Election Day Open Thread

We’re not really open thread people at OTB but we’re making an exception today.  Use the comments below to make electoral vote predictions, share your Election Day experiences, or the like.

FILED UNDER: 2008 Election, US Politics,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Patrick says:

    James,

    I did want to take this opportunity to praise and thank you for always being “fair and balanced”. I think that, even though you and I may differ politically, that you have stayed classy throughout this campaign. Your blog is always a great read. Keep up the good work.

    I’m rooting, in this election, for a record turnout too!

  2. Floyd says:

    I am saddened to see the widespread corruption in this election, with an Anti-American media encouraging it at every turn.
    Even when the results were not encouraging, there was a time when most people felt that they could rely on the process.
    This is no longer true, we have a majority of the states embracing vote fraud through legislation.
    I have lived through 25% of this noble experiment and I fear I may live to see it’s end.
    I once was a citizen with a franchise, now I can be nothing more than a subject in chains.

  3. Went to vote this morning. I haven’t sen lines like that outside of Disneyworld.

  4. Michael says:

    I predict that OTB’s servers will be unreachable at least twice more before the end of the day. Your host does know you’re a political site, and has beefed up your bandwidth today, right James?

  5. ODIrony says:

    In our little precinct, where there’s usually only a five minute wait – at most – today I wait two and a half hours in line to vote. The wait has been about two hours since the polls opened this morning at seven. Great! I have a theory that in regards to the “uninformed” voters (to wit., “stupid” voters), they basically cancel out between the parties. Still, it’s nice to see so many people involved. Who knows? Maybe the uninformed voters today will come back, and come back well informed last time

  6. James Joyner says:

    Your host does know you’re a political site, and has beefed up your bandwidth today, right James?

    Unfortunately, I’m on a dedicated — and expensive — server and still exceeding my 3.5 gigabyte RAM allocation. They’re making some tweaks that will turn users away but at least not crash the server.

  7. Floyd says:

    When we voted this morning and there were several open booths [out of seven] for the entire time I was there,also there were several precincts voting in the same building, each appeared about the same.
    Of course, this IS Illinois,……I suppose if I were like the boy from “The Sixth Sense” I would have seen the long lines!

  8. Michael says:

    Unfortunately, I’m on a dedicated — and expensive — server and still exceeding my 3.5 gigabyte RAM allocation. They’re making some tweaks that will turn users away but at least not crash the server.

    You’re memory bound?!?! Something sounds wrong with your configuration. Even if PHP was buffering every page, you’d have to be juggling roughly 35k page requests at any given point in time to reach 3.5 gigs (estimate for the 94.55kB homepage).

  9. James Joyner says:

    Even if PHP was buffering every page, you’d have to be juggling roughly 35k page requests at any given point in time to reach 3.5 gigs (estimate for the 94.55kB homepage).

    I honestly don’t get it. If had my WordPress guy, Ed Burns, look at it but he’s stumped. Some of the pages, especially at Gone Hollywood, are image intensive. But, still, it shouldn’t be THAT heavy a load.

  10. Michael says:

    I honestly don’t get it. If had my WordPress guy, Ed Burns, look at it but he’s stumped. Some of the pages, especially at Gone Hollywood, are image intensive. But, still, it shouldn’t be THAT heavy a load.

    Images could cause an I/O bottle neck and cause a denial of service, but it shouldn’t cause you to use up all your ram, unless WordPress is doing image manipulation on them.

    In the near term, you can try disabling any add-ons or plugins for WordPress that aren’t especially necessary, they may be doing some extra processing that is consuming your memory. You should also try the commercial Zend optimizers, which will help with the PHP processing.