[Vilnius, Lithuania; May 17. Image via Getty]

A woman casts her vote during the first round of the presidential elections of Lithuania in Vilnius on May 17, 2009. EU budget chief Dalia Grybauskaite poised to return to politics in her recession-hit Baltic homeland as its first female head of state. Grybauskaite, who has a martial arts black belt and says her heroes include Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, has pledged to pull the nation of 3.34 million 'out of the political and economic shadows.' AFP PHOTO / PETRAS MALUKAS (Photo credit should read PETRAS MALUKAS/AFP/Getty Images)

[Guwahait, India; April 23. Image via Getty.]

Indian PM Votes As Assam Goes To The Polls
GUWAHATI, INDIA - APRIL 23: An Indian woman casts her vote at a polling station on April 23, 2009 in the Muslim dominated town of Mukalmua, near Guwahati, India. Around 200 million Indian voters are expected to cast their vote in the second phase of the world's largest democratic elections. Voting was conducted under tight security after Maoist rebels threatened attacks. At least 19 people were killed last week during the first phase of elections, some being election officials. The election has been staged over five phases due to the enormous number of voters and security requirements. The last phase of voting is to be conducted on May 13, the results of which are to follow a few days after. (Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

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In case you missed it: Here are the Election Day photos Part One and Part Two.

• If you weren't already aware, voter turnout is really high. That's led to some scattered problems, which will be chronicled after the jump. [Washington Post]
• In the mean time, the fucking Supreme Court heard the fucking case about fucking swearing on fucking TV. They didn't say "fuck" once, so I felt like someone had to. [Washington Post]
• A lot of people in California who really love each other rushed to get married today in case a bunch of small-minded, easily-led voters decide to make it illegal today for them to do so tomorrow. [NY Times]
• Joe Lieberman "fears" for the future of this country if the Democrats gain a filibuster-proof majority today, and has vowed to join with Republicans to filibuster anything they want to show his contempt for his constituents and the Americans who decided they were okay with a Democratic Senate. [Think Progress]

• Actor Tim Robbins was the most prominent victim of the ironically-named Help America Vote Act's mandated purges of voter rolls today. Being rather well-informed, he took his ass to court to force the city of New York to allow him to vote in the regular fashion, rather than provisionally since it would have gotten discarded. Can we just agree HAVA needs to be revisited next year? [NY Times]
• Rudy and Judith Nathan Giuliani apparent had no such difficulties and even got to cut in line. [Village Voice]
• Some people in Detroit waited 4-5 hours to vote. [CNN]
• Ditto in St. Louis. [CNN]
• A bunch of people in New Mexico that requested absentee ballots never got them and were told to show up and cast provisional ballots, as though if one needed to vote absentee that was a possibility. [CNN]
• At one Florida voting site, they had one machine to accommodate all the voters. Yeah, it was in a predominately African-American neighborhood. [Huffington Post]
• There were big problems with broken machines and a lack of paper ballots in Richmond, Virginia today, too. [Huffington Post]
• In Indiana, the GOP violated a judges orders and tried to challenge the voting status of foreclosed-upon voters. [Huffington Post]
• Some voters in Ohio were forced to cast provisional ballots (which might or might not be counted) because poll workers screwed up and thought that the address on the license had to match the address on the registration. It doesn't. [CNN]
• A 92-year-old woman in Texas cast her ballot from an ambulance outside the polling place when her absentee ballot didn't arrive. [CBS]
• Joe the Motherfucking Plumber went to the wrong polling place and tried to good ol' "Do you know who I am?" when he got stopped for speeding this week. Fuck. Off. Dude. [Wonkette]
• Joining JTMP in fucking off should be P.U.M.A. co-founder Will Bower. [CNN]
• Not that she swears, but 114-year-old Gertrude Baines, the daughter of former slaves who voted for Obama today, probably shares that sentiment. [LA Times]

Click on a picture below to begin the gallery view.

In case you missed it, here are the photos from earlier today: Yes We Can Happily Wait In Line To Vote.

MOE: Ok so THAT was fun... economic indicator time! I'm sitting in Starbucks and I had resigned myself to paying $10 for a crappy TMobile session, when it turns out they've changed Wifi partners and now AT&T is offering 2 hour blocks for $3.99, the price of a soy latte! How times change, okay, and speaking of Starbucks I think I'm going to be watching the returns in Boston with Barney Frank if anyone's interested in showing up to that. Dixville Notch will already be in bed natch! Landslide for Obama up there! Oh and did I mention that before I hit Boston I have to go to Philadelphia to cast my vote? And then the crappy AT&T Wifi service crapped out.

