If you were curious about what the disbarred lawyer, former Florida inmate, bagpipe-blowing fringe candidate Montgomery Blair Sibley thinks about last week's election, you're in luck. He thinks it stinks.

Sibley, who has been disbarred from 13 different federal courts and three state bars during his career, is suing D.C.'s three representatives to the Electoral College, which is slated to meet next month and confirm that President Obama won on November 6. And, like he always does, Sibley doubts Obama's legitimacy to hold the office to which he just won another four years.

In one complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Sibley calls Obama's birth certificate, college transcripts and other identifying documents "questionable." So, basically the same birther shit as usual.

His second complaint takes direct aim at the Electoral College itself. Citing the 12th and 23rd amendments, Sibley hopes to stop the 332 electors pledge to Obama from voting for a candidate he sees as illegitimate. Or something like that.

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MUCH of the coverage of Tuesday’s results has focused on the strength of Barack Obama’s coalition — minorities, women and young voters. But that analysis misses the real point. The contours of the 2012 presidential race were shaped less by the country’s changing demographics than by the underlying attitudes and values of American voters, who are always far more complex than they appear to pollsters.

The president’s victory was a triumph of vision, not of demographics. He won because he articulated a set of values that define an America that the majority of us wish to live in: A nation that makes the investments we need to strengthen and grow the middle class. A nation with a fair tax system, and affordable and excellent education for all its citizens. A nation that believes that we’re most prosperous when we recognize that we are all in it together.

From the 2012 campaign’s earliest days, analysts focused on historic economic and political metrics to explain the steep uphill climb Mr. Obama faced in his re-election bid: no sitting president had been re-elected with unemployment higher than 7.2 percent; or the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index below 78 percent; or the “right track” rating for the country as low as it was.

Such conventional indicators failed to capture the mind-set of the American people who always had a broader view of the nation’s economic situation and what had happened to their lives. A national survey of 800 voters conducted by our firm — not for the Obama campaign — during the final weekend before Tuesday’s vote, confirmed that a clear majority of Americans viewed this election in the context of the scale of the economic crisis we faced and the deep recession that ensued.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/opinion/obama-won-on-values-not-demographics.html?ref=politics&_r=1&&pagewanted=print

...1) Modernize voter registration. Over and over, vote-watchers said that this was one of the biggest problems Tuesday. Voters would get to the front of the line and find out that they weren’t on the registration lists, for whatever reason. That caused confusion and delay. In some cases, it meant people couldn’t vote. In most cases, it meant longer lines.

The good news? “This is a very solvable problem,” said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice. “We have the technology to do it.” States can reduce errors by improving their online registration systems or by making registration automatic at various points, as when people receive their drivers’ licenses. Many states are moving in this direction, but not all. An upgraded system could also help keep track of voters’ registration status when they move.

Congress could also chip in. The Voter Empowerment Act, sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) would upgrade voter-registration standards across the country and make same-day registration more common. It would also create more ways to register voters automatically, such as students at public universities.

2) Make sure local jurisdictions keep their polling stations well-equipped. Another reason that many polling stations had long waits Tuesday was that they were simply ill-prepared, said Mary Boyle of Common Cause. Stations ran out of ballots. Their machines broke down. The poll workers were unprepared. “We had reports of stations where people were voting on one machine when ten were supposed to be working,” she said. Likewise, said Pamela Smith of VerifiedVoting, many states use older machines that are prone to glitches — when they break, that bogs everything down.

Congress is well within its rights to set national standards for federal elections and provide enough money for stations to upgrade their infrastructure and train poll workers. This happened in 2002, when Congress passed the Help America Vote Act to help states replace their outdated punch-card and lever systems. But that money has since dried up — even as new problems have arisen with the newer electronic machines.

3) The Senate could actually confirm nominees to head up the Election Assistance Commission. Back in 2002, Congress set up this nonpartisan federal commission to aid local jurisdictions with things like certifying electronic voting machines or coming up with contingency plans in case of a disaster. But to date, the panel has no commissioners sitting on it, as Republicans in the Senate have blocked the nominees. (The commission is supposed to have two Democrats and two Republicans.) Having a functioning commission, said Weiser, might have helped states such as New York and New Jersey that found themselves scrambling to set up voting alternatives after Hurricane Sandy.

4) Expand early voting. Allowing people to vote early can help alleviate the pressure on Election Day. But not all states allow early voting. And this year, some states, like Ohio and Florida, cut back on early voting at the last minute, causing chaos and longer waits. Here, too, Congress could set national standards on early voting, so that the process isn’t left to state officials who may often have partisan reasons for mucking with the schedule. “When we see such broad problems across so many states as we did this year,” said Weiser, “it may be appropriate for Congress to act.”

Another related, long-proposed idea would be to make Election Day a national holiday. That way more people can vote at different times throughout the day, easing the wait.

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More at www.washingtonpost.com

University of Colorado Professors Ken Bickers and Michael Berry have quite a set of bragging rights up their sleeve – namely, they’ve devised a mathematical model of the Electoral College that has predicted every Presidential race correctly since Ronald Reagan won the Presidency in 1980.

And despite recent polls showing the presidential race deadlocked both nationally and in key swing states, Bickers and Berry’s model shows a race that isn’t even close. According to them, not only will Mitt Romney win, but he will win big, taking 320 Electoral Votes to President Obama’s 218 – a result almost as decisive as President Obama’s win against Senator John McCain in 2008.



http://www.theblaze.com/stories/electoral-college-model-predicts-romney-will-win-big-in-2012-and-its-been-right-since-1980/

Losers:

* Big money/Citizen's United/Koch empire/the self centered 1%-ers
* Faux News (and friends)
* Rasmussen's state polls
* Gallup's "likely voter" model
* Racists
* Birthers
* Speaking of racist, birthers ... Donald Trump
* True The Vote
* John Husted
* Election will be stolen, proponents (understandable concern, however)
Not speaking about those who rightfully called out voter suppression efforts, obviously.
* Karl Rove/Dick Morris/Glenn Beck and crew
* The I'm too pure to support Obama because he's just like Republicans, choir
* Liars - lots of em'
* http://unskewedpolls.com/
* Anti-gay bigots (who lost in many states)
* The "Tea Party"

Winners:

* WE THE PEOPLE
* Honest pollsters like PPP/NBC and CNN
* Nate Silver/Sam Wang/others who were using statistical science
* Those who stood in long lines to exercise their constitutional rights
* MSNBC's "Lean Forward" team
* Troops on the ground in the middle east
* Common sense foreign and domestic policy
* DU-ers who kept us sane, when the nay-sayers thought the sky was falling. THANK YOU ALL!
* Democratic Underground and its founders