Despite the enthusiasm, I’m the reason why getting 60 percent of 170 million registered U.S. voters out there would be a triumph.

I’m fairly politically aware — even my interests are more in local policy than national — and have been involved in government and campaigning in the past. But, like most Americans, I have an excuse.

I spend most of the time leading up to an election pondering the journalism around it, listening and debating both sides — in short, seeing the election through my own prism (in my case, that means something of a balanced journalist).

I feel like most do just that: see the election as an abstract in one’s own sense of self. So the activism, it seems, is someone else’s work.

I do vote, though not in many primaries because I am registered independent, and I do follow the discourse and prepare ahead of time, but much of my preparation is, like most swing voters like myself, very last minute.

So I decided, if only for me, I’d get together the voting resources I use most and usually spend the Monday before Election Day searching for.

In Philadelphia, the four resources I share with friends the most often and a new one:

• Find your elected officials here — This is for finding out who is marginally affecting your life by voting on legislation that someone else writes.
• Find your polling place here — This is for when you don’t where you even go to vote.
• Register to vote here — This is for coming into a new state or changing an address or party affiliation.
• Find your registration status here — This is for young people who have moved so often in recent years that they don’t even know where they last registered.
• Google Elections here — This is trying to cover all the above information.
• Voting Totals here — Information and links  on voting results in Philadelphia from the Committee of Seventy.

Every Election Day since November 2004, with an occasional exception, I’ve worked with the Committee of Seventy, a more than century-old political oversight nonprofit in Philadelphia.

I always come away with stories.

As I did in last April’s primary, below, I’ll share some of the best from last Tuesday’s election, a relatively low-profile affair, including just a couple citywide offices and a dozen state and municipal judicial positions.

For the first few elections I worked, I was assigned a portion of the city and trekked to all the polling places there, watching for myriad of common violations, excessive electioneering, improprieties and the rest. The past few general, primary and municipal elections though have seen me, with others experienced in the organization (I spent a year as a policy research and graphic design intern), holed in a Center City office building answering questions and directing the field teams, I started on.

In this capacity I get the chance to watch all the complaints that pour in — from field teams, to polling officials, legislators, their staffs and, yes, citizens, too.

I only worked from 6:30 a.m. until just after 1 p.m., so my experience only accounts for half the day.

Some of the quirkier complaints, as written both in the voice of Seventy phone operators and the voter callers themselves, that came in through the hot line system (215 557-3600):

• From 19th and Ellsworth in South Philly: “[The second machine] is giving off red dye on people’s fingertips, which may be an indication that fingerprints are being taking. These machines are computerized, so I don’t understand why this is happening unless it is set up to do this.”
• From 57th and Haverford in West Philly: The caller is complaining of a power outage at a polling place located at 57th and Haverford.
• From 2521 N. 23rd St in North Phily: “Workers there were talking entirely too loud, and I couldn’t concentrate on my voting. This is a continuous problem I have had with this group.”
• From E. Cheltenham Ave & Charles St at the Wissinoming Recreation Center in Northeast Philly: …The voter expressed skepticism regarding the location. I tried two different databases and got the same info. I also gave her the telephone number for the Bd. of Elections.” [No followup on what "skepticism" means]
• From 370 Devereaux Ave. in Northeast Philly: “The voter works for the Philadelphia Fire Dept. and complained that due to the length of his applicable shift — 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. –  it is virtually impossible for fire department employees to vote. I told him I would forward his complaint, noting that the Committee of Seventy has been advocating liberalized absentee voting requirements.”

If you’re interested in volunteering with the group go here, or read more about them here. See a video on Seventy below.

It will be an event I will tell my children about. John McCain wasn’t running as John McCain.

Unfairly, unjustly untruly or not, it seemed the media – particularly in Europe, from my experience – wanted Barack Obama in the office.

He has been anointed as part of a great achievement of American freedom. As a supporter of the U.S. president, I hope he can do it. But he has to exceed the level of excitement around him that prompted one supporter to tell a CNN TV camera: “you hear about people seeing Ghandi and Martin Luther King…”

I am worred for anyone who has already mistaken Obama for a revolutionary or civil rights legend. He is a young, bright, engaging, organized leader who just became leader of the free world-elect.

Because he is following such an unpopular president and taking control at such a time of upheaval. One would think his reputation can only blossom.

But I will be interested to see if an engaged media and white liberal comedians and reporters – who are at least as conscious of Obama’s race as his supporters – challenge him.

Photo from CBC News.

cvxn:

pica:

Gee, all you had to do was check out this site.

Hat tip Neal

Senator Barack Obama (R) (D-Il) is greeted by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell before speaking during a Democratic Unity Rally at Temple University's McGonigle Hall October 21, 2006 in Philadelphia. (Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images)

The Barack Obama presidential campaign’s focus on Pennsylvania is “unprecedented” Gov. Ed Rendell said in a news conference call I listened in on during this my first day with the Allentown Morning Call for my post-graduate internship with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association.

Rendell was a noted booster for Obama’s primary opponent Hillary Clinton, but long maintained he would support whoever was the Democratic candidate. Rendell said “90 percent” of Clinton supporters are with Obama and getting “more excited” for Obama everyday.

“Pennsylvania is generally and typically a battleground state. Democrats have done well but absolutely can’t take it for granted,” said Steve Hildebrand, the national deputy Obama campaign manager. Aside from Florida, he added, Pennsylvania has the largest number of electoral votes that the campaigns are considering real battlegrounds.

The campaign has 24 offices already open in the state – 10 times as many offices as McCain – to which 93 percent of the state’s volunteers are less than a 30-minute drive, said Obama’s Pennsylvania State Director Craig Schirmer.

“That’s unprecedented,” Rendell said. “The visibility on the ground is incredible.

