From The New York Times Online:

Typically presidents have to wait until long after they’ve left office for holidays to be declared in their honor. But officials in one Alabama county have fast-tracked that process for President-elect Barack Obama.

In Perry County, where residents voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama on Election Day, members of the county commission decided to set aside the second Monday in November as “Barack Obama Day.”

And it won’t be a holiday in name only. Each year on Obama Day, the county will close down its offices and all of its workers — about 40 of them — will get the day off, with pay.

The only problem is…

Click here to find out.

Seeking a transcendent victory, Democrat Barack Obama made a final-hour push for Republican-leaning Indiana on Tuesday after casting his own ballot with his young daughters at his side. “It’s going to be tight as a tick here in Indiana,” Obama told volunteers in Indianapolis trying to get out the vote for the Democratic ticket with only seven hours to go in the area’s balloting. “So the question is who wants it more.”

The Illinois senator and his wife, Michelle, were among the first to vote after polls opened Tuesday at Chicago’s Beulah Shoesmith Elementary School. They cast paper ballots in side-by-side booths with 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha looking on.

“The journey ends, but voting with my daughters, that was a big deal,” Obama told reporters later.

At times while he completed his ballot Obama grinned at his daughters and whispered to them. His wife took longer to fill out the lengthy ballot with several local offices up for consideration, and at one point Sasha hugged her father’s leg looking impatient. Obama later joked that he had to check who his wife was voting for after she took so long.

The family was ushered inside ahead of a line of their Hyde Park neighbors that wrapped around the block and cheered upon their arrival. Fellow voters inside watched in silence and snapped cell-phone pictures.

Obama kissed the cheek of the poll worker who took his ballot, then watched while she fed it into a machine. The crowd broke into applause when a smiling Obama held up his validation slip and said, “I voted.”

Obama voted a few minutes after William Ayers, the 1960s radical who lives in the neighborhood and whom Republicans tried to link to Obama in the campaign. Ayers did not answer a question about how he voted from reporters waiting inside for Obama’s arrival.

Afterward, Obama traveled to Indianapolis for final campaign stop to encourage voters in Indiana to support the Democratic candidate from next door. He helped about two dozen members of United Auto Workers Local 550 in Indianapolis work the phones at their union hall.

“I think we can win Indiana, otherwise I wouldn’t be in Indiana,” he said.

Obama was targeting other swing states in the final hours of voting by doing an hour and a half of satellite television interviews from a Chicago hotel room. The interviews were with local news stations in Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, Missouri.

Later he planned his voting-day game of basketball with friends and staff — a habit he liked to stick to in the primaries for good luck — before watching returns at a Chicago hotel room.

After the race is called, he planned to address supporters from a stage built especially for the occasion in Chicago’s Grant Park.

Barack Obama has taken on this uphill climb with ardent philosophical tools, and the impressive work ethic to push him past front-running candidates twice. It seems like a well-staged coup, but a brief one in the context of the stacked historical and social trends. While polls indicate that he will secure the most white support for any Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976, the evidence of concrete support (votes) has yet to be counted. He waded through the oft-neglected territories of our electorate, battling voluble mistrust, and opponents who egged the theory that black men should not be trusted so soon. They imputed that no one so young, so closely linked to our urban centers, so brazenly ruffling feathers with his competence, could ever appeal to the entire nation. However strident their notions of his upstart role, it seems Mr. Obama has carved a path to symbolic victory that delicately burnishes his historical insignia in the same stroke. While black Americans have been typically skeptical of this nation’s lawful ideals, shown through one outspoken Reverend’s calls for radical break from them, one presidential hopeful has made a daring groundswell of ideas into an iron-clad machine of liberal messaging.

In striving for a “more perfect union,” we have encountered our growing pains in a cataclysmic way. Hate rallies defined the tightening race, along with wholesale rejection of a new order defined by multiple faces and consensus opinions. The conservative esprit de corps abated noticeably when the mud could only sully the process, but not the ideals. In the same week that mob rule and epithets gained media attention, the Neo-Nazi Tom Metzger endorsed Mr. Obama on the grounds of his policies, and his willingness to stand up for them. Still, we wonder how it could all play out. 

