US elections: your guide to watching - and a lot of other stuff to ponder upon the state of our f-upped nation on this important day

1. The Couch Potato's Guide to Election Night -- by Michael Schwartz/TomDispatch.com

If you have a political bone in your body - even if you're usually a cynic about elections - you're undoubtedly holding your breath right now. With the 2006 midterm elections upon us, the question is: Will the Democrats recapture at least the House of Representatives and maybe even take the Senate by the narrowest of margins?

There is very little agreement about what might happen if a change in Congressional control takes place. The Bush administration, of course, has trumpeted the direst of warnings, predicting (in sometimes veiled ways) nothing less than the demise of the country. Less apocalyptic predictions include an expectation among 70% of potential voters (as reported in the latest New York Times poll) that "American troops would be taken out of Iraq more swiftly under a Democratic Congress." The more cynical among us hope for at least a few challenging congressional investigations of administration activities at home and abroad.

So we will go into Tuesday looking for that tell-tale count that will indicate a Democratic gain of 15 or more seats in the House; and - a much bigger if - six seats in the Senate. We probably face a long night sorting out so many disparate races - and our traditional counters, the TV networks, won't even begin their task until the polls close on the East coast. So we could face a long day's journey into night, if we don't have some other "benchmarks" - to use a newly favored administration word - and issues to ponder.

Before the Polls Close

Voter turnout is crucial: The networks have grown skilled at predicting elections using exit polls and they begin collecting their numbers first thing in the morning. Even for close races, they often have a very good idea what will happen by early afternoon. They are, however, sworn to secrecy until those polls close, because early forecasts of results have, in the past, affected voter turnout later in the day.

But they are willing to reveal one very important fact during daytime newscasts: voter turnout, which is generally the determining factor in close races. Here's why.

By the time Election Day arrives, just about every voter has made up his or her mind about whom to vote for. Even for that vaunted category, independent voters (who, so many experts are convinced, will determine this election), less than 15% were undecided a week before the election. True enough, those who hadn't by then made up their minds are expected to be splitting two-to-one for the Democrats even as you read this, thereby making some previously secure Republican seats competitive. But by Election Day itself, the handful of independent "undecideds" that remain will not be enough to tip the close races one way or the other, no matter what they do.

The determining factor in winning those "too close to call" seats is: How many already committed voters actually go to the polls. Traditionally, in a midterm election as many as two-thirds of a candidate's supporters may stay home, so whoever moves the most people from the couch to the polling booth will win.

And this year there is real intrigue about which party can get its supporters to the polls. Since the 1990s, the GOP has been hands-down better at this. Leaving aside the question of fraud for the moment, most observers believe this "get out the vote" effort was critical in the elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004. But this year may be different.

GOP superiority has been based on two factors - a much better on-the-ground organization and far greater enthusiasm among the rank and file. Such enthusiasm means potential voters are more likely to brave cold weather or long lines to vote; and it also means more volunteers to encourage people to get out and, in some cases, to transport them to the polls.

The Democrats have been working since 2004 to build up their on-the-ground organizations in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Because Bush is so unpopular and the GOP obviously so vulnerable, opinion polls tell us that there is tremendous electoral enthusiasm among Democratic rank and file - and concomitant gloom and disillusionment on the Republican side.

So check the news early for turnout reports from key areas. Look for whether turnout is higher this year in Democratic urban strongholds, and lower in GOP suburban or rural ones. This will tell you a lot about each party's congressional (and gubernatorial) possibilities.

What about fraud? In 2000 in Florida and 2004 in Ohio, fraud made a world of difference in close contests. As early as noon on Tuesday, you should begin to get a sense of how much of a problem fraud will be this time around.

Many people are terrified that the new electronic voting machines will be the means to falsify vote totals (as was apparently done in Ohio in 2004) and so steal elections - especially with no paper trails available for recounts. However, the biggest threat is old-fashioned indeed: legal and illegal methods that block eligible voters from voting.

Two examples will illustrate how this can be done. In the 2000 election, Republicans in Florida disenfranchised over 10,000 voters, by purging names from the voting lists that happened to match the names of convicted felons. When these voters showed up at the polls, they were simply declared ineligible; and, by the time they took their case to court, George W. Bush was already president. (The excluded voters were largely African American and would have voted overwhelmingly in the Democratic column.)

In Ohio in 2004, election officials simply did not provide enough voting machines in predominantly Democratic areas, so many potential voters waited all day in endless lines without ever getting the chance to vote, while others grew discouraged and left. There seems little doubt that the excluded voters would have tipped the state to Kerry - and this act of voter suppression wasn't even illegal.

This year, GOP state officials in as many as a dozen states have already made good use of the legal system to exclude otherwise eligible voters. They have, for instance, passed laws that will disqualify people who think they are eligible to vote. One common way to do this is by requiring a state-issued picture ID (a driver's license), which many old and poor people (guaranteed to fall heavily into the Democratic column) do not have. These potential voters will simply be turned away and, by the time anyone can register a meaningful complaint, the election will be a fait accompli. Watch especially for complaints in the following states that have passed such laws (or similar ones to the same end): Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia.

But Ohio will probably be the worst, since Republican officials there have developed an ingenious electoral "purging" system. State-appointed officials are allowed (but not required) to eliminate people from the voting rolls for a variety of minute irregularities - without notifying them. This year, only strongly Democratic districts had their rolls purged, while strongly GOP districts, not surprisingly, went untouched. On Election Day, many voters, possibly hundreds of thousands statewide, are going to show up at the Ohio polls and be told they are not eligible.

So start looking for news reports early in the day reflecting the following symptomatic problems: (1) voting sites with tremendous long lines because there aren't enough machines to accommodate all the voters; (2) people in enough numbers to catch reportorial eyes who claim that they have been declared ineligible on appearing at the polls. Expect virtually all affected people to be Democratic.

Election Night

Contested races: Of the 14 contested Senate seats, the Democrats currently hold six (Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington State) and are favored in all of them except Connecticut, where Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the defeated Democrat, is leading as an independent. If Lieberman beats Ned Lamont, but then caucuses with the Democrats (not exactly a given, despite his promises), then in addition to holding those six, they have to win six of the eight GOP races.

Right now the Democrats seem likely to win three of these - Pennsylvania (ousting the odious Rick Santorum), Ohio (barring massive disfranchisement and fraud) and Rhode Island (replacing the most liberal Republican in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee). The latest polls indicate that they are behind (but not out of it) in Tennessee (see below) and Arizona (where incumbent Jon Kyl is leading shopping-center magnate Jim Peterson). Their best chances to get those crucial three more seats are Virginia (where incumbent George Allen has given away the lead with verbal gaffs), Missouri (where Michael J. Fox and a statewide referendum on stem-cell research may put underdog challenger Claire McCaskill over the top), and - most surprising of all - Montana (where the Abramoff scandal has given challenger Jon Testor a slight lead).

Among the approximately 60 house seats now generally agreed to fall into the category of "contested," all but six are currently held by Republicans. The Democrats need just 33 of these, a little over half, to claim the House. It's obvious why so many people are predicting that the Democrats will win.

Three states to watch: New York (at least 5 contested seats) may be a real bellwether, since the results will come in early. All five of them are upstate Republican, and if even three go to the Democrats that could mean a genuine sweep to come (barring massive fraud elsewhere) - as well as being a signal of the emergence of a "solid (Democratic) North" that might in the future help offset the solid (Republican) South.

Ohio (5 contested seats) is at least as interesting, because polls show at least three of the four contested races, all with Republican incumbents, to be really close - and so especially sensitive to fraud. If all of them go GOP, this might be a strong signal of success for the various Republican voter-suppression schemes in the state - and for fraud in the rest of the country. If the Dems win at least two, it will probably be a long night for the GOP.

And then, keep an eye on Indiana. There are three GOP House seats up for grabs in districts that were supposed to be Republican shoo-ins. Miraculously, Democrats are leading in all three, and the lead is approaching double digits in one of them (the 2nd district). If one or two of these actually go Democratic, you're seeing a small miracle, a tiny sign of tidal change in the electorate - and the good thing is, the polls close early in Indiana, so what happens there could be a bellwether of change. But take note that Indiana passed "the strictest voter identification law" in the country; so watch out as well for frustrated Democratic voters turned away at the polls and a GOP sweep of these seats.

