Clinton, who employed Sestak on his counterintelligence team at the White House, will join him for Get Out the Vote rallies at Bryn Mawr College, Cheyney University and Temple University today. He has also cut a radio ad for Sestak, which makes the case for why Sestak is the best man to represent Pennsylvanians in the Senate:

I’d like to tell you about the Joe Sestak I’ve known for 15 years. He’s a true patriot. Thirty-one years in the Navy. A Three-star admiral. His dad was a Navy man who taught Joe that it’s his duty to serve, to look out for the little guy, to stand up to the special interests. That’s why the Washington crowd is spending so much to elect his opponent. Because Joe is tough enough to really make a difference in the senate.  He’s a very good man.

Having Clinton at your side these days is a better bet than having just about anyone, including the sitting president and his predecessor. He’s still quite beloved in Pennsylvania, and a new Bloomberg poll shows he might just be the best person to have alongside you on the campaign trail, period:

President Barack Obama’s campaigning isn’t helping Democrats, the poll shows, with a majority saying it makes no difference and almost one-fourth saying his efforts on behalf of his party actually make them more likely to vote Republican. Another Democrat, former President Bill Clinton, may be helping, as he outscores other politicians tested on popularity by a wide margin.

“She wasn’t out there!” said an annoyed Laura White, a 78-year-old pilates instructor who supported Coakley in the Democratic primary. “That’s not how the Kennedys ran. I remember seeing JFK campaign in New York in 1960, shaking hands in the rain, not even wearing a raincoat!” She never considered voting for Brown — he reminded her of George W. Bush — but she was disappointed in Coakley.

Lyn Ackerly, who’d backed Coakley’s rival Alan Khazei in the primary (“it was his honesty”), wasn’t entirely happy about her vote. “We need the health care bill to pass,” she said, “but it’s been whittled down so much.” On Coakley’s campaign: “If she loses, it was her fault.”

George Watkins, a prep cook who hadn’t voted in the primary, came out because he was worried about President Obama’s agenda getting blocked if he lost “his help” in the Senate. He, too, was frustrated with Coakley, and decided to vote after polls showed the race closing.

When TWI visited the polling place, there was steady traffic but no line. Turnout was around 25 percent at lunchtime.

“I always vote Democratic,” said Frank Creighton, a construction worker who voted with his wife Patty at a polling place in St. John the Baptist church. “Brown doesn’t have a chance. The Democrats are gonna take care of it.” Both Creightons said they’d supported Coakley in the primary, and while she’d run a lackluster campaign, Brown simply rubbed them the wrong way.

Eddie Beck had the opposite take. “I voted for Obama and I’m voting for Brown,” he said. “I know it’s only been a year, but there are too many broken promises.” An independent who usually voted Democratic, he said he was strongly considering switching to the GOP.

At 2 p.m., turnout in the 2nd ward was running around 25 percent so far, out of around 1,400 people per precinct.

Here, meanwhile, is an example of the data not quite matching the spin.

New Jersey is not part of D.C., of course.

Here’s the whole survey.

The judge also revealed that he had voted early on Friday and had to stand in line for more than two hours. “It was quite a civics lesson,” Williams said.

The Advancement Project, which joined in the lawsuit with the NAACP, issued a statement saying, “With 500,000 new voters and high expected turnout the burden shouldn’t be on voters, it should be on the Commonwealth to make sure voting is accessible.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is rightly calling it a “poll tax” — the hours-long lines that many people will have to endure to exercise the most basic of American rights. It’s a right that many Americans — who have full-time jobs, child care and other responsibilities — simply can’t afford.

In Virginia, the NAACP tried suing over it, charging that the state is clearly unable to handle the predicted historic voter turnout on Tuesday — and lost. On Monday, a federal judge refused to order any changes.

In Pennsylvania, officials have said they fear an electoral flood — with not nearly enough voting machines to handle the expected before- and after-work crowds.

To Ed Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University, “the most worrisome threat on the horizon from a national perspective is the potential that states won’t be able to handle the volume of voters on Tuesday.”

This is all aside from the various criminally fraudulent tactics that have tried to keep people away from the polls: by threatening their arrest; telling them to vote on the wrong day. or even, via robocall, offering voters to vote by phone.

When the most historic presidential election in decades could be decided based not on voter preferences but on a combination of who’s least duped or intimidated, whose names are least subject to typos in bureaucratic databases and who can afford to wait longest on line, that’s a real problem.

All these claims of voter fraud, vote suppression and registration shenanigans may have the unfortunate effect of casting doubt on the legitimacy of the next president.

The one good thing that could come out of this glaring spotlight on the absurd mechanics of voting in this country could be, finally, a real push for future voting reform.

An Oakland, Calif. rally, part of the National Day of Action (Flickr: greenforall.org)

It’s becoming apparent that the youth vote could be a key component of Tuesday’s electorate. Americans age 18 to 30 are expected to turn out in record numbers. This is what the Obama campaign has long been focusing on, since Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, does well with voters under 30, according to national polls.

