have identification requirements in ohio. we dothink overall the legislature has felt it has not been necessary in ohio. we do have pre-registration in ohio. you have to be a resident for 30 days in ohio in which to register to vote. we think that is fair. we have other requirements in our law that we think need to be addressed. host: let go to pennsylvania on the democratic line. david, go ahead. caller: good morning. i am a union member, a union carpenter over here in pennsylvania. i just wanted to call and ask you what is your opinion on organized labor. all i see is the republicans trying to break all the teachers unions. pennsylvania, ohio, and all over the country. this looks like a referendum on the reagan election when he busted up the air traffic controllers. union members should take note of this. this could be the most important election of our lifetime. guest: i come from a long family of union members. i have a son-in-law who is a member of a local electrical union in cleveland. i do not think most republicans are anti

we do have a identification requirements in ohio. t have voter identification requirements but i think overall the legislature has felt it has not been necessary in ohio. we do have pre-registration in ohio. you have to be a resident for 30 days in ohio in which to register to vote them back we think that is fair. we have other requirements in our law that we think need to be addressed. host: let go to pennsylvania on the democratic line. david, go ahead. caller: good morning. i am a union member, a union carpenter over here in pennsylvania. i just wanted to call and ask you what is your opinion on organized labor. all i see is the republicans trying to break all the teachers unions. pennsylvania, ohio, and all over the country. this looks like a referendum on the reagan election when he busted up the air traffic controllers. union members should take note of this. this could be the most important election of our lifetime. guest: i come from a long family of union members. i have a son-in-law who is a member of a local electrical unio

ohio is facing a double whammy in terms of voting rights. ohio is always important. it feels more important than in recent elections. we have john husted doing everything he can to make it harder to vote in ohio. and we have the effects of weather in the democratic stronghold. which of the things do you think most important? >> one the the provisional ballot issue. that's with the new regulations put in place now where if you show up, you don't know what presing. you go to the wrong precinct and this tends to happen disproportionately in democratic areas. nobody can be sure how many are democratic ballots and republican ballot, but there are more democratic votes than republican. so he has mandated that you have to fill out the form if you're a voter, a provisional voter,

[applause] >> do you like what's going on in ohio? we're growing jobs and helping families. well let me tell you what we're doing in mow hoe is what mitt romney is going to do in washington and get this country back on track again. [applause] it's really faith ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls, and by the way i've never seen so many young people at campaign rallies. and i'll tell you what i think it's all about. we as americans recognize we have two paths to choose. we've seen what the last four years gives us and it gives us more government that's inefficient and doesn't work very well. it gives us the possibility of even higher taxes. and there's a lot of reasons i hate higher taxes, the biggest reason is i know where that money goes in that city and it's time to clean it up down there. the last thing we need is higher taxes and regulators. instead of embracing the people that give people opportunity for jobs, they pound on us, they pound on small business people and stunt our growth. but we have another choice here tonight. and that's why there is so many people here

in ohio. you know, polls don't decide elections, voters do." house speaker john boehner says he's confident. and while congressman paul ryan tailgated with cheeseheads in his home state - wisconsin... the democrats bring out secret weapon bill clinton in new hampshire. then - there's the sandy effect on voting and opinion.. new jersey's governor having to reassure republicans romney still gets his vote. "i don't know why telling the president he's doing a good job when he's doing a good job equals an endorsement." in areas still without power because of the superstorm, new jersey residents can cast a paper ballot in guarded trucks, or vote by fax or email. new york city is relocating and combining some polling places... and...sandy's not the only cause of voting trouble. in florida - no stranger to election controversy - state democrats are suing to extend early voting in some counties. after unprecedented turnout and long, long lines. tempers flared... with some waiting as long as 7 hours. those who couldn't wait...didn't vote. >> in this city of chicago more than 243,000 people voted early.

in a recount. ohio with the provisional ballots, and romney doing well in wisconsin, doing well in colorado. might be enough if romney can win both florida and ohio, i think he can win the race, if he loses either one, i don't think there's a chance. >> i think that's right. those three were always the key states. >> the auto bailout, frankly, may have been the best money obama ever spent. i don't like the policy, brendan does, but it may be the difference in this election. >> it's good policy. >> i don't think i've ever heard you guys agree on two things back-to-back. >> george allen, you know there's some guys some candidates who had been governors and lawyers and come back. tommy thompson, wisconsin, bob allen, in each case, the voters rejected them. >> brian, back over to you. >> a lot of people aren't watching these election results alone. many are hanging out at the local bars or watering holes in their own neighborhood. public bar d.c. scott, what's the word there. >> reporter: a good crowd here at public here. nobody is watching the game. they're all watching election night coverage,

so i expect a victory in ohio tomorrow. >> when you say proper provisional ballots, what should people do will you have people at the polls in ohio and florida? congresswoman fudge, let me start with you. >> yes, we have not only observers but judges in every single polling place. we have a direct line. there is a direct line to an attorney's group. we are prepared for whether it's true the vote or whoever it may be. >> and you as well, congresswoman wilson, people can call, organizing a lot of our groups are nonpartisan but certainly they are not going to let people be robbed of their vote. >> yes. and we have the justice department here. >> uh-huh. >> the justice department is here also. >> macia fudge, thank you both for your time tonight. >> thank you. >>> your right to vote has been paid for with the blood and tears and generations of sacrifice. we'll look at the long road in 2012 and what it took to get here. that's next. online outfit piccolo headphones buy now broadway show megapixels place to sleep little roadster war and peace deep sea diving ninja app hipster glasses 5% cash ba

in ohio. and we're doing well. they targeted independents, knocked on their doors. these are people who hadn't participated in the primaries of either party, and they were winning with those independents. a senior strategist said to me, fmitt romney loses ohio, i'll give you $1,000 to your favorite charity for every point he wins among independents." his argument was there's no way he can lose the state if he wins among independents. mitt romney won independents by 10 points in ohio, lost the state. they just-- >> schieffer: barack obama also won white working clalsz voters in ohio, which he didn't do very well with in other places. >> what he did in ohio was did well enough with white work clalsz voters and the african american turnout in ohio was 11% in 2008. it was 15% in this election. why did that happen? the strategists i talked to sort of were like, well, of course, barack obama is going to do well with african americans. if you look at african america african americans -- two things you talk to strategists who know the african american community, there was an

let's set polls aside, and look at reality, i have been on the ground, i was in parts of ohio, secretary of state there, tried to do a let to suppress turn out, trying to cut off sunday voting, a huge thing for democrats in ohio it was unbelieveable exciting to be in cleveland yesterday, and it was like a street scene with a huge line, i think that is terrible thing but good news people were not moving. neil: you are not troubled by -- by the way, i know you are concerned about suppressed voting. >> we should be. neil: but i didn't hear your same concern about ballots that romney supporters that were writing that came out for obama, but i am sure you were, i want to focus on notion that state, as far as early voting, is down from number democrats, who voted early be230,000 fewer this go around than 2008. republicans -- i don't know what that translates to difference from your numbers, would that be troubling ? >> i think we're looking at different numbers, i know that all over the country we had those numbers, but in florida, and north carolina, and absolutely in ohio. we've had real surges in turn out in i think b

very well in the places he was expected to do well but he is doing well in south central ohio and he is, in fact, doing better than expected there. but it is not over yet. we will have to wait to see how it all plays out. let's check in with florida and, again, you can see how close this race is. 50% each. and about 35,000 votes out of more than search million cast. it divides these candidates. florida could be another long night. we have seen that before. >> we certainly -- it certainly might be. but we want to look at virginia. seeing the latest numbers from the associated press. virginia with 13 votes, romney, 52%, president barack obama with 48%. but, remember, a lot of government contractors, government workers living in the state of virginia. we will have to see how that plays out as well. >>> we have poll workers getting ready for the polls to close in 45 minutes. how are things looking there? >> not bad right now. but let me tell you as people have been coming in as the deadline approaches, clerks office staff have been telling me people have been bringing in sample ba