For all of our American dreaming, we have issues to address as a country that go beyond identity. For instance, the supposed imprudence of arguing for change and progress will be met with fiercely resistant forces of tradition. Besides the obvious rates of imprisonment, college graduation woes, and biased crime enforcement, there are anecdotal moments to make us all the more frightened about learning the ropes of progressive nationalism. At the mere mention of a communal effort to rebuild our sore economy, we have bucked at the word socialism like its contagion could lead us down a battered path. After the nation’s banks accepted 250 billion dollars of federal money (with the promise of more coming), we still could not fully embrace that our economic leaders asked for the helping hand of a nation, regardless of color or tax bracket. We still view our weaknesses through an tenacious individual’s eyes, unwilling to see the value of teamwork when the world tests our moral failings. And to compound that sort of sluggish approach, we have a leader in our realm whose name and story still evoke mystery among the majority of us. Unbridled ambition and fundraising may be his proud body of work, one that seals his reputation as a marketing maven, but bridging the ideological gaps enough to create sound policies will be his direst duty.

Barack Obama has done what he can: ignited the cultural conversation; proved his grit; found humanity through shared experiences. The throne of power has not been demonstrably anyone’s claim as clearly as now. Whatever obstructions we have faced as a people, we held patriotism close as Buffalo soldiers, military men turned bus drivers, and West Indian nurses earning their credit as workers and citizens over time. Our problems loomed large, but we decided they were worth confronting. Racism and classism are our open secrets, and like any other nation attempting to figure disparate truths, we sometimes demur. Worse still, electing a synecdoche of change will not guarantee ingenuity or sustained morale. 

For the skeptics among us, however, this is a coup of terrific import. Black men and women can point to a moment in our lives when a friend or relative spurned even the idea of a Barack Obama, the usual refrain being: “Not in this lifetime.” Rather than blame them for egregious predictions, we should thank anyone who doubted this moment. We should thank them for questioning the limits of our social contract in the face of so much genocide. We should thank them for dispensing the retail advice of regular men and women intent on filling our cups with practical thinking, instead of blind projections. 

The hip-hop generation, in particular, has produced fleet-minded prophets like Nas and Tupac Shakur who, despite their displeasure with the establishment, offered their artistic rise as proof of a dream. (See: “If I Ruled the World” and “Changes”) On Nas’s “Black President” he issues caution about the Obama presidency, saying that it will meet both our highest expectations as a nation, and that it will expose our most resonant fears: 

What’s the black pres’ thinkin on election night?

Is it, “How can I protect my life? Protect my wife? Protect my rights?”

Every other president was nuttin’ less than white

‘cept Thomas Jefferson and mixed Indian blood and Calvin Coolidge

KKK is like, “What the f-ck?!”, loadin they guns up

Loadin up mines too, ready to ride

 

Yeah, but on the positive side

I think Obama provides hope, and challenges minds

of all races and colors to erase the hate

and try to LOVE one another

In other words, whether or not we are ready is an ongoing discussion. Our sentiments about social obligation, duty to our country and to our fellow men and women, will be in constant flux. Barack Obama’s candidacy represents a unique shift to a set of principles often heralded, rarely upheld. American have a chance to hold their breaths collectively, and possibly exhale the biggest therapeutic sigh in our short history.

And I voted for my grandmother, who left South Carolina for New York to work in a government job for 49 years, and then left it all to my mother and me. I looked up to her from behind that curtain, and all was ok…

Smokey D. Fontaine is the chief content officer of InteractiveOne, parent company of NewsOne. Watch for Smokey tonight on TV One! (Check your local cable TV listings for channel information.)

270
This, of course, is the number of electoral votes needed to win the presidency. With 24 hours to go, Obama holds a solid lead in the national tracking polls and what appears to be a near-lock on the Electoral College. Senator McCain is pouring vast resources into a last-minute play for Pennsylvania because it is the only Kerry state that McCain feels he can pick off this year. Without it, his odds of winning are very long.
The math is daunting for McCain: Kerry won 252 electoral votes in the close 2004 presidential race. At least three states that went for Bush in 2004 appear to be solidly in the Obama column: Colorado (with nine electoral votes), Iowa (7) and New Mexico (5).