If young voters meet these expectations and turn out to vote, their preferences could influence the electorate. That’s why political organizers and pollsters have been trying to determine exactly what those preferences are.

Illustration by:Matt Mahurin

Like other demographic groups, voters under age 30 are most concerned about the economy. Since, according to the polls, the majority of all voters view Obama as better able to handle economic issues than his opponent, Sen. John McCain, this could be one reason the Illinois senator attracts the youth vote.

But young voters are concerned about more than the economy. While their concerns frequently match those of other demographics, there’s at least one issue where they diverge: the environment.

The environment is the major exception for youth voters, according to Carroll Doherty, the associate director at the Pew Research Center. In an October poll, 64 percent of voters under age 30 said the environment is “very important,” compared to 55 percent of older voters.

“At a time when there is so much convergence in priorities,” Doherty said, “that is a noticeable, significant difference.”

He attributes the difference to greater environmental consciousness among young people. For example, young people are more concerned about human effects on global warming than any other age group, according to an April Pew poll.

What’s most noteworthy about this interest in the environment is that it crosses party lines.

Young Republicans and conservatives, for example, see a need for more investment in clean energy, said Ashley Barbera, communications director for College Republicans. “A lot of [them] support alternative energy but have different reasons for that support — whether it’s climate change or [cutting the] cost of energy or [reducing] dependence on foreign oil.” For more and more young people, she says, “climate change is something that needs to be addressed.”

In this way, young conservative voters diverge from older conservatives, since the GOP base has not called for action on climate change, according to groups like the Heritage Foundation.

Nonpartisan political organizers are also finding that young voters are bipartisan when it comes to the environment. Generation Vote, a coalition of 20 youth organizations working to get out the vote, declared climate change the No. 5 issue on its “Youth Agenda,” which ranks the nine issues most important to young voters.

Stephanie Young, Rock the Vote communications associate, also said that young people across the political spectrum want to see more done to control climate change using clean-energy technologies. “Among young people,” she said, “Democrats, Republicans and independents can agree that the environment is extremely important, and that climate change is a problem.”

That’s because, Young contends, younger generations “have always been at the cutting edge of what’s going on in environmental protection.” They have grown up knowing how important it is to recycle, conserve energy and conserve water. “We have a much different perspective than other generations,” she said.

Young people may also be interested in the environment because they tend to see environmental and economic interests as compatible, some organizers conjecture. That may explain why the creation of more green jobs has emerged as an important issue for them. During the National Day of Action for Green Jobs, in September, youth turnout at events across the country was impressive.

This video of the National Day of Action, produced by Rock the Vote and Wiretap Magazine, captures a number of young environmental activists working to bring green jobs to people of all economic backgrounds:

Jessy Tolkan, executive director of the Energy Action Coalition, an umbrella youth environmental group, is working to mobilize 1 million young Americans to vote on climate and energy issues Tuesday through its Power Vote campaign.

“This generation,” Tolkan said. “sees the economy and energy and the environment as 100 percent linked.” But this isn’t new, she adds, because young people have been at the forefront of the movement advocating more green jobs and greater clean-energy investment for at least two years.

Climate change has become a determinant in some young people’s vote. “What I hear time and time again from young voters, ” said Tolkan, “is that the defining issue of our time is going to be whether or not this generation in this country stood up and dealt with climate change and energy solutions — or whether we ignored the writing on the wall and allowed this catastrophe to happen.”

Tolkan also finds that young voters, whether Republican, Democratic or independent, are largely disappointed with the environmental rhetoric they’ve heard from both presidential candidates. “What I’ve heard from [them],” said Tolkan, “is that neither candidate has gone far enough to lay out how he is going to address [these issues].”

In any discussion of young voters, it can’t be ignored that national polls show Obama leading overwhelmingly with those under 30. Pew, for example, puts the Democratic nominee ahead, 68 percent to 24 percent.

Alexandra Acker, executive director for Young Democrats for America, says this is because of Obama’s stand on three of the most important issues to young people: the economy, the war in Iraq and the environment/energy. Young voters see those issues as connected, she says.

“Young people were the first group to turn away from the war — to see the war in Iraq as a war of energy,” she said. “Young people want a commonsense approach to breaking our dependence on oil. They want to invest in clean energy and new technologies. They want to find new energy but reduce our carbon footprint.”

Acker says more young people trust Obama’s platform than Sen. McCain’s. “Just because John McCain says he’s an environmentalist, doesn’t make it so,” she said. “He has low ratings from the environmental groups [because of his voting record on conservation].”

With young people expected to vote in record numbers, this portion of the electorate could wield great power. Acker says young voters may well make issue-based decisions on Tuesday, regardless of what others might expect.

“Contrary to every stereotype, young people are taking this election very seriously,” Acker continued. “They’re voting on the issues, not on personality. More than any other age group, they’re worried about our economy. We’re the ones who are going to inherit [economic problems]. We’re the ones who will inherit environmental problems.”