Election Day in Austin

Today, as anybody on the Globe knows, is the day of the american elections, where the world sits by with its hand on its heart, waiting for the choice 130 million american voters will make: Either Go with another 4 years of Republican Presidency with McCain, or Change to Democratic Rule with Obama. Over in Austin Texas, there isn't much of a competition: In what is referred to as the Blue Oasis in the Sea of Red, this town is heavily tilting towards Obama in a major way.

When you start walking towards the On-Campus polling station, which is one of the biggest in the city, You are greeted with college republicans and democrats protesting out in front, and urging people to vote for their candidate. I first spoke with Zack Hall, the President of the University Democrats.

Zack was visibly excited and energetic about the election, and what he predicted to be a major win for Obama and the democrats nationally. He told me that his organization managed to register 12,000 new voters this election year, and that over 18,000 University students have already voted in early voting, the supreme majority of which were for Obama. While he conceedes that there isn;t a chnace this year for Texas to vote for a democratic President, he notes that with the organizational efforts they made, and the huge draw the Obama candidacy has generated amongst Young people, that it's possible within a couple of voting cycles for "Texas to turn blue". He hopes it will, anyway.

Back in the area where the two camps were facing off, one particular college republican was the focus of heavy discussion from the University Democrats side and regular passer-by students, and the reason for that was that he was black.

His name is Eric Dunn, and he is supporting McCain instead of Obama for 3 major reasons: 1) He doesn't believe Obama is capable of delivering all the promises he is making; 2) As a former member of the Airforce, he believes that America needs to remain and secure and to have a strong military, which he belives John McCain will provide and , 3) He views Obama's policies as socialist in nature, which is something he firmly doesn't support. He says that he believes that if one works hard, one can achieve a high income and wouldn't need "a government handout", and he referrs to himself as an example of that:He owns 2 businesses that make him around 200,000 dollars a year, and he doesn't feel that paying anymore taxes is fair to him . He does concede that his support for McCain has made his life more difficult, especially amongst his family, who are all democratic Obama supporters, but he doesn't view this as a good enough reason to switch his support to someone he doesn't agree with.

In front of the Polling Station

The Voting lines at the polling station were long, but the process seemed to be efficient. When I asked a number of people who voted or were about to, they informed me that it took them 40 minutes to get to the head of the line. Outside the polling station there stood one girl holding a note pad and had a sign that said "Voter Rescue". Her name is Sheila Dean, and she was the local volunteer for "Texans for Real Elections", a non-partisan group that focuses on election integrity, especially with the wide use of electronic elections machines this election.

Sheila, and her group, worry that the integrity of the elections is at stake, especially that all voting machines are made by Three corporations: Diebold, Hart Intercivic and ES&S. Sheila stresses that those corporations designed their machines to count the votes in secret, using proprietary secret software, which makes them nothing more but High-Tech" versions of "smoke-filled back rooms". She pointed out to an article just released by Wired Magazine yesterday, that showed that ES&S machines can be hacked into to favor specific candidates, without anyone knowing about it. To her, the only way to have an election is by having paper ballots that get hand-counted in public view. Anything less invites voting fraud and compromises the electoral process.

Efforts to get out the vote

From what I learned from the college republicans, there has been very little effort to get out the vote in Austin, primarily because they know that Texas is a safe republican state this election cycle. The University Democrats, on the other hand, did not share their outlook, and have organized themselves to become an efficient get-out-the-vote machine, whether by block-walking or by making Phone calls on behalf of all the democratic election campaigns that are happening in this race and the ones in surrounding states.

With over 700 members to the college republicans 70, the Univeristy democrats had the volunteers necessary to have an effective running Phone-bank. Using widely available registered voters contact information, they contact hundreds of voters every day using Skype to urge them to vote for the democratic party in their national and local elections. "The republicans have nothing even close to what we have", The University Democrats President beamingly said to me and then followed up "and if you think that's impressive, you should see what they are doing at the National Campaign headquarter".

The Obama campaign headquarters is located in a huge warehouse in the middle of Austin, where the local Obama campaign is run concurrently with all the local and municipal election campaign that are taking place today. The place was buzzing with energey, with volunteers from all walks of life and all ages pouring in to help "Barrack the Vote".

What was noticeable was the amount of volunteers the campaign had amongst elderly voters, who were mostly working the phones as well, also using Voice Over IP technology to be able to communicate with the registered voters better and get them to go out and vote for their candidate. If the level of energy is this high in all the Obama campaign headquarters all over the nation, then John McCain is definitely headed for a serious defeat at the end of today.