Add those three states to Kerry’s 252, and Obama is already at 273, regardless of what happens in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana or any other swing state. Hence, it’s of vital importance to McCain to put Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes into play. Polls there close at eight, though the race will probably be too close to call for some time, but that will be one of the key races to watch all evening.

7:00 pm to 7:30 pm
The earliest poll closings of significance will be in Indiana, Virginia and Georgia at 7:00 pm EST and Ohio and North Carolina at 7:30. All five states voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and all five are competitive this year.

The most likely Obama pick-up in this normally Republican group of states is Virginia, where Obama has maintained a lead in the polls for most of the last month. An Obama win in any one of these would put a nearly mortal lock on an Electoral College victory. If Obama wins any two of these five states, he achieves an Electoral College majority even in the unlikely event he loses Pennsylvania.
Ohio’s 20 electoral votes are the biggest prize in this group and Obama has held a lead there for the past few weeks. However, whereas John McCain must win Ohio to have any realistic shot at the White House, Obama can relatively easily chart a course to 270 even without the Buckeye State.

0
This is the number of African Americans who would be in the United States Senate if Obama were to become President, since he’d have to give up his seat. Jesse Jackson, Jr. is on the short list of likely replacements for Obama (Democratic governor Rod Blagojevich makes the pick).

One Million
This is the approximate number of references to the so-called “Bradley effect” during this election cycle. This phenomenon is named after former Los Angeles Mayor and failed California Gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley, an African American. The effect asserts that Black candidates are likely to do worse than their poll numbers suggest, because a substantial number of white voters lie to pollsters when they say they will vote for the Black candidate. Bradley appeared to have a big lead in the polls against George Deukmejian, but lost the 1982 election. Similarly, Doug Wilder, who became the first African American governor in the United States, barely eked his 1989 victory in Virginia, despite polls showing him with a substantial lead.

The evidence suggests that, since the 1990s, no such effect has existed in high-profile elections involving one Black and one White candidate. In fact, Obama clearly out-performed the polls in numerous (though not all) primary states against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

From www.ColorOfChange.com:

5 Ways to Protect Your Vote

If there’s one thing we see every election, it’s that Republicans will try to manipulate the rules any way they can to prevent some people from voting. Don’t be discouraged–be prepared. If we’re armed with the right information, we can beat most of these dirty tricks.

1. Be Prepared, and Conquer the Lines. We can’t let long lines stop anyone from voting. There are several ways you can reduce lines and make sure they don’t prevent you or anyone else from voting:

* Vote early if you can. You can find early voting times and locations at govote.org.
* Double-check your polling location before you go to vote. You can look it up at govote.org.
* Have a Plan & Have Fun. Have a plan in case there are lines. Bring some food, drinks, friends, books, games, a chair — anything that will prevent you and other voters from walking away. Have fun while you wait and encourage your friends and neighbors to stay in line so their vote is counted.
* Don’t give up–don’t walk away without voting.

2. Two numbers you should have in your phone. Put these numbers in your phone so you’re prepared to report problems and help other voters find their polling place:

* 866-OUR-VOTE is a hotline that’s been set up to collect information about problems on election day–lawyers and election protection advocates are ready to respond. It’s the best way to make sure someone addresses any problems you see.
* The number for your local election board–in case you need to tell someone where they can vote. Enter you zip code at govote.org, then look for “Contact [your county] election officials” on the right.

3. Beware of lies, misinformation and dirty tricks; spread the truth.
Republican operatives are spreading plain lies to frighten new voters. In Philadelphia, anonymous flyers in Black neighborhoods have falsely claimed that voters with unpaid traffic tickets or outstanding warrants will be arrested at the polls. If you hear a scary rumor, it’s probably a lie. Call your local election officials to check it out–and make sure your friends and neighbors know the truth.

Click here for the last 2 very IMPORTANT tips on how to protect your vote!

Watch the video here.