Good rundowns here, here, and here. The big show is in the Virginia governor race, but there’s also 312 Mayoral elections, including big ones in Boston (first open ballot in 20 years), NYC (no more Bloomberg), Seattle (expected to be tight), Minneapolis (35 candidates!), Miami (corruption!), and Detroit (a race to turn around a city).
USA Today has the inevitable ‘a Presidential campaign shall be borne in New Jersey today’ storyline, but I avoided that. Chris Christie will win his gubernatorial race, although this is a bit interesting: as of now, Wall Street isn’t sold on Christie. Admittedly, though, he might be the GOP’s only real superstar right now. (The Fix feels the same way.) Interestingly, a Governor-type who was a major national name to bandy about a few years ago, Mr. Charlie Crist, took the occasion of Election Day Eve to announce he’s running for Governor again — from a different side of the aisle. Of course, this whole day is a warm-up to 2014, where ObamaCare will be a central (the central) issue.
The history of Election Day in the U.S. is fairly interesting. It was officially set as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in 1845 (by Congress); they essentially followed a model already in existence in New York state at the time. Since 1792, it had been a bit more scattershot, involving a 34-day grace period of sorts. Tuesday was selected because, in 1845, the U.S. was still predominantly an agricultural society. Tuesday didn’t interfere with church day (Sunday) or market day (Wednesday), and allowed people to travel to their polling place on Monday and/or Tuesday if need be. In the nearly 200 years since, people have introduced bills to move voting to the weekends. There’s a whole website about the cause.
Comcast has become an issue/player in Seattle, whereas Charlotte — viewed by some as a symbol of the New South — is keeping things fairly low-key. Kaslim Reed should have it locked up in Atlanta, whereas the showdown in Pittsburgh could change the overall political climate there.
Meanwhile, the labeling ballot for GMOs in Washington could be a major turning point in terms of how we understand the food we consume and let the companies that produce it speak to us.
In addition to major sites and TV stations, you can use Twitter for tracking purposes. You can also use Reddit for fairly detailed, and diverse, information about local areas … but you may come across a few links such as this. It balances out with a few interesting IMGURS, though.
Here’s some more races to watch, including the special election in Alabama-1 (Congress) between (GOP primary) Bradley Byrne and Dean Young. Young is a Tea Party guy that used to work for Roy Moore, best known for doing this.
I’m a big fan of elections and voting, personally (MERICA!). Get out and vote if you get the chance. If you need some final motivations, read this. Or go ahead and watch this (there are several more in this vein; just toss a ‘Why vote?’ search on YouTube):
