Game Change Authors Will Dish on 2012

Mark Halperin and John Heileman who exposed Sarah Palin as the most dreadful Veep candidate ever in their bestselling book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime are now joining forces to write the behind-the-scenes look at the 2012 campaign between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

The working title is : Double Down: Game Change 2012

I want to know who will play Paul Ryan in the HBO movie! *makes popcorn*

From the New York Times

Penguin also said that HBO had optioned the rights to the book, which is set to appear in fall 2013.

“Game Change,” which made its debut at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list in 2010, featured behind-the-scenes machinations within the Obama and McCain campaigns.

Mr. Halperin is a senior political analyst for both Time magazine and MSNBC and Mr. Heilemann is national affairs editor for New York magazine and political commentator on MSNBC.

From Screencrush:

Though nothing official has been locked down, it’s believed that HBO’s ‘Game Change’ team of director Jay Roach and Emmy-winning writer Danny Strong would return for the sequel. President Barack Obama was presented in HBO’s adaptation through real-world footage, but would likely be given an actor’s portrayal in a sequel.

Ten Ways Romney/Ryan Helped Obama Win

The Obama Diary has a great post called "Ten Steps to Victory" showcasing the various speeches and debates that helped the President win reelection.

I've been wanting to do something similar, but from the point of view that Romney/Ryan helped Obama win just by being themselves. So here are my top ten ways, and really I could do so many more:

1. Mitt Romney was the most awkward candidate of all time.







2. Romney has a tendency to brag about his status as a super-rich guy which merely alienated him from most Americans. The Obama campaign was able to use this fact in countless ads about Bain and Cayman Islands offshore accounts, and Comedy Central and SNL took up the slack. Romney played right into it by refusing to release his tax returns for more than one year.







3. Romney's World Tour was known by the hashtag "Romneyshambles" on Twitter. Traveling abroad, he managed to tick-off all our allies plus the press corp, whom he kept locked on the bus most of the time. And when they did ask a question, Romney's aide told them to "kiss my a$$." Very un-Presidential. And definitely not worldly-wise.





4. Trust us, we're rich! Ann Romney had a tendency to use the phrase "You People" when talking about the media and people who watch the media - yeah, voters. Her smug condescending comments reminded many of Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake!" reaffirming her husband's 1% status, which certainly didn't help the campaign.





5. Clint Eastwood's Empty Chair Moment upstaged Romney at the RNC. Later it was the only thing anyone could remember.








6. The 47% Video was a bombshell that showed the "Real Romney" at a fundraiser speaking frankly while dismissing half of America as people who were lazy moochers who wouldn't take "personal responsibility" for their lives. It confirmed every bad stereotype associated with Romney and the 1%.








7. Paul Ryan seemed rather sentimental in Florida, talking about his mother and grandmother needing Medicare and Social Security. But then he promised to cut both programs for "anyone under 55," which scared the crap out of middle-aged people everywhere (including me). And why did he think that other mothers and grandmothers would want him to screw over future generations in the name of Ayn Rand? He should have gotten a clue when he was booed by AARP.





8. Romney had the worst campaign team in history, a veritable clown car of ineptitude. From Eric "Etch-A-Sketch" Fehrnstrom to the hapless Andrea Saul who was called a "moron" in a vicious attack by Ann Coulter, they remained consistantly shamble-tastic till the end of the election.





9. Mitt Romney avoided talking about the War on Women or standing up to Rush Limbaugh, although he did slam Planned Parenthood and threatened to "repeal Obamacare." In one of the Presidential debates, Romney was asked about the Lilly Ledbetter Fair-Pay Act, and instead of answering the question Mitt rambled on about needing "binders of women" in order to get them hired. And women said "What???" And Tumblr went crazy with pictures. And Twitter exploded with jokes. And . . . did I mention the whole "binders" thing was a fib?





10. Horses and Bayonets ~ Romney's weak showing in the final Presidential Debate left him open to several zingers from Obama, including the famous lines about "horses and bayonets" and "sink your battleship." Romney had won the first battle in Debate One, but Obama won the "war" with a flourish on this night.

Campaign 2012 ~ Defining Hometown

Downtown Janesville, Wisconsin
For years Republicans have enjoyed pointing out that if Al Gore had won his home state of Tennessee in the presidential election, he wouldn't have needed Florida, and the vote wouldn't have been decided by the Supreme Court in favor of George W. Bush.

Let's ignore the fact that Gore was much more a citizen of Washington D.C. than Nashville, plus the fact the he knew he seemed further to the left than Bill Clinton on most issues so Tennesseans wouldn't vote for him. He never had an illusions of sweeping all areas of the country, and some would say that Gore actually won Florida, but moving on . . .

This year, Obama won not only his birth-state of Hawaii, but his adopted home state of Illinois. Hawaii matters because of the crazy birthers who seem to forget that Hawaii IS a state of the union, but also because it is a diverse state reflecting the demographic changes that are coming for the rest of the country.

Romney lost Michigan, his birthplace, where he bragged no one needed to ask for his birth certificate. He can blame it on his previous statement that "Detroit should go bankrupt," but the fact remains that he made multiple trips to Michigan and named-dropped his father George, who was once Governor of Michigan, yet it did him absolutely no good.

Romney lost Massachusetts where he was governor once back in his "moderate left-leaning" days. Once Romney swung far to the left and began rubbing elbows with Donald Trump and quoting Rush Limbaugh, he was never going to win the Bay State.

Romney lost New Hampshire where he has the "lake house" even though he campaigned hard there and never took it out of his equation to get to 270 electoral votes.

Romney lost California where the cars in his special elevator garage live. But obviously - he was never going to win there in Blue Land.

He did win Utah, where he graduated summa cum laude from Brigham Young University and "saved the Olympics" as they say. But seriously - any Republican on the ticket was going to win Utah, a solidly red state full of Mormons. Did I mention Romney is a Mormon? So yeah, he won Utah.

But his running mate Paul Ryan had even more trouble connecting with the hometown crowd, if that's possible.

Part of Ryan's stump speech for months - and really for all of his career - was "I'm from the small-town of Janesville, Wisconsin, where my family has lived for decades," or something of that nature. He said it in every interview, in every town-hall meeting, in every speech. His wife and kids live in Janesville instead of Washington and I suspect part of that is so his children can grow up there and use it in their own campaign speeches someday.

But on election night, Janesville said "thanks but no thanks" to Paul Ryan. He not only didn't win the town of Janesville, he didn't win the district, or the state of Wisconsin.

Yet in post-election interviews Ryan is blaming the "urban" voters for his loss, which is ridiculous. Janesville isn't "urban" and I assume most of the town is as white as Paul Ryan. He can't accept that he is out of step with his own hometown.

The L.A. Times Story

. . . the Romney-Ryan ticket didn’t exactly connect with the voters back in Janesville, either.

A struggling blue-collar manufacturing town of 63,575, Janesville lies on the eastern edge of Rock County, Wis., and unofficial election tabulations from the county clerk there show that only 37% of Ryan’s hometown neighbors voted for him and his running mate. Meanwhile, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got 62% of the Janesville vote.

The results were even slightly worse for Ryan from his own polling place at the Hedberg Public Library. Out of 1,428 votes cast there, 65% went for Obama-Biden and just 34% for Romney-Ryan.

. . . in Janesville proper, Ryan fared only a little better in his congressional run than he did in the vice presidential one. Zerban grabbed 54% of the Janesville vote to 44% for Ryan. And at the Hedberg library polling spot, Ryan was the choice of just 41% of voters to 58% for Zerban.

Ryan explained it this way, admitting he lost Janesville due to being too far right, but coming back to this "urban" thesis to explain it away (I guess he is talking about Milwawkee?. Whatever - the truth hurts.

Huffington Post

"Well, as you know, Janesville is a very Democratic town, but I'm a Republican," Ryan said in an interview with Janesville radio station WCLO. "But I've always done very well here, because more people saw me not as a Republican but just as a Janesville guy."

"When you join a national ticket for a party, you become more seen as a Republican guy than necessarily a Janesville guy," he continued. "So I think my image, or the thought people had in their minds of me once I joined the Republican ticket, was more 'Paul Ryan, Republican,' than 'Paul Ryan, Janesville guy.'"

At 11.5 points, Ryan's congressional victory margin in the state was the smallest of his eight House campaigns.

During the interview, Ryan also admitted that President Barack Obama's reelection team ran a better campaign than the Romney/Ryan folks, chalking the Democrats' win up to their ability to mobilize the "urban" vote.

