It's achingly close in the crucial Senate race in Virginia. At time of writing, with 40% of precincts reporting, gaffe-prone Republican George Allen is leading Jim Webb by a mere 79 votes.
Meanwhile, the first results (as called by the various major US news organisations) begin to trickle in. The major notable result -- not massively surprising, but encouraging for Democrats nonetheless -- is a Democratic gain in the Senate in Ohio, with the election of Sherrod Brown. The results so far:
Senate: Dem 5 Rep 2 Ind 1
(Dems need net gain of 6 to win control. Net gain so far: 2)
House: Dem 90 Rep 94 Ind 0
(Dems need net gain of 15 to win control. Net gain so far: 2)
And in other news, a squirrel chewed through an electrical cable in Oklahoma, cutting off power to electronic voting machines. That's tonight's squirrel-related scandal, but voting activists aren't smiling at the rash of mechanical glitches. Julian Borger and Ed Pilkington have more.
UPDATE I: "Unlike England, where voting is the simple matter of being sufficiently sober to identify which of three boxes to put an 'X', with a pencil," Hugh Bowles emails from California, "voting here requires consumate attention, the ability to read and understand the driest material, and it helps if you are handy -- even the manual ink dot machines require some skill to operate; I am hoping to get through this vote without having to ask for help." Be careful: you might get choked.
UPDATE II: Farewell Katherine Harris.
UPDATE III: Democrats hold on to the contested Senate seat in New Jersey, which had looked liked the Republicans' best chance to win a seat from their rivals.
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