Three elections to watch, for very different reasons: First, keep a close eye on the Tennessee Senate race. African American Congressman Harold Ford, the Democratic candidate, was essentially written off early in a generally blood red state - until, that is, he caught up and even pushed ahead in some polls. Now, he is slipping back a bit and probably won't win (in the 10 polls since October 20, he is, on average, lagging by about 3%). But even if he loses, the margin by which he goes down will be an interesting indicator of the national mood. It seems that white southerners have this habit of telling opinion pollsters and exit poll workers that they favor a Black candidate, even though they vote for the white opponent. This peculiar racial trait has resulted in Black candidates losing big in "close" races. So if Harold Ford stays within 5% of his opponent, businessman Bob Corker, it may indicate that white electoral prejudice in the South is waning (or that anger over the President and his war in Iraq simply trumps all this year).

Second, make sure to keep an eye out for the results of the anti-abortion referendum in South Dakota. This is a draconian measure making virtually all abortion illegal. It is meant as a full-frontal challenge of Roe v. Wade, offering the new Bush Supreme Court a future chance to weigh in on the subject. The latest poll suggests that it is losing, 52% to 42%, with only 6% undecided.

Third, Connecticut is fascinating because Joe Lieberman, defeated by anti-war Democrat challenger Ned Lamont in the primary election, is leading as an independent. He says he will caucus with the Democrats, but we should have our doubts. If the final tally in the Senate, for instance, is 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans, think what his vote would mean and what kind of horse-trading might then go on. After all, the GOP could then retain the ability to organize the Senate and appoint committee heads as long as he voted with them and the Vice President cast the deciding vote to break any 50-50 ties. The pressure would be incredible and so would the temptation for honest Joe to take a GOP dive. Remember, he's already shown himself more loyal to his own career than to the Democratic Party through his refusal to accept defeat in the primary. If things are close, this is a story that will eat up media time in the days to come.

The Morning After

What do the Democrats stand for? But what if, as some pollsters, pundits, and even Republican prognosticators are suggesting, those New York seats go Democratic, along with moderate Republican ones in Connecticut and previously red-meat Republican ones in states like Indiana? What if the Democrats win by 20-35 seats or more, as some are suggesting, decisively gaining control in the House?

From the opinion polls, we already know that most Democratic voters this time around will see the taking of the House, or all of Congress, as a mandate to begin a draw-down of American troops in Iraq and to bring the American part of that war to an end in some undefined but rather speedy fashion. As it happens, however, Democratic leaders do not see it this way. Their strategy has been to "lay low" and let anger towards Bush sweep them into office.

An indicator that voters know the Democrats ran on a non-platform is the fact that independent voters favor them in polling by two-to-one margins mainly because they are incensed with the President and the GOP. As the Washington Post put it:

"Independent voters may strongly favor Democrats, but their vote appears motivated more by dissatisfaction with Republicans than by enthusiasm for the opposition party. About half of those independents who said they plan to vote Democratic in their district said they are doing so primarily to vote against the Republican candidate rather than to affirmatively support the Democratic candidate. Just 22 percent of independents voting for Democrats are doing so 'very enthusiastically.'"

A Democratic victory, if it actually occurs, will be a statement by independent (and other) voters that they disapprove of Bush administration policy on a wide range of issues, not an ideological tilt in support of the Democrats. But then how could it be? Today's Democrats essentially stand for nothing. They are the not-GOP Party.

Will a Democratic victory mean a "mandate" for change? Do the Democrats need to avoid political positions? Those of us who are actively hostile to the Bush administration tend to excuse the absence of a Democratic program as a necessary ploy to win the election. Laying low and not being too "left wing" are, the common wisdom goes, the keys to winning independents - and thus the election. Many of us expect that the Democrats, once in control of all or part of Congress, will see themselves as having a mandate from the people to be much more liberal than their campaigns have suggested. This, I suspect, is an illusion - and this cynicism is, unfortunately, supported by our recent political history.

Remember, as a start, that Bill Clinton's 1992 election was based on a similar "anti-Republican" appeal. Yet, once in office he proved himself to be a "modern Democrat" by, for instance, advancing the GOP agenda in eliminating much of the welfare system, adopting a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military, and abandoning a national health plan. Then, of course, came the Republican "revolution" of 1994, which really did drastically alter policy. The GOP made an explicit and vociferous break with the failing policies of the Democrats, began the most serious drive of our times to rollback history to the days before Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, and never flinched from taking strong stands.

Since that year, the Democrats have found themselves increasingly locked out of power, while the GOP has finally inherited the mantle of the established party with the failing policies. Instead of riding back to power on a dramatic set of alternative policies as the GOP did, however, the Democrats - like Clinton - are mimicking parts of the GOP platform, while arguing that the Bush administration administered it in an inept, extreme, and corrupt way.

This strategy may indeed get them elected if the Karl Rove system of political governance finally comes apart at the seams, but it won't work to generate the changes in policy that so many of us desire. Instead, we can expect Democratic leaders, suddenly invested with the power of the subpoena (but probably little else), to investigate past Republican sins while attempting to prove that they can, indeed, pursue a less overtly offensive Republican program more honestly and efficiently than the Bush administration has. Just as the Democratic leadership has promised, they will probably continue to support fighting the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more "effectively." They are also likely to continue the essence of Bush tax policy (more cuts, just not as favorable to the very rich), and to serve money to the Pentagon more or less on demand, but not to domestic "reconstruction" programs.

Could the Democrats win in 2008 on the basis of actual differences in policy? Only if they tried to win over the American people (including independents) to a genuinely different platform. On the Iraq War alone, look at how close ex-Marine Paul Hackett came to winning a 60% Republican congressional district in Ohio back in 2004 on a simple platform of withdrawal from Iraq.

Or look at the actual attitudes held by independents. According to a typical recent poll, only a third believe the war is "worth fighting"; three quarters think the country is "headed in the wrong direction"; only 37% approve of the job Bush is doing. Doesn't this suggest that such voters might indeed be receptive to ideas that dramatically challenge Bush administration policies?

But, let's face it, even if such a strategy could win, the Democratic leadership will not follow the path laid out by the GOP from the 1970s through the 1990s as they toppled an entrenched Democratic establishment. They may want to win on Tuesday, but what they don't want is a mandate to lead Americans in a new direction.In the end, they prefer to hang in there as the not-GOP Party, pick up old-hat and me-too policies, and hope for the best.

What's at Stake in This Election

As in 2004, there is no mystery about what the voters think when it comes to this election: It is a referendum on Bush administration policies in which unhappiness over the war comes first, second, and third. And this is why, no matter what the Democrats do afterwards, the 2006 midterm elections whose results we will all be anxiously watching on Tuesday are so important. If the Democrats prevail, however narrowly, against a world of massively gerrymandered seats, Republican finances, blitzes of dirty ads, the presidential "bully pulpit," and well-planned campaigns of voter suppression, American - as well as world public opinion - will interpret it as a repudiation of Bush administration war policy. And this will become a mandate for those who oppose these policies to speak and act ever more forcefully. With or without Democratic Party leadership, this added momentum might even make a difference.

(Michael Schwartz is Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the College of Global Studies at Stony Brook State University. For years he was part of the polling world, measuring attitudes and attempting to predict the political, economic, and social behavior of Americans. His current work, which has appeared frequently on Tomdispatch.com , is focused on the equally problematic goal of understanding the war in Iraq. His email address is ms42@optonline.net)


2. What to Recall, What to Forget on Election Day -- by Carl Hiaasen/Pennsylvania Centre Daily Times

The latest New York Times/CBS poll shows that only 29 percent of Americans approve of how President Bush is handling the war in Iraq.

That's terrible news for Republicans on the eve of mid-term elections. While some frantically try to distance themselves from the president, others are frantically trying to distract voters.

Please worry about illegal immigration, they say.

Worry about gay marriages.

Worry about income taxes.

Worry about the stand-up comedy career of John Kerry.

