The homepage of FOX News right now:

"RESULTS ROLLING IN" over what appears to be a backwoods church, followed by "McCain Wins West Va., Ky; Obama Takes Vermont."

Emily Richardson, who voted in Maryland earlier today, stands outside the polling place at 19th & Kalorama Rds. NW wearing an elaborate beet costume. She's campaigning for the Obama-Biden ticket nationally and for the Statehood Green ticket locally, but mostly, she's campaigning against McCain. Richardson confirms that if McCain wins the election, she may destroy her costume, a delicious leftover from Halloween festivities. "I might just have to 'beet' it to death," Richardsons says.

Ben's Chili Bowl is an epicenter of District Obama supporters. Nearly every employee wears a button---or twelve. Everyone's expecting a clear win for Ben's favorite candidate. But what are they going to do if McCain wins? I spoke to D.C. residents enjoying their election day lunch at Ben's to find out their worst case scenarios.

Carl Clark, Obama merch hawker. Clark says he's been selling Obama buttons, which he collects from a flea market on Florida Ave. & 4th St. NW, for about a month. (Designs range from Obama/MLK "Legacy of Hope" to "Obama: First Black President.") Clark says that if Obama wins, he'll keep picking up some more designs to sell off before the inauguration. If McCain wins, "well, I guess it's all over for me," he says.

Read More "What Would Ben’s Chili Bowl Do?" »

Doug Sparks, a tough-as-nails D.C. lawyer, is in Richmond as part of a huge crew of attorneys that will be monitoring precincts and doing election protections tomorrow. This project got some big play in the Post a few days ago.

An Obama supporter, Sparks has been assigned to a polling precinct in Richmond. He has already traveled down to VA's Cap. City Desk spoke with Sparks while he is in his hotel suite watching Hardball trying to "get my wind here before everybody arrives." "It's like redeployment for us," Sparks says. Sparks and several other D.C. trial lawyers volunteered for this assignment.

"I'm resting up," Sparks says. (He wants to be called Doug the Lawyer. Ha). "I got all my voter stuff spread out on the table. There's all kinds of rules that you have to know. We got a big training manual. And all these voter rules. They say it's going to be raining all day tomorrow. We're going to load up on rain gear. We got to be out there from 5:30 until polls close at 7. It's a very long day for those of us who are stationed outside the poll. I have one of those Coleman Lanterns for the morning. The polls open at 6. They want us there at 5:30-5:45 a.m."

Sparks is pumped. "I want to be part of history. This is history. This is going to be the moment when everybody remembers where they were and what they were doing. I wouldn't miss this for the world. Just driving down here was fantastic. I saw Obama signs hanging over 95 (overpasses). It makes you feel pretty good."

We will be checking in with Sparks throughout the day tomorrow.

With election day less than a day away, I thought City Desk should step into the news time machine (i.e. Lexis Nexis) and take a look at what McCain was up to a year ago this week:

Read More "McCain: This Week, Last Year" »

Obama has a former president and a former secretary of state. McCain has this guy:

Via TPM.

Today, in the Post's Trail blog, we get McCain Camp bigwig Rick Davis declaring that his candidate is set to achieve one of the greatest comebacks in election history. Coates calls BS. And we second that assessment. The story is all conjecture, theory, and truth stretching. Not a bit of evidence is cited. I know it's just a dashed off item but it's lazy.

Since when do news orgs just let the spin go unchecked? All the time?

Here's the first two graphs:

"GOP presidential nominee John McCain's advisers today said their candidate had closed the gap with Barack Obama over the past few days and would be competitive with the Democrat as voters headed to the polls Tuesday.

'We are witnessing, I believe, probably one of the greatest comebacks that you've seen since John McCain won the primary,' his campaign manager, Rick Davis, said in a conference call with reporters, adding that when it came to the electoral votes needed for victory, 'We believe, with the combination of our base states and the states we've been able to put into play this week, we can achieve 270.'"

There's no factcheck that follows.

Via TPM. In Indiana, three dozen McCain volunteers walked out of a call center over--shall we say--creative differences. Their job was to call prospective voters and read from a script provided by the McCain campaign. But once they got a look at the script, they said no thanks and left, complaining the the prepared talking points included several BS statements about Obama--that he wasn't tough on crime and that he voted against protecting children.

To quote the TPM piece: The script asserted that Obama was "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and "for voting against 'protecting children from danger.'"

You can read the rest of the TPM piece here.

