LOCALLY Glen Whitman writes on California’s Proposition 72, which would require large and medium-sized businesses to provide health insurance to their employees:

. . . the mandate will act as a tax on employment. That’s true of any form of income tax, of course. But it’s true in an especially pernicious way with a mandate like this, which attaches to number of laborers instead of labor hours. That will induce employers to reduce their total number of employees while expanding the number of hours each employee is asked to work. In other words, the policy would tend to cause unemployment of some workers while shifting their hours to other workers.

Second, given the small-business exemption (one of the few saving graces of the proposition), there will be a tendency for employers to “bunch up” around arbitrary threshold defining the difference between “small” and “medium” businesses. If it’s defined at, say, 50 employees, expect to see lots of businesses with 49. Businesses may also find ways to start converting regular employees into “freelancers” or temps to get around the requirement.

Third, there’s a potential rent-seeking problem. The state legislature will have to define the set of benefits included in the standard benefits package (defined vaguely in the proposition as prescription drug, major medical, and preventive care). Lobbying groups representing the various medical fields will naturally press for the inclusion of their own specialties in the package. The package may start bare-bones, but eventually it will grow to include psychotherapy, chiropractic, dermatology, acupuncture, etc. As the package expands, the cost of insurance will grow, exacerbating the effects described above.

BAD BEHAVIOR DIRECTED AT BOTH SIDES. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that [t]he tires of at least 30 cars and vans rented by the Republican Party to carry voters to the polls were slashed, Milwaukee police said this morning.” From the other side, “two people were blocking the [Kerry campaign office] parking lot exit, preventing Kerry supporters from leaving the parking lot and screaming and spitting on cars.” And yes, I’m suspicious that the second, but not the first, incident is a dirty trick.

UPDATE: Bracketed phrase added above for clarity.

BOOK OF THE DAY? Michael Barone’s The Almanac of American Politics, what else?

Meanwhile N.Z. Bear is rounding up online resources.

I’m STEELING MYSELF FOR THE EMAIL to come from that “Revolution Will Be Posted” NYT Op-Ed piece of mine. Here’s an example, typical in its anger but better written than most (and containing a touch of the humor that is normally missing from the tsk-ing from the left):

Perfesser,
I’m glad I’m not the only person from Madison who’s a fag-hatin’, charisma- lovin’, country-invadin’, process-evisceratin’, nature-despoilin’ revolutionary! Go Bush, twelve more years! So, those of us who grew to appreciate the notion that government might mean a certain level of rationalism in its decision-making have shed that ashen chrysalis to appreciate the need for raw autocracy. God help us, indeed. May you be disenfranchised. If you can’t perceive that Bush is a cult, not a political figure, whose revolution is unapologetically crypto-fascist, then you need to relinquish your position of influence and return to your lonely typewriter. Sadly, [Name Withheld]

Presumably the “position of influence” this person (a UW alumnus) refers to is law professor and not blogger, though both roles do entail contact with a “typewriter.” (My keyboard must be a very needy partner indeed if it’s “lonely,” since I can barely keep my hands off it.) Anyway, how could I not have known that academia is for Bush-haters only? By the way, I love the closing “Sadly” — it’s so … Tom Daschle.

UPDATE: Another emailer makes the kind of logic-and-language point I love: “How can anyone be ‘unapologetically crypto-fascist’? Doesn’t ‘crypto-‘ mean ‘hidden’?” Well, the original emailer only wanted “a certain level of rationalism.”

ANOTHER EMAILER: That second emailer also wrote that on his blog.

VOTING IN PAJAMAS!

A VIEW FROM THE GROUND IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. A Dartmouth student is live-blogging the election in a key battleground. Not unlike the scene here in Madison.

YET ANOTHER NYT PIECE ABOUT BLOGGERS AND POLITICS. I guess we’re going to be getting a lot more of these articles, as the history of the election is written. Mainstream newspapers all seem to say the same thing, to start over in the same place every time, and to repeat the same boilerplate. “Web logs, or blogs …” … oh, no, here we go again! They’ve come into their own this political season, they are intensely partisan, they’re good for fact-checking, etc. How about some new angles? I’d like to see some articles about blogs that are not tied to a particular political agenda but that are surprising, full of variety, and fun to read.

MORE CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS: I blame John Ashcroft.

MORE CRITICISM OF ROCK THE VOTE, in The Hollywood Reporter.

UPDATE: The phony draft rumors were a low blow, but this is beyond the pale.

READER DOUG LEVENE EMAILS via Blackberry: “Hi – I’m poll watching in Kenosha and the line is already very long before the poll opens up — unprecedented.”

FOX NEWS IS REPORTING that the appeals court has ruled that Ohio will have poll challengers after all. Also, Hart’s Location, New Hampshire, pop. 30, has had an unusually strong showing for John Kerry, though Bush squeaked out a win.

IS THIS A NEWSPAPER TALKING ABOUT BLOGS, or a blogger talking about newspapers: “Despite their partisan nature, they became a source of information for many political aficionados”?

JUST VOTED IN NEW YORK CITY Even though the city goes for the Democrats about as reliably as the sun rises in the morning, my polling place was absolutely packed. This was made worse by the fact that one of our two machines was out of commission, apparently because no one had brought an extension cord for it; I had to stand in line for 45 minutes to cast my ballot. Yet no one got out of line. Whoever wins, we can be sure that a record number of people will care about it.