But please, please put the ongoing debacle in Iraq out of your mind when you walk into the voting booth.

Just try.

October was the bloodiest month for coalition forces in almost two years. According to the Pentagon, 105 U.S. soldiers were killed, most of them by improvised bombs.

As of last week, the American death toll since the invasion stood at 2,814. Another 9,737 soldiers had been wounded so seriously that they couldn't return to duty and were sent home.

Don't think about them next Tuesday.

Don't think about all the funerals at Arlington. Don't think about the months of rehab at Walter Reed, learning how to walk with prosthetic legs or eat with prosthetic arms.

Don't remind yourself of that day, so long ago, when Bush posed on the aircraft carrier and announced that major combat was over. Mission accomplished.

Don't remind yourself of how Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld belittled the insurgency in Iraq, and predicted we'd make short work of it.

Don't ask yourself what those arrogant fools were thinking when they dreamed up this war.

Please don't think about the phantom weapons of mass destruction, or about the obliging and unquestioning members of Congress - Republicans and Democrats alike - who bought the hype.

Don't think about what happened at Abu Ghraib prison, or how it helped turn so many Iraqis against us.

Don't ask yourself how Afghanistan, haven for the guys who planned the 9/11 attacks, got shoved to the back burner. Don't clutter your head with thoughts of Osama bin Laden, still very much alive and spewing hatred - in hiding nowhere near Iraq.

And please don't think about where we are today, stuck in the middle of a religious civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites, with violent fanatics on both sides. Also, don't worry about Iran waiting on the sidelines, juicing up its nuclear program.

And as long as you're not thinking about the war's human casualties - including thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians - don't bother fretting about the estimated $8 billion a month that it's costing U.S. taxpayers.

When Bush stands up at a campaign rally and says America is safer now than it was five years ago, don't think about the National Intelligence Estimate completed by 16 U.S. spy agencies. Their conclusion: The occupation of Iraq has galvanized Islamic radicals and actually increased the global threat of terrorism.

That, from the top intelligence officials in our own government. Their report was done last April, but kept under wraps until the details began leaking in September.

Here's something else not to think about on Election Day: A 2005 study by the National Intelligence Council saying that since the invasion, Iraq has become the main training camp for the next generation of terrorists and future leaders of al Qaeda.

Every day the war comes home in a crushing way to another American town, to heartsick wives or husbands and to children. The finest soldiers in the world are fighting their guts out in a place where they are increasingly viewed, and treated, as invaders.

There's a powerful new book by journalist Trish Wood called What Was Asked of Us, a compilation of interviews with veterans who've returned from combat in Iraq. Some of them still believe the cause was right; others are disillusioned, or burned out.

Army Lt. Brady Van Engelen survived a bullet in the head from a sniper near a Sunni mosque in Baghdad. He came home with a Bronze Star and the same questions many Americans are asking.

"I still want answers, and I think the thing that I really want from this is there to be lessons learned from what happened, how we ended up in Iraq," Van Engelen says.

" ... and I'd feel bad if I were a Vietnam veteran watching the Iraq war unfold. How do you apologize to them for making the same mistake? All I really want is answers so we don't make the same mistake again. I'm not angry ... I just want some honesty."

Judging by the polls, the lieutenant is more attuned to the pulse of the nation than those holding the power.

The same politicians who got us into the war promise to get us out, but they can't say how or when. They're more comfortable ranting against lesbian weddings and illegal farm workers than talking about the 105 coffins that were shipped home last month from Iraq.

They'd prefer that the war wasn't a big campaign issue, and that voters didn't wonder about the doubts of our own top generals or the bleak assessments from our own intelligence networks. Or about the president himself, grinning like a Muppet while defending the competence of Cheney and Rumsfeld.

They'd prefer at this time to ignore Lt. Van Engelen's simple plea for some honest answers.

Try not to think about that on Tuesday.

Just try.


3. Decision 2006: Itchy
(Or Scratchy?) For Senate
In Web video spoofs, candidates get remixed with movie characters, cartoons; Ted Kennedy as Bluto
By JAMIN WARREN/Wall Street Journal

In the final days before Tuesday's midterm elections, Florida Rep. Katherine Harris has been spotted vamping to the 1980s song "I Know What Boys Like." In the Ohio Senate race, Democrat Sherrod Brown has made an impromptu appearance on the cartoon "South Park." And the "Partridge Family" theme song, "Come On, Get Happy," has turned into an anthem of sorts for embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Or that's what it looks like in the alternate universe of online video spoofs. These politicians -- and many others -- are finding themselves starring in short satires playing on the Web.

Much has been written about the powerful effect of Web video on public opinion in this year's elections, with everything from Virginia Sen. George Allen's notorious "macaca" gaffe to Michael J. Fox's pro-stem-cell-research ads in Missouri appearing online and shaping the views of voters around the country. But there is another variety of Web video emerging this election season: political parodies that interweave campaign footage with segments from popular movies, TV shows and songs. They are called "mashups" because they blend seemingly incongruous scenes from different genres -- like the video now on YouTube that puts the words of John "Bluto" Blutarksy of "Animal House" into the mouth of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

In some cases, the makers of these clips are politically-inclined amateurs with time on their hands. Others are the work of campaigns or political organizations trying to reach voters.

One video intersperses images of Montana Sen. Conrad Burns with the ad theme song for Internet phone service Vonage. Playing off Vonage's advertising tag line, "People do stupid things," the video declares, "Some senators do stupid things -- like taking a free flight on a Vonage corporate jet to play golf two days after pushing a Vonage special interest bill through the Senate."

Eric Blumrich, a 36-year-old free-lance animator and Web developer in Montclair, N.J., was commissioned by Democrats.com , a Web site supporting the Democratic party, to make a video highlighting allegations that Sen. Burns had inappropriately accepted a favor from Vonage. Mr. Blumrich says the video's concept was a no-brainer: He'd seen the Vonage commercial, which features Japanese girl group the 5.6.7.8.s covering the infectious song "Woo Hoo," dozens of times. "The connection was immediate," he says.

Mr. Blumrich spent four hours at his home computer downloading video footage of the Montana senator from Web sites and blogs. He interwove the clips with images of an airplane in flight and added the Vonage song as a soundtrack, using video editing programs including Adobe's After Effects. "Anyone with a Mac or PC can download video and recut it or recontextualize it," he says. Mr. Blumrich started making political videos in 2003, after being frustrated by negative TV news depictions of antiwar protests.

Not everyone is amused by Mr. Blumrich's video. "We talk issues and they make videos on the Internet," says Jason Klindt, the spokesman for Mr. Burns's campaign. He says there was no improper relationship between Mr. Burns and Vonage, and that the flight was booked months before the legislation in question. He says Mr. Burns has not seen the video, and adds that he doesn't think YouTube has been a factor in this year's campaigns. "I don't have time to watch YouTube," he says. "Maybe on November 8."

The campaign office of Mr. Burns's opponent, Jon Tester, takes a more kindly view of the video, though it says that the Tester campaign was not involved with making it. Mr. Tester's spokesman, Matt McKenna, says he personally found the clip humorous, but adds, "It would be more funny, if it weren't so true."

For Robert Fitzgerald of Rothsay, Minn., making a funny video was a bit more personal. The creator of a video spoof about Minnesota Senate candidates Mark Kennedy and Amy Klobuchar is the little-known Independence Party candidate in the same race. Mr. Fitzgerald, the 29-year-old director of a public-access television channel, says he has posted videos on YouTube because, with only $12,000 in his campaign war chest, he doesn't have the money for TV ads. One of his videos interweaves a televised debate between Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Klobuchar with scenes from the "Itchy and Scratchy Show" segment on "The Simpsons."

Mr. Fitzgerald says he had the idea for the video, which he posted Sept. 29, after a friend compared the two candidates to the feuding cat and mouse characters. "It was me letting off some steam," he says, adding that in retrospect, the video, which took him about 10 minutes to make, might have been an ill-advised move, but that he made it out of frustration with the campaign process. "I borrowed some materials that were up online," he says.

