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Predictions Recap As I write this most of the news sources I can find display a map that looks like this:

Montana, Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina are too close to call and President-Elect¹ Obama has small leads in all of them. Looks like I was wrong in Georgia and North Dakota but I myself said that they were a stretch. Interestingly the longest stretch I was willing to make seems to be the one of the three President-Elect Obama might win. We’ll have to see where things are in the morning.

On a final note it looks like California Proposition 8, along with several other homosexual-rights reducing ballot measures across the country, is going to pass. I’m not entirely sure how to feel about this. I attempted to rewrite these last few sentences and have settled on this statement of lack of words, but for different reasons than above. I suppose the only thing I can really say is that things are changing and for the better and we will just have to see.

I’m absolutely exhausted right now. I spent 16 hours working at Ames Ward 4 Precinct 3 today. I helped register ~100 people, and gave ballots to probably another 90. I was the first person to vote this morning (being a poll worker has perks) and one of the last to leave. More than physical exhaustion I’m mentally exhausted. After months of reading fivethirtyeight.com, politico.com, and realclearpolitics.com I was in a near blackout when polls started closing around the country (thanks to Scott and Rachel for alleviating some of that). But it’s finally over, and America has just elected a new President.

To say that I am proud doesn’t do justice to the way that I feel. Joy, excitement, pride, and love are only a few words that I can use to attempt to describe the way that I feel about my country right now. I don’t necessarily mean the people (although they are surely part of it) but also the institutions that make up our state, the shared ideals that make us a nation, and the Constitution that defines our government. For the last eight years America has endured a President of the people that voted for him, and just those people; a President unversed in the patriotism of politics, and ignorant of pride of all people, not just those who swagger and tote a gun.

For the last eight years I’ve felt just as much anger for the people that wanted to move to Canada as those who would tell me disagreeing with my President was unpatriotic. I sincerely believe that this election would have been far more of a landslide had it not been for the divisive anti-politics of President Bush and this is just the first step in healing that wound. America has a gaping gash that must be healed, and it will take years for it to be completely whole again, but we’re on the right track to recovery.

There is no picture to accompany this post, I can’t think of one fitting enough.

Edit: Corrected a sentence in the second paragraph (needed “mean” to be a real sentence structure) that should have even made sense to exhausted me.

Whew, can it come any sooner? November 4th is only 6 2 long days away from us now. Sen. Obama is up in the polls, at his highest point ever, and it’s looking increasingly like he’s going to clinch the White House before polls even close in the central time zone (the networks might not call it till later, they don’t want to repeat 2000 or loose viewers). Hell, it’s a long shot but it’s possible we could see Democrats winning 60 seats in the Senate. In typical Democratic fashion however I hear a lot of people very wary of any positive news for Obama. This includes the Senator himself saying in a recent rally “But for those of you who are getting a little cocky I have two words for you: New Hampshire.”¹ That’s not the analogy I hear most frequently though, it’s an analogy to the crushing defeat of John Kerry in 2004.

The polling situation now isn’t anything like either of those situations however. First of all, New Hampshire wasn’t heavily polled. There were only eight days between the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Nearly everyone had their eyes on the Hawkeye state leading up to the caucuses and pollsters had little time in the field afterwards to gauge the feeling of New Hampshire voters. With less polling you are far more likely to run into statistical problems with your data. In addition to this , and I think more importantly, New Hampshire is a small state, this makes the state easier to poll but makes it far more likely that it will swing in a manner that is fast enough to be missed by polling. This is exactly what happened in New Hampshire.

What about the Kerry analogy? Well, there are two issues in the Kerry analogy. The first is that people were looking at exit polling. Exit polling has issues that over the phone polling doesn’t have. First of all you are in face to face contact with the pollster. This leads to a comfort level issue, something that results in extreme response bias. Younger, enthusiastic, and individuals with strong party affiliations are far more likely to speak to exit pollsters, also, in the case of 2004, Democrats. The other issue here is comparing apples and oranges. What we have right now are pre-election polls, not exit polls. So lets look at some trends.

Hop on over to this link. Here you see some side by side polling averages for the presidential campaign courtesy of Electoral-vote.com². Specifically lets look at the second and fourth graphs. The second graph is the number of electoral votes each candidate has by averaging polls each day ignoring states that are within 5 points. These states are far more reliable come election day and as far as I know all of these states went for their respective candidates in 2004. The second graph is all for this year. You’ll notice that Obama is above 270 electoral votes ignoring “barely” or what other places call “leaning” states. In other words by these polling averages he could loose all the close states (for EV.com these are Nevada, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Georgia, Montana, and North Dakota³). Now look at the 2004 graph, the fourth one, notice how Kerry and Bush were no where near that 270 mark? The election in 2004 is significantly closer than it is today.

