Isle of Wight Madness

Well folks, the ABC News site powered by AP was showing Webb winning Isle of Wight with 9050 votes. But the State Board of Elections site says he received 5050 votes. I noticed this about 15 minutes ago... let's see how long it takes the Allen camp to figure this out.

Libertarian Apathy

I've witnessed a disturbing phenomena amongst my fellow libertarian minded friends: declining to vote at all because of no affections for any of the candidates. While not voting for any candidate is fine if you have no preference (as many of us argue Democrats and Republicans in many cases are practically the same), I am appalled by those of us who are choosing not to vote. They are neglecting a very important opportunity to take a decisively libertarian stand by voting NO on Virginia's Ballot Question 1#: the liberty-restricting "Marriage Amendment". This oversight is unfortunate, and many libertarians in their displeasure for major party candidates this year have in turn failed to do their part to protect liberty down the ballot. Please, whether or not you can agree on the candidates, be a libertarian and vote no to "Marriage Amendments" Virginia and elsewhere.

Deserve to Vote?

I've been watching Fox News this morning and a few minutes ago a man from Time was on. He suggested that Photo ID requirements for voting aren't right because just because someone doesn't have a Photo ID doesn't mean they don't deserve to vote. This is ridiculous, would one also suggest people who aren't willing to invest time in registering to vote deserve to as well? Of course not, voting like anything else bears costs, in the form of registration, and even the time we spend waiting at the polls. If one is unwilling to bear the burden of such costs they CHOOSE not to vote, and it has nothing to do with whether they deserve to vote or not.

A bit more prediction fun...

Senate Key Races

Virginia - Democrat Gain
Tennessee - Republican Hold
New Jersey - Democrat Hold
Montana - Democrat Gain
Missouri - Democrat Gain
Pennsylvania - Democrat Gain
Rhode Island - Republican Hold
Ohio - Democrat Gain
Maryland - Republican Gain
*Net Gain of 4 seats for the Democrats.

House

Democrats will probably win a net gain 16-20 seats.

My humble predicitons...

Virginia

Webb - 50
Allen - 48.5
Parker 1.5

While Republican's traditionally strong GOTV efforts will help Allen, Webb will likely squeak out a victory by means of Northern Virginia which will break around 60-65% for Webb, as it did in this past Gubernatorial election for Tim Kaine.

Maryland

*Senate
Steele - 50.5
Cardin - 49.5

The Washington Post and PG endorsements and his very strong momentum will help bring about a break for Steele in undecided likely voters, and a very narrow win.

*Governor
Ehrlich - 51
O'Malley - 49

Ehrlich will manage a stunning comeback, his high job approval and final week momentum in the polls have the makings of a minor election night upset. The much talked about Baltimore 'burbs won't break strongly enough for O'Malley to stave off Ehrlich's advantage in other parts of the state. Most importantly, against all odds Ehrlich has been able to match his opponent in fund raising and perhaps endorsements in this very democratic state and it will serve him well on election day.

Missouri

McCaskill - 52
Talent - 48

McCaskill's slight edge in the polls in the final week indicate she will probably succeed in her bid to unseat Senator Talent.

I don't claim to be good at this, but I figured it'd be a fun exercise none-the-less. As for Ballot question 1, I believe it will be extremely close... 51-49/50-50. Let the voting begin!

Election eve prediction fun...

As I pour through polls, news articles, and blogs this election eve I have decided it would be fun to make my own "election eve" predictions. After I finish analyzing the races this afternoon I'll post my numbers and see what actually happens. On a separate note, two out-of-state races I'm particularly interested inare the Gubernatorial and Senate races in Maryland. From the last filings for the senate race it would appear Steele had the edge in cash on hand. Likewise, the less extensive information for the Governors race seems to indicate Ehrlich also lead in cash on hand. I think if this is true, the money will have been the icing on the cake for these two candidates seen surging in the last week and might prove the foundation of two potential election night upsets. Unfortunately, here in Virginia the campaign finances are less telling because Allen has amassed a considerable amount in anticipation of an '08 presidential bid.

Kerry's follies...

When Democrat John Kerry asserted that those who don't "do well in school" will "get stuck in Iraq" he raised more questions than simply his opinion of the intelligence of our troops. Rather, it's possible Kerry is implying that if students don't perform well now, a Democratic congress might stick them in Iraq vis-a-vis a draft, such as the one Charlie Rangel D-NY has discussed trying to impose should Democrats gain control of congress. Maybe Kerry's comments mean something more than they seem to on the surface. Just a thought.

A little something I had forgotten to mention...

With reguard to the Van Yahres fundraising snafu:
http://dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?c=MGArticle&cid=1128768985338&pagename=CDP/MGArticle/CDP_BasicArticle

At the Kennedy Center...

Although I'm in the midst of exams, on Sunday I took a few hours off to go to the annual Kennedy Center Spring Gala in Washington.

At the rooftop reception after the show, I had a rare chance to meet some of the performers, including Angela Lansbury, who was the honorary chair of the event.


I remember watching Miss Lansbury on her long-running program, Murder, She Wrote, when I was growing up. I never would have thought, back then, that someday I'd meet her and have my picture taken with her!

My friend, Rick Sincere, has more photos from the gala.

Spending Sunday in Style

My friend Rick Sincere, who is the Republican-appointed member of the Charlottesville Electoral Board, is one of several political experts quoted in today's Washington Post Style section article on falling voter turnout in Virginia gubernatorial elections.

Check it out. The article is by Linton Weeks and it is called "Virginia's Quadrennial Dilemma: Whosis or Whatsizname?" I didn't know that voter turnout plummeted by 20 points since Doug Wilder was elected in 1989.

Rick tells me that the last time he was quoted in the Style section was way back in the 1980s, in a series of articles about nuclear fallout shelters. Fads come, fads go.

The Fair Tax

According to syndicated radio talk show host Neal Boortz, U.S. Senator George Allen (R-Virginia) was recently seen carrying a copy of The FairTax Book to the podium when he gave a speech last week. The book, written by Boortz and U.S. Representative John Linder (R-Georgia), advocates replacing the current federal income tax and payroll taxes with a national consumption tax or sales tax.

Linder is the principal sponsor of H.R. 25, the "Fair Tax Act of 2005," the bill that would make the FairTax a reality. The FairTax Book is currently number 6 in sales on Amazon, number 1 at Barnes & Noble, and this Sunday is going to be at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction.

Could prospective presidential candidate George Allen become a proponent of this radical change that would eliminate the Internal Revenue Service's capacity to pry into our lives and badger us taxpayers?

We can only hope.

Around the Blogosphere

Touring some Virginia blogs, we find:

Rick Sincere and Waldo Jaquith are going to be interviewed on a local Charlottesville radio station about blogging in Virginia.

Rick, meanwhile, has posted some nice comments on a new book about the Ford Administration, saying that, to his surprise, Gerald Ford was something of a libertarian-leaning Goldwater Republican. The book is called Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s.

Waldo, for his part, has been presiding over a debate on his blog about teaching creationism (masquerading as "intelligent design") in schools. Hans Mast has also weighed in on his own blog.

Speaking of "intelligent design," Tim Hulsey has a posting on Senator Rick Santorum's new book, It Takes a Family. Tim writes:

Rick Santorum's new book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, offers a heapin' helpin' of cornpone fascism (cleverly disguised as old-fashioned moralism) for the American religious right. Fortunately, thanks to Santorum's habit of dropping personal remarks like rabbit pellets, it's also a laugh riot.

Santorum, apparently, not only abandons the Goldwater-Ford-Reagan heritage favoring personal autonomy against an overbearing state, he condemns it.