Left, a video intersperses clips from a debate between Senate candidates with "Itchy & Scratchy" scenes. Right, Rep. Sherrod Brown is flanked by Howard Dean and Sen. Chuck Schumer, as a character in a cartoon.

In the case of the video spoof of Ms. Harris, its creator says the clip was made primarily for entertainment purposes. Alex Briant of Bend, Ore., says he's been taking a sabbatical from a sales job and has spent some of his time making political parody videos for the Web. The one starring Ms. Harris shows the congresswoman in an interview on Fox News's "Hannity and Colmes" adopting what Mr. Briant clearly interprets as a provocative pose. "I Know What Boys Like," by the Waitresses, plays in the background.

A video by another creator shows Sen. Kennedy making a speech during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, but has been dubbed over with a monologue by John Belushi's character in "Animal House." "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" Mr. Kennedy seems to shout. "Hell no, and it ain't over now!"

Markus Kolic, a Harvard sophomore, says he enjoyed a video making fun of Mr. Brown, the Democratic Senate candidate from Ohio -- even though Mr. Kolic is a Democrat and supports Mr. Brown.

Brooks Jackson, director of FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, says, "I think there is real potential for viral marketing campaigns based on videos like these to become a factor in future campaigns." The spoof of Ms. Harris made him smile. "Whoever put it together could get hired by 'The Daily Show'," he says.

(Write to Jamin Warren at jamin.warren@wsj.com)

Candidates meet "The Simpsons," "The Partridge Family" and "Animal House" in online parody mashups. A few notable examples:

Rep. Katherine Harris (R., Fla.)
"I Know What Boys Like"
As Ms. Harris thrusts her chest forward during an interview with Hannity and Colmes of Fox News, the Waitresses' song plays in the background.

Rep. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio)
"South Park"
This clip shows Mr. Brown, flanked by Howard Dean and Sen. Chuck Schumer, as a character in the cartoon. A character appearing to be Rep. Dennis Kucinich kills Kenny.

"Oops I Did it Again"
The clip shows an image of Mr. Brown breakdancing to the Britney Spears song.

"Unbelievable"
The song "Unbelievable" plays as the clip shows comments made by Mr. Brown.

Rep. Mark Kennedy (R., Minn.) and opponent Amy Klobuchar
"The Itchy & Scratchy Show" from "The Simpsons"
The video intersperses clips from a debate between Senate candidates Mr. Kennedy, a Republican, and Ms. Klobuchar, a Democrat, with "Itchy & Scratchy" scenes, replacing the candidates' faces with those of the feuding cat and mouse.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa. )
"Come On, Get Happy"
The campaign office of Mr. Santorum's opponent, Bob Casey, says it was behind this clip, which shows Mr. Santorum becoming enraged as the upbeat "Partridge Family" theme song plays.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.)
"Animal House"
A passionate speech by Mr. Kennedy is dubbed over by Jon Belushi's classic pep talk as "Bluto" Blutarsky in the 1978 comedy.

Sen. Conrad Burns (R., Mont.)
Vonage theme
Images of Mr. Burns are set to music from the ad for Internet phone system Vonage.


4. How Democrats Can Win Without the South
The upcoming election guarantees gains for the Democrats. but they won't be coming from the South. It's time to whistle past Dixie.
By Thomas Schaller/In These Times

Poised to assume their respective posts atop new congressional Democratic majorities, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) can be forgiven a certain giddiness as the 2006 midterm elections approach. Pelosi recently told Time that establishment Democrats in Washington "can't even believe the fact that I'm going to become Speaker, but they're getting used to it." A bit more cautious but no less hopeful, Reid has noted that "history's on [the] side" of the minority party in a president's second midterm cycle.

To become the first female House Speaker, Pelosi will need to gain 15 seats. For Reid to become Senate majority leader, Democrats must net six new senators. A year ago, talk of an electoral upheaval of this sort was limited to the perfunctory cheerleading of Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the men tasked with recruiting, training and electing Democrats to Congress.

Since then, however, the conventional wisdom has reversed. Most of the "political capital" President Bush claimed to have earned in his 2004 re-election was poured down the Iraqi money pit or squandered in a failed attempt to privatize Social Security. By August 2005, whatever political currency the Administration had left Hurricane Katrina promptly swept over the broken levees.

The pre-election consensus among political handicappers like Charlie Cook, Thomas Mann and Stu Rothenberg is that Democrats will flip the House, and have a decent shot of deadlocking the Senate and an outside chance of capturing it outright. To maintain control, even if narrowly, top Republicans are relying on district-by-district, state-by-state efforts as a local buffer against pervasive anti-Bush and anti-Republican sentiments nationally.

Whatever the magnitude of the coming changes, two things are certain: The Democrats are going to gain seats in the 2006 midterms, and those gains will come from outside the South.

Regionalized partisanship rises

The 1920 elections were a Democratic disaster. Dissatisfaction with Woodrow Wilson created an electoral avalanche that would be nearly impossible in today's era of highly gerrymandered districts and overwhelming incumbent advantages. Republicans picked up 10 new senators and 62 representatives, giving the GOP 61 of 98 Senate seats and a whopping House majority with 302 seats. The resulting 67th Congress mirrored the regional alignment of the two parties, with no Republican senators and just a handful of House members coming from the 11 states of the former Confederacy. Despite their chokehold on the South, the Democrats were a regionally confined party that found little support elsewhere in the country.

It was an era in American politics when presidential and congressional results aligned regionally in ways that have been decidedly misaligned since the collapse of the New Deal in the late '60s.

But regionalized partisanship is beginning to emerge anew. Republicans won every southern state in the past two presidential elections and now have 18 of the region's 22 senators and two-thirds of its House seats. In 2004, despite Bush's two-and-a-half-point defeat of John Kerry, outside the South the Democrats actually gained congressional seats in both chambers. That's right: If the five House seats produced by the re-redistricting of Texas orchestrated by former majority leader Tom DeLay and the five Senate pickups made possible by those southern Democratic retirements are held aside, the Democrats won the 2004 congressional elections.

Four-D Democrats

Today, the Democrats cannot swing enough seats in the near or medium term to invert the electoral maps of the late 19th and early 20th centuries--that is, to confine Republicans solely to their new, southern dominion. Nor would they want to: Democrats will never be shut out of the South the way Republicans once were because there will always be a certain number of districts in the South where African Americans and Hispanics make up the majority. What Democrats can do, however, is accelerate the regional transformation already underway in the quadrant of the northeastern and midwestern states formed by connecting Dover, New Hampshire, and Dover, Delaware, to the east, with Des Moines, Iowa, and Duluth, Minnesota, to the west.

Call it the "Four-D Rectangle."

The Cook Political Report publishes a partisan index that measures the House district-level performance of presidential candidates. Rising partisanship has shrunk the number of split districts, that is, districts that vote for Democratic presidential candidates but have a Republican member of Congress, or vice versa. Republicans currently represent 59 districts that either tilt Democratic or which Bush won by narrow margins, and 44 of these seats are located in the Four-D Rectangle.

Consider Connecticut. Although the Nutmeg State has already drawn plenty of attention for its bloody, intra-party squabble between Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman in the Senate race, it is Connecticut's House steats that are more indicative of the electoral situation. This blue presidential state has only five House seats, three of which are represented by the sort of moderate, "Rockefeller Republicans" who once formed the backbone of the GOP: Nancy Johnson, Chris Shays and Rob Simmons.

None of the three received at least 60 percent of the vote in 2004, and both Shays and Simmons are prime Democratic targets because they won with less than 55 percent. Defying the White House and his fellow Republicans, the embattled Shays made national headlines by calling for a timeline to withdraw American troops from Iraq. His defection was quickly deemed the Shays Rebellion.

Along with Connecticut, the Emanuel-led Democrats are also eyeing winnable seats in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Democratic challengers are even causing Republicans headaches in places like Idaho, eastern Washington, and Wyoming's at-large seat. By contrast, about half of the small group of Democratic incumbents in jeopardy of losing despite a general tailwind this cycle are southerners: Louisiana's Charlie Melancon, South Carolina's John Spratt and two Georgia Democrats.