There is something that is even more significant about these graphs though. Note how stable the 2008 graph is in comparison to 2004. This isn’t because it has fewer data-points, it’s because the race was so close that pollsters had a very hard time gauging the electorate, with such a closely divided electorate the electoral vote will fluctuate wildly because a very small change can result in a swing of the entire election. The Obama numbers are steady, and pretty stable, and they’re at their highest point of the election, Kerry peaked in late July, early August, and never firmly retook the lead. With the exception of the Palin/Republican National Convention “bubble” McCain hasn’t been ahead since before the end of the Democratic primaries.

This argumentation only takes us so far and doesn’t look at what the polls aren’t telling us. One of the most frequently cited polling anomalies this cycle has been “The Bradley Effect.” The Bradley Effect is named for Tom Bradley a highly popular mayor of Las Angeles that lost the 1982 California gubernatorial race. Bradley significantly underperformed polling that had him up by a reasonably safe margin before election day. The explanation is that some voters will tell a pollster that they are willing to vote for an African-American candidate but wont follow through with it on election day. The existence of the effect at all has come into question and many who believe that it existed at one time don’t believe it exists anymore. This is supported by Barack Obama’s performance in the primaries where he actually outperformed polls by about 2 points.

There doesn’t appear to be any sort of Bradley effect any longer, Barack Obama in the primaries, Harold Ford in the Tennessee Senate race in 2006 (which was highly racially charged, if you wanted to find a Bradley effect you would have found it there), Michael Steele in the Maryland Senate race in 2006, all cases where no Bradley Effect were seen. The idea that it exists any longer is outlandish, and the fact that it doesn’t speaks volumes for the way we’ve grown as a country.

The Bradley Effect would skew results against Obama but there are factors that actually favor him that won’t appear in polls. One getting major coverage is cell phone polling. Why does it matter? Cell phones are under-polled, it’s hard to get the numbers and cell phone users are far more likely to screen their calls than landline users. Cell phone users lacking landlines and/or mostly using cell phones are also overwhelmingly young. When you effectively have a systematic removal of one population group from the polls you only have an issue if that population group has a particular lean that is different than the population as a whole, which in this case you do. Young voters favor Obama by 2:1 in some polling and up to 3:1 in other polling. This has remained consistent throughout the campaign and has the possibility of having a huge impact. The question is how much of an impact. This hinges on two things, how much the under polling of cell phones has skewed polling, and how many young voters turn out on election day.

The skewing of polls as a result of lacking cell phone numbers is easy to see and according to Five Thirty Eight could be almost a 3 point bump for Obama. If you’re a reader of Five Thirty Eight you’ll be familiar with the mentioning of “house effects.” House effects are the leans that polling firms have shown over the course of the election. This isn’t due to attempting to cook the books (Fox News actually has a slight Democratic lean) it’s simply due to how the polling is conducted and how the questions are asked. Five Thirty Eight accounts for these effects so the “cell phone effect” is being controlled for as if it’s a systematic problem with the pollster when in fact it could be that the pollsters that call cell phones could be ~2.8% closer to the truth.

The “cell phone effect” is only an issue if young voters turn out. Young voter turn out is something like Godot, people keep waiting for it to happen, this year is always the year, but never seems to materialize. This year however if it’s going to be any year, appears to be the year. We’ll have to wait for Tuesday to know for sure but the GOTV⁴ efforts this year have been phenomenal at ISU and I have no reason to think it’s unique. Added to real empirical evidence of a youth vote turnout in the primaries I think that this might be the year.

The less covered advantage that wont be captured in the polls is Obama’s massive ground operations. Senator Obama has amassed the largest campaign apparatus in American history. He has a paid campaign staff edge of 3:1 in some battleground states which is matched by a similar edge in field offices⁵. This huge campaign apparatus is being predicted to turn out Democratic voters in record numbers in a year that Republican vote is probably going to be suppressed by the seeming unstoppable juggernaut of a campaign that bought up 30 minutes on every network to air an informercial, a move costing $4 Million, 4.5% of McCain’s total general election budget. Campaign organization has been credited by as much as a possible 3 point shift in some places, but it’s something we wont know till we see it on election night.