"What the president and his campaign excelled at doing is mobilizing turnout in their critical base areas, and they expanded the turnout above the norms," he said. "They had record turnout in urban areas and all of our polling did not project that kind of turnout, and that's why we thought we had a very good chance at winning this race going into election day."

Obama's Heartfelt Moment with Volunteers

source: gfln tumblr
Obama has a tearful moment while thanking his volunteers. Sweet.

Romney ~ Gone but not Forgotten

I think as a country we will never forget some of the Romney-isms we heard during this election. And I love lakes, trees and teachers as much as he does.

Florida Finally Calls it for Obama

Finally, Florida has finished counting (well mostly) and can certify that President Obama won the state on November 6. Woot-Woot!!! Those 332 Electoral Votes were hard-won and I applaud all the hard work done by Obama For America, the League of Women Voters, and many other groups in Florida. You did good!

Even Rick "Voldemort" Scott couldn't stop the Obama with voter suppression. I hope and pray that Obama really meant it when he said "we have to fix that" about the long voting lines in Florida and elsewhere. Seems to me they could tell states not to load up the ballot with written referendums during a Federal election. A 12-page ballot in November should go the way of the dinosaur.

CBS News:

After a four-day count with neck-and-neck tallies, President Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, earning 50 percent to Mitt Romney's 49.1 percent, according to the Secretary of State's office.

The victory puts the president - who had clinched reelection Tuesday night even without Florida - at a final 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. It also marks his sweep of eight of the nine swing states, with North Carolina his only battleground loss.

Mr. Obama's margin of victory is over the half-percent mark that would trigger a computer recount unless Romney had waived it. A handful of overseas and military ballots, which have a Nov. 16 deadline, are believed to remain outstanding, but under Florida law, recounts are based on Saturday's results.

Nate Silver, Polls and Arithmatic

Well, Nate Silver was right. Exactly right. He couldn't have been more right. His Monte Carlo models for 2012 accurately predicted the number of electoral votes each candidate would receive, as well as which states would go blue for Obama. Well-done, Sir. You have now become part of election history, and I'm glad you also stuck to your guns when others were taunting you and with Politico calling you a "one-term celebrity." I guess they should have said "Won Term Celebrity."

What's important is that you get the last laugh. :) I think you'll be around in the next election. I'm not sure about the hacks at Breitbart or those guys from Politico. What were their names again?

Excerpt of Silver's Book "The Signal and the Noise" via Daily Beast

Political news, and especially the important news that really affects the campaign, proceeds at an irregular pace. But news coverage is produced every day. Most of it is filler, packaged in the form of stories that are designed to obscure its unimportance. Not only does political coverage often lose the signal—it frequently accentuates the noise.

Snark Amendment: Pundits Wagering War on Nate Silver
Previous Posts on Nate Silver and the Polls



The Romney camp was "shellshocked" over the fact that the Republican-leaning polls were the ones that were skewed, since the party-line had been the opposite for months.

Rush, Dick and Rove Skewed into Frenzy by Polls

In the last days of the campaign, people were coming out of the woodwork to predict a landslide, which had nothing to do with the reality of the polls, most of which showed Obama ahead at that time. I gathered up their quotes and tweets here:

Snark Amendment: Republicans Predict Romney Landslide

Yeah, the GOP got a landslide, all right. They are going to be digging their way out of it for years to come!



I think one reason ordinary voters drank that Kool-Aid in addition to the Romney Camp, was that some spineless pundits in the mainstream were hedging bets on the outside chance that all the Democratic pollsters were A. Delusional and B. Liars. For instance, CNN kept talking about the "razor thin margin" which somehow gave the advantage to Mitt instead of Obama, when their own internal polling showed otherwise. Chris Cillizza at Washington Post moved Ohio into the "toss-up" column just because Romney needed it so much to win.

The Dems who took a "poll of polls" approach and checked in with statisticians and oddsmakers were not nearly as confused. Yes, we were also nervous and scared about the unknown outcome, yes, but we were not AS confused about the data. And in the end, this election was all about the math.

Bookmark these websites for future elections - math works!

