Below The Beltway

Two legal developments that may have an impact on the election in Virginia.
First, a Federal Judge has rejected a bid by the NAACP to extend voting hours in response to anticipated heavy turnout:
A federal judge has refused to order longer voting hours in Virginia and reallocation of voting machines to black precincts in some localities.
The [...]

Barack Obama and John McCain continue to fight it out for the Old Dominion’s thirteen Electoral Votes:
As the two major presidential candidates made a final, urgent push for Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, Sen. John McCain appeared before an energized crowd in Springfield, and Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign announced that he will hold his final event [...]

Today, it was a five hour wait in the City of Richmond to vote absentee:
In heavily-Democratic Richmond City, there was a five-hour wait today to vote in-person by absentee ballot. Hundreds of people, many in walkers and wheelchairs, waited in a line that snaked around City Hall.
“I wouldn’t be able to come Tuesday cause I [...]

Barack Obama is spending the last weekend of the campaign fighting for votes in states that usually go Republican:
COLUMBIA, Mo. — When Senator Barack Obama’s plane took off from here on Friday morning, after a large rally one night earlier, Democrats might have been justified in assuming it was his final visit to Missouri, given [...]

If the number of people turning out to vote absentee is any indication, voter turnout is going to reach record levels this year:
In Virginia and all across the Washington region, tens of thousands of people spent another day yesterday standing in line to vote by absentee ballot for John McCain or Barack Obama in numbers [...]