For those wondering how our electoral system is running today, the folks at 866-OUR-VOTE/The Election Protection Coalition have a blog with running updates from around the country. One state in which the coalition has received a number of calls requesting assistance has been Virginia, where the group is now calling on election officials to extend voting by two hours.

Breaking news: at 10:30, Election Protection - the nation's largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition - will call for the voting hours in Virginia to be extended by 2 hours.

Virginia is emerging as a major hot spot, with tens of thousands of voters at risk. Check out some of the reports here. If you are voting in Virginia, please do not get discouraged and leave the polls.

We've received hundreds of calls to the Election Protection Hotline - 1-866-OUR-VOTE - from Virginia voters reporting a variety of problems:

• Massive machine failures across the state
  
• Over 2 dozen precincts opening late
  
• Voters turned away from the polls
  
• Reports of voter intimidation

Update [2008-11-4 11:44:55 by Jonathan Singer]:HuffPo has more on the developments on the ground in Virginia.

If you are having trouble voting, do not hesitate to contact the election protection folks, and if you still need to find where your polling location is located, BarackObama.com has a useful widget to help you out. And if you have the time today -- even just an hour -- to help out and volunteer, do it. It's not too late. Punch in your zip code below or click through this link to find out where you can help out the effort the most.

Update [2008-11-4 12:26:32 by Texas Nate]: Virginia Democratic House Caucus Chair, Delegate Brian Moran is in Hampton Roads, VA today working to protect the vote. Here's his election day commentary:

Here's some local news coverage of Moran's efforts from the Petersburg Progress-Index:

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... please, do it for Pam. As you can see in the video to your right, this poor, poor woman, Pam Geller, is in dire need of better prescription coverage. Electing Barack Obama to the presidency will be a great stride towards the goal of getting it for her.

Now you might say, "But Natasha, that woman is so over-the-top guano, if she didn't exist, she'd have to be invented. She's hilarious. Fix her problems, and the nice bloggers at Sadly, No will have to find new, perhaps even more toxic, sources of guano to mock for our eventual amusement."

But look, we should not be selfish. If Pam were your sister, daughter, or even friend, I'm sure you'd want to see her get help. Well, as Obama reminded us all the way back in 2004, we are our sisters' keepers. Even if they aren't our sisters. Or something like that.  

Pam's plight doesn't move you? Then do it for Dana. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), that is. Dana is a 61 year old man who's been reduced to being the "biggest blithering idiot" in Congress. You may not know this, and I wouldn't want to alarm you, but there is some stiff damn competition for that title. Even when you've gotten to the point where you're reduced, as he is in the video to your left, to babbling about "dinosaur flatulence" in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that you're dead wrong.

I mean, that might not even be in the all-time top 10 dumbest things said by a congresscritter.

Dana would retire, so he could save some of his dignity, but with his party in control of any of the levers of power in Washington, DC, that's a precarious thing to do. Republicans are just no good for retirement security. So poor Dana approaches his twilight years forced to continue working long past time when the skills he was trained in (showboating, crossdressing) are really good fits for his job. Instead of being able to cheer the Russian invasion of Georgia in the comfort of his jammies at home, Dana had to do so in a suit in front of the media. So sad.

Won't you please help Dana retire in peace? You can do it today by supporting Debbie Cook, his opponent, and a Way Better Democrat. Debbie will help make sure that all Americans are not only taken care of in retirement, but that there's a decent future for their descendants. Debbie Cook doesn't want any of our seniors to have to worry themselves sick, that's just the kind of stand up person she is.

So for Pam, Dana, and all the other Americans who are hoping that next Tuesday will be a giant stride towards their most cherished dreams, we must Barack this vote. Following are a few places where you can get a hand with that ...

-- The AFL-CIO has produced these state-by-state voting rights fliers that you can distribute in your area if you're worried about disinformation campaigns.

-- A guide to voter suppression in key swing states can tell you what to look out for, or what to warn friends about if they live in a swing state.

-- If you're on Twitter, you can use the #votereport tag to get breaking election news out from your area via mobile text, details at the link.

-- Are wikis more your speed? Check out the voter suppression wiki or the election protection wiki.

-- This has nothing to do with voting rights, but I couldn't resist sharing a George Will column entitled, "Call Him John the Careless". Priceless.

Now are we ready to rumble? Yes. We. Are. Let's do this thing.

[ Find Your Polling Place | Voting Info For Your State | Know Your Voting Rights | Report Voting Problems ]

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It's too late to change ballot designs, change voting machines, any of that. Also, elections have standard error rates that are commonly 1-3%, where ballots are spoiled, lost, etc.