538.com - Nate Silver
ElectoralVote.com
Princeton - Sam Wang
PredictWise


Below is a list compiled by professor Costas Panagopoulos, Ph.D. of Fordham University. It shows which pollsters did a good job of accurately predicting the election outcome. It's a good idea to save this list for the next election so you can avoid the polls from CNN down to AP because those were the most biased and least accurate.

Fordham University List of Pollsters Ranked from Most Accurate to Least Accurate

Most (22) polls overestimated Romney support, while six (6)
overestimated Obama strength (indicated with a * below), but none of the 28 national preelection polls I examined had a significant partisan bias.
The following list ranks the 28 organizations by the predictive accuracy of their final, national pre-election estimates (as reported on pollster.com).

1. Ipsos/Reuters
2. YouGov
3. PPP (D)
3. Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP
4. Angus-Reid*
5. ABC/WP*
6. Pew Research*
6. Hartford Courant/UConn*
7. Purple Strategies
8. NBC/WSJ
8. CBS/NYT
8. YouGov/Economist
9. UPI/CVOTER
10. IBD/TIPP
11. Democracy Corps (D)*
12. CNN/ORC
12. Monmouth/SurveyUSA
12. Politico/GWU/Battleground
12. FOX News
12. Washington Times/JZ Analytics
12. Newsmax/JZ Analytics
12. American Research Group
12. Gravis Marketing
13. National Journal*
14. Rasmussen
14. Gallup
15. NPR
16. AP/GfK

The End of the Romney Campaign

And I won't be sorry to see it go! Buh-Bye, folks!

New York Times: Career Options

After three decades of remarkably seamless career hopping — from Bain Capital to the Olympic Games, from governor of Massachusetts to constant candidate for president — Mr. Romney is now a restless chief executive with no organization to run.

. . . At a breakfast on Wednesday for top advisers and donors, Mr. Romney marveled at the Obama campaign’s ability to turn out such a large volume of voters on Election Day, though at times by using strategies that he said had unfairly maligned him.

He did little to hide his frustration and pique: he bemoaned attempts by the president and his allies to characterize him as an enemy of women, singling out advertisements that claimed he opposed contraception and abortion in all cases. That, Mr. Romney said, is simply untrue, according to those at the breakfast.

He even took a gentle swipe at the news media, mocking what he said were inaccurate articles suggesting that his oldest son, Tagg, had staged an intervention to fix a tottering campaign and was playing a heavy role in shaping political strategy.

“He will be sifting through this for quite a while,” said Kirk Jowers, a Romney friend. “The question is when the sifting takes a couple of hours a day instead of being all consuming.”

. . . “I know he will do something,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime Romney political adviser. “I just don’t know what it will be.”

Romney Transition Campaign Website That Won't Come True:


CBS News: Romney Wasn't Prepared to Lose

. . . it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.

After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.

"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

. . . Romney was stoic as he talked to the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

"There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't," said another adviser. "It was like a sucker punch."

. . . Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser said of Romney.

GQ: How the Secret Service Said Goodbye to Romney

At some point, early Wednesday morning, when Gov. Mitt Romney and family were tucked into bed, a quiet call went out on the radio channel used by his Secret Service agents: "Javelin, Jockey details, all posts, discontinue."

Of all the indignities involved in losing a presidential race, none is more stark than the sudden emptiness of your entourage. The Secret Service detail guarding Governor Romney since Feb 1. stood down quickly. He had ridden in a 15-car motorcade to the Intercontinental Hotel in Boston for his concession speech. He rode in a single-car motorcade back across the Charles River to Belmont. His son, Tagg, did the driving.

. . . When the race was close, agents would joke about the number of "j" words they'd need to come up with in order to give every one of his children, their wives, and all of their children code names. That's 29 people who would have received, if not protection, at least a protective survey and recommendations from the Service. Quietly, plans had already been put in place to assign protective details to all of them, just in case.

2012 ~ A Great Election for Women

This was a great election, not just because Barack Obama was re-elected in a near landslide, but because women found the power to fight back against an oppressive Republican Party that seemed hell-bent on attacking our decisions, our basic human rights and our bodies. Most of the time, they simply attacked our intelligence, thinking a return to 1950s values is what women want for ourselves and our daughters. This is why I've written 26 Posts on the War on Women going back to Rick Santorum in the Primaries, as well as 21 posts on Snark Amendment collecting quotes and video from these guys. I want all of it to stay on the internet forever if possible, so that four years from now we won't have complacency and forget just how bad it was.


