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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Mark Warner, party builder, is lending his voice to Barack Obama in Virginia:

I'm not sure I would go so far to say that John McCain can't win the presidency without winning Virginia, because it's mathematically possible -- but it's pretty close to a necessity for McCain to carry. So having Mark Warner coming through the car stereos of voters across the commonwealth of Virginia during drive time, asking them to support Obama comes as a major blow to McCain's overall efforts.

Mark Warner is, if not the most popular politician in Virginia, certainly among the small handful of the most popular politicians in the state. At present, he is leading in his Senate race by close to 30 points. His favorability ratings are close to astronomical. In short, he is as strong a surrogate as Obama could ask for in Virginia.

The question, then, for some was whether Mark Warner would be willing to use some of his good will with the voters of Virginia to try to help the Democratic ticket both down ballot and up ballot. The answer is apparently yes. And considering the already remarkable trend in the state, Warner's backing might be just what Obama needs to go over the top and bring the state's 13 electoral votes into his camp.

Throw on top of all of this the roughly 4.3-to-1 edge in television expenditures in the state the Obama campaign is enjoying over the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee -- combined -- and you can see that Virginia is in a good position to flip from red to blue for the first time in 44 years.

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Here are the latest swing state numbers from CNN and Time:

Michigan (September 7-9, 966 RVs, MoE 3.0%)

John McCain (R): 45 percent
Barack Obama (D): 49 percent

Missouri (September 7-9, 940 RVs, MoE 3.0%)

John McCain (R): 50 percent
Barack Obama (D): 45 percent

New Hampshire (September 7-9, 899 RVs, MoE 3.5%)

John McCain (R): 45 percent
Barack Obama (D): 51 percent

Virginia (September 7-9, 920 RVs, MoE 3.0%)

John McCain (R): 50 percent
Barack Obama (D): 46 percent

Looking through the write up of the polling linked to above, one piece of data jumped out at me from the Virginia survey:

Obama is leading in southeast Virginia, where he spent Wednesday campaigning, 54% to 41%, despite the Arizona senator's strong military background; the area is home to the Naval Mecca of Norfolk as well as several Army and Coast Guard bases.

The full internals of this poll have not been released, but doing some triangulation it's likely that the margin of error for the subsample of Southeast Virginia is in the neighborhood of plus or minus 7 percentage points, meaning that these numbers are likely right on the edge of statistical significance. That said, if it is indeed the case that Obama is leading by about 13 points in the region, it's hard to see him losing the state. Note that back in 2006 Jim Webb carried the Southwest portion of the commonwealth by a 53 percent to 47 percent margin. So it's definitely worth keeping an eye on polling from Virginia to see if these numbers showing Obama particularly strong in the Southeast portion of the commonwealth are borne out in other surveys.

Anyway, overall this remains a close race.

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Rasmussen Reports on Virginia:

The presidential race in Virginia is now dead even, with Barack Obama and John McCain each drawing 44% of the vote, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state.

If "leaners" are factored in, McCain leads by a statistically insignificant one percentage point 48% to 47%.

[...]

In five of the last six polls, Obama and McCain have been within five points of each other. Only in March with the Jeremiah Wright controversy raging did the Republican candidate jump ahead significantly -- by 11 points.

And on North Carolina:

The race is still close between John McCain and Barack Obama in the traditionally red state of North Carolina. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds McCain ahead 45% to 42% in the Tar Heel State. When "leaners" are included, McCain leads 48% to 45%.

McCain led by two points last month and by three points in May. The two candidates were tied at 47% in April. North Carolina has voted for Republican candidates in nine out of the last ten Presidential elections. In 2004, George W. Bush won the state by a 56% to 44% margin. The race between Obama and McCain is also very close on the national level, where Obama is currently leading 44% to 42% in the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Both of the surveys show that Barack Obama's favorable/unfavorable numbers appear to be harder at this juncture than those of John McCain -- a thought-provoking set of data considering it is McCain who has been on the political scene for the past three decades, and the past several years in particular, and Obama who broke out nationally just within the last few years.

These numbers, if correct, seem to suggest to me, then, that Obama still has quite a bit of room to try to define McCain as the Republican has apparently not yet been successful in completely defining himself with the electorate despite the fact that he has invested heavily in the past month or so on bio spots. Of course the opposite is true, too; McCain does still have time to define himself as well. But while there is a tendency to believe that it is preferable to save up for the last month or two of the general election rather than spend big in the summer months, if Obama can shape voters views of McCain now -- both in these key reddish-purple states, without which McCain cannot win, as well as across the country -- Obama's chances of winning come November could be greatly increased.

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Today Rasmussen Reports has some new numbers out from the commonwealth of Virginia:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Virginia voters finds Obama with a statistically insignificant one-percentage point lead over McCain, 45% to 44%. Five percent (5%) favor a third-party candidate, and 7% are undecided. Last month, with Hillary Clinton still in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, McCain led Obama 47% to 44%. (See Video)

This marks the fourth time in five polls that the two candidates have been within five points of each other in Virginia, confirming the state's competitive status. The one exception came in March, at the height of the initial Jeremiah Wright coverage, when McCain was up by eleven points.

With this new polling in the mix, the Pollster.com trend projection for Virginia shows about as close to a tossup as they come, with John McCain sitting at 44.6 percent support and Barack Obama at 44.1 percent. The Real Clear Politics pure average of recent polling shows an actual tie, with both candidates securing 43.3 percent support. And at present, Nate Silver gives Obama a slightly better than not chance of winning (57.4 percent).

Now that Virginia, which no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has carried, is in the "tossup" category, and even states like Kansas (which I will write about in the morning) and Nebraska (at least a couple congressional districts -- and thus EVs -- in the state) and North Carolina are being talked about, the near obsessive focus on the race in Florida (and even in Ohio, to an extent) seems a bit dated, mired in a mindset that seemingly made more sense four and eight years ago than it does today.

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