Al Giordano is on the road right now, reporting from swing states, and has just written up his report from Ohio. It's a call to action if there ever was one:
It's that tight in Ohio.
It will not shock your correspondent at all if those 20 Electoral Votes come down to just one person's vote.
Read on for more about the situation on the ground in Ohio.
First, the good news:
The crowd here in Columbus is - according to an unscientific survey taken by The Field as they exit from voting - overwhelmingly Obama country; nineteen voters told me they had voted for Obama, and just one - a middle aged white man in a tie - wouldn't say ("I voted for the one who will win," is all he said). There were various Obama vans coming in and out of the parking lot, dropping off voters, and none visible for McCain on this second day of early voting.
Next, the bad news:
The in-person early voting is going to be dwarfed by absentee voting by mail: Hamilton county had received 55,320 mail-in absentee voter requests as of Thursday. Fourteen thousand had come into Fairfield County, and twenty thousand into Butler County (which in all of 2004 had only 16,000 absentee ballots). Those are Republican counties won by Bush in 2004.
Finally, the ugly news:
A group called the Vote Today Ohio PAC is rounding up the homeless at shelters and soup kitchens and bringing them to register and vote. Right-wing toadies like John Fund of the Wall Street Journal are feigning outrage over the idea that homeless folks can vote, transparently queuing up false charges of "fraud" in case Ohio rejects McCain and to blunt outrage over GOP voter suppression tactics in Florida and elsewhere. (To argue that a homeless person shouldn't be able to vote seems, to this writer, the ultimate in cretinism; especially given that current economic policies have led to tens of thousands of home mortgage foreclosures here in Ohio.)
::: :::
So, what can you do about this?
Take action NOW.
Different ways you can get involved.
- Register voters in your neighborhood. There are plenty of events in almost every corner of this country. It's really simple: just click on your state and sign up. In addition, can also pass on this voter registration link to your friends to help them get registered from the ease of their home.
You can register voters at naturalization ceremonies, grocery stores, local colleges and high schools, malls, courthouses, apartment buildings, etc.
- Make phone calls to locate new volunteers.
There are plenty of folks on the rolls that would happily volunteer in their local neighborhood, but haven't been asked yet. You can complete that last step by making the call.
- If you live in or anywhere near Ohio, CLICK HERE and then pick up the phone and call one of the offices listed and tell them you'd like to help.