Mark Lewis recorded some white-people desperation at the mostly African-American Hillside Center polling place. Here’s his account:

The lawyer for the El Paso County GOP, John Buckley takes down an Obama sign from across the street to the polling place, blames it on poll workers, then two McCain worker show up to place signs closer than this new several hundred foot limit.

They also come equipped with some silliness about firecrackers being thrown at kids (by kids) It turns out to be as false as the fire alarm pulled at the Centennial Hall polling place.

As usual, the first order of business in a controversy is the suspend the first amendment right of the free press and rewrite the laws on public “reasonable expectation of privacy”. People cheating and breaking the law hate this open society that exposes them.

In the end, no big deal, just the usual wrangling by a loosing party, desperate to take an election the way they’re used to taking them. They also misrepresented what they knew nothing about: that a person coming to vote carried up an OBama sing and the poll workers told them the law: you can’t come within 100 feet with that sign, so they folded it and put it in the trash. The poll workers thought that might be a violation too, it was visible in the open trash if you looked inside, so removed it, and these 2 guys witnessed the removal, and claimed the poll workers were electioneering within 100 feet.

Earlier Buckley threw out observers from the floor who were later allowed back in because they had a right to be there as credentialed by various ballot initiatives.

Another GOP poll worker threw out a woman looking up registrations for people and claimed she was electioneering and causing a “disruption”. I taped her helping people and she found some at the wrong precinct, directed other to the correct line (3 precincts at this polling place) and some mail in ballots that needed to be taken downtown. Never a word about any political issue.

Otherwise, where I was: West Middle School, Colorado College, Palmer High, and Hillside, the early voting long lines ended up making shorter lines on election day. Now if we can just get the lines down to the 2 hour limit that state law requires and employer give employees time off to vote, we’ll have a match and reasonable election day.