It appears the McCain Camp was the first to play up Ashley Todd's story--before the police concluded its investigation. A top official in the campaign went so far as to provide details of the attack, including a quote from Ashley Todd's now-made-up attacker. Huffington Post reports:

"John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the 'B' carved into the victim's cheek stood for 'Barack,' according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, 'You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson.'

TPM has a lot more on this.

OK. The headline was a little harsh. Via TPM:

"By now you've all heard about Ashley Todd, the 20-year-old McCain volunteer who claimed that she was assaulted in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night by an attacker who scratched a 'B' in her cheek after learning that she was for McCain.

The story was flacked madly last night by Drudge, even though few if any details had been established or independently confirmed."

Well. The woman made it all up. The AP is reporting that police found her story just didn't add up. Here's more of the details:

"A McCain campaign volunteer who reported that a tall black man robbed her and then cut a "B" onto her cheek after seeing a McCain bumper sticker on her car has been given a polygraph test because of 'inconsistencies' in her story, police said.

Among other things, police said photos and bank card information from an automated teller machine where the college student claimed she was robbed do not show her using the machine at the time, police said."

Yesterday, Todd became a mini Joe The Plumber. According to HuffPo: "The report of the attack Thursday prompted the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate, Sarah Palin, to call Todd expressing their concern. Barack Obama's campaign also issued a statement wishing Todd well and hoping the attacker would be swiftly brought to justice."

I guess Todd won't be making any appearances on Fox News. And I guess McCain will not be citing her in any campaign rallies or using her as some sort of campaign theme.

McKenna has posted some details about the woman's blog earlier today.

Update 3:16 p.m. A Fox News Honcho says if this assault turns out to be a hoax, McCain's campaign is over. Really? I wouldn't blame Todd for McCain's problems.

*photo courtesy of Huffington Post.

The New York Times reports that several baseball players from the Tampa Bay Rays appeared yesterday at a rally in support of Obama. The players should be resting, reading up on their World Series opponents. Instead, they're hugging it out with the candidate:

"On Monday, he was endorsed at a rally in Tampa by six players for the Rays — outfielders Jonny Gomes and Carl Crawford, and Fernando Perez, the pitchers David Price and Edwin Jackson, and Cliff Floyd, the designated hitter.

Mr. Obama shook their hands, hugged them, smiled and offered: "'I’ve said from the beginning that I am a unity candidate, bringing people together. So when you see a White Sox Fan showing love to the Rays, and the Rays showing some love back – you know we are on to something right here.'”

McCain must be fuming.

The Post endorses Obama. Its editorial board writes in part:

"There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race. Yes, we have reservations and concerns, almost inevitably, given Mr. Obama's relatively brief experience in national politics. But we also have enormous hopes."

Read More "The Post Endorses Obama" »

For a brief moment on Friday, John McCain's campaign had an ad up on YouTube making a big noise about the non-issue of Barack Obama and ACORN. Fox News apparently had a problem with it, so it's down now, but the McCain-Palin camp is apparently still proud enough of the ad to have a transcript available.

ACORN is a favorite subject for rageoholic Twitterers and few others, and I suspect it won't sway many undecideds. But John G. Geer figures it's all a good thing anyway: In a Post op-ed over the weekend he argued that negative ads, if nothing else, get down to specifics. Geer's written a book-length study of the subject, but those with short attention spans can go straight to his "Attack Ad Hall of Fame." It's probably only a matter of days before McCain posts an ad featuring 25 seconds of Barack Obama's face and five seconds of a mushroom cloud; at least you don't need Fox News' permission for that.

Maybe he'll want to revive his column for The Nation again! Is this Hitchens endorsement a shocker? Not really when you consider the man's distaste for lies, propaganda, stupidity, and so on. He writes best when putting McCain in his place (saying what so many are at least thinking):

"But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called townhall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him."

I suppose it could be said, as Michael Gerson has alleged, that the Obama campaign's choice of the word erratic to describe McCain is also an insinuation. But really, it's only a euphemism. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear had to feel sorry for the old lion on his last outing and wish that he could be taken somewhere soothing and restful before the night was out. The train-wreck sentences, the whistlings in the pipes, the alarming and bewildered handhold phrases—"My friends"—to get him through the next 10 seconds. I haven't felt such pity for anyone since the late Adm. James Stockdale humiliated himself as Ross Perot's running mate. And I am sorry to have to say it, but Stockdale had also distinguished himself in America's most disastrous and shameful war, and it didn't qualify him then and it doesn't qualify McCain now.

Ouch.