We confident – but not overconfident – that we will win this state.”

Brett Lieberman of the Patriot News asked whether it was possible to suggest Obama’s stance on social issues could attract conservative communities in Pennsylvania, particularly the famed ‘Pennsylvania T,‘ to which Rendell countered that the election would be focusing “much more on the American economy” so he expected “very little niche voting,” on social issues.

“A vote for John McCain is a vote for four more years of Bush’s failed economic strategy,” said Schirmer. The campaign will engage rural communities “that have been ignored for far too long.”

Rendell said that McCain is the “most appealing” candidate the Republicans have run in the last 20 years.

Rendell said that though John McCain choosing former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge to be his Vice President-running mate would “make things harder,” nothing in the statewide campaign would change.

A statewide Obama campaign manager spoke of their neighborhood-based plan for voter registration and turnout, one that will be “fueled by people who want to change politics.” The campaign hopes to establish more than 700 neighborhood teams, led by captains who will be asked to dedicate 10 to 20 hours a week in community outreach, said Schirmer.

They already have 250 teams, which are charged with attracting 1.1 million unregistered, eligible voters in Pennsylvania which the campaign feels can be a net gain to Obama, Schirmer said.

“This is just the beginning,” he said.

Photo courtesy of DayLife.

Oh, today is the much hyped Pennsylvania primary.

If you’re registered in Philadelphia and need to know where you’re voting, using the Committee of Seventy’s Citizen Access Center. Oh, and if you’re an Independent or Republican and feeling bummed out ’cause everyone is talking Obama/Hillary, fear not, in Philadelphia, there are also two ballot questions that mean a whole lot to some people. Want a real explanation of what to do?

See that from the Committee of Seventy and their endorsements.

Today, I’m helping oversee Philadelphia’s polling locations with a team of more than 800 volunteers collected by the Committee of Seventy. I am looking at an entire database of complaints around the region and will share the best of them from the day.

Here are a couple. In at 7:35 a.m. from a Chester County man.

I am a Republican. Should I bother to vote?

In this region, that is a real question, particularly when even the suburbs are going blue. But, in Philadelphia, for one, there are ballot questions that everyone can vote on. So get out there.

A second: What’s the least comforting reason for your polling place to be moved? Because it’s a crime scene.

But, that’s what’s allegedly happening in North Philadelphia, for the 25th Ward, 14th division. A troubling reminder of life for some on the 1800-block of West Somerset, near Lehigh and Glenwood Avenues.

But, I’m leading volunteers through the (mostly) peaceful confines of the central Northeast, so I’m not doing much this early on. -Although I have gotten several complaints about the lack of handicapped access at the Pollock Elementary School on Welsh above Holme Circle.

Anyway, so I’m reading up on philly.com. Pretty sweet story about a 103-year-old black woman who has been voting since 1924. (do the math yourself). Check it out here. Kuods to Elmer Smith.

I’ll say it.

I read a really on-point, interesting column in, seriously, the New York Times. ..I have joined semi-literate whites everywhere.

David Brooks took on Sen. Barack Obama, how the man had been raised on high as the messiah of U.S. politics and is now struggling with those unfair expectations.

See, Republicans are more known for quick primaries and getting behind a unified candidate, as has played out with Sen. John McCain. Now, McCain is sitting back, raising money and preparing for a general election, though some think it leaves the candidate less competitive.

On the other hand, big tent Democrat politics are more open to larger, longer and more competitive primaries. The thought is it sharpens the candidate, but, as Brooks wrote, this may be an exception.

If Obama could have won the Democratic Party nomination decisively and cleanly, he could have continued his role as this generation’s great unifier. He could have played the change and hope (that his Stalinistic graphics representations depict) to any Republican candidate’s role of the unchanged. The place he first took hold of after his often deified speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in July.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3mOyuJvX8U]

But, he hasn’t won decisively, and it won’t end cleanly.

The result is that he has had to act increasingly like any other presidential candidate in his fight with Sen. Hillary Clinton, and Obama is seeming more and more human and more able to be beaten by McCain. David Brooks wrote as follows:

He sprinkled his debate performance Wednesday night with the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics. He claimed falsely that his handwriting wasn’t on a questionnaire about gun control. He claimed that he had never attacked Clinton for her exaggerations about the Tuzla airport, though his campaign was all over it. Obama piously condemned the practice of lifting other candidates’ words out of context, but he has been doing exactly the same thing to John McCain, especially over his 100 years in Iraq comment.

Brooks noted a handful of mistakes by the Obama campaign, including issue-based promises that will restrict his calls of the future. Going on, Brooks wrote:

It was inevitable that the period of “Yes We Can!” deification would come to an end. It was not inevitable that Obama would now look so vulnerable. He’ll win the nomination, but in a matchup against John McCain, he is behind in Florida, Missouri and Ohio, and merely tied in must-win states like Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A generic Democrat now beats a generic Republican by 13 points, but Obama is trailing his own party. One in five Democrats say they would vote for McCain over Obama.

Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary is seeming more and more important. Clinton is still hanging on to a lead in most polls, and, though many say even a near-victory by Obama is a win, it is difficult to think Clinton would quit after winning the Keystone State, by even the slimmest of margins. If he does pull close enough to call it a win and move nearer to becoming the candidate, it seems much of the damage as been done. Obama can be lobbed as elitist, a John Kerry strike. McCain, a war veteran, can return to his populist roots by distancing himself from George Bush, knowing his conservative base is less likely to abandon him than liberals have done to the Democrats. Meanwhile, he could paint Obama as a bad bowling, stuffy-shirted San Francisco academic.

The old Republican trick of waiting on the Democrats to fail is looking eerily prescient.

Image courtesy of Funnimetric.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkqEdlRDKfo]