The election thread

[Brian]

Louisa mentioned the Bradley effect again last night on the corner and I wanted to run to my car so I could read this to her from last week's Time Magazine:

But some analysts say there is little evidence the Bradley effect still exists—if it ever did. Among the more persuasive voices in this camp is V. Lance Tarrance, Jr. When he calls the Bradley effect "a pernicious canard," Tarrance speaks with some authority—he was the pollster for Bradley's opponent, George Deukmejian. Tarrance argues the effect was merely a result of bad data: the poll declaring Bradley a prohibitive favorite ignored Deukmejian's advantages among absentee and early voters. To give credence to a Bradley effect in this year's election, Tarrance argues, "is to damage our democracy, no matter who wins."

There's more -- racially charged issues like busing and welfare aren't part of today's elections and Obama actually outperformed the polls by an average of 3.3 percent in the primaries -- but I never bought the theory, not even in 1982.

Seems to me that most people who are so prejudiced that they wouldn't vote for an African American weren't going to vote Democrat anyway. And they are less motivated than all the new voters Obama has inspired, registered and organized.

[Brian]

I was totally knocked out watching the Channel 4 news last night and reading the Los Angeles Times today: people were lining up at the Registrar-Recorder's headquarters in Norwalk and waiting for up to five hours to vote early.

For more than 20 years, I walked past empty early voting booths every Saturday before statewide elections to train as a ballot inspection board supervisor. (The new Registrar-Recorder essentially laid off all 20 of us who had overseen the clerks who opened and inspected the boxes from every precinct before they were counted by the computers in the next room -- I knew people who had been supervisors back in 1964. But now I get to learn the results before 2 a.m. Wednesday.)

The county had set up dozens more voting booths in tents outside. The early voters were cheerful and enthusiastic despite the long waits -- and California's status as a solid Obama state -- because they needed to make sure their votes were counted.

[Paige]

In case you have friends who actually might not bother to vote, here's a video to send them from the Billionaires - (really fun satirical street theatre):

thebillionaires.org/videos/dont-vote-video