Election Day...Now We Wait and Worry and Work

I know there will be a lot more to say on Election Day, but here are just a couple of things.

First: read Lyz Lenzl's newsletter about watching the election in Iowa. It includes her rending reminiscence about election night 2016 and the day after, but also a lot of nitty-gritty info on where things are at this year, not only with the presidency, but with Congressional races in that state. 

Party allegiances in Iowa are...wow, there are a lot of independents there. (I've recently decided one of my least favorite sentences is: "I don't vote for the party, I vote for the person.") Her assessment of what it can mean to be a Democrat in Iowa is this: "a Republican who doesn’t want you to die of COVID-19 or drink dirty water… in Iowa that makes you a leftist"... well.

If you like what you see there, you can subscribe to it as a weekly newsletter (called Men Yell at Me) and send Lyz a little bit of money because she was recently laid off from her regular gig with an Iowa daily newspaper.

Then I have to include just a couple of day-of-election Tweets:

For anybody who needs it, here is a map of poll-closing times that I put together several weeks ago. All times are in EST:


Jack Curran @jackcurran49 [click to enlarge and read the key]

I have to say: whenever we finally become a real democratic republic and pass some national voting rights laws, one of the things we're going to do is make it so polling places can't close at 7:00 p.m. or — Judas Priest! as my high school English teacher used to say — 6:00 p.m.!

Seeing all the pro-fascist propaganda construction workers, from the suburbs presumably, bring on their trucks to this utilities construction project we have going on is a good reminder we need to diversify public construction contracting. Especially in a diverse city like Cleveland.
Angie Schmitt

Tamir Rice would’ve been able to vote for the first time in 2020. His 18th birthday would have been in June, in the midst of an uprising sparked by the same police brutality that took his life.
Jamil Smith

Well he finally got his wall:


Cory Doctorow

Welcome to living in the last 20 minutes of a horror film when you know the director's anxious not to be considered "too commercial" so you can't count on a happy ending and even *if* the studio gets its way and the good guys win at least one person you're rooting for won't make it.
Tabatha Southey

This morning feels like an odd mix of a kid on Xmas morning and a doomed prisoner's last day.
Sandi Behrns