As I am celebrating Obama’s victory, I have to reflect on a few more completely crazy things related to voting in USA.
Let’s start with this. MSN page leads to the article with the following quote (the article keeps changing so I’m not linking):
Obama reached the 270 electoral votes he needed for election at 11 p.m. ET, when NBC News projected that he would win California, Washington and Oregon.
Apparently after this McCain phoned Obama to congratulate him. But wait, “NBC News projected”? What does NBC news have to do with projecting election results?!? Shouldn’t that come from oh, someone like say government?!?
OK, let’s assume that statement above is just MSN nonsense and this info did come from the government. However, Obama was proclaimed victor before Alaskan voting stations closed!
Shouldn’t that be like illegal?!? I mean, imagine yourself getting ready to vote in Alaska, checking out news and seeing that Obama already won… would you still go to vote? No, you wouldn’t.
Some fine folks in Alaska got stripped of their right to vote, I say. It should be forbidden to release any results, even start counting until everyone has voted. Period.
Of course, nobody cares much about poor Alaska which has only 3 electoral votes.
(and you wouldn’t vote if you were say a Democrat in a state like Oklahoma or Wyoming because you knew that all electoral votes will go to Republicans anyway)
And don’t get me started on having to register to vote. Last time I voted was in damn Croatia and what they did is simply send every citizen mail saying “this is where and when you vote”. End of story.
OK, I let out some steam… now back to celebrations!
Following The Mountain Wreath 
Projections are based on exit polls. Usually, the networks have a pretty good idea who is going to win a state based on the exit polls. They just hold off on callng a state until the polls officially close in that state, which is why they called it at 11pm EST, about 10 seconds after the polls officially closed in CA, WA, OR and HI.
So the question is: if I go to bed, will I wake up tomorrow to find this has all been a dream?
Yeah, USA elections are one big media circus… that’s for sure.
And no – it was not a dream!!! :-)
In Canada, once Ontario and Quebec have voted, the die is cast. There’s no point in even going to the polls if you live in any of the western provinces — the weight of those two is enough to set the entire country. They used to try and block news coverage of the canadian elections, but US networks would still broadcast, so it didn’t work.The only thing which stops that from happening here is California.