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As they start, Kerry has 14 states and the District of Columbia in his column for 193 electoral vote while Bush has 25 states for 217 votes, according to an Associated Press analysis of state polls as well as interviews with strategists across the country.

Both candidates are short of the magic 270 electoral votes. The margin of victory will come from:

* Tossups: Bush and Kerry are running even in 11 states with a combined 128 electoral votes. Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan and West Virginia are the toughest battlegrounds. Two other tossups, Pennsylvania and Oregon, could soon move to Kerry’s column.
* Leaning to Kerry: Maine, Minnesota and Washington (a combined 25 electoral votes) favor Kerry over Bush by a few percentage points. Gore carried them in 2000.
* Leaning to Bush: North Carolina, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, Virginia, Arkansas and Missouri (a combined 73 electoral votes) give Bush modest leads. He won all seven in 2000.Al total, 21 states are in play. Some will bounce between "lean" to "tossup" throughout the campaign.

Four years ago, Bush won 30 states and their 271 electoral votes — one more than needed. Gore, who won the popular vote, claimed 20 states plus the District of Columbia for 267 electoral votes.

Since then, reapportionment added electoral votes to states with population gains and took them from states losing people. The result: Bush’s states are now worth 278 electoral votes and Gore’s are worth just 260.

Reapportionment? Wasn't that called "redistricting" when we last heard of it? I guess the neocon press (I don't think they get irony, so I'm calling a spade a spade here) didn't want us to remember the GOP's, led by tom delay, big party power grab the last few years. Remember when the Texas democrats spent some time in Oklahoma In May 2003 to deprive the real evil-dooers (GOP members)a quarum in the Texas State House of Reps. It worked for a while then in August Texas became a true Banana Republic.

Eleven of the twelve Democrats in the state senate refused to attend the special session, convening instead in Albuquerque, New Mexico July 29, outside the jurisdiction of the Republican-controlled Texas state government. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat, has rebuffed requests that the legislators be extradited.

The Democrats refused to return, defying the fines, which took effect on Thursday, August 14, starting at $1,000 each, doubling to $2,000 on Friday, $4,000 on Saturday and $5,000 on Sunday and every day following until the special session ends August 26. The total fine for boycotting the entire special session would amount to $57,000, and the Republican senators specified that this be paid from personal and not party funds.

Several Republican senators suggested that Democrats who do not pay the fines would be deprived of their votes in the state Senate, an action that would deprive as many as 8 million people of representation (each Senate district has about 700,000 residents). Neither Governor Rick Perry nor state Attorney General Greg Abbott have yet taken a position on disenfranchisement of senators, which has no precedent under the state constitution.

The boycott by the Democratic state senators repeats the tactic employed by Democratic members of the lower house who left Texas as a group three months ago. They waited at a hotel in Oklahoma until the regular session of the legislature ended, frustrating the initial Republicans effort to push through the redistricting plan.

Governor Perry called a special session of the legislature and the redistricting plan was passed through the lower house, but the bill failed in the state Senate for lack of a two-thirds majority. Perry then called a second special session of the legislature, for which the Republicans imposed new rules ending the traditional two-thirds requirement for a bill to pass the Senate.

Kerry’s best prospects may be in the five tossup states won by Bush in 2000: Ohio, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and West Virginia.

Winning either Ohio’s 20 electoral votes or Florida’s 27 would do the trick.

Come on Ellen, you can do it! Save the country. Get out the vote, call all your friends! Put notes on all the cars in the grocery store parking lot that say "bottleofblog.com". That should do it.