Election news from October 12, 2008 - ground game in Ohio, no parking for Obama supporters, 106-year-old nun, Bill Clinton, etc.

Very nicely located Obama campaign office downtown. The image comes from here.

Quite a few interesting stories happening today that might not be noticed without a great deal of browsing:

• On the road in Ohio: fivethirtyeight.com gives an account on what the ground game is like in Ohio between the two camps:

The first thing that stands out about the Troy, Ohio Obama field office is its placement. It's right in the heart of town. It catches everyone's attention -- you can't miss it.

The next thing that caught our attention was that, since the office had first opened, 800 different people from Miami County had come through the office's doors to volunteer. There were only 51,760 voters in the entire county in 2004, and a mere 17,606 were Kerry voters.

4.5% of the entire Miami County Kerry vote has already walked in the doors to volunteer.

compare that to the McCain office on Saturday:

We tried to go to the McCain office just down the street in Troy at noon on Saturday. At the exact moment we arrived, we found two nice elderly women peering inside the locked, closed office. They'd come to volunteer. Unfortunately, McCain's Troy office isn't open on weekends, according to a sign in the window.

• Gibsonville, North Carolina: an owner of a parking lot has decided that he doesn't want any Obama supporters parking in his parking lot.
• Rome: an 106-year-old American nun that has been living in a convent in Rome for 50 years has decided to vote for Obama, the first time she's voted since 1952 (for Eisenhower).
• Bill Clinton is doing a ton of rallies today (content at this link changes all the time so it probably won't have the Bill Clinton info when you click on it):

Democratic vice-presidential would-be Joe Biden will hold a "Change We Need Rally" in Scranton, Pa. Sunday, where he'll be joined by Bill and Hillary Clinton in the small city in the state's northeast where the Delaware senator spent his very early years, and where Hillary Clinton thumped Barack Obama in the polls. (From there, Bill Clinton is off to Virginia for a 6:15 p.m. rally in Roanke and another at 9:30 p.m. in Richmond.)

• There doesn't seem to be much communication going on between McCain's campaign and the local offices, as this office in Prince William County, Virginia is still going off on irrelevant internet rumours and whatnot that have brought McCain so much grief in recent days:

With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii.