Election Day 11-6-2012

[Papasito]

Well, today's the day. Good luck to everyone.

[Hermod]

I voted this morning. Despite all of the angst about long lines and long waits for early voting, I arrived at my precinct to find the line around the block just five minutes before opening. I was truly amazed at just how fast the line went through. I was in and out in just about an hour despite the ballot being seven pages long and having to plow through twelve constitutional amendments all of which had to be printed in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. I complemented the poll operators at how well and efficiently they were moving and she said that it helps that our precinct had knowledgeable voters who were ready with their ID and who knew what they were doing.

[Papasito]

vote or else

[Mikeg]

I arrived at my polling precinct right at the 7 am opening time. It is one of two precincts located in a middle school and the last open parking space was taken by the person ahead of me. I parked on a side street, walked in and got in line. The election workers were coming out to those of us lined up out in the hallway with blank slips and clipboards so that we could fill out our slip and have it [[along with our photo ID) ready for when we got to the front of the line. Now that they can simply swipe our Michigan drivers license and pull up our voter registration info on a PC, it is a much quicker process than having to look each name up on an alphabetized printout and striking out the name to indicate they have already voted. The bottleneck in the voting process at our precinct was the wait for one of the approx. 30 "booths" to become available for marking your ballot. I was the 64th voter in our precinct and walked out at 7:39 am.

[firstandten]

Thats great I did early voting in Detroit and I waited 3 hrs.

However I do think the process was pretty efficient just too many people and probably more sites should be in place.

[Papasito]

For those of you who are on the fence, here is a quick recap of the two candidates explaining their stance on the issues...

[oladub]

My town* has three voting booths; each provided with a pencil. My wife and I are recognized upon entering so the book of registered voters is opened to the right page for our signatures almost as soon as we walk across the room in our town hall. We were each handed one piece of paper. There was no voting line. It took about 30 seconds to make our x marks with a not sharp pencil. We fold the ballots any which way and stuffed them into a wooden plywood box with a padlock holding the lid on. Total time spent: about three minutes mostly spent jabbering with the five election workers.

It was snowing this morning making it more difficult for rural voters and senior citizens, who are more likely to be Republican, to vote. The snow has since melted off where we live but further north there was supposed to be an inch of snow. Heavily Democratic Madison and Milwaukee weren't bothered by snow. The snow might make a percent or two difference statewide.

*In Wisconsin, "town" means township. Villages are small cities. Towns are unincorporated areas of a county

[rb336]

*In Wisconsin, "town" means township. Villages are small cities. Towns are unincorporated areas of a county

that's interesting. Villages are unincorporated here, even if they have all the hallmarks of a small city. Chelsea was unincorporated until a few years ago, yet it has a downtown, school district, fire & police, a library, etc.

[Gistok]

Came across this funny little cartoon... kind of says it all [[and FYI... I am a Lutheran)....

[brizee]

vote or else

Look at that savage African black panther.

Saying hello to and holding doors open for WHITE WOMEN!!!!!

The nerve on him.

“If someone stands at the poll in a way that appears to be intimidating, it is intimidating”

[Johnnny5]

Look at that savage African black panther.

Saying hello to and holding doors open for WHITE WOMEN!!!!!

The nerve on him.

“If someone stands at the poll in a way that appears to be intimidating, it is intimidating”

Would you feel differently if it had been a Skinhead or KKK member holding open the doors for black women?

[noise]

Would you feel differently if it had been a Skinhead or KKK member holding open the doors for black women?

Of course not. The Black Panthers don't have a long history of acting out violence against whites.

[oladub]

that's interesting. Villages are unincorporated here, even if they have all the hallmarks of a small city. Chelsea was unincorporated until a few years ago, yet it has a downtown, school district, fire & police, a library, etc.

[[off topic) rb, When I lived in Michigan, I tended to use the words 'town' and 'village' interchangably and thought of townships as being rural subdivisions of a county.

This is probably a good example of how any two English speakers can talk past each other, In this case, states have actually defined word meanings differently. There is an incorporated village in my unincorporated town much as Highland Park exists within Detroit. My town hall is in the village; a different legal jurisdiction. In Wisconsin, towns may vote to have "village powers" allowing them police powers and more power wielded by the town board. Our town briefly had village powers but a "special meeting" was called and by democratic vote, we stripped our board of village powers thus preserving allodial property rights and the right to vote on things as a community as in the Norman Rockwell painting rather than only by elected board members. That is more than you probably wanted to know about another state's local politics.

[Jimaz]

Romney conceded.

[Jimaz]

Romney conceded very gracefully. All credit goes to him for that.

I still have this creepy feeling that the GOP deliberately intended to lose this election. It was too easy.

Are they anticipating/planning some disaster that they wouldn't want to happen on their presidential watch?

[Gannon]

In the heat of a Facebook discussion, I had to admit that even to this dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist...this whole democracy thing might work. On its own.

But nah...that'd be too easy.

[Gannon]

I say the Dirty Tricks Squad is busy working an all-nighter in Ohio.

Somethin' about the voting machines changing votes from Romney to Obama.

Somehow the involvement of Mitt's son in the company will be kept quiet.

But didn't someone say that Mitt's blind trust invested a cool ten million bucks into one of his son's enterprises?!

I thought if the kid DID own a company that provided voting machines, they'd try to win the election by defaulting the actual vote in a court...not by making the machines vote for his daddy, but for the current president, then showing the whole world that it could and did happen. Court overrules the election, we're back to square one...Mitt wins the do-over in a landslide. Riots ensue.

Which is where they wanted us in the first place.

[Gistok]

OK... now that the electoral process has worked....

It is interesting to note that Romney won 61% of the [[non-Latino) white vote, and yet lost the election. There are 50,000 Latinos who are coming of voter age every month... so the Republican Party cannot ignore this fast growing minority.

[Papasito]

4 more years of businesses in siege mode, apologies to our enemies when Americans die, misinformation to the people, strangulation of energy, and the morphing from America being a bastion of opportunity and freedom into a face in the crowd of globalism.

Enjoy and Congrats!



It's not the people who voted against Obama who are the sore losers, it's the more then 1 out of 10 Americans who have lost their job or have looked for one for so long they aren't even counted anymore.

[leapfrog]

4 more years of businesses in siege mode, apologies to our enemies when Americans die, misinformation to the people, strangulation of energy, and the morphing from America being a bastion of opportunity and freedom into a face in the crowd of globalism.

Enjoy and Congrats!



It's not the people who voted against Obama who are the sore losers, it's the more then 1 out of 10 Americans who have lost their job or have looked for one for so long they aren't even counted anymore.

Blah blah blah...we survived 8 years of Bush. You'll survive 8 years of Obama.
your savior lost, go have a seat and we'll talk to you in 4 years.

[poobert]

4 more years of businesses in siege mode, apologies to our enemies when Americans die, misinformation to the people, strangulation of energy, and the morphing from America being a bastion of opportunity and freedom into a face in the crowd of globalism.

Enjoy and Congrats!



It's not the people who voted against Obama who are the sore losers, it's the more then 1 out of 10 Americans who have lost their job or have looked for one for so long they aren't even counted anymore.

You better get together with your Republican buddies and do some serious navel gazing. You right-wingers had the stated goal of destroying Obama and taking the Senate [[state of the country be damned) four years ago and your little shitbombs of malicious nonsense like the one you just deposited here DID NOT WORK with the American people. You better figure something else out if you guys ever want to win a national election again, or shake the reputation you've gained as stark raving lunatics.

[Lowell]

The best quote of last night came from a Republican Hispanic commentator on CNN speaking on what Romney's pandering to the fringe on immigration meant. "Mitt Romney self-deported himself from the White House."

Mitt Romney lacked the moral compass to win this election because his compass spun in every direction.

Personally I think he is a decent, if somewhat boring, and competent person but his desperation to win the primary left him stranded on the fringe. His attempt to move away from those compromises [shake the Etchasketch] proved impossible. Sell your soul, and it gets collected.

[oladub]

A modest victory for the Democratic Party nationally. Here in Wisconsin, we elected the most liberal Senator imaginable to replace a status quo Democratic Senator. Meanwhile, Republicans took back the WI State Senate. Our new Senator Baldwin at least has a record of not supporting all the Bush/Obama wars and Obama's police state legislation as a US Representative.

The stock market was initially up 1% based on 'certainty' meaning not being tied up in court waiting for the presidential results. The US dollar initially took a .4% dive when swing states started going Obama. That translates into an slightly higher gasoline and other import prices. With an anticipated $4T increase in the federal debt in the next four years under Obama, Americans have chosen to assume an extra $12,800 of personal debt for every American. That's what the democratic [[small d) process is about I guess. Argentines chose Eva Peron and Argentina survived. So will we.

---Rand Paul 2016---
to begin picking up the pieces

[rb336]

When I heard some Romney supporter in Boston saying he lost because Americans didn't really know Romney, my first thought was that he no longer knew himself

[rb336]

Did this election in some ways seem to be the last gasp of "old white men"?