MEGAN: So you worked out the registration issue that got screwed up from the primaries? Good! Also, that sounds like quite the fun day of train rides, culminating with watching election returns with a seated Congressman. I will be live blogging for Jezebel. In preparation for it, last night I stopped by the grocery store and bought: 2 bottles of Guenoc Petite Sirah, one of cava, a six pack of beer and a bag of chips. I might have a friend over, or not if I don't feel like sharing. I'm already craving the salty chips.

MOE: Now I'm stealing Wifi and it is working better than the Wifi I legitimately clicked the "Terms & Conditions" box and PAID for. Yeah I called the hotline last night. They told me my polling place was at 23rd and Fitzwater!

MEGAN: Mine is around the corner, and has been for the last 5 years.

MOE: Yeah but you have to stand in line right? In Philly polling places are so small you rarely have to stand in line. It's like a few thousand Dixville Notches.

MEGAN: Well, I didn't wait in a line until 2006, when it was an hour wait in the morning and I gave up and decided to come back later but you should have seen the looks I got from people. I then managed to get caught in a deluge which caused three car accidents on the way home from work, ran into the polling place with 2 minutes to spare and there wasn't a line at all. I assume that, even though I will be voting mid-day, there will be a line. We are a swing state and all.

MOE: Hey so it turns out that the AT&T network just can't handle its traffic today. A guy came up to me and just informed me of this.

MEGAN: Great. It's like voting in a swing state, all fucked up. By the way, within the first 90 minutes of voting in Virginia, not one but two cities in Virginia were already having problems.

MOE: And we're back, on Gchat this time. Good thing I'm not voting by internet right??

MEGAN: I'm sure they'd find a way to make that even more fucked up than the system already is. And the system is pretty fucked up.

MOE: So, okay, there are many things to discuss. Many many things. And yet the whole topic feels so exhausted. Yesterday Rachel Maddow had Tim Pawlenty on her show and started grilling him about why McCain wasn't closing up the campaign by going out for Republican congressional candidates etc. etc. and you could tell even she wanted to tell herself to just give it a rest.

MEGAN: That's going to be a question a lot of Republicans start asking tomorrow, when the Dems are, at a minimum, in the high 50s in the Senate and way, way down in the House. I mean, $150,000 is a lot of radio ad time in, say, Tulsa.

MOE: Yeah, well, sure, but the Republican Party has bigger problems than that. As David Brooks captures. Contempt for government turns out to breed bad government! Which Republican Senators are losing btw? I haven't been paying attention ever since I sort of started to inherit Barney Frank's Senatitis.

MEGAN: Oh, gosh, Ted Stevens in Alaska, Liddy Dole in North Carolina and John Sununu in New Hampshire, for starters.

MOE: Right, I knew about them.

MEGAN: And then possibly Mitch McConnell, Roger Wicker, Saxby Chambliss and Norm Coleman.

MOE: I went to a Democratic dinner in NH with BF. Interestingly his favorite person in government is a longtime Dole loyalist, Sheila Bair of the FDIC. Have you written about her? There are few heroes in this financial crisis, but a wildly disproportionate number of them are heroines and she's one. (Also: Brooksley Born, Meredith Whitney, possibly Zoe Cruz.)

MEGAN: No, I have been all politics, all the time! Also, I forgot Gordon Smith in Oregon, because one generally always does. And there are 3 vacancies that the Republicans expect will be Democratic pick-ups. By the way, in case you were curious, Obama's grandmother's absentee ballot will be counted. Countdown to inappropriate Republican comment about a Chicago politician and dead people voting: T minus 2 minutes and counting.

MOE: Well I was going to say if you read one thing read this, but actually, just read that, people, it's nothing you don't sort of know about the crisis but it's horrifying nonetheless. There are parts of California where people who have been paying their mortgages for three and four years have been simultaneously watching their balances and monthly payments balloon while the values of their houses shrink to less than half their balances. It's insane. And anyone who buys, even to a teensy degree, the notion that "people without jobs were getting houses" and that's what got us here, ughhhhh.

MEGAN: Well, but, rich white people don't do things like that! The Wall Street Journal is biased! Of course it was the minorities! How can Ann Coulter be wrong??!!

MOE: What actually happened was people, in particular Hispanic people, were signing on to mortgages with such hair-raisingly exploitative terms it makes no sense in any fractionally-logical universe that anyone would extend such a loan. If not for the fact that none of the mortgage lenders actually every had to keep track of who they were lending to or whether they were paying!

MEGAN: Well, and the fact that some brokers weren't exactly good at things like "disclosure" and "layman's terms" and "honesty" and "integrity."

MOE: Yeah but forget honesty and integrity, I'm talking logical working capitalism here. I am a cynic, I am a skeptic, I sometimes call myself a Marxist, but the more I read about it the level of corruption and internal destructiveness allowed by the current system is actually astonishing.

