huckelberry's blog

Kevin O'Connor is at 30% in his race for 41st State Rep, and Joe Futrelle is at 33% in his race for Champaign County Board. We've got a whole lot of windows open here trying to keep track of everything from Boone County Board to Arkansas State Legislature. Woo!

Luis Gutierrez was just on NBC 5 for no explicable reason and he looked ridiculous. They were trying to talk him up for the Senate seat!

Hard to serve in the Senate from federal prison, you know?

People will start filing back now. We'll move from the office to Cafe Catedral soon. More coming later.

There are livestreams scheduled for Cynthia McKinney in San Francisco and Rosa Clemente in New York tonight:

http://www.mogulus.com/GreenVisionCA

http://www.mogulus.com/greenpartyny

We have no livestream available in Chicago, but you can pretend that you're watching me blog or something.

We survived what is typically the most difficult part of a day like this: organizing lunch. Now we're ready for the afternoon rush.

Overhead at one precinct was a Dem operative calling someone and saying "these Greens are everywhere" and telling the guy on the other end of the phone he was needed. Now, we haven't had complete coverage of every precinct, not even close. But somehow we've managed to roll out a localized organization at least on par with the Democrats in large chunks of the area.

Ironically, Obama is helping us out quite a bit in two ways we hadn't expected. The big rally downtown has required all of the street and sanitation workers - people who might normally have been given the day off, or who might have conveniently went around and picked up Green signs while leaving other signs alone - to report to Grant Park. And then a lot of people who might ordinarily be doing work within their neighborhoods hopped in cars and went off to Indiana instead.

Things are actually going significantly better than I had expected.

So there's been all this talk about early voting etc. One of the unexpected side effects of early voting is that people get more confused than usual about where to go vote on Election Day, because the early voting locations are just one for each ward, whereas there are 60+ polling places in each ward on Election Day.

In the 35th Ward, early voting was at the Logan Square library. So a lot of people file toward the library thinking that's where they're supposed to vote. And then they find out they're in the wrong place, but nobody there knows what to do. Except us: because we ran into this problem on primary election day, we expected it, and we've been able to help route people through using the Chicago Board of Elections page to look up polling places.

We've even had two people walk into the office looking for help finding their polling places.

This is really the core of what good political work is. We're doing things that I haven't seen Greens do before and it's really making a big difference.

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/CT_GREEN_TO_FILE_COMPLAINT_OVER_BALLOT...

Connecticut Green party officials announce that they would file a complaint with the state elections officials because the space for the "write in" votes for their candidates and other third parties was too small and questioned whether their votes would be counted.

Just to be clear on this - the space is so small you can't actually fit someone's name in there so that it's legible.

I usually fall back on Occam's Razor in a situation like this and assume incompetence instead of malice, but sheesh.

From a Green in Utah, about her daughter in Maryland:

I couldn't believe what she told me today - that not only are schools closed (not a surprise, they always have been on election day there), as well as state offices, but the public transporation is also not operating today due to election day!!!! So my daughter is unable to go vote because she has no transportation. Which means an entire population of people who depend on public transportation will not have easy access to their polling places because of this!

Eric Friedl passes this along:

Chicago, IL 38th ward, 8th precinct.

My mother moved to Chicago in April. Since she did not vote here in the previous election, her ballot card was grey, indicating she needed to show an ID. She came prepared with her current verification of registration. However, since her card was grey, the judges gave her a provisional ballot, and she chose to vote on the electronic machine. Once I learned her vote was provisional, I challenged the judges' decision. explaining to them how they had mis-interpreted the instructions in their manual. When they called "downtown" for clarification, it was confirmed that my interpretation was correct, and that my Mother should have received a standard ballot. Apparently, however, there is nothing they can do to fix the situation, since the ballot was cast electronically. One (very helpful and considerate) judge did promise to take a photocopy of my mother's ID downtown, and ensure that the ballot is counted. I do trust her sincerity, but I personally have no faith in the system beyond her control.

This is obviously a result of insufficient training and a over-eagerness to use provisional ballots. I overheard several others while I was in the polling place.

I just voted (Ward 35, Precinct 12), and I found electioneering going on inside the polling place. At a table which all of the voters for my precinct walked by, but which was not very visible from where the election judges were sitting, a guy with a list of registered voters was sitting with Democratic palm cards in plain sight. They weren't just generic Democratic palm cards either; they were Berrios-specific palm cards which listed all of the Democratic candidates but which had Obama and the Berrioses in bold.

For reference: Joe Berrios is the Chair of the Cook County Democratic Party, and he is also on the Cook County Board of Review, running for reelection for that office. His daughter, Toni, is the 39th State Representative. Jeremy is running against Toni.

I don't really blame the guy sitting there, because I don't think he had any idea what was going on, he was just doing what someone told him to do.

The impunity of the way in which these people operate never ceases to amaze me.

I'm live blogging today, mostly from Lopez/Karpen HQ on Armitage near Kedzie in Chicago. We've just dispatched the last of our morning teams to their respective polling places.

Even though it was Election Eve, I went to see Magnolia Electric Co. and Bottomless Pit last night at the Abbey Pub. On the way home, on a stretch of Irving Park between Kimball and Sacramento (a half-mile for those of you unfamiliar with Chicago geography, I must have seen 35 of Omar's signs.

The Greens have more signs up in big parts of Chicago than the Democrats and Republicans combined right now. Or at least, we did as of four hours ago. That is very weird.

First report from downstate is that 50 people were lined up outside one polling place before 6 am. It's going to be a wild ride today.