Predictions

I made these predictions on the air Wednesday and they’re based on what I’ve outlined here. I expect to see an Obama win, and a big one, something that might look a little like this:

Now that map is not what I think is most likely, just what I think might happen. More likely is that Montana and North Dakota will remain in the McCain camp, but barely. Montana, North Dakota, and Georgia are the only three states that the Obama campaign set out to compete in that they aren’t currently winning (except Alaska which was removed from the list when Gov. Palin was added to the GOP ticket). Georgia and North Dakota both have large numbers of young voters and Georgia has a large African-American vote. Montana is probably the least likely of the three but with a highly popular Democratic Governor and an independent streak I think there is potential (not to mention close poll numbers). These factors I think create a potential upset. I also think that the recent shift of Indiana and Missouri in the polls is going to be outweighed by the factors I’ve outlined above. I think it’s near guaranteed that Obama is going to take the states I’ve marked above except Montana, North Dakota, and Georgia, and highly likely that he’ll take Georgia; I’ll admit I’m going out on a limb with North Dakota, and even more so with Montana.

Additionally I think that Obama might carry some heavy coattails leading to a run-off election in Georgia’s Senate race, possibly taking the Democrats to 60 seats in the Senate.

We’ll see if I’m right come Tuesday.

Editorial Note: I wrote this over the last few days and I really just want to get it up so I haven’t heavily proofread it, apologies to spelling and grammar nazis.

Above you see a video tour of my apartment. It was finally in a clean enough state to capture. I recorded the video from my phone which although not great, isn’t bad. A few notes

1. I narrated this live. I ramble. I comment on this in the video.
2. Dimmie is adorable.
3. My bedroom isn’t in the greatest shape purely due to that air mattress. I’ve been sleeping on it instead of my bed because my bed’s mattress is too soft. I really need to get rid of it or something, right now it just takes up a ton of room.
4. From left to right the appliances on my kitchen counter: Toaster oven, microwave, hot water heater, wand blender, sink (not technically an appliance), coffee maker.
5. I’ve only used the dishwasher once. I was dreading doing dishes. By normal people standards it was a small load. For me it was an overwhelming tsunami of dishes. Normally it serves as a nice off-counter dish dryer.

I’ve been severely lacking in the post department lately. My apologies. Hopefully a video will make up for some of it?

Ahh so now the secret is out, John McCain’s running mate: Gov. Sarah Palin. It’s a pretty gutsy move on McCain’s part, but I think it was a bad move. I think McCain is trying to do three things with this pick:

1. Change the message of his campaign.
2. Appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters.
3. Appeal to the Republican Party base.

I watched Palin’s speech given in Ohio after the announcement was made (still haven’t found McCain’s making it or introducing her) and she really played up McCain as a maverick . They’re trying to bring the maverick/reformer McCain back into play. This is going to be a really hard sell. I think the Democrats (at least some of them) did a really good job this last week attaching McCain to President Bush, and they’re going to keep hammering it. I think the McCain campaign is trying to change the direction of their message to combat that, It’s going to be really hard to do it and it’s going to be harder to do it overnight with this pick. Not to mention that the maverick John McCain never really played well with the GOP base (see #3).

As far as appealing to Hillary Clinton supporters, I really don’t think this is going to happen, at least not the smart Hillary supporters. Palin really stands out as a far right conservative against many of the things Clinton is. Palin made reference to the “18 million cracks in the highest glass ceiling” but this is going to be a hard sell for any Clinton supporters. I think that it will help lock in the Republicans that changed party-id to vote for Clinton in the primaries. I think McCain already had these votes though and the Democrats did a good job speaking to the rest this last week. Not to mention that appealing to Clinton supporters and the Republican base are pretty difficult things to achieve at the same time.

As for appealing to the Republican base this was a fairly solid move. She’s pro-gun rights, anti-abortion, pro-drilling, pro-drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), and has huge approval ratings in Alaska (a steadfast Republican state). But appealing to the base is totally counter-intuitive with the other things McCain is trying to do with this pick and I’m completely confused as to how he expects to have his cake and eat it too.

She has some pretty solid negatives as well. Currently she’s under investigation on ethics violations for firing a state official because he refused to fire her former brother-in-law after his divorce with her sister. That isn’t going to go over well. She also completely removes on of McCain’s biggest arguments against Obama: that he’s too inexperienced. Palin has been governor of Alaska for two years and before that she was mayor and city council member of a city of less than 10,000 people. She has so little experience that she talked about being on the PTA at one of her kids schools during her introductory speech¹.

