Palin As President

Never mind the satirical New Yorker cover a few months ago. And forget Entertainment Weekly’s recent take on it, featuring funnymen Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

PalinAsPresident.com is arguably the most elaborately detailed spoof of the Oval Office’s possible future inhabitants yet created. The carefully constructed interactive site appears to have hit the Web in the past 24 hours (just in time to be played during tonight’s final presidential debate) and pokes fun at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. A quick online search shows only that the site’s architect has taken pains to cloak him or herself. But this much is clear — the creator is no Palinite.

Read the whole story here.

Play: Palin As President

The Nation: Katrina vanden Heuvel

As we head into the final stretch of the election season, alarming reports of dysfunctional voter registration, purges of the rolls, and possible voter suppression are surfacing weekly, if not daily. The National Campaign for Fair Elections’ hotline (866.OUR.VOTE / 866.687.8683) is already receiving roughly a thousand calls a day; while the majority of these are requests for information, some concern problems with registration. The New York Times reports that tens of thousands of voters may have been illegally purged from the rolls in swing states. Other news sources speculate there are 600,000 voters at risk of disenfranchisement in Ohio alone. What goes unreported upon amid all this turmoil is how effective the response has been, and what can still be done.

Take Montana. On October 8th, US District Court Judge Donald Molloy issued a scathing ruling denouncing the state Republican Party’s effort to challenge the registration of 6,000 voters: “The timing of the challenges is so transparent it defies common sense to believe the purpose is anything but political chicanery.” The Montana Republican Party and its leaders, he wrote, “are abusing the process.”

The real danger is that the process itself is flawed. “We have an election system that’s exquisitely designed for low rates of participation,” says Tova Wang, Vice President of Research for Common Cause. “We’re expecting increased turnout and we have a system that’s not designed to handle it.” While these problems are endemic throughout our fractured electoral system, three states–Virginia, Florida, and Ohio–present both the challenges we face and the measures we might take to solve them. All three are closely contested, and an Obama victory will require every one.
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Open Left: Chris Bowers:

Here is the campaign at a glance:

Victory Chart
Obama needs one of these states to win it all

* = If Obama only wins Nevada among these seven, that would force a 269-269 tie, which would almost certainly result in a victory in the House of Representatives, given the large Democratic lead there

Electoral College: Obama 306, McCain 171 Toss-up 61 (270 to win)

(Dark Blue (277): Obama +7.0% or more
Lean Blue (29): Obama +2.6%-+6.9%
White / Toss-up (61): Obama +2.5% to McCain +2.5%
Lean Red (35): McCain +2.6%-+6.9%
Dark Red (136): McCain +7.0% or more)

Complete Tracking poll average

* = Gallup is an average of their expanded and traditional likely voter models
** = Yesterday’s numbers

I notice two things about these numbers. First, Obama is well ahead, with only 14 days left. Second, the number of states where he holds a statistically significant lead has shrunk to its lowest point since October 1st, at least in my reckoning. While that isn’t the most heartwarming trend, with only 14 days left, there is good reason to be thankful that Obama built such a large advantage earlier in the month.

Chris Bowers :: Presidential Forecast 10/21: 14 Days Left