3 Comments - Anonymous - Tuesday, Nov 2, 04 @ 11:35 am: Hey Capt Blog —you forgot to mention the weenies at the PJ-S whining about the Newspaper Guild being listed in the AFL-CIO ad endoring Slone. - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Nov 2, 04 @ 11:40 am: I didn’t have to cuz’ you just did. - Anonymous - Tuesday, Nov 2, 04 @ 12:13 pm: Capt Blog — Here is the Wall Street Journal story on blogs — they don’t mention you, but I will straighten them out ASAP ELECTION 2004 DOW JONES REPRINTS This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit: www.djreprints.com. • See a sample reprint in PDF format. • Order a reprint of this article now. Reporters, Voters File Real-Time Web Updates By ELIZABETH WEINSTEIN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE November 2, 2004 12:31 p.m. With voter turnout expected to reach record levels today, war stories from the polls are already starting to pour in from around the country. This election year, Web logs, or blogs, are serving as first-hand diaries for voters and reporters alike, who are posting their observations directly on the Web. Here are some of the highlights so far: Swing-State Waits Voters who thought they’d beat long lines at the polls today by voting right when the polls open have been unpleasantly surprised — especially in the all-important swing states. Reporters for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel1 reported that at 7 a.m when the polls opened, lines were already snaking around buildings. Reporter Tom Held said 141 votes had already been cast in one precinct on Milwaukee’s south side — about twice as many as normal, election workers told him. Voters in Wisconsin fill in arrows to select their candidates, a technique that confused a lot of people, Mr. Held reported. “About a half dozen of the early voters had their ballots rejected initially, either for voting twice in one race or making the lines connecting the arrows too thick,” he noted. Fifteen minutes before polls opened at 6 a.m. in Kansas City, Mo., 30 people were already cooling their heels waiting to get into the polls, writes Ellen Dunkel2 for Knight Ridder’s election blog. Barely a half-hour later at another polling place, she saw lines out the door. Ms. Dunkel said voters kept their sense of humor though. “Hey,” said a woman arriving at the end of the line, “this is what democracy looks like,” Ms. Dunkel wrote about an exchange she observed. In Florida, voters were up before the sun to cast ballots, their moves being watched carefully by a slew of international election monitors and poll watchers from both campaigns. Reporter Darran Simon for the Miami Herald’s blog3 says when polls opened at 7 a.m., many people had already been waiting for two hours. By law, the election monitors, kept their distance. “Several poll-watchers stood about 50 feet from the two precincts, including volunteers from Election Protection and NAACP International Observers from England, Kenya and Mexico. By 7:10 a.m., 19 people had voted in two precincts at the poll, according to two Kerry poll-watchers who were clicking away on a hand-held silver counter,” Mr. Simon reported. Photographer Mark Hertzberg of the Racine, Wis., Journal Times writing in on the Battleground Wisconsin4 blog, says partisan election monitors are keeping close tabs on who’s coming to the polls, and he worries their presence could intimidate voters. “County Board Supervisor Andrew Kallin from Waukesha, wearing a bright orange HAVA [Help Americans Vote Act] shirt and Jim Ferguson, an attorney for the state Republican party who says he was sent here by the Republican National Committee in California, have a list of more than 50 people which is marked at the top “Potential Problem Registrations” and “Challenge These Individuals,” writes Mr. Hertzberg. “… I asked Kallin, who was holding the list, and Ferguson what the list represented. They professed ignorance.” Poll-Worker Confusion In Ohio, initial complaints seemed focused on election workers, according to posts on Cleveland.com’s blog.5 Readers wrote in to the site to report their initial impressions from the polls, and most of their posts started sounding the same after a while. “One of the problems seems to be that poll workers are going VERY slow,” wrote Cleveland.com blog contributor Garry. “No ID was being checked, all you had to do was sign your name, although there had been five challenges of the first 35 voters.” “Just your normal, confused volunteer stuff. As with everyone else, I was never asked for an ID. I simply helped the poll workers find my name, scribbled my signature, and voted,” wrote J. Jodon. “If Ohio has problems with voting it is not due to the lawyers or the challengers, it is due to the poll workers who seem to be untrained. At my polling place the woman working were so confused we had to wait almost 5 minutes for them to decide what number ballot we were on,” complained another writer, Leah. Red Alert from Matt Drudge The Philadelphia Daily News’s blog6 — and several others this morning — are already buzzing about a report from Matt Drudge’s Web site7 reporting voting irregularities at Philadelphia’s polls. Before voting began in the city, poll watchers found nearly 2,000 votes already planted on machines scattered throughout the city, Mr. Drudge’s site reported this morning. Mr. Drudge later removed the report. He cites at least four locations where the votes were found, but the Philadelphia Daily News blogger William Bunch says the paper is working to determine whether the claims are valid. “It … strikes us as odd though,” Mr. Bunch writes. These are heavily Democratic and predominantly black (and some Latino) wards in North Philly areas … These could be premier areas for fraud, but wouldn’t such large numbers of fake votes also raise turnout to obviously fake numbers? We’ll do some more research. You’ve Gotta Laugh Election Day is making people a little jumpy in some parts of the country. In Milwaukee, police are already getting some interesting calls, according to the Journal Sentinal’s blog.8 Early this morning Milwaukee police got a report on the scanner that a person with a rifle was standing on an overpass. The blog says police quickly corrected the report — it was two women standing on the overpass with a Kerry sign. Also in Milwaukee police were called to a John Kerry campaign office before 6 a.m. because at least two people were blocking the parking lot exit, preventing Kerry supporters from leaving the parking lot and screaming and spitting on cars. The officers removed the disruptive people but no arrests were made. Knight Ridder reporter Ellen Dunkel writes9 that in Camden County, N.J., at least two voters needed the help of a higher power to cast their votes: “Between 7 and 10 a.m., 50 people stood up before Superior Court Judge Frederick J. Schuck to prove they were registered. Among them were nuns Kathleen Aherne, 64, and Judith Terrameo, 55, who planned to vote this morning in Haddonfield but couldn’t because there was no record they had registered. They didn’t tell the judge that they are both Franciscan nuns, but he believed them anyhow and they were granted the right to vote.” Write to Elizabeth Weinstein at elizabeth.weinstein@wsj.com10 Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.