in ohio. adding another stop, tomorrow, on election day. the aides say they want do stone unturned in the search for last-minute voters. no republican has ever won the white house without first winning ohio. and ohio has voted for every president since 1960. the president has visited ohio 20 times this year alone. he makes it a point to hammer governor romney's opposition to the bailout of the auto industry a major employer in that state. governor romney claims the president mishandled the bailout. now the news live from columbus this afternoon. word of the early voting looked like a mad dash? >>reporter: it did for a while in franklin county. these votes are voting for visual balance in case this is question about the address or registration. this line before 2:00 snaked all the way out the door and folks in front, law enforcement and people with election offices were announcing they had two minutes or less to get in the line so there was literally a mad dash to get in line to cast their vote early. as it turns out it was a naturalize the russian immigrant who was l

but if you look underneath at the ground game and what we are doing in ohio, and pennsylvania and here in wisconsin, people should be very confident that tomorrow night during the 11:00 news hour out east and 10 , too, central, mitt romney is going to be giving a very good speech and it's going to be a good night for him tomorrow. >> you think it's going to be that early? >> well, i think it's going to be right on time. i feel good about where we are at. we have done everything, i think, right on the ground. mitt romney has been masterful in october. the president has not delivered a message to this country that's coherent or is something we can grab on to. we don't know what the obama plan is even tonight. what we are telling people all across the midwest, tell your friends who are voting for. tell them you are voting for mitt romney, tell them why you are voting for mitt romney, hit all of your e-mails. we going to win tomorrow and i have to tell you, we will be celebrating. >> peince, thank you very much. we will be watching to see if your predictions will be right. thank you. >> yo

and what's remarkable, you look at what husted wants to do in ohio, he wants gerrymandered house districts to determine where the vote goes. so obama would have carried the state and romney would have gotten 12 of 18 electoral votes. that doesn't make any sense. governor walker said he was concerned that this was unfair to poll workers that they had to register voters. now since these are, as far as i can tell, the only public employees for whom he's expressed sympathy, that can't be the reason they are doing this. and i just think that -- i hope this is a passing thing and that there are other forces in the republican party saying, no, we need a more fundamental rethink. they only need to shift about four votes in a hundred. you'd think they would have the confidence to win a fair election by converting just four people out of every 100 people. >> we have seen a new normal or maybe a new attempt at a center in republican politics on a bunch of different issues since this election. comprehensive immigration reform is something they are willing to talk about. some of the issues like talking

ohio is facing a double whammy in terms of voting rights. ohio is always important. it feels more important than in recent elections. we have john husted doing everything he can to make it harder to vote in ohio. and we have the effects of weather in the democratic stronghold. which of the things do you think most important? >> one the the provisional ballot issue. that's with the new regulations put in place now where if you show up, you don't know what presing. you go to the wrong precinct and this tends to happen disproportionately in democratic areas. nobody can be sure how many are democratic ballots and republican ballot, but there are more democratic votes than republican. so he has mandated that you have to fill out the form if you're a voter, a provisional voter, where the burden is now on you to prove your identity on the form. it's not on the poll worker. it's you to fill out the form correctly. and if you screw it up at all with the last four digits of your social security number, anything like that, driver's license number, the vote is thrown out. in 200840,000 provisional votes in the state were thrown out. with this new voting

in ohio. polls don't decide elections. voters do. and listen, i've been around ohio. i've done this trip around ohio for a lot of presidential races in the past. everyone i think ohioans vote with their wallets. that's why i think romney's going to win on tuesday. >> so, you're confident that he can pull out a win here? >> very confident he's going to win on tuesday about. >> reporter: boehner did admit that the president has gotten traction in ohio because of the auto bailout. he insists not everyone there was for it. no matter what happens on election day, congress and the president have to immediately turn to the issue of the fiscal cliff. the speaker was really pessimistic to cnn about any major effort during the lame duck session to do more than just a temporary fix. he even admitted that could be tough to get through. don? >> dana, thank you. there is, of course, another big pressing story. not just this election. new information on the cleanup of hurricane sandy, next. ñç@rÑo >>> last month the u.s. national soccer team advanced in the world cup qualifying. and

