You’re all invited down to the farmhouse tonight. We’re going to be watching the election on satellite TV and doing what’s necessary with the leftover Hallow’een liqour. I’m still undecided: I don’t know if we should call the evening “What’s Your Poison 2004” or “Damned If You Do 2004”. Either way, I have a plan to make America stronger, and that plan is to have a drink for every electoral college vote that Bush picks ups. That way my nervous system should be auto-cailibrated to receive the end results in the least painful fashion. By my math it’s about 265 electoral votes for either side to take it. My math isn’t often reliable even when I’m sober but that anyway sounds like about the right amount of nervous system cushioning fluid to make the experience survivable.

I’m not totally unoptomistic. In fact, I am going to very quietly predict that Kerry will win. I don’t have much more confidence in my prediction than my math, but it’s based on a couple of things. One: pollster John Zogby called it for Kerry the other night on the Daily Show (you can watch him say it here, note that Jon Stewart has responded to nonrelated polls that indicate many of his viewers use his show as their prime news source by saying that they should stop doing so; note also that accumulated experience indicates that you shouldn’t use any of the generally available news channels as your primary news source either). Also consider this: since that interview Zogby International has taken the extra step of becoming the first of the polling firms to survey people who exist without land lines by calling them on their cell phones, that demographic is going to Kerry.

Second major ray of “hope”: according to the latest numbers at electoral-vote.com, the unfair advantage of the electoral college system, which set Bush up to win over the popularly elected Gore last time round (with a little help from his friends of course), is swinging Kerry’s way this time round. Very much so, 298 to 231 as of press time. This acorrding to electoral-vote.com. However, the “votemaster’ of that site is qualifying the hell out that result, pointing to the nonlinear response in electoral votes that small changes in popular vote can induce. This is how we elect people? It’s like a community ecology class.

Wether our group of corporate thugs take it in the end or thier group of corporate thugs take it in the end, I’m thinking it may be wise to set aside a good ration of the good stuff for the end of the evening, because the way things are looking, the evening could well drag into several of the following days. With the results hingeing on such slim margins and the fast multiplying reports of voting irregularites, this could all take some time to settle out. Things are unstable.

I’ve just been told that we’re switching the venue for the evening to the basement of the auditorium. See what I mean? I can’t promise it’s going to be fun, I can’t promise anything. God have mercy on us all.