Okay. So my numbers were off. I still called it, against the advice and counsel of many friends who thought I was nuts.

That is my prediction for the final result tonight, even if we don't know the final result tonight. I predicted it earlier this week in an email to my grad school classmates. As the results read 237-188, I stand by it. Ohio will fall next. Get ready for four more years, like it or not.

A few commentators have been suggesting that its possible we could find ourselves with a split electoral college -- 269 votes each -- tonight. I heard one organization say that there are no less than 33 distinct scenarios under which this could happen. Should that happen, the decision would would under the 12th Amendment to the Constition Fall to the U.S. House Of Representatives. And if the House can't make up their mind, by Jan. 20 of 2005, then the 20th Amendment comes into play. Under this scenario, the vice president -elect becomes the acting president . But get this. If they're still undecided, the 20th Amendment reads as follows: "the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified."

Most elections aren't terribly close. It appears this one will be. But the election of 1800 was as well, and resulted in an evenly split electoral college. Here's a fascinating look -- in audio -- on that election from National Public Radio.

Garrison Keillor also has some fine words to take some comfort from with today's installment of
The Writer's Almanac. (Scroll down to Nov. 2). I often get frustrated about low voter turnout, like in 1996, when less than half of those voters eligible -- 49% -- showed up to the polls. Yet I learned today -- thanks to Keillor -- that the lowest turnout was in 1788 for the very first election held under the authority of the Constitution: It was 11%.

Keillor goes on:

To be eligible to vote at the time, you had to be a white male property owner. But different states had trouble defining what a property owner was. ...In Pennsylvania, you just had to prove that you paid taxes. In New York, you had to prove that your estate was worth a certain amount of money. If your estate was greater than 20 pounds, you could vote for state assembly, but your estate had to be worth more than 100 pounds to vote for senator or governor. In Connecticut, you had to be a white male property owner "of a quiet and peaceable behavior and civil conversation. ... In order to vote in that first election, voters had to travel many miles to the nearest polling place, which was often a tavern. There they met the candidates for their district's seat on the state assembly. In many precincts, there were no ballots. Voters announced their votes to the sheriff in loud, clear voices, and then stood by the candidate they had voted for, who usually offered them something to drink.

Here's the audio.

Devo's "Freedom Of Choice" seems as good as any as the theme of the day.



Or if you prefer, some verse:

Election Day, November, 1884
--From Leaves Of Grass by Walt Whitman

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes--nor
Mississippi's stream:
--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name--the still
small voice vibrating--America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board and inland--
Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the
peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart
pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

Looks like the hosting switch went off without a hitch. This site is now hosted entirely on websitesource.com. I can publish normally just like before. Yay.

We're out at the house in Bridgehampton today, taking in an unusually warm day for this late in the fall -- 66 degrees and sunny as I type. But the foliage on the trees out front is gorgeous.



Here's how those same trees looked on 2 Oct.

Posted 10/31/2004 01:04:00 PM