On the plus side she did put an end to Ted Stephens “Bridge to Nowhere.” This doesn’t outweigh the fact that I think Biden is going to make her look like someone with the experience of a child in the debates in a way McCain can’t even dream about doing to Obama.

Also I’m done doing Political bits here for a while, 4 posts in a row is a bit much.

On the Ballot in California this year will be “Proposition 8″ which in the voter information guide¹ is described as follows.

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Fiscal Impact: Over next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact on state and local governments.

As I’m sure you know California became the second state to allow gays and lesbians to marry, Iowa was briefly the third. Californian (and national) social conservative groups went into an uproar over this and have decided to come to the defense of marriage. In order to overturn the California Supreme Court a constitutional amendment was proposed to define marriage in the California Constitution. To pass the measure requires only a simple majority.

Wait…. WHAT?! The United States Constitution is incredibly difficult to amend. It has to make it’s way through Congress by a super majority of two thrids of the Congress and then through three fourths of the state legislatures. In California you don’t even require a majority of the populace to weigh in. In theory three people could vote on Proposition 8, two of them for one against and the constitution would be amended². This isn’t tyranny of the majority here, it’s tyranny of the active minority!

There is a more fundamental issue at work here however. In my understanding of Constitutional Law (that’s US Constitution now) brings to mind the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; ‘nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’

According to our Constitution, everyone, black, white, male, female, gay, straight is afforded equal protections under the law. You can’t discriminate via legislation or by state constitution. By denying gays and lesbians the ability to marry and enjoy the benefits that the states give to married couples you are discriminating based on a quality of the person. This isn’t a gay right to marriage, it’s a citizen’s right to equal treatment, and I have a great amount of difficulty understanding how people can’t see that.³

The current picture of the week was captured before the announcement of Senator Biden as the running mate for Barack Obama otherwise I would have likely commented on it then. I initially wasn’t sure what to think, frankly I was a little surprised that the Obama campaign went with the expected choice. Biden had been rumored and speculated on for days.

What does the selection of Biden mean for the ticket? Well first of all it means that the Obama campaign is concerned about the junior Senator’s foreign policy and experience credentials. Change is still the message of the Obama campaign though so how does picking an old Washington Hand change this? It doesn’t.

Obama’s change has always been about the control of special interests on American politics. It’s about the disenfranchisement of voters and the empowerment of those who feel powerless. It’s about a rolling back of the partisan bickering that has poisoned political discourse. It isn’t about being anti-experience or anti-Washington those are themes that others have tacked on, not Obama. In the primaries it was framed as change vs experience. This wasn’t because Obama was against those who were experienced, it was because he was a self proclaimed agent of change. Clinton however was a self proclaimed agent of experience.

How does Joe Biden fit into this rubric of change? Accepting political contributions from individuals has been a major cornerstone of the Obama campaign. According to OpenSecrets.org Biden has received 76% of his career campaign funding¹ from individual contributions but for 2006-2008 he recieved 96% of his contributions from individuals and 0% from PACs². Compare this to McCain with 80% individual contributions and 16% from PACs³ and you can see a sharp contrast and we’re not even talking about Obama-McCain, we’re talking Biden-McCain. Clearly Biden’s recent record individual contributions and taking PAC money is in line with the Obama camp.

How about empowering those who have been disenfranchised? This goes more to values and personalities than policy or platform but is worth noting. Biden is the lowest compensated member of the Senate. He’s the “poorest” Senator. If any Senator can relate to those who feel disconnected it’s probably Biden. The populist message has only recently become an element of Obama’s message of change but the influence of John Edwards is certainly there now.

Lastly, and I think most importantly, is Biden able to honestly champion Obama’s “post-partisan” message? I think he is. For the very reasons that he is being used to attack Obama by McCain:

Not only does Biden stand by what he says, and not try to twist the facts or weasel out of past actions by selective memory, he lauded his fellow Senator for the work that he’s done for our country. The “Change” of Obama isn’t about out with the old and in with the new. It’s about fixing what’s broken and keeping what isn’t. It’s about working with people and opening a dialog with them, especially if they don’t agree. Unfortunately I can’t find the exact line but Senator Obama said that he wanted to choose a running mate that would argue with him, debate matters with him and keep him on his toes.

So I think that even though Biden might not be the obvious candidate for change he can definitely fit into Obama’s change. Not to mention that he’s one hell of a fighter and I can’t wait to see the Obama campaign throw some punches by way of Biden allowing Obama to stay above the fray. They’ve needed a VP candidate for months.

