sigh

[sisyphusshrugged]

Kerry is taking Ohio to court (you may have read that somewhere last night).

President Bush moved to the brink of securing his bid for reelection early this morning, winning the prized battleground of Florida and holding what appeared to be an insurmountable lead over Sen. John F. Kerry in Ohio. But the Massachusetts senator considered continuing his battle to win the White House with a fight over provisional ballots in the Buckeye State.

With reports of pandemonium inside the campaign, Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), appeared at Boston's Copley Plaza at 2:30 a.m. vowing to continue the fight. "John Kerry and I made a promise to the American people that in this election every vote would count and every vote would be counted. Tonight we are keeping our word and we will fight for every vote. You deserve no less."

Bush had planned to speak to supporters once the results were clear but held off once Edwards made his announcement, with aides expressing irritation at the Democrats. At the time Edwards spoke, Bush, who lost the popular vote four years ago, was leading Kerry by more than 3.7 million votes nationally -- 51 percent to 48 percent. He had 254 electoral votes to Kerry's 242. To win the presidency, 270 votes are needed.

There. We're irritating Bush's aides. That's something to fight for, right?

As of 2 a.m. this morning, Mr. Bush had 2,685,059 votes, compared with 2,564,047 for Mr. Kerry, or an edge of 121,012 votes. Mr. Kerry's aides said that they believed the vote could be turned around once provisional ballots - those submitted by people who were unable to vote because their names not on registration rolls - had been tallied.

"The vote count in Ohio has not been completed,'' said Mary Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager. "There are more than 250,000 remaining votes to be counted. We believe when they are, John Kerry will win Ohio."

The dispute provided a chaotic conclusion to a long gyrating night of counting that vividly recalled the turmoil of four years ago. In addition to the problem in Ohio, Iowa officials said that they would do a recount in that state, where Mr. Bush had a lead of 11,000 with 94 percent of the vote counted.

An evening of confusion - and deflation for Mr. Kerry's aides and Democrats across the country - caused in no small part by surveys of voters leaving the polls, which showed Mr. Kerry leading Mr. Bush by as much as 3 percentage points nationally. With 86 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Bush was leading Mr. Kerry 51 percent to 48 percent.

Americans turned out in big numbers to vote, according to officials from both parties, lining up at polling places across the country - from Ohio to Florida, from New York to Minnesota - in an evocative conclusion to one of the most emotionally charged campaigns in a century.

Polls taken up to the eve of the election showed Mr. Bush tied with Mr. Kerry, and party officials suggested that the turnout in this hard-fought election could match the modern-day record of 63 percent set in 1960. In Ohio, lines were so long that some polling places stayed open past the 7:30 p.m. closing time.

One in seven people who voted yesterday did not participate in the 2000 election, and 60 percent of those voters said they supported Mr. Kerry, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls. And throughout the day, Republicans appeared concerned by the images of long lines of Americans waiting to vote, particularly in cities and in areas with large numbers of minority voters. A survey of voters leaving the polls suggested that the turnout was at least partly inspired by anger among Democrats lingering from Mr. Bush's disputed victory in 2000.

The results in OH and FL do not track the exit polls (which the Republicans went to court to try and block in OH) and which were extremely accurate in other states. There are contradictory turnout numbers in both places.

We planned for this. We knew it was going to happen. Let's do something about it before we give up, 'K? These are the votes of american citizens we're talking about here.

We've been pissed off for four years because we rolled over last time. Kerry's not rolling over. We shouldn't either.

And for crying out loud, do try and remember that even if they're narrating your worst midnight bogeyman there on the tv or in the newspaper or en blog, anyone who was a lazy self-aggrandising partisan hack yesterday is still a lazy self-aggrandising partisan hack this morning.

Let's annoy Karl Rove, OK? Always a thing worth doing.

Comments

[antigone-ks.livejournal.com]

What confuses me (aside from everything), is how the numbers keep changing. When I left the house, CNN had Bush with 252 electorals and Kerry with 250, but Kerry with 50% of the popular vote and Bush with 49%. Now, I get how the popular vote can fluctuate, but how can Kerry's selectoral vote go down by six when the states haven't changed yet? For that matter, MSN now shows Bush with 269 electoral votes... what's up with that?

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

There's clearly a lot of number massaging going on here.

[antigone-ks.livejournal.com]

I wish they wouldn't do that. It's confusing.