Schumer-freude

The Northeast and Midwest are also home to four of the five most vulnerable Republican senators running for re-election this cycle: Missouri's Jim Talent, Ohio's Mike DeWine, Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum and Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee. The fifth is Montana's Conrad Burns.

None of the five targets are in the South, the region that produced five new Republicans in 2004 to fill the vacancies created by the simultaneous retirement of five Democratic senators. Current Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) is a formidable campaigner who hopes to take the Senate seat being vacated by Majority Leader Bill Frist, and the "macaca" blunder of Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) has breathed new life into party-switcher Jim Webb's Virginia campaign. But these two seats are considered second-tier opportunities.

Meanwhile, the Democrats' chances of picking up the sixth and decisive seat Schumer and Reid need for a majority are as good in the Southwest as the Southeast. In Arizona, well-financed millionaire Jim Pederson has an outside chance of upending two-term Republican incumbent Jon Kyl, who is a lackluster campaigner. And in Nevada, former President Jimmy Carter's son Jack is closing ground against rookie Republican John Ensign.

Even if Democrats come up short, netting just three or four seats this cycle, the Senate outlook is just as promising two years hence. The Democrats are defending 18 seats to just 15 for the Republicans in 2006, but in 2008 the split is 21 Republican seats to only 12 Democrats. If Reid fails to get his majority this time around, he'll be poised to do so next cycle.

The emergent pattern is clear: To forge a House majority, the Democrats will need to convert the purple Midwest states to blue, make the blue states of the Northeast bluer, and snag the odd seat here and there in the interior West. The Washington Post's Dan Balz and David Broder confirm that top Republican strategists, speaking off-the-record about their party's prospects, are predicting doom: "Republicans face potential losses in every section of the country, but the area that concerns strategists most is the arc of states running from the Northeast across the Midwest."

Party correction

Evidence of this pattern can be found across the ballot. In January 2001, there wasn't a single Democratic governor in any of the eight states of the interior West; there are four now, and if 2006 Democratic nominees in Colorado and Nevada win it could rise to six. The Republicans are almost certain to lose the New York and Ohio governorships, and Democrats are also favored to win in Maryland and Massachusetts. In the 2004 state legislative elections, Democrats gained enough seats outside the South to more than compensate for their southern congressional losses, flipping control of eight chambers, only one of which was in the South.

Though Pelosi and Reid would never say so publicly, national Democrats are benefiting from a regional correction to the realignment that began with the South's Republican conversion following the Brown v. Board ruling and the civil rights movement. To accelerate this process, Democrats must expand and consolidate their control over the Northeast and Midwest by purging as many of the remaining "Rockefeller Republicans" as possible.

For many in the Democratic establishment in Washington, this is the new regional winning formula for the party. As Pelosi might say, they'd better start getting used to it.

(Thomas F. Schaller is associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South)



5. The GOP Should Lose, the Democrats Don't Deserve to Win
The Message of Campaign 2006
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Is the half-hidden message of the 2006 campaign season that in the presidential showdown in 2008 we'll have Senator John McCain running as both a Republican and a Democrat? It would certainly sweep away any remaining doubts that there is any difference between the two major political parties. And maybe it would open up some space for outside challengers, assuming all vociferous opponents have not by that time been arrested and stuck behind barbed wire in an internment camp in the western deserts.

And what candidate would be more appropriate as the next commander-in-chief than the mad ex-POW who now serves as Arizona's senior senator? McCain, don't forget, was under consideration by his senatorial colleague, Democrat John Kerry, as his vice presidential pick in 2004 before he picked John Edwards, whose prime distinction is that he is married to Elizabeth Edwards, the only Democrat I've seen in recent times to display any of the qualities one might hope for in a Democratic presidential nominee.

McCain is obviously aware of his impending responsibilities as the fusion candidate. As the US congress prepared its craven assent to President Bush's destruction of Habeas Corpus with the Military Commissions Act, he was one of three Republican senators who raised a bleat of protest. True, as is always the case with McCain, it was a very brief bleat, but as against the complaisance of Democrats such as Joe Biden (who chortled happily that Democrats would be happy to "sit on the sidelines" as the Constitution thumped into the trash bin) this counts as a lion's roar.

Even the word "bleat" is a fierce overstatement of the noise raised by any U.S. senator, including McCain, as Bush finally junked legal restrictions on the role of the U.S. military in domestic law enforcement, a deed consummated with his signature on the same day, October 17, that he signed the Commissions Act which permits warrantless incarceration and torture of suspected terrorists.

Speaking of what is now Public Law 109-364, Senator Pat Leahy whispered into the Congressional Record on September 29 that he had "grave reservations about certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill Conference Report". The language of these provisions, Leahy said, "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law."

At least when the Military Commissions Act was striding through Congress, the press did demurely note the fact, albeit without alarm sirens that Habeas Corpus is headed towards a display case in the Smithsonian. The only story I've seen on the significance of Public Law 109-364 came from Frank Morales, on Uruknet, describing its license for the President to "declare a 'public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America, taking control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to 'suppresspublic disorder.'"

Does McCain's latest statement Iraq--a call for 20,000 fresh U.S. troops to be sent there--square with the Democrats' position on the war? The answer to this is of course that the Democrats don't have a position on the war beyond the de facto one of trying to make sure no peacenik candidates slipped past the guard post supervised by Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

As is the case with the American people overall, the majority of ordinary Democrats want US forces leave to quit Iraq in the immediate or relatively near future. This was not the posture of Democratic candidates approved by Emanuel, particularly in tight races. Most of them have talked about withdrawal as a matter of many months. The Democratic leadership would sign onto a McCain beef-up plan in minutes, flailing away at Bush for the next two years for losing the war. For the left position we'll probably have to wait for the commission headed by James Baker or a mutiny by the generals, aware--just as they told Rep John Murtha this time last year--that the war is a bust and it's time to quit Iraq.

Campaign 2006 has shown us clearly enough that about the outer limit of popular sanction is the ability to lodge a formal protest on Election Day. Such protest can only have actual consequences in the very few remaining congressional districts not gerrymandered into permanent incumbency or rotted out with vote fraud. Mostly the voters seem to have felt that both parties are pretty awful, but as the outfit that's been running the country without opposition for six years the Republicans deserve to get a kick in the pants.

The fact that this protest is purely formal is attested by the adamant refusal of the Democrats to offer anything by way of a substantive alternative, beyond saying Bush is an incompetent fellow. Indeed, the substantive effect of Campaign 2006 has been to state in terms plain enough for a simpleton to understand, that resistance is futile, since both Republicans and Democrats agree that the Bill of Rights is a dead letter and that wars must go on, and jobs to disappear, despite overwhelming popular disagreement with such policies.

Pick a topic--the war, the economy, a two million-plus prison population, the environment, the condition of organized labor, the Bill of Rights--and can you recall any Democrat this fall having said anything suggesting that in the event Democrats recapture either the House or the Senate or both anything of consequence might occur?

The week before polling day the New York Times had a story about the Business Lobby's plans to sweep away all irksome laws and regulations passed in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Did anyone cry, "that's just the kind of corporate villainy we need the Democrats to guard us from!" Of course not. It would be as unrealistic as to hope that a Congress controlled in both chambers by Democrats would simply vote to deny Bush the money for the war in Iraq.

As things stand in organized politics today a purely formal protest is the most we can hope for, and the significance of this fall's campaign is that no one has pretended otherwise.

(Footnote: This column appeared in slightly shorter form in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday.)


6. Tomorrow's Outcome Hinges on Our Vigilance at the Polls -- by Bob Fitrakis/Harvey Wasserman

On Election Day 2006, the American people will almost certainly vote to give the Democratic Party one or both houses of Congress.

We will vote to restore at least some of the checks and balances written into the Constitution of the United States. We will vote to end the reign of terror and error imposed on the nation and world since the stolen election of 2000. State by state, governorships and legislatures should return to the opposition party.

True to form, the corporate media is already starting to tell us that the polls are starting to slip back to the Republicans. This is the classic precursor to a coming fix.

In fact, all the instincts of credible students of American politics, indicate a massive shift away from the GOP. Anyone familiar with the history of the American electorate can be reasonably certain that the issues of war, deficits, economy, environment, scandal, sexual imposition and more will overwhelmingly favor a traditional rejection of the party in power, and then some.

