The McCain campaign and the GOP have been quite vocal over the past couple weeks about potential voter fraud and a vast left-wing conspiracy, and it looks like it’s finally hit the news. Just in time for the weekend news cycle, which means it will be virtually ignored by the press and thereby the voters. A case of media bias or a case of the snooze factor? You decide.

In accordance with that old tried-and-true “vote early, vote often” adage, a liberal community activist group named ACORN is being accused of asking voters nationwide to register several times. According to the New York Post, two Ohio voters have said they were “hounded” by ACORN volunteers to register to vote again even after the two made it clear they were already registered. One of the voters who came forward is an employee with Domino’s Pizza, who was extra pissed because he was late on delivery and had to throw an order of cheesy bread in for free.

It’s the rush of voter registrations on both sides this close to the election that makes people nervous about the validity of the registration cards. Even some Democrats are expressing concern over ACORN’s broad voter registration effort which could conceivably provide individual volunteers the opportunity to take advantage of the system. Meaning this election could very well be decided by… Dora the Explorer.

ACORN claims to have registered 1.3 million new voters, which probably means they actually registered only three.

[via Marc Ambinder]

Who wrote this today by way of endorsing Barack Obama?

John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

Christopher Buckley, son of Bill, who’s no doubt spinning in his grave.

Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic — admittedly, no McCain fan — goes off on the Republican nominee for not quashing the hyper-angry, threatening-sounding rhetoric of his supporters at rallies this week. There was already a low-grade fear of what awfulness could befall Obama before the stoking of these racist and nationalist flames; now it’s been upgraded to something more tangible. And it’s just shameful.

Former McCain strategist John Weaver makes a similar, if more muted, argument to Politico.com.

“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Senator Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Senator McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

Fascinating front page piece in tomorrow’s New York Times about Sarah Palin and Troopergate. Keith Olbermann will have a conniption.

Paul Burka and Eileen Smith talk about a possible Obama landslide and the only four states that matter. Meanwhile, Eileen tries to name all 50 states and fails miserably.

In these last few weeks of the campaign, McCain has decided to claim the highly-coveted title of The Underdog for himself. Acknowledging that he is behind in the polls, he tells Charlie Gibson in an exclusive interview that he’s used to being an “underdog.” (McCain was quick to clarify that he’s the underdog who’s familiar with the Bush Doctrine.)

“This is a tough campaign,” McCain said. “I’m the underdog. I’ve always been the underdog from the beginning.”

In the interview, McCain defends the negative attacks against Obama and linking him to Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground, not to be confused with the weathered underdog.

“[Ayers] wasn’t a guy in the neighborhood. [Obama] launched his political career in his living room, in Mr. Ayers’ living room. And I don’t care about two washed up old terrorists that are unrepentant about trying to destroy America,” McCain said. “But I do care, and Americans should care, about his relationship with him and whether he’s being truthful and candid about it.”

Speaking as an American, I must say that I don’t really care, although I did hear that Obama tried to kill some guy’s entire family.

[Watch the clip here.]

The Dow has slipped below the 9,000 mark for the first time since August 2003.

SCORE! I knew we could beat our record. Well done, my friends.

Or is it? In our Election Daily video yesterday (below), I was surprised when Evan called the race over. (You can tell I was surprised by the look of surprise on my face.) In past elections, I’ve been confident of who the winner is only to be shocked when the final votes were counted. Little hint: Never trust the exit polls.

I think everyone can admit that Obama has run a more solid campaign than McCain, from the primaries up until now. And the McCain campaign effectively made their candidate unrecognizable and, let’s face it, kind of scary. Similar to the Hillary campaign, McCain’s tragic flaw was assuming that experience would trump the call for change. Both of them were wrong.

Despite his slight post-convention bounce, McCain has seen his poll numbers drop dramatically, as well as his support in what used to be solidly Republican states. If the electoral map is any indication, Obama could actually win this race in a landslide.

The latest Gallup tracking poll shows Obama ahead by 11 points, 52 to 41 percent. It’s difficult to look at numbers like that and see any way for McCain to catch up, especially given his decision to go negative, which doesn’t play well with undecided voters. Using Sarah Palin as his attack dog has only made things uglier.

But… BUT… you never know what can happen. And what if the voters are saying they support Obama but actually voting McCain? It’s a stretch, but not unheard of. Paul Burka has cited the so-called Bradley effect more than once, in which there is a marked discrepancy between opinion polls and election outcomes between a white and a non-white candidate. This theory was named after Tom Bradley, an African-American candidate who lost the California governor’s race despite being ahead in the polls.

That was 1982. This is 2008. It’s hard to imagine that underlying racism could have that type of impact today.

So what else could happen that would lead to a McCain surge? Not much. Barring some kind of terrorist attack, or the capture of Osama bin Laden by Steve Schmidt, or another more serious incident of Russian aggression (which we’ll know about beforehand since you can see Russia from Alaska), there doesn’t seem to be much hope for the McCain camp.

