Thread: Is everyone ready and down with the plan for tomorrow?

I heard Cali. is having problems with power outages in some areas ! The weather, that sucks.

Don't think this has been posted anywhere.

Toledo Police brace for possible civil unrest



By Aaron Brilbeck
Monday, November 03, 2008 at 4:44 p.m.


TOLEDO, OHIO -- Toledo police are gearing up for possible "Civil unrest" during and after tomorrow's elections.

In an internal memo obtained exclusively by NBC 24 News, officers are ordered to "Have their riot equipment with them Tuesday and Wednesday". Police chief Mike Navarre confirms, officers will have gear similar to the equipment they used during the 2005 race riots. "They have been asked to have their helmets and their gas masks available tomorrow and Wednesday.", Navarre says, "That's the equipment they would not normally carry with them on a normal day".

Navarre also says, officers will not be stationed at individual polling stations. But the memo says otherwise. It reads, "On Tuesday, units shall be directed to patrol the polling locations".


http://www.wnwo.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=216464

i'm here! have been surfing the local news on tv and radio. the only thing the chicago stations are spewing is the obama party in chicago and all the celebramorons that will attend. i'm hoping at 4 they will start the crawl at the bottom of the tv news.

washingtonpost.com
Voting Problems Reports Slowly Coming In
POSTED: 02:15 PM ET, 11/ 4/2008 by Derek Kravitz
TAGS: campaign, politics, voter registration, voting

Reports of voting problems are slowly streaming in as roughly 100 million voters head to the polls.

Election Protection, an election watchdog group made up of activists and volunteers, reported 41,000 phone calls to its national headquarters in Washington by 12:30 p.m. But, save for a few hot spots across the country, voting problems have not been heavily reported. A quick look at key states on our Election Day watchlist:

VIRGINIA

Unknown hackers broke into George Mason University's e-mail system, sending students a forged message from the school's provost early this morning stating that Election Day had been moved to Nov. 5. Seven hours later, students, faculty and staff received another message, this time from the real provost, who blamed the e-mail hoax on a compromise of the school's e-mail system.

But the big story in Virginia so far has been long lines and a host of voting machine problems, according to watchdog groups and elections officials across the state. Election Protection has called for the state to extend poll times to 9 p.m.; a federal judge refused to issue a similar order earlier this week.

Other reported issues included long lines and paper jams in Hampton; malfunctioning machines and long lines in Roanoke; and long waits and tempermental machines in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach.

Voting rights advocates have raised questions about whether Virginia has enough machines to handle the record turnout expected today. The minimum standard requirement is one machine for every 750 voters, compared to one for every 200 voters in Maryland.

OHIO

Elections officials in Columbus are downplaying reports of widespread problems in Franklin County with touch-screen voting machines, the Columbus Dispatch reports, saying most problems are related to setting up certain machines.

Voting in Cleveland and its surrounding suburbs is going smoothly, elections officials say. As of 10 a.m., the board had received reports of 25 problems with ballot scanners across the county; poll workers fixed 20 of the machines and replaced five others. Of the more than 1,400 precincts in Cuyahoga County, only three were not open for voting at 6:30 a.m. The others opened up within minutes. Officials reported that just 2 percent of nearly 8,600 poll workers were M.I.A., compared with an absence rate of around 20 percent in 2006. Election Protection was investigating reports of "general confusion and mechanical malfunctions" in Cleveland this morning.

FLORIDA

Clerks in at least three precincts in Tampa-St. Petersburg failed to hand out the second page of ballots, leaving voters unable to vote on all the measures. Elections officials there say one clerk has already been replaced, and are working to figure out what to do with the other two sites, the Tampa Tribune reports. Similar problems were reported in Palm Beach County, where some machines were not accepting ballots because voters had not filled out the second page, according to The Associated Press. However, poll workers reported relatively few problems across the state.

By Derek Kravitz | November 4, 2008; 2:15 PM ET Election 2008

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washin ... oming.html

Thanks for the update Populists!!

Obama Volunteer On Scene Disputes Fox News' Suggestions That Black Panthers Are Intimidating Voters

By Greg Sargent - November 4, 2008, 3:04PM
Fox News and other conservatives on the Web are pushing hard on the story that two black panthers may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia.

But an Obama campaign volunteer who's been on the scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that there's been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. And a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said the two men aren't in any way affiliated with the campaign.

Fox News' story is right here. It says one of two black panthers on the scene was "allegedly blocking the door," says another was "holding a nightstick." and adds that "the concern was that they were intimidating people who were trying to go inside to vote."

But Jacqueline Dischell, the Obama volunteer, tells me by phone that that's false.

Dischell confirms that there were in fact two black panthers guarding the polling place, a nursing home on Fairmont Avenue in north Philadelphia, earlier this morning.

But she says one was an officially designated poll watcher (it was not immediately clear which municipal office had designated him in that role), and the second was his friend. The second panther, who left two or three hours ago, was the one with the nightstick, she says.

Dischell says that earlier this morning a few men who identified themselves as being from the McCain campaign came and started taking pictures of the two panthers on their cell phones. She suggested that they seemed to be baiting the panthers, and that the designated watcher may have given one of them the finger in response to the picture taking.

The police came roughly an hour and a half later. She says she talked to the cops and told them there had been no incident. The police drove away without getting out of the car, she adds.