But in 2006, the party in power has installed a nationwide system of election theft. And the outcome of tomorrow's election may depend on the ability of the grassroots American citizenry to overcome this infernal machine.

The GOP engine of vote theft is built primarily on two pillars:

First is the massive disenfranchisement of mostly urban Democrats, including millions of people of color. Second is the simultaneous inflation of mostly rural and suburban Republican votes, including the mythological influx of "last-minute evangelicals" who may well exist primarily in the memory cards of rigged electronic machines.

Throughout the country, a concerted effort by the Republican Party has crippled voter registration drives. In Ohio some 500,000 citizens who were already registered --some ten percent of the electorate---have been deleted (many without notification) in the Democratic strongholds of Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton and Lucas Counties. With easily manipulated electronic registration books now in place, or private partisan vendors controlling registration rolls, throughout the US, millions more may have been deleted or flagged in other largely Democratic urban areas.

Based on what we know from Florida 2000, stolen Senatorial races in 2002, and Ohio 2004, here are some of the things we can expect from the GOP on Tuesday:

Disenfranchisement of alleged "ex-felons," even in states where it is not illegal for ex-felons to vote, or their intimidation through anonymous phone calls; denial, misprinting and failure to send absentee ballots; denial of voting rights at polling stations through unreasonable or illegal demands for identification; insufficient numbers of voting machines and/or paper ballots at inner city and college town precincts; malfunctioning of those machines and misprinting of those ballots, rendering them erroneous or deliberately confusing; misrepresentation of requirements to obtain regular or provisional ballots; outright trashing of ballots at the voting stations; declaration of phony Homeland Security alerts to remove ballot counting from public scrutiny; outright refusal to count ballots (as in Ohio, where more than 100,000 cast in 2004 have yet to be tallied); termination of the traditional posting of outcomes at precincts; subversion of the recount process.

All this and more was used to steal the elections of 2000 and 2004, and has been documented and broadcast through the internet, at sites such as blackboxvoting.org, freepress.org, bradblog.com. onlinejournal.com, and many more. Despite a mainstream media blackout and the unwillingness of the Democratic Party to face this issue, there is no reason to be surprised on Tuesday.

It will not be enough to rely on polls indicating victory, or to call voters to turn out, or to merely vote on Election Day.

No citizen should be turned away without an election protection monitor documenting it. No monitor should be turned away without full documentation and a call to the police. No ballot should be trashed without sworn affidavits as to why. No recount should be conducted without total public scrutiny.

In all cases, we ask anyone involved to send a report to democracy@freepress.org, with at least your publishable e-mail address included.

We further urge that throughout the states, public post-election hearings be convened in the presence of a court stenographer, so that sworn testimony and affidavits can be available for later litigation.

Such documentation has proven crucial in the lawsuits that have preserved the Ohio 2004 ballots and other voting rights here. It will be at the core of continued efforts to restore American democracy.

Electronic voting machines remain problematic. There is no magic bullet except for absolute scrutiny, persistence, and a willingness to fight it out over every electron. Even with high tech thievery, if the People are vigilant, the Truth can eventually win out. The higher the voter turnout, and the greater the vigilance by voters, the more difficult for Bush and Rove to steal the election, and the more likely we are to catch them if they try.

We expect more tricks we've not yet seen. Even as we write this, Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is imposing new regulations for obtaining a ballot.

Already we are seeing the familiar, tell-tale signs of an impending theft. The so-called "last-minute GOP surge" being reported by the corporate media is emblematic of a party machine gearing up to engineer another public larceny. Forewarned is forearmed.

But there's no excuse for throwing up one's hands in despair. Or for doing nothing in the face of the obvious.

As with the recent rise of the movements for civil rights, peace, social justice and ecological survival, the public campaign for election protection has exploded from the handful to the many to the multitudes.

The power of pro-active grassroots democracy will be sorely tested on Tuesday. The stakes could not be higher.

(Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? , just published by the New Press. They are of counsel and plaintiff in the King Lincoln voter protection lawsuit in Ohio. Bob is an independent candidate for governor of Ohio, endorsed by the Green Party. Harvey's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 , is available at www.solartopia.org)


7. Dispatch From The Future -- by Wolfgang Drechsler

TALLINN, Estonia -- On the night of Oct. 16, 2005, I sat in front of a huge screen in one of the great halls of Tallinn Castle to watch results come in from the first genuine nationwide Internet elections in the world. Soon, numbers began pouring down the screen, Matrix-like, as the votes were assembled and counted, votes from citizens who had hit the send buttons on their PCs and notebooks throughout this small northeast European nation. Some of my fellow election observers muttered their unease; after all, it was hard to judge what was happening, what the numbers meant.

But as we soon determined, e-voting in Estonia's local elections had been a resounding success. There were no technical problems, no hackers broke through. As an accredited observer, I was convinced that the system worked and that the results had not been manipulated. The vote confirmed Estonia's leadership in e-governance but, more important, it offered the world a glimpse of what the elections of a new era might look like -- in Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

A dispatch, then, from the e-voting future.

It is no accident that the first e-elections took place in Estonia. The Baltic Sea nation of 1.4 million tucked hard against Russia had reclaimed its independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 -- and it never looked back. Eager to differentiate itself from Russia and other countries in the region, Estonia positioned itself as a technological trailblazer. It quickly became a leader in e-everything, with citizens paying parking fees via cellphones and submitting tax declarations online.

Online elections were a natural next step. Estonia already had in place some of the practical elements for e-voting. Citizens must carry chip-based ID cards that include digital signatures, allowing them to be unambiguously identified online after logging in to vote. Although the country's rate of Internet use is not terribly high -- about 60 percent, compared with 70 percent in the United States -- it has a strong e-banking system, which increases trust in the Internet for important transactions. (In my experience, Estonia's Internet banking is more advanced, more customer-friendly and safer than that of the United States.)

Still, e-voting has not been unanimously accepted here. The country's Reform Party, representing the most e-literate voters -- often younger and more urban -- has favored the innovation, as has the nationalist and pro-market Fatherland Party, whose leaders think the effort provides great global PR for the country. But parties drawing support from older and poorer voters hurt by the post-Soviet changes, such as the Center Party and People's Union Party, have opposed e-voting. The digital divide is alive and well here.

In the 2005 vote, electronic voting and traditional voting via paper ballots took place. As a confidence-building measure, those who cast e-votes were allowed to replace them with paper ballots later. Overall, though, few Estonians availed themselves of e-voting -- about 2 percent of those who voted did so via the Internet. And with slightly less than half the Estonian electorate opting to vote at all, that amounts to a 1 percent online turnout.

There is no evidence that e-voting increased Estonia's overall turnout, either: The typical online voter is a politically motivated person who has an Internet connection, not a gamer or YouTube aficionado who decides to vote for the first time because he or she is already online. But even so, online voting did have some political impact in last year's election: The Internet-savvy Reform Party did better among online voters than it did in the overall tally -- 32.7 percent of the e-vote vs. 16.9 percent overall -- while the less tech-friendly parties performed decidedly worse among Internet users. For instance, the Center Party won 25.5 percent overall, but only 8.7 percent of the e-vote. How that will play in the future, with larger samples, is unclear, but it seems logical that as e-voting becomes more prevalent, parties that attract e-literate voters will benefit.

Language and cultural barriers also may have posed a challenge to e-voting: Estonia's ethnic Russians, who account for more than a quarter of the population, generally avoided the online option. Their difficulty understanding Estonian-language Web sites may have contributed to their reluctance, and this population also tends to lag behind economically and to display less Internet expertise than the rest of the country.

The election in Estonia did experience one technical glitch. An ID card was not enough for e-voters; they needed to have the card validated for online use and had to purchase an ID-card reader for approximately $15, which requires software that was tricky to install on laptops and PCs. I had to ask an expert friend for help.

Estonia's parliamentary elections set for spring 2007 will again allow e-voting along with the traditional kind. Some hope that this second effort will bring new voters into the political process, though the 2005 results don't suggest that. Yet, as a 23-year-old student of mine recently said, "Perhaps now with e-voting also some people will vote who didn't vote before, so that it actually balances out."