It's also been much discussed that even if a canvasser tries to get paid for signing up people who don't exist, those nonexistent people don't show up to vote, and the worse crime is that plenty of people are outright prevented from voting in the first place.

There will be a time, I hope, when problems like these can be corrected. When we can insist on standard, nation-wide balloting with a full paper trail. But that wasn't going to happen while Bush was in office and it's going to be a hard slog even with Democrats in power.

So here are a few things people may want to keep an eye out for, given that there are glitches in the system:

-- The Election Protection Wiki is a publicly editable, collaborative effort to keep track of how the election is going and to identify any problems. If you learn of any problems, you can report them here.

--Mother Jones has compiled its own state-by-state report on known election issues.

-- North Carolinians are having problems with a ballot that allows straight party line voting ... except for the presidential race. That's an extra box to check and a lot of people don't. It's also a problem that's plagued previous NC elections and that no one's cared enough to fix.

-- What do Republicans who aren't Charlie Crist do for fun come election time? Purge voters and discard ballots.

-- Or, they may send the politicized Justice Department to prosecute groundless claims of vote fraud in order to depress turnout.

-- Or, they may lie to Virginians about when election day is, and suggest that Democrats can wait until November 5th to vote. Which is ridiculous. Who ever heard of holding a US election on a Wednesday?

-- Bipartisanly suspect e-voting machines have flipped votes in three states, affecting both Democrats and Republicans, and even the New York Times is now saying that paper ballots need to be the standard. Check out these videos from West Virginia for more.

--Verify your registration, or you might end up voting on a provisional 'ballot'.

-- If you live in Florida, don't give your ballot to a stranger just because they knocked on your door and asked for it. Not even if they give you candy.

-- If you live in Pennsylvania, be aware that unpaid parking tickets have nothing to do with your right to vote and the police don't cage polling places looking to arrest people who forgot to move their car on street cleaning day. And, based on past, similar fliers I've read about in past elections, outstanding bills also have nothing to do with voting rights. Neither the landlord nor the repo man get to interfere with whether you can vote.

Though even with all these problems, even with opponents who literally lie, cheat and steal, even with dodgy equipment, we can still win. It will mean that the election can't be close enough for there to be a question. It means everybody who can contribute, contributes. It means everybody votes who can vote. Everybody volunteers who can volunteer.

We will turn out this vote. We will elect people who'll listen when we tell them that we need better election laws. We can bury the efforts of these two-bit weasel-humping punks in an avalanche of legitimate votes.

So let's do this thing. You coming?

"Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win." Robert Heinlein

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Volunteers at the Center for Media and Democracy's Election Protection Wiki continue to collect reports of ongoing voter suppression.

Among the reports on the Election Protection Wiki from the last few days:

Michigan: GOP admits foreclosure voter suppression scheme.

California voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans

West Virginia: voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans.

US Supreme Court sides with Ohio election officials against striking 200,000 from the voting roles.

And the Obama campaign has asked the Justice Department to expand the special prosecutor's DOJ politicization probe to see if the ACORN accusations are related

The volunteers are collecting information on polling place shortages, voting machine malfunctions, ballot misprints, voter roll purges, voter intimidation and other election threats. At the same time they are contributing to issue articles on exit polls, student disenfranchisement, the ACORN controversy and other important topics. All of this is being collected into a central location for use by media, activists, advocates and policy-makers on and after election day.

We need every hand we can get to help us get this information ready in time. Come to the Election Protection Wiki and help keep this election honest.

Update [2008-10-21 21:54:42 by Todd Beeton]:The pushback against the ACORN bullshit has gotten more aggressive lately. Great to see Brave New Films has gotten in on the act with this must-see video. Pass it around to anyone you know who is buying the right-wing's "voter fraud" absurdity.

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Volunteers at the Center for Media and Democracy's Election Protection Wiki continue to collect reports of ongoing voter suppression.

Among the reports on the Election Protection Wiki from the last few days:

Michigan: GOP admits foreclosure voter suppression scheme.

California voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans

West Virginia: voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans.

US Supreme Court sides with Ohio election officials against striking 200,000 from the voting roles.

And the Obama campaign has asked the Justice Department to expand the special prosecutor's DOJ politicization probe to see if the ACORN accusations are related

The volunteers are collecting information on polling place shortages, voting machine malfunctions, ballot misprints, voter roll purges, voter intimidation and other election threats. At the same time they are contributing to issue articles on exit polls, student disenfranchisement, the ACORN controversy and other important topics. All of this is being collected into a central location for use by media, activists, advocates and policy-makers on and after election day.

We need every hand we can get to help us get this information ready in time. Come to the Election Protection Wiki and help keep this election honest.

There's more...