MEGAN: Well, but ask Adam Smith, the basis of capitalism was supposed to be honesty and integrity. Without it, of course the system doesn't function. You can't have a functional market economy if it's all a zero-sum game of fucking over the other guy with every transaction, and trying to minimize the amount you get fucked over. People do business with one another assuming that they will get what they pay for, and that they will be paid. If that goes away, there's no longer an incentive to do honest business and it just devolves into chaos.

MOE: Well that's the invisible hand. Adam Smith never anticipated the credit default swap is one problem. And here's another thing: I really hate it when Republicans — notably Larry Lindsey, who I talked to the other day and is otherwise a stand-up guy — say stuff like "Don't buy stuff you don't understand…" A bigger part of this crisis — AIG — is that none of the SELLERS of this stuff understood what they were SELLING. In many cases the buyers knew better. And McCain — at the end of the day, he didn't need to pander to the base, which is what has been so sad about this. But better I suppose. It's almost as if their inane resurrection of Reagan era code words and talking points was in the cards all along, so we could sort of definitively put it all to bed. Although they are still screaming about socialism on CNBC.

MEGAN: If no one bought things they didn't understand, no one would invest their 401k's in the stock market in the first place.

MOE: What % of the Latin vote is going for Obama this time around?

MEGAN: McCain's numbers are down in the high teens, so I think 70-80 percent.

MEGAN: The Latino community isn't so keen on the Republican's "kick them all out" immigration policy.

MOE: That wasn't McCain's policy, poor guy. Too bad he couldn't remind any of them of that!

MEGAN: He could've reminded them of that, only he had to pander to the base that feels differently, so he pandered and then couldn't pivot.

MOE: Oh here's something about the strategic importance of Hispanic voters. And, not to belabor but the stock market was not the problem here. The stock market is like tic tac toe compared to the securities that caused this.

MEGAN: Well, but the point I was making was not whether stocks were the problem, it's that it was a stupid point. People buy stuff every day they don't understand.

MOE: Hispanics and youngs really got in at the tail end of this debt Ponzi. No, it's a stupid point, but it also has no validity whatsoever.

Anyway, the artists stayed. While I was away trying to have a career, they bought long-abandoned real estate and painted murals and taught school and built bars and occasionally joined civic associations and marched in parades and became committeemen. They masked their wonder and idealism and hope in gratuitous tattoos and beards and funny little slacker-rituals like bringing their kids to bars, but damn if they didn't sort of spruce up the place. If you think I am romanticizing common Richard Florida shit, fuck you, it isn't like I hadn't thought of that; it isn't like they didn't think of that.

All of which is a long way of getting back to the original point: that, despite its waning relevance insofar as broad macroeconomic and demographic trends are concerned, I always drew inspiration from Philly's trajectory. It was a place that very slowly and quietly kept getting prettier and nicer and cleaner and less disrepaired, fueled in large part by a bunch of artists seeking a working-class existence in a community untainted by all those pollutants that flow through places with delusions of being at the Center of the Universe.

But yeah, today it was muggy and overcast and slow and cluttered and on my walk to my polling place at 12th and Federal in South Philadelphia, I stopped to think how orderly and businesslike and prosperous it made my new corner at Rivington and Allen in New York look by comparison. And when I walked inside the little Italian social club and they couldn't find my name on their damn roster I couldn't get mad: I hadn't, after all, even lived on the block the last time I'd voted there. (I'd abandoned it for a job or a career or a piece of the action or whatever, a chance to double my rent for half the space, etc.) I simply asked my committeeman — a hefty, silver-haired Italian I didn't recognize who was munching on a paper plate of penne and kidney beans — how he figured our block had voted today.

"I don't know and I don't care!" he roared jovially.

"You don't care?"

"The turnout has been great, that's all that matters. I'm happy either way. It's when people don't vote that you've got a problem."

I smiled and thanked him and ran out to catch the train home. A cab driver on call picked me up on Broad Street. He said he'd take me part of the way. As we approached City Hall, a flock of Obama people standing on the median wove signs and those Styrofoam things they sell at Sixers games. The cabbie started honking wildly and laughing.

"Did you vote for Obama?" I asked.

"I'm a crazy Republican, I voted for McCain," he said. "But I like Obama. Look at him, he is smart and came from nowhere to Harvard and he has dark skin, it is time for someone with a little dark skin. Why have the same people over and over in charge? So one person can lead and then their son and their wife and their daughter can lead as well? I come from Pakistan and I never liked Bhutto. Her grandfather was a politician, her father was a politician, now her son is a politician. Let someone else do it for a change. Obama is a great speaker because black people are great speakers. Even black people who are not educated or have nothing, they have great voices, they can sing, they can make you feel inspiration. And look, not all black men are in jail, look at this one!"