The impulse to continually upgrade information and communication technology is so irresistible that I suspect much of the world will follow Estonia's e-voting example. It is the future of politics, notwithstanding the warnings of people such as Internet theorist Manuel Castells, who contends that e-voting poses risks to democratic legitimacy.

Such risks should not be ignored, even in the most technologically adept nations. As long as there is a political digital divide -- with one party's followers more Internet-capable than another's -- a move toward e-voting could easily skew electoral results. Moreover, even just the ritual of going to a voting booth on Election Day with one's fellow citizens can be a significant social act, one that underscores the community-based aspects of democracy, with individuals truly coming into their own as citizens. Might removing that experience in favor of a mere mouse click from home or work somehow erode the culture of democracy, a culture that must endure if the system is to function properly and to last? And might the secrecy of one's vote -- a key principle of democratic elections, one that is guaranteed when a voter is alone in a booth with his ballot and his conscience -- be compromised with a universal distance-voting option, where it is almost impossible to make sure no one is peeking over your shoulder?

Estonia's pioneering e-voting experience has not seemed to harm democracy here. But it does provide lessons that cut in several directions. Online voting is possible, and can be carried out without technical roadblocks. Yet the impact on democracy hinges on the context and conditions in each nation, particularly the extent to which technological awareness is not spread evenly across a population. When e-voting becomes a significant form of voting in Estonia and elsewhere, the new winners and losers of elections won't just be the candidates, but also different segments of society with disparate technical abilities -- and they may be different winners and losers than the country had before.

(drechsler@staff.ttu.ee Wolfgang Drechsler is professor of governance at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia.)

8. It's Election Eve, Do You Know Where Your Country Is? -- by Dave Lindorff

When you go into the voting booth tomorrow, here are a few things you need to think about.

First of all, this is not a local election, whatever your candidates for Congress and even for statehouse have been telling you. We have just lived through six years of one-party government, and we've seen the damage that can do. Congress under Republican leadership has ceased to function as an independent branch challenging and investigating the actions of the president, and has instead become an enabler of presidential abuse of power and of the undermining of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That means we have to restore at least some measure of opposition in the Congress for the sake of saving the country from a slide into one-party dictatorship, and that means voting for the Democrats, even Democrats who are worse than their Republican opponent. I'd say different if your district had a third-party candidate with a chance of winning, since that person could be expected to vote against Republican rule too, once in office, but aside from Vermont's Bernie Sanders, I don't know of any such cases, such is the sad condition of third party politics in America.

It's equally important to vote Democratic for state legislative candidates and for governor, because the legislatures, in almost all states, are where congressional district lines get drawn up. We saw last year how the Republicans have used their power in state legislatures, particularly in Texas, to eliminate Democratic districts and replace them with Republican ones. In that state, such gerrymandering gave the Republicans five extra House seats before an election was even held.

Second, think about the big issues: human survival on the earth, mass murder in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, the bankrupting and deindustrialization of the U.S. economy, the destruction of American constitutional democracy and the reversal of a 230-year history of expanding liberty.

Human Survival: It is increasingly clear that the earth is facing a catastrophe because of rampant use of fossil fuels, and the prime offender is the United States. There is only a narrow window of opportunity to at least moderate this threat to humanity and to life on the planet, yet the Bush administration and the Republican Congress have refused to even acknowledge the threat, and have squandered six years that could have made a huge difference. (Isn't it kind of ludicrous to worry about aborted fetuses and stem cells when government policies are currently threatening the survival of the human race?)

Mass Murder: Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq--a nation that clearly posed no immediate threat to the U.S. or its own neighbors in 2003--was the worst of war crimes, a "Crime against Peace" under the Nuremburg Charter, and a crime under US law because it was based upon lies, fraud and deception. It has led to the unnecessary and criminal deaths of nearly 2900 American troops, the maiming of another 25,000, and the deaths of as many as 650,000 innocent Iraqi civilians--largely at the hands of U.S. weapons. Many of those weapons, like the illegal white phosphorus and napalm bombs used in Fallujah and elsewhere, The thousands of tons of depleted uranium shells and bombs, the millions of rounds of anti-personnel bombs and shells, and the helicopter and fixed-wing gunships that spray wide areas indiscriminately with saturation fire, are the very "weapons of mass destruction" which we claimed we were going to war to prevent. The same weapons have been widely used in Afghanistan against the people of one of the most primitive societies in the world. These are massive crimes, and they won't stop until the Congress brings them to a halt--and calls the criminal in the White House who initiated them to account. (Remember, neither one of these wars is doing a thing to challenge or defend against terrorism.)

Economy: In six short years, this president has turned the national budget from a surplus into six years of record deficits, by ramming through the Republican Congress tax breaks that primarily benefit oil companies and the richest 1 percent of Americans. As for trade policy, thanks to Bush and the Republican-led Congress, which has made exporting jobs and boosting imports the centerpiece of its economic policy, the U.S. now owes more than $1 trillion to our rival, China, and is shipping more than that annually to Middle Eastern dictatorships like Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran to buy oil for vehicles that get 12 miles per gallon or less. Sure there are plenty of Democrats sucking at the corporate teat who are voting for those same policies, but with Republicans in total control, the issues aren_t even being raised. We need only to look at the unprecedented corruption that has swept over the Republican Congress, and seeped under the doors of the White House, into the Oval office, the Vice President_s office, and the office of Karl Rove, the president_s closest adviser, to see why this is happening, and what needs to be done. (Any token tax break you got from Bush and the Republicans was long ago eaten up by the higher gas prices caused by the Iraq War and by higher interest rates caused by their budget and trade deficits.)

Freedom and Democracy: President Bush has claimed for himself the right to ignore laws passed by Congress, which he erases with the stroke of a pen in what he calls "signing statements" saying that as commander in chief he is above the law and the courts. He has used his rubber-stamp Republican Congress to ram through laws eliminating the right to trial and the right to a lawyer, has given himself the power to declare any American to be a unlawful combatant" and supporter of terrorism, with no rights whatsoever, has approved the use of torture and immunized himself and his gang of conspirators from prosecution for past torture. He has even slipped through a measure making it easy for him to declare martial law anywhere in the nation he deems there to be "public disorder." With these laws and these crimes unchallenged, we no longer live in a democracy--only the hollow husk of a former democracy, which could be crushed in a moment. Only a revived Congress, led by a revitalized opposition party, can challenge this dire threat to our freedoms and traditional tripartite government. (The country you learned about in your junior high civics class barely exists anymore, and won't if you don_t stand up for liberty and democracy now, and stop buying the scare stories about fighting terrorism. Remember Ben Franklin, who warned that those who surrender liberty to seek security _will end up with neither._)

This election is a turning point.

If we turn out Republicans from the leadership of the Congress, there is at least a chance that, with a strong public campaign of pressure, we can rouse timid and somnolent Democrats to protect liberty, restore Democracy, impeach the president, take back the government, start rescuing the economy, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and start seriously confronting global warming. If we don't, we may not get another chance. Republicans, having brought us this close to fascism and ruin, are not going to let the public get this close to unhorsing them again if they manage to hang on to power.

None of this is to suggest that having Democrats win this election, even by a significant margin, will fix things. Too many Democrats over the last six years, or even the last 14 years, have been fully complicit in too many of the above crimes and atrocities and attacks on freedom and the Constitution. It's going to take constant struggle and constant pressure to make them act like a true party of opposition, and like the party of the people that the Democrats once claimed to be.

But we can't even begin that difficult struggle unless we toss out the Republicans from Congress.

So think about all this when you vote Tuesday.

And make sure you know how to vote on the new computer screen systems that are being foisted on most of us.

Don't let the bastards steal this one! -

(Dave Lindorff is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of "The Case for Impeachment: the Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office " . His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.)


9. Our President Is Berserk Plus other Reasons to Vote -- by Beth Quinn/Times Herald-Record

It should be a no-brainer that the Republican Congress will get voted out of power tomorrow.