Well, today is a much better world for my daughter as well as my sons, and everyone else in society. Obama will protect the Supreme Court, health care, and Pell Grants. While the Tea Party may still control the House, and unfortunately Ryan and some others are still there, we have the political capital and some new voices to help in the fight, Obama will surely be able to pressure Speaker Boehner in ways we never did before. The conservative message failed and their party is in shambles. For all Romney's talk of family values and his love of his wife and kids, he couldn't put himself in the place of one female American who wasn't either a wealthy Stepford Wife or some glorified secretary in a binder.


The Gender Gap was real, and that should prove that the War on Women was real for us. We shouldn't have to explain it. We don't need anymore lectures and threats of probing and rape and forced pregnancy from nutjobs and religious fanatics. We don't need anymore insults from loser misogynists like Rush Limbaugh either, and he needs to realize his day is DONE.


But if that is the only message you have, just keep on keepin' on. It can only help the Democrats in the future. I know I will stay fired up even after this election and I think all women feel this way. History books will be written on the failure of the white-male oriented GOP to connect with half the country. If they don't understand it by now, just read the book.

And look at some of the great women who were elected yesterday!!!

Claire McCaskill Beat Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin in Missouri



Tammy Baldwin beat Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin
And Becomes the First Openly Gay Senator



Tammy Duckworth Beat Joe "Misogynist Shouter" Walsh in Illinois




Elizabeth Warren defeated Scott Brown in Massachusetts

Epic Win ~ 4 More Years for Obama

I'm almost too happy to blog today, but this has to be said:

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And congratulations to President Obama, the Democratic Party, and every Progressive voter who voted for fairness and sanity in their government - last night we got our country back.

Ohio Voter Suppression - With Updates

UPDATE: Federal Judge throws out lawsuit against Husted over voting tabulator:

From Bloomberg

A Green Party candidate for one of Ohio’s 16 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives lost a bid for a court order blocking the use of electronic voting machines that he said might be tampered with.

U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost in Columbus today denied the request by Robert J. Fitrakis, who’s running in a district covering parts of that city, the state capital.

Fitrakis alleged in court papers filed yesterday that electronic voting machine software contain a “back door” through which vote tallies from today’s elections could be manipulated.

“Fitrakis has not provided actual evidence that demonstrates how this harm is a realistic possibility, much less how it is actual and imminent,” Frost said in a 10-page ruling after a hearing.

Time Interview with Ohio Sec. of State Jon Husted

In an interview with TIME on Monday afternoon, Husted shrugged off the criticism. “My job is to deliver an election that runs smoothly and well,” he said. He says some of the attacks are politically motivated. “People are going to attack you to obtain political advantage,” Husted said, “The goal of the other side is to make me look bad.” And indeed some Democrats are comparing Husted to Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State of Florida during the disastrous recount in 2000.

. . . Husted defends his handling of the expansion of early voting, and his efforts to block voting the weekend before the election. “We have the most liberal voting opportunities of any state in our area and I settled that issue fairly, uniformly and consistently across every county,” he says.

He also says he’s ready for possible court battles after the Tuesday’s vote if there is a recount that challenges some of his recent rule making. He says many of the attacks against him are preparing the ground for such court battles. “That’s absolutely the case, and I don’t lament that, it’s just life being Secretary of State in the most important swing state in the country,” he says. “People are going to sue and create controversy to prepare the environment for post-election contests.”

Think Progress: PA Judge Halts "Electioneering" outside Polls

..A judge in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania has issued an order to “halt electioneering outside a polling location in Homestead.” “Individuals outside the polls are prohibited from questioning, obstructing, interrogating or asking about any form of identification and/demanding any form of identification from any prospective voter,” the order says. Republicans had been asking people outside the polls to show identification. Under the current law, voters will still be asked to present IDs at the polls, but an ID is not required to vote

Plunderbund: True the Vote Forged Documents

All but one (Scott Rupert, an independent for U.S. Senate) of the six candidates whose names appeared on the original form had withdrawn permission to use their signatures prior to the submission of today’s forms. During the BOE meeting Candidate Terri Jamison spoke up to say her name was “forged” on the latest round of forms.

The form for appointing observers reads ‘election falsification is a 5th degree felony’. Election officials have confirmed that there will be a post-election investigation of True the Vote.
The forms have been rejected unanimously by all members (Rs and Ds) on the board. True the Vote observers will not be allowed in Franklin County polling locations tomorrow. Poll monitoring organizations expect they may still be stationed outside of polling locations.
Board member Zachary Manifold told us he was ”amazed that a group that goes to such extreme lengths to claim voting fraud in Ohio would knowingly forge or misuse signatures to try to gain access to Franklin County polling locations.”

Obama's Last Campaign Speech, Iowa November 5, 2012

Obama gave an inspiring and impassioned speech tonight, and definitely got everyone in the crowd and at home "fired up." What a great man! Good luck tomorrow, Mr. President.

An emotional President Obama at Iowa rally. twitter.com/niccolina/stat…
— Nikki Kahn (@niccolina) November 6, 2012

Sign handed out at final #Obama rally in #Iowa twitter.com/LukeRussert/st…
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) November 6, 2012

The pictures below are screencaps I made from the video.

Vote as if Your Way of Life Depends on it ~ Because it does!

Now. Is. The. Time. So.
VOTE

That is All.

Nate Silver: Obama has 86% Chance of Winning

Obama becoming a heavier favorite, in 538's view. Now 86% to win Electoral College. fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Obama unlikely to win by anything like his post-DNC margins. But Romney has no momentum, Obama's state polling is robust, and time is up.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Headline from 10/29/84: "Mondale upset win predicted": news.google.com/newspapers?id=…

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Good point when considering the Republicans want us to believe that Mitt is going to win in a landslide!

Also the last PEW Poll statistics have come out:

Final Pew Poll: Obama 49 Mitt 42 registered voters. Obama 48 Mitt 45 Likely voters. #p2

— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) November 4, 2012

Pew Poll: Who do you expect to win? Obama 52 Mitt 30. This question is always a strong predictor.

— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) November 4, 2012

Final Pew poll of campaign shows Obama regained much of the ground he lost following the 1st presidential debate pewrsr.ch/Tsny9I

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) November 4, 2012

Ohio's Jon Husted now "Secretary of Voter Suppression"

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is going to keep trying to suppress the vote until the very last minute. This guy has no shame and no sense of fair play. He just wants Romney to win and will do anything to fix the vote in Ohio. Outrageous and scary that one man can have this much power over millions of voters in a state that often swings the election.

We could have legal problems on Wednesday thanks to this one unethical bureaucrat. Shades of Katherine Harris in Florida when she refused to certify the vote during the 2000 election that gave George W. Bush the Presidency instead of Al Gore.

From The Nation

Once again Husted is playing the voter suppression card, this time at the eleventh hour, in a controversial new directive concerning provisional ballots. In an order to election officials on Friday night, Husted shifted the burden of correctly filling out a provisional ballot from the poll worker to the voter, specifically pertaining to the recording of a voter’s form of ID, which was previously the poll worker’s responsibility. Any provisional ballot with incorrect information will not be counted, Husted maintains. This seemingly innocuous change has the potential to impact the counting of thousands of votes in Ohio and could swing the election in this closely contested battleground.

“Our secretary of state has created a situation, here in Ohio, where he will invalidate thousands and thousands of people’s votes,” Brian Rothenberg, executive director of ProgessOhio, said during a press conference at the board of elections in Cuyahoga County yesterday in downtown Cleveland. Added State Senator Nina Turner: “‘SoS’ used to stand for ‘secretary of state.’ But under the leadership of Jon Husted, ‘SoS’ stands for ‘secretary of suppression.’ ”

In 2008, 40,000 of the 207,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio were rejected. The majority of the state’s provisional ballots were cast in Ohio’s five largest counties, which are strongly Democratic. Moreover, provisional ballots are more likely to be cast by poorer and more transient residents of the state, who are also less likely to vote Republican.

The number of discarded provisional ballots could rise significantly due to Husted’s directive. It’s also very likely that more provisional ballots will be cast in 2012 than in 2008, thanks to a wave of new voting restrictions in Ohio and nationwide. The Associated Press reported that 31 percent of the 2.1 million provisional ballots cast nationwide in 2008 were not counted, and called provisional ballots the “hanging chads of 2012."

