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November 03, 2004
Election Frenzy
I crawled into bed this afternoon just before 5 p.m. in preparation for getting up in the middle of the night to listen to the election results. After a failed attempt to watch ABC News via live internet feed, I ended up listening to NPR's live stream, with Washington Post as my primary electoral map.
Of course, there had to be a technical glitch--apparently, my internet provider here in Sweden (Affairsverken) scheduled broadband maintenance scheduled for 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. When my internet connection conked out with no warning, it took me a good 45 minutes to discover the reason. In the intervening minutes, I was plunged into a sea of despair, feeling totally cut off from the rest of the world. Thankfully, their maintenance must have been completed ahead of time, because promptly at 4 a.m. the internet went back on and I'm now back online, listening to my favorite radio people, Robert Siegal and Linda Wertheimer. Sigh--I love public radio.
I also love the Washington Post, which has a live update on key races. Currently, at 4:13 a.m. (here), the race in Florida is looking extremely tight, with less than 200,000 votes seperating Bush and Kerry with 77% of the vote counted. And just in Broward County, there are 90,000 absentee ballots that haven't been counted, and potentially won't be counted until Thursday.
Another thing I am amazed at is the voter turnout. Apparently, there are still long lines at polling places in Ohio and Florida (main swing states). Even though the polls have closed, the law states that once you are in line to vote, your vote will be counted.
High voter turnout favors Kerry. NPR is reporting that if 130 million voters (or more) participate in the election, the likelihood of a Kerry win increases dramatically. They point to a polling place at an Ohio college campus where students have formed an impromtu party (having to wait over 7 hours to vote), which has brought in additional students that weren't even planning to vote. Yay for voter turnout!
I have been feeling extremely excited about this election, but strangely detached, having voted by absentee ballot several weeks ago. So I'm thrilled to be able to listen to the results on the internet.
NPR has now reported that Senator Bunning (Kentucky) has won re-election. This has been a bizarre case, as the Senator has been behaving erratically--suddenly withdrawing from a live debate and participating instead from his campaign headquarters, where he read his opening and closing statements from a Teleprompter. The campaign got really nasty, and it seems that there are real concerns that Senator Bunning has lost some mental facility. And yet, the voters chose to re-elect him. Weird, weird, weird.