After all, with its indulgent permission, George Bush has given away our environment, made a mockery of science, cavorted with felons, ignored our Constitution, lost our standing in the world, run up our deficit, sent our young people to senseless deaths, ignored the poor and flipped the bird at the middle class.

Plus, he smirked while he did it all. I hate it when a president smirks.

But, oddly, even though the majority of Americans think George Bush is like a crazed toddler with weapons, electing Democrats to Congress tomorrow is not in the bag.

It's entirely possible that voters could wind up being monumentally stupid. We did it in 2000 and again in 2004, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.

But we've got to restore some mental balance to Washington, and that means voting for Democrats to even out the power. Only a grown-up Congress can take away Bush's guns and send him to his bedroom for a time-out so he quits being berserk.

Here are 28 true things to remember tomorrow if you want George Bush to stop wrecking the place.

1. Republicans vote.

2. Democrats often don't.

3. So they lose elections.

4. Torture is bad.

5. The Constitution is good.

6. The mission, whatever it was, has not been accomplished.

7. Republicans vote.

8. Congress has been in a coma.

9. Women should vote tomorrow.

10. If your neighbor doesn't drive, give him a lift.

11. If he's a Democrat.

12. Spying on Americans is bad.

13. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

14. Republicans vote.

15. Pedophiles should not be protected.

16. The caskets hold dead soldiers.

17. New Orleans was not a heck of a job.

18. Nuclear is pronounced noo-klear.

19. Republicans vote.

20. Staying the course when the course is wrong is wrong.

21. We are no safer today than on Sept. 11, 2001.

22. Gay people should vote tomorrow.

23. So should Michael J. Fox.

24. Global warming is real.

25. Republicans vote.

26. There are 806 more days 'til Jan. 20, 2009.

27. That's far too many days to leave a crazed toddler unsupervised.

28. Democrats should vote tomorrow.

(Beth's column appears on Monday.)


10. GOP Must Go -- from The American Conservative/Editorial

Next week Americans will vote for candidates who have spent much of their campaigns addressing state and local issues. But no future historian will linger over the ideas put forth for improving schools or directing funds to highway projects.

The meaning of this election will be interpreted in one of two ways: the American people endorsed the Bush presidency or they did what they could to repudiate it. Such an interpretation will be simplistic, even unfairly so. Nevertheless, the fact that will matter is the raw number of Republicans and Democrats elected to the House and Senate.

It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen-in America and the world at large-as a decisive "No" vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush's failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration's endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why-thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer.

As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for themselves. Bush's decision to seize Iraq will almost surely leave behind a broken state divided into warring ethnic enclaves, with hundreds of thousands killed and maimed and thousands more thirsting for revenge against the country that crossed the ocean to attack them. The invasion failed at every level: if securing Israel was part of the administration's calculation-as the record suggests it was for several of his top aides-the result is also clear: the strengthening of Iran's hand in the Persian Gulf, with a reach up to Israel's northern border, and the elimination of the most powerful Arab state that might stem Iranian regional hegemony.

The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can't face the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against Iran and Syria.

Meanwhile, America's image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country-which once symbolized hope and justice-to be humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do.

There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country's reputation for a long time. But the process of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place is in the voting booth this Nov. 7. If we are fortunate, we can produce a result that is seen-in Washington, in Peoria, and in world capitals from Prague to Kuala Lumpur-as a repudiation of George W. Bush and the war of aggression he launched against Iraq.

We have no illusions that a Democratic majority would be able to reverse Bush's policies, even if they had a plan to. We are aware that on a host of issues the Democrats are further from TAC's positions than the Republicans are. The House members who blocked the Bush amnesty initiative are overwhelmingly Republican. But immigration has not played out in an entirely partisan manner this electoral season: in many races the Democrat has been more conservative than the open-borders, Big Business Republican. A Democratic House and Senate is, in our view, a risk immigration reformers should be willing to take. We can't conceive of a newly elected Democrat in a swing district who would immediately alienate his constituency by voting for amnesty. We simply don't believe a Democratic majority would give the Republicans such an easy route to return to power. Indeed, we anticipate that Democratic office holders will follow the polls on immigration just as Republicans have, and all the popular momentum is towards greater border enforcement.

On Nov. 7, the world will be watching as we go to the polls, seeking to ascertain whether the American people have the wisdom to try to correct a disastrous course. Posterity will note too if their collective decision is one that captured the attention of historians-that of a people voting, again and again, to endorse a leader taking a country in a catastrophic direction. The choice is in our hands.


11. Can You Hear Us Now? -- by Sean Gonsalves

“Cultures that don’t look at the dark become a perversion of it.” -- Novelist Anne LeClaire

Though the huge advantage Democrats had in the polls, predictably, has narrowed on the eve of the mid-term elections, the conventional wisdom still says that the House of Representatives is there for the taking.

Given the outcome of the 2000 and 2004 elections (ballot shenanigans and voter suppression included), I wouldn’t bet on it. But, just to go along with the crowd, for once, let’s assume the Democrats do end up running the House. Then what?

Regardless of the mounds of circumstantial evidence that point to grounds for impeachment, the potential Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has already made it clear that she’s not having it. Making Bush a lame-duck is good enough for her.

While regime change, or at least regime check, would be an important first step in restoring a sense of sanity to American politics, it’s not enough. But before good legislation can be proposed on a number of vitally important challenges facing this country, there has to be an honest accounting of where we are, which brings us to the Word Up of the week: Congressional hearings.

Uncle Sam’s definition of a Congressional hearing is: “a meeting or session of a Senate, House, Joint, or Special Committee of Congress, usually open to the public, to obtain information and opinions on proposed legislation, conduct an investigation, or evaluate/oversee the activities of a government department or the implementation of a Federal law. In addition, hearings may also be purely exploratory in nature, providing testimony and data about topics of current interest.”

If the Democrats took take control of the House, then what? Congressional hearings, that’s what.

We need an Iraq Exit Strategy hearing. On Iraq the only question should be is: how, not if, U.S. forces should exit. And for three good reasons: 1) Iraq is a threat to no one, except Iraqis. 2) The U.S. occupation is fueling the guerrilla insurgency. And 3), short of genocide, there is no military answer to guerrilla insurgencies.

We need veterans health hearings that would examine the extent of the physical and mental health needs of soldiers returning from Iraq. It’s the least we can do for those who, without asking questions, sacrifice their lives to defend this nation, especially because they have served in a war launched for ideological, not sound strategic, reasons.

We need an asymmetrical warfare hearing. As the so-called Global War On Terror (GWOT) has shown, the days of conventional warfare where military battles are fought on a battlefield are over for the foreseeable future.

In asymmetrical warfare, the battle for “hearts and mind” - propaganda, if you like - is far more decisive than hi-tech shock and awe military tactics. And the idea that you beat the enemy by killing him/her doesn’t wash either. As Israel’s air war against Hezbollah in Lebanon showed us, bombing guerrillas doesn’t get rid of them, it multiplies them, like feeding Gremlins after midnight.

It would be particularly insightful for a hearing to shed light on an open military secret: short of genocide, there is NO military answer to guerrilla warfare - in case you didn’t hear me twice the first time.

We need a Military Commissions Act review hearing. The MCA, which the president signed into law last month, gives him the authority to define “enemy combatant,” torture them in secret prisons while barring “detainees” access to courts.

An MCA review hearing could seek to inquire about the constitutionality of the law. As the Center for Constitutional Rights points out, the Constitution is clear about when habeaus corpus can be suspended. “The writ of habeus corpus shall not be suspended, unless,…cases of rebellion or invasion…require it.”

This hearing could also probe the nonsense of the so-called ticking bomb scenario and how interrogation techniques like water-boarding are not designed to elicit actionable intel. They’re designed to elicit confessions.

These are just the foreign policy related hearings we need, if we‘re going to re-deploy and re-focus. Because, Lord knows, there’s a need for a slew of domestic hearings - on Bush’s wiretapping program; the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast; our energy and environmental policies…Geesh. There’s a lot of work to do. And none of it’ll get done unless we keep our elected leaders feet to the fire. Voting just isn’t enough.

(Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columnist. E-mail him at sgonsalves@capecodonline.com)