Following are updates on races that are particularly important to Iowa:

Tom Harkin (D) is reelected to the US Senate.

Bruce Braley (D) reelected as Iowa District 1 US Congressman.

Dave Loebsack (D) reelected as Iowa District 2 US Congressman.

Leonard Boswell (D) reelected as Iowa District 3 US Congressman.

Tom Latham (R) is reelected as Iowa District 4 US Congressman.

Steve King (R) reelected as Iowa District 5 US Congressman.

Iowa Constitution Amendment passed.

Bill McCarthy (D) reelected as Polk Country Sheriff.

The Iowa State House and Senate races are still not all settled at this writing. However, it appears that Democrats like have a majority in both houses again.

Peter Cownie (R) has won in District 60. The unofficial totals are:

Peter ran a good solid clean campaign. We look forward to his work in the State House.

Congratulations, Peter!

After two years, we finally get to pull the lever.
I do not propose to get into specifics, here about what I’m going to do. I don’t suppose I will need to.

You see, when I vote today, I’m going to remember which party made possible another vote recently, and which party decided fighting for freedom wasn’t worth it.

I strongly suggest that you should, as well.

Cross-posted from BitsBlog.

Addendum (Art): Great point, Bit. It’s also great to see American’s taking their right to vote this year as seriously as Iraqis do.

If you need them, free voter tools and endorsement information are in the center sidebar. We want to help you out today as much as possible.
The numbers are not completely up to date yet, but it looks like over 30 million Americans have voted in early balloting (up through November 3) for this election. That’s almost 25% of the total votes cast in 2004! Depending on how and when different states are counting these ballots, Tuesday and Wednesday could be an interesting time… and I doubt that exit polling will have the same level of predictability it had in years past.

Wow.

It’s awesome to see the power of the people brought to bare… the results are certainly unpredictable, but that’s part of the beauty and ultimately the intended process. Everyone has done everything they can and should to promote their parties, their candidates, their positions, and today everyone (who hasn’t already yet) gets to[...]

I’ve only provided endorsements for President and for legislative contests that affect me directly. Unfortunately, personal and work commitments have kept me from providing a broader assessment of candidates.

If you have not had adequate time yourself to interact with candidates or research them at their web sites, I can make a couple of simple suggestions:

There are a number of web sites with candidate assessments from varying perspectives, including general political principals and specific policy areas. Using various Google searches (such as “2008 Congressional candidate comparison tax“) you can[...]

District 60 is currently represented in the Iowa House by Libby Jacobs (R). She decided retire from the house this year and so we have a fresh set of candidates.

Dr. Alan Koslow (D) is a vascular surgeon who has been involved in health related volunteer activities for over 30 years. Without being a legislator, he has authored bills passed by the Iowa General Assembly, focused in the health and child services area. He has worked in missions to El Salvador after an earthquake. He considers himself a Smaller Government-Private Business-Progressive Realist. Koslow’s main focus is Health Care. His positions appear somewhat moderate, although he advocates leveraging our “balanced budget” to stimulate the economy by spending it on teacher pay, improving infrastrucutre, early child development programs.

Russ Gibson (L) is a customer service representative for FBL Financial Group. He states on his web site that he is not[...]

Less than 72 hours remain until the polls will close across the country, and we’re already getting plenty of messages intended to demoralize McCain supporters. DON’T LISTEN TO A WORD OF IT!

The model for this was set during the primaries… a great analysis and prediction of repeat offenses are described at the HillBuzz Blog. It’s a great read if you have time, but the point of it that they will do anything to convince you to skip voting if you’re planning to vote for McCain. Three core efforts (and tell me you haven’t seen this already) are:

• Calls for McCain to just give up and quit, because the race is over
• Wild claims of Obama winning states that shock and surprise you
• Repeated insistance that blacks and young people will decide this election, and they are all going to vote in record numbers for Obama

The worst part of this is[...]

Early state-by-state voting numbers are available at this link. For Iowa, we have already had nearly 340,000 votes cast this year. In 2004, there were a total of 1,521,966 votes cast, which means we’ve already seen over 20% of the 2004 total voting in the early polls! That is awesome, and again speaks to the likelihood that the numbers will likely be even higher than 2004 when the dust settles.

Out of the early numbers, registered Democrats make up 48.9% of the votes, and registered Republicans make up 28.5 (the 22.7% are independent). That does NOT mean that Obama has 49% of the vote in the early polls!

There was TV ad put together by some Hollywood heavyweights that, regardless of the political leanings they may espouse, delivers a message we should all support: every vote counts. Don’t let yourself be[...]

I just got home from the GOP Fest fundraiser here in Polk County.  I was a bit disappointed.
Don’t get me wrong.  I thought the speakers were great, the food was good.  The governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, gave an encouraging stump speech for McCain and Palin.
It’s just that the event was so lightly attended.
I walked [...]

I’m hoping that the fact you have come to this web site means that you care more about government than the average person.  If you care about government, how we do government, and who is doing the work of government on our behalf, then this article is for you.
I’ve alluded to this before, and I [...]