This morning I decided that I should write my Senators. Why? Electronic voting. The picture that accompanies this post is an electronic voting machine. You probably saw one (maybe you used one) in the last election. After the mess that was the 2000 election Congress passed the HAVA¹. One requirement of HAVA was that all local governments must provide for individuals with special needs. Electronic voting machines were an easy route since not only could they support the blind they could also support non-english speakers. Since some local governments were buying new machines to comply with the act anyway whole precincts were replaced with these voting machines².

What’s the problem with this? Well besides the fact that the machine’s are easily hacked³; that the CEO of one voting machine company has personally endorsed and said he would “deliver” the election to Bush in 2004; the fact that the voting machine manufactures refuse to release the source code⁴; that there is no voter verified paper trail for most of these machines; or maybe that some of these voting machines can be opened with the same key that opens a minibar⁵? Well besides those small details they’re pretty great!

Some of these problems can be resolved in a fairly simple manner, a voter verified paper trail. If the voting machine immediately prints exactly what it’s storing into it’s memory to paper so there is a paper receipt of the vote that the voter can verify and if needed can be used in a manual recount it doesn’t matter how the machine tallies the votes. Currently there is no law requiring voting machines to have such a paper trail, and almost none do. This is changing and there is currently a bill working it’s way through the Senate to change this (S. 3212). However, the bill makes an exception for voting machines purchased before January that were bought to comply to HAVA. This is completely unacceptable. If the exception stands these insecure voting machines will undoubtedly remain in use for years.

When I found out I decided that I needed to write to my Senators. Most of these machines in Iowa are only used to meet the requirements of HAVA in order to accommodate disabled voters. One Iowa Senator, Tom Harkin, has a long history of supporting disabled voters. The other Iowa Senator, Chuck Grassley, I really don’t know how he’ll stand on this. Either way, I thought that it was important enough that I let both of my Senators know my feelings on this issue. S. 3212 appears to be a good bill with many measures needed to fix the electronic voting mess and I hope it passes, even with this exception.

One last thing. There is a really easy way to avoid all of this. Use paper ballots. There are braile ballots and ballots printed in other languages. It’s not that hard, and doesn’t need any fancy, and expensive, toys to fix.

For those of you who wish to contact their senators I’ve included my letter as a sample. Most senators and representatives have online forms that are respected just as much as a paper letter. It doesn’t take much time. Just fill in the lines I’ve left for your information and google “contact ” generally the first hit will be the page you want.

Dear Senator ______, It has come to my attention that a highly necessary bill to improve the accountability of America’s electronic voting machines is making it’s way through the Senate (S. 3212). I support this change no matter the expense as very little is more important then the accountability and security of our elections.

However, there is an exception placed in this bill for voting machines purchased before January 1, 2009 to meet HAVA’s requirements. Such an exception would lead to Americans that use these machines because they must (the disabled and non-English speakers) to use these sub-par, unverifiable voting machines for years.

I understand an exception may be needed to allow local governments to meet the law for this coming election cycle however I think the exception should have a termination point. Give local governments a grace period, but don’t give them the chance to marginalize these voters forever. Thank you for your time.

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I am so amazingly pumped. I get my kitty tomorrow! I’ve picked a name. I’m naming her “Dimmit” which is Amharic for “cat.” However I’m planning on calling her “Dimmie” most of the time because that sounds less like an expletive, and it’s cuter. Many photos will be taken an posted.

UPDATE: The Picture of the Week is now a picture of me and Dimmie. I’ve also uploaded pictures to flickr here. There have been additions to that flickr set since the potw for those of you who already saw those.

This post is a bit of a rant, you’ve been warned.

Today is the two hundred and twenty third anniversary of the adoption¹ of the Declaration of Independence. Two hundred and twenty three years ago the United States officially declared themselves separate and independent of the tyranny of the King of England. It’s a day to be remembered, and it is. People everywhere will be going to see fireworks and grilling and celebrating with friends and family. One thing as of late has bugged me about the celebration of Independence Day, the way people acknowledge the day. It has become more and more common to wish someone a “happy 4th” rather than a “happy Independence Day.” It’s a little silly, but this really really bugs me. If we have a holiday in remembrance of something, remember it and say it out loud. You don’t wish people a “Merry 25th” for Christmas, so why wish people a “happy 4th?”

On that note. Have a Happy Independence Day everyone. Celebrate your freedoms, remember those who have fought for it², and go see some fireworks.