It’s an epidemic. RNC Chair Ken Mehlman prefers paper ballots… and so does Bob Novak.
From TPM Reader TO:
I voted directly behind Bob Novak this morning in a small polling place on Capitol Hill. Novak immediately picked the paper ballot too. There was no line.
As with Mehlman, Novak had a choice between paper and an electronic machine.
GOP elected officials getting tripped up by voter ID laws.
From the GOP handbook of Maryland politics:
(1) Recruit homeless men in Philadelphia;
(2) Bus them into Maryland;
(3) Arrange for the Republican governor’s wife to greet them upon their arrival;
(4) Outfit them in hats and T-shirts for the governor’s re-election campaign;
(5) Have them pass out flyers in heavily Democratic areas that erroneously identify the GOP candidates for governor and U.S. senator as “Democrats.”
The complete primer here.
Update: A first-hand account here.
Despite delays, glitches, and other snafus, most polls will not extend voting hours.
In Denver, where the lines are long, the Democratic candidate for governor waited nearly two hours to vote, presumably for himself.
Hmmm. That was pretty disappointing. Ken Mehlman was just on Blitzer’s show. And when Ken was asked about the Republicans’ robocall scam, he ducked the question and then went on with a litany of accusations about the Democrats committed various kinds of election fraud this year and in 2004. As far as I could tell, Wolf let all of what he said stand uncontested.
CNN’s exit polls show corruption topping their list of issues of concern to voters.
Also polls show national issues motivating voters 2:1 over local issues.
Reportedly very high turnout in Virginia, Missouri, Montana, and Tennessee.
Okay, here we go.
As you can see in the section above, we’re tallying the election results on our TPM Election Scoreboard. We’ll have the toplines here at the top of TPM. And you can click over the main TPM Election Scoreboard page for real-time results of all the contested races.
Now, you’ll see that there are already numbers up there on the board. 181 Democrats in the House and 157 Republicans. Where do we get that? Those are the races that CQ, Charlie Cook and Stuart Rothenberg each agree are ‘safe’ seats. Those are the numbers we’ll start with as already in the bank for each party. (Obviously, if there are surprises we’ll recalibrate.) The numbers in play are the ones we’re tracking on the main page.