Some time later, a second, larger group of men whose affiliation couldn't be determined came with real cameras and started taking more pictures. Maybe 15 minutes later the cops returned. This time, they spoke to people on both sides, and told the panther not designated to watch the polls to leave, which he did without an argument.

"There was no fight, nothing," she says.

Fox News arrived on the scene at around that time and started interviewing people near the entrance. The building manager asked the Fox reporter to leave, she says, and he moved further from the entrance.

That's where things now stand. "There has been no fighting, no voter intimidation at all," she said.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpoints ... _dispu.php

I went to my county voting site. I'm going to keep an eye on how Dick Durbin will do.

http://results.enr.clarityelections.com ... mmary.html

Try this for your county too for key local results.

U. S. Senator (Vote For 1)
Vote type summary

Precincts Reporting
0 of 481 Precincts Reporting
Percent Votes
Richard J. Durbin (DEM)
0.00% 0
Steve Sauerberg (REP)
0.00% 0
Kathy Cummings (GRN)
0.00% 0
Larry A. Stafford (LIB)
0.00% 0
Chad N. Koppie (CPI)
0.00%

I'm going to try that for Cook County/Chicago as well.


****Here is who they have on our presidential ballot.

U. S. President - Vice President (Vote For 1)
Vote type summary

Precincts Reporting
0 of 481 Precincts Reporting
Percent Votes
Obama/Biden (DEM)
0.00% 0
McCain/Palin (REP)
0.00% 0
McKinney/Clemente (GRN)
0.00% 0
Barr/Root (LIB)
0.00% 0
Polachek/No Candidate (NEW)
0.00% 0
Baldwin/Castle (CPI)
0.00% 0
Nader/Gonzalez (IND)

Update: E-voting problems reported early in battleground states
Issues arose in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia
November 4, 2008 (IDG News Service) Tuesday could be a long day for election officials in states relying on electronic-voting machines to record votes in the U.S. presidential election, if early reports of malfunctions are any indication.

Problems with e-voting machines were reported early on Election Day in several U.S. states, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia, which are identified as battleground states where the outcome of the vote could tip the presidential race in favor of either Democratic Sen. Barack Obama or Republican Sen. John McCain.

According to voter reports on the ground and from watchdog organizations, there were problems with getting e-voting machines up and running in these key states and others, and in some cases the machines would crash during the voting process and had to be rebooted.

Pennsylvania and Virginia were among states that Verified Voting, an advocacy group focused on improving voting systems, and other watchdog organizations said they would keep a close eye on for problems. Neither state had early voting before Nov. 4, nor do they require paper-trail backups with the touch-screen e-voting machines in place at polls.

Critics of e-voting said that without a paper trail, there's no way to audit the results of a touch-screen machine, often called DREs, or direct recording electronic machines.

Some polling locations can give voters so-called emergency paper ballots, but this is not the case in all locations, said Pamela Smith, executive director of Verified Voting, in an interview early Tuesday. "There is no clear policy on emergency paper ballots, or on when to distribute them so voters can still vote," she said.

Moreover, if there is widespread failure with machines, locations with paper ballots are "concerned they'll run out," Smith said.

This, in fact, happened at one location in northern New Jersey this morning, where emergency paper ballots were gone by as early as 9:30 a.m. EST. Polling officials began making photocopies of paper ballots because people who came to vote were leaving the site, frustrated by the delay.

William Grafton, an IT professional, left the line at a polling site in Maplewood, N.J., a town just outside of New York, because the e-voting machines were not working; he said he would return at lunch to try again.

Grafton said people in the area are "worried" their votes will not be counted because they would be on paper ballots and not on the e-voting machines. Other voters said they preferred to use a paper ballot -- even if they voted via e-voting machine -- because they felt having a paper trail to record votes was more secure.

"It's two minutes to do the electronic, so if you have to do the paper I would do it too, to make sure the vote counts." said Sylvia Green, a certified nurse's aid who waited two hours to vote at a polling site in Irvington, N.J., about six miles from New York.

ComputerWorld.com

FLORIDA

Clerks in at least three precincts in Tampa-St. Petersburg failed to hand out the second page of ballots, leaving voters unable to vote on all the measures. Elections officials there say one clerk has already been replaced, and are working to figure out what to do with the other two sites, the Tampa Tribune reports. Similar problems were reported in Palm Beach County, where some machines were not accepting ballots because voters had not filled out the second page, according to The Associated Press. However, poll workers reported relatively few problems across the state.

They have had 8 years to learn how to vote, I am giving up on Florida. I feel if you are too dumb to figure out how to vote, you are to dumb to figure out who to vote for.

Cambridge, Mass. Voting Problem Fixed
by Sharona Coutts, ProPublica - November 4, 2008 2:53 pm EST
Tags: Election Day 2008, Elections, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Voting Rights

Earlier, we noted that some voters arrived to vote in Cambridge, Massachusetts to find that their names were missing from the rolls. Officials in Cambridge, Massachusetts have reportedly fixed the problem, according to WBUR.

The problem arose because the city forgot to send all the necessary voter information to the printers of the rolls, according to Brian McNiff, of the secretary of state’s office.

"If the problem had been at the state level, we would have been able to correct it," McNiff told WBUR. "Cambridge had to correct it at their end which they have done. The new lists are printed and they have been distributed."

Propublica.org