Sorry: I’m in Minneapolis, at a convention of writers and editors. I actually travelled here on Amtrak (an interesting and mostly quite pleasant experience), so I’ve been several days away from the online world already. Cruelly, I’ll be back on the train for the entirety of Election Day (and evening), so I’ll have to settle for lots of phone calls to find out who’s winning what. (I’ve already voted, myself.)

Meanwhile, as the indispensable Jeanne D’Arc says, you can’t make this stuff up:

A high-level delegation of European and North American election observers—including members from Russia and Albania—arrived yesterday for a week-long mission to watch Florida’s mid-term elections, which take place on Tuesday.

Their task: to see if the world’s most powerful democracy has learned anything from the disastrous 36-day showdown between George Bush and Al Gore in 2000, in which the world saw every wart in Florida’s deeply flawed electoral system without ever discovering for sure who had won.

Certainly, the Russians and Albanians know a thing or two about flawed, rigged or fraudulent elections. After receiving a decade of lectures from Western democracies about overhauling their own systems, they also have a good idea how to overcome them. […]

[T]he team will look at the broader picture of Florida’s electoral laws, how they are applied, and the ways in which US practices fall short of the stringent requirements imposed on emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

[01:43 PM]