Absolutely insane line to vote in Columbus, Ohio (via @finneganlatimes) twitter.com/thinkprogress/…

— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) November 4, 2012

Pundits on Sunday Talk shows attacked Romney ads being shown in Ohio that imply that car companies that took bail-out money are now shipping jobs overseas. It was a bad day to be a Romney surrogate:

Long Lines for Early Voting in Florida

Reuters: Early Voting Extended in Parts of Florida

Saturday was the last day for early voting in Florida, where polls showed Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney running neck-and-neck.
But Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles reopened the polls at one site, a library in the Orlando suburb of Winter Park, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
The library was evacuated and voting there was suspended for four hours on Saturday because suspicious items were found on the grounds. A bomb squad safely detonated both - a cooler containing small electronics and what investigators described as a bag of miscellaneous garbage.
. . . In Miami, the Florida Democratic Party filed suit in U.S. District Court on Sunday asking for an extension of early voting opportunities in densely populated Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, where some voters waited six and seven hours to cast ballots on Saturday.
The lawsuit said the lines in the Democratic-leaning region were longer than in other areas, deterring or preventing people from voting.
. . . Election supervisors' offices were also opened in several other densely populated counties on Sunday for in-person absentee balloting.
Republican Governor Rick Scott refused on Thursday to extend early voting statewide despite the long lines.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Story from The Grio

UPDATE 2:50 p.m.: The Miami-Dade Elections office is facing a backlash Sunday evening after the lone voting location was quickly overrun by would-be voters, and because the location is far from neighborhoods where Democrats are most likely to live. From the Miami Herald:

The department had opened its Doral headquarters from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. as a work-around to an early-voting crackdown law.

But by 2 p.m., around 180 voters had showed up, and department spokeswoman Christina White said the office would not be able to accommodate any more voters who showed up. Additional voters would be turned away, she said.

“We had the best of intentions to provide this service today,” she said. “We just can’t accommodate it to the degree that we would like to.”

Shortly after, however, the department locked its doors and shut down the operation without explanation. The people in line did not get to vote.

“Let us vote!” they shouted.

The department had only one ballot-printing machine, five voting booths and two staffers to assist voters Sunday.

Karen Andre, who heads the Florida office for Obama’s Organizing for America field campaign, called the situation “unacceptable,” and said the organization’s attorneys would be “monitoring the situation.”

Celebrities Make Final Push for Obama

gifsfln.tumblr.com
I wish some of these ads had come out sooner (Steve Carell's came out in September), but hopefully they will be passed around on Facebook and Twitter enough for the last-minute voters to see, or in states where there's no early voting.

Mr. Burns Endorses Mitt on The Simpsons

Well, it's about time. Mr. Burns is definitely cut from the same cloth as Mitt.

Joe Biden Does Letterman's Top 10

Top Ten Good Things About Voting Early

• 10. I'm not saying each early voter gets a cheeseburger, but I'm not saying they don't either.
• 9. It's vastly more effective than voting late.
• 8. You know who votes early? People with a backbone like a ramrod.
• 7. In a less crowded polling center there's more room to stretch out, linger, and relax.
• 6. If you vote early, you don't have to pay taxes. (I'm sorry, I'm being told that is not accurate.
• 5. Single and lookin' to mingle? Find that special someone on the early voting line.
• 4. Of course, there's the open bar.
• 3. Not exercising your right to vote is Malarkey. It's literally Malarkey.
• 2. Early voters receive a $5 million donation from Donald Trump
• 1. Honestly, don't you want this election over with already?

Adorable Child Crying About "Bronco Bama" and Mitt - We All Understand, Abby!

I think this little child from Colorado speaks for all Americans! And how adorable is it that she calls Obama "Bronco Bamma"? :)

This is the original video of Abigael Evans, posted by her mother.


And NPR has apologized on behalf of all the news reporters who are royally sick of covering the election, too. And as a blogger, I know just how they feel. We wish it was over yesterday.

Via Politico

"On behalf of NPR and all other news outlets, we apologize to Abigael and all the many others who probably feel like her," NPR's Mark Memmott writes. "We must confess, the campaign's gone on long enough for us, too. Let's just keep telling ourselves: 'Only a few more days, only a few more days, only a few more days.'"