Cast Your Ostraka For Hipparchus

11:00 AM Nov 08, 2005

It's election day, and as 2 Live Crew once said about the senior Bush, we'll see who's banned in the U.S.A. Or since it's an odd-numbered year, we'll see who's banned in a series of bellwether state-level polls.

Two of the marquee tilts on the card are big DIA users through the for-profit DemocracyInAction.com, which serves campaigns, 527s and other political entities.

Democrat Tim Kaine is running in our backyard for Governor of Virginia, a red state trending blue that figures to be a battleground in presidential elections to come. Kaine totes a small lead over Republican Jerry Kilgore into the last day of what's become a ferociously bareknuckled campaign.

In Ohio, the 2004 election debacle followed by a Halliburtonian stench of corruption among the state's Republican leadership, has a quartet of good-government ballot measures on the table. Two DIA users, Reform Ohio Now and Blue 88 are bugling the charge there. (Reform Ohio Now has been using a nifty series of signup pages organized around a county map to marshal last-minute volunteering.)

Go get your vote on.

Update: Reform Ohio Now took it on the chin, but Kaine won convincingly in a generally positive night for progressives. DemocracyInAction.com's press release on the Kaine victory is here.

Update #2:  One tries not to read too much into the handful of off-year elections.  But the Prince of Darkness says Kaine's election, "the only contest in scattered off-year elections that was carefully monitored on Capitol Hill," harkens woe for the GOP -- and will encourage Republican lawmakers to defy the president out of electoral self-interest.

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