He let me off at 17th and I walked the rest of the way to the station. And yeah, that's pretty much all I got for you guys from the real world: a Pakistani cab driver, like the Tom Friedman style guide taught me. But whatever. I'm almost home and will be back blogging imminently. In the meantime: go Barry!

—Moe

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld.

• Rumors are flying that Britney Spears might appear on Sunday's Emmy Awards to apologize for her performance at the VMAs. WTF? What does she have to apologize for? She gave a shitty performance, she didn't go on a racist tirade or run over a crowd of schoolchildren. Britney, babe, don't let those assholes convince you to humiliate yourself even more for their ratings pleasure. Go home, take a shower, and play with your kids. [US Weekly]
  
• A 16-year old buy trailed a group of girl runners from his high school and yelled, "Keep going, or I'll rape you." The girls showed the little fucker they weren't scared and took down his license plate number and called the cops. Take that, punk. [NBC5.com]
  
• Holy crap, Beth Ditto from The Gossip writes an advice column? Awesome! [Guardian UK]
  
• Teen girls who diet are more likely to become smokers. Well, duh. If there's anything Kate Moss ever taught us it's that smoking fights hunger pangs and looks super sexy. [Reuters]

• After our 72-year old grandpa had triple bypass surgery, the first thing he asked the doctor when he awoke was when he could "have relations" with his wife again. That's why the news that seniors are still into humping came as no surprise to us. [USA Today]
• African pop star Angelique Kidjo has launched a campaign in her native country of Benin to encourage girls to get an education. [Reuters]
• Is today Paris Hilton's birthday? Scientists are close to developing a vaccine for chlamydia. [ScienceDaily.com]
• Two badass female NASA commanders will make history next month as they become the first pair of women to lead their orbital missions at the same time. Punky Brewster would be so proud. [MSNBC]
• MSNBC calls out Myriad, a company which is marketing their breast and ovarian cancer tests in TV commercials, for using scare tactics to increase their stock price, alleging that these ads make more business sense for Myriad than for public health or for educating women. [MSNBC]
• The debate over how to teach sex education in India rages on. Bizarrely, the situation there is really no different than the sex education vs. abstinence debate in the US — except that we're a freaking first world country and should be beyond this shit. [Economist]
• Eighty-nine year old Sylvia Levin is awesome — for the last 34 years she's spent six days a week getting people to register to vote, for free. Government experts think the 46,700 voters that Levin has registered are a national record. Think how many scarves she could have knitted instead. [LA Times]

• Breast milk proponents in the UK are calling for a ban on baby formula advertisements after an ad appeared alongside a photo of mammary-enhanced new mom Jordan in a gossip rag. Um, clearly she was just worried about the baby suffocating. [Daily Mail]
  
• Statistics show that while more women vote than men, single gals don't vote as much as married women. People, register to vote already! [Feministing]
  
• A female Air Force officer is facing a court martial for refusing to testify in her own rape case. The charges against the alleged rapists were dropped and now she's being charged with underage drinking and "committing indecent acts". If convicted, she'll have to register as a sex offender. The mind boggles. [Houston Chronicle]

• Not that this is a heinous crimes competition or anything, but this story about a British sicko who raped a teenage girl and forced her into prostitution in return for gasoline may make us even sicker. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with the world? [Guardian]
• Doulas are out and you are in! Today the new birthing accomplice is you, your baby daddy, and a big ol' full length mirror! Apparently, unassisted home births are on the rise in the UK. [Daily Mail]
• Girls are entering puberty as early as six years old, with everything from television to divorced parents to blame. Mother Nature, you are so cruel. [Daily Mail]
• The Nation's Barbara Ehrenreich thinks it's pretty wack that Why Am I Tempted (WAIT) doesn't require its abstinence trainers to actually abstain from sex themselves. Totally agree. Besides, wouldn't you rather hear the truth — that lotsa men are 'eh' in the sack and you're better off waiting until you can find one who's at least good at oral — if abstinence is going to be rammed down your throat? [The Nation]
• A new study conducted on Finnish female twins suggests that the rate of anorexia might be underestimated and that the eating disorder actually occurs in as many as 270 out of 100,000 women. Count us out — we just ate a delicious salami sandwich. [Reuters]
• Children of single dads are less likely to get routine check-ups with their doctor or have medical insurance. Well, Britney, at least you have something to suggest you might possibly may be a better parent than K-Fed. But it's still probably not enough. [Reuters]
• If you're mega chubs before you get pregnant, your baby is more likely to have birth defects — luckily, the chances of that are still pretty midge, so don't start dieting for Junior just yet. [CNN]
• Ending on a lighter, more grrl-power note, movies from women directors are flooding the big screen, says CNN, and they're not all crappy romantic comedies either. Oh, but there's bad news. The Director's Guild of America still is only 7% female. Pout. [CNN]