As Election Day arrives, hype sure to reach pique

It’s all over but the shouting. Nope, it’s not over till the fat lady sings. Which probably means in this historic election, today’s the day but tomorrow – or several tomorrows – may be what counts. Literally.

No doubt we can expect charges of voter fraud: confusion, if not chaos in balloting across the states with their widely disparate election methods, claims of voter intimidation, if not disenfranchisement, and demands for recounts, if not court appeals.

And no doubt this may be a record voter turnout as last-minute campaigns – their workers canvassing door-to-door or using radio and television ads or telephone messages – have mobilized the rank and file to get out and vote. Vote early, vote absentee, vote any way but loose, and inevitably, that too.

As a matter of fact, in the last week I have answered the phone to hear the voice of President George W. Bush himself, then the first lady, then mother Barbara Bush, all telling me to vote … and how. Olympia Snowe has called, so have George Mitchell, Wesley Clark, John Edwards, some Reaganite, and even Curt Schilling who talked about the Red Sox first, of course, then his endorsement of Bush.

Since all of these messages were prerecorded – let alone unsolicited – I promptly hung up, annoyed once again at all forms of telemarketing that intrude on and interrupt my life, but that is another subject for another time.

What has happened in the waning days of this 2004 campaign has been an intensification of efforts unlike any I’ve ever seen. The phone banks have been bustling with activity; poll workers – and watchers – have been instructed. Undecided voters, as well as swing states, have been bombarded.

New voters by the thousands have being registered, and anyone who needs a ride to the polls must only ask. In Maine alone, a push to register student voters at area college campuses resulted in 5,300 18- to 24-year-olds filling out registration cards.

As for other examples of intensity, the TV ads for Bush and Kerry in these final hours have leveled some of their most misleading charges to date; the campaign rhetoric on the stump has grown vitriolic; and there has been more spin than on a child’s wooden top.

And speaking of spin, these new collegiate voters see right through the distortions and misrepresentations. Just ask them about today’s election and the campaigns that led to this day, and they may very well direct you to Factcheck.org., or Spinsanity.org. or to documentaries or books, editorials or speech transcripts that influenced them.

They will tell you why they’re voting as they are. And why they believe, as they wrote in an assigned commentary: “This is the most important election of our lifetime.”