If this race was truly Obama’s to lose, and not McCain’s to win, then there are still four weeks for a bombshell to drop, such as an illegitimate baby, a long-time mistress, and hush money, all reported by the National Enquirer.

But not very likely.

Your daily election video. Brought to you commercial-free. Please note that I am wearing a yellow sweater so as to look uncharacteristically cheery.

Eileen Smith talks with Evan Smith and Paul Burka about the town hall debate, McCain’s lackluster performance, and why Evan says crap all the time.

And who brought up Gossip Girls anyway?

The McCain campaign is circulating a statement from John Murtagh, whose home was firebombed in 1970 by Weather Underground radicals (and, by extension, Bill Ayers). Murtagh’s father was a NY State Supreme Court justice at the time who was presiding over a trial involving the Black Panther Party and a plot to bomb NY landmarks.

Money line: “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family.”

[via The Page]

I’m not going to say who I think won the debate last night. But I’ll tell you who lost. McCain. (Not to mention a rather bitchy Tom Brokaw.)

I thought Obama overall did much better than McCain — especially in the first half when the focus was on the economy — but this wasn’t really about Obama’s performance. He almost always comes across as more presidential in appearance. This was about McCain. I didn’t expect a game-changer, and I also wasn’t waiting for McCain to attack Obama’s character (which he didn’t). I mean, Obama’s standing right there. AWK-ward.

McCain 2000 was a master of the town hall forum. He seemed to really connect with the voters. That was when McCain was McCain. The 2008 version is like Bizarro McCain — totally different dimension in space and time. In Bush’s first term, there was still a bit of a maverick glint in his eye. By Bush’s second term, I looked in McCain’s eyes and saw three letters: MIA.

McCain’s campaign strategists have done him no favors, just as Hillary advisers did her a great disservice. When you package your candidate in such a way that they’re unrecognizable, no one’s going to buy it.

Last night, in the second of three presidential debates, McCain needed to tap into who he was eight years ago. Unfortunately, he’s too far gone. It’s also too late to remind the voters why they liked you in the first place, why they respected your service and sacrifices, why they could disagree with you on the issues and still support you.

When McCain constantly addressed the crowd as “my friends” during the debate, you had to wonder who he was talking to.

Here is the daily update of electoral maps for Wednesday, October 7:

1. Pollster.com: Obama 320, McCain 163, Toss-Up 55
2. electoral-vote.com: Obama 349, McCain 174, Toss-Up 15
3. 270towin.com: Obama 243, McCain 174, Toss-Up 121
4. Real Clear Politics: Obama 264, McCain 163, Toss-Up 111
5. 538.com:Obama 345.4, McCain 192.6

Today’s swing states: Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina (same as yesterday).

No new polls = good news for Obama. As I said Monday, it will take some tme for the post-debate state-level polls to come in. I’d expect by late tomorrow or Friday we’d have more data to determine if those Ohio dialers really are indicative of the general public in other swing states. As Pollster’s blog tells us:

All but one of the 21 new statewide surveys released yesterday represented net gains of at least one percentage point for Obama, although most (17 of 21) were updating results previously collected before the first debate. The new polls tipped the balance in both Ohio and New Hampshire, shifting both states to the light blue lean Obama category on our map, and increasing Obama’s electoral vote total to 320.

I’ll make the note, since I forgot yesterday, that I’ve added 538.com to the line-up. The site excels in its weakness: tremendous statistical analysis. That makes the site less interactive and user-friendly, but excellent for statisticians and hyper-politicos that want to examine the status of the race from any number of measurements. It’s run by the same guy — Nate Silver — who does Baseball Prospectus (for those baseball statisticians out there).

To read the guide to electoral maps, click here.

So says Rick Hertzberg, senior editor and political essayist for The New Yorker, in the most recent edition of the magazine’s weekly politics podcast. I laughed so hard I practically ran off the road. Rick and his colleagues always do a great job of analyzing the state of the race, but this week’s ‘cast, taped before a live audience at the New Yorker Festival this weekend, is definitely worth downloading.

New Election Daily video on tonight’s town hall debate — What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting Much.

Jake Silverstein, Paul Burka, and Eileen Smith discuss Tuesday night’s town hall debate, what’s at stake, and why height matters.

Here is the daily update of electoral maps for Tuesday, October 7 – four weeks out from the election:

1. Pollster.com: Obama 320, McCain 163, Toss-Up 55
2. electoral-vote.com: Obama 349, McCain 174, Toss-Up 15
3. 270towin.com: Obama 243, McCain 174, Toss-Up 121
4. Real Clear Politics: Obama 264, McCain 163, Toss-Up 111

Today’s swing states: Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina

What a difference a day makes. Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, and Colorado all move out of toss-up to Obama in the Pollster maps, which has the most up-to-date information and trend estimates (hence why I rank them first).

To read the guide to electoral maps, click here.