reelection of a president is much more important than this the dynamics of ohio and the economy in ohio has more to do with how the president is doing in ohio than any tactical thing either campaign has done and that dynamic is set. the other dynamic that's pretty much set and something that i kept telling people to look at in 2004 was the president's job approval number and the president's job approval number today is in two polls that came out today, 51% and 52%. no president has lost reelection when their job approval number has been over 50%. >> rose: but wasn't it below 50% two months ago. >> yeah, it was for a long time. >> pretty close. >> it's now slightly above where george w. bush's was when he was reelected. >> and that dynamic is more important than any tactic. >> rose: albert? >> charlie, there have been two other elements that have enabled obama to have a better close than romney. one was the storm. sandy. there's no question that happened. there's no question that the hug if you will, with governor christie played to what people wanted to see. i'm looking at the iowa poll that was done

my husband has been with this company for over 40 years and they do not seem to care that people need jobs in ohio. his hands are tied. everyone's hands are tied. they're being told by corporate headquarters. i do not understand why people think someone like mitt romney is going to come in and do this any different than the way things are being done at my i will give you a chance to talk to marie. unfortunately her story is a story we of heard in northeast ohio for a long time. and that is that we lost a lot of jobs to china. my cousin donney, one of his businesses he worked for -- there is a machine on a factory floor, and it was shipped to china. that is what people in ohio are dealing with. that is why the president i think will win ohio. they see that mitt romney has made a living, a good living off of outsourcing and offshore in the jobs for companies and -- in places like ohio. they are very concerned that he is not the person that we want in the levers of power in washington, d.c. to make that even easier. unfortunately, that story is not unique to our state. who is going to the president o

that's the deep seeded enthusiasm that will carry the day in ohio. >> in ohio are the voters or them, dohey bring up the automobile fiasco that romney has gotten himself into? ohio senator rob portplan was also asked about the jeep lies today and here is his response. >> the fact is we now make jeeps here in toledo, ohio, that we're proud to send to china, to asia. we export 25% of what we make here. if they're going to start facilities overseas, we're going to lose the exports here. that's all the ad said. >> chrysler said they are spanding production in ohio. what do the residents of ohio say to you? what are you hearing? >> well i think people are disgusted with this. the truth is the ceo of chrysler said we're not going to do it. i don't know what else you can say. but it's the kind of fear they're trying to put in people to undermine president obama. you're hearing it and don't forget in ohio one in eight jobs is related to the auto industry. there's a lot of good things going on in ohio. people are going back to work. they're putting on third shifts in the auto plants. so there rea

very well in the places he was expected to do well but is doing well in south central ohio and he is -- in fact doing better than they expected there. it's not over yet. we will have to wait and see how it plays out. let's check in with florida and again you can see how close this race is. 50% each and 35,000 votes out of more than 7 million cast divide the two candidates in florida so florida could be another long night. we have seen that before. >> we -- it might be when it comes to florida but also want to look at virginia. see the latest numbers we have from the associated press of virginia with the 13 votes, take a look. pretty close here. romney with 52%. the president with 48% but a lot of government contractors, works in the state of virginia so we will have to see how that plays out. >> poll workers getting ready for the polls to close in the next 45 minutes, janet is at voter's office in martinez. how is it looking there? >> reporter: not bad. as people have been coming in as the deadline approaches, clerks, office staff have been say something have been bringing

do allow early voting. in the states that do, we have seen quite a remarkable turnout. it is voting day. it is the scene in ohioone of the closest states as we have been saying. fur staying up, watching the election coverage. also arlington, virginia another key state. just a sense of people out and about. of course it's only 7:00 a.m. in the morning the polls generally open at 6:00 so people have been queuing already for some time in places. our correspondent zoey conway is there. what sort of turnout is there in madison, zoey? >> well, i amp standing in front of one of the polling stations in the center of madison. the city in wisconsin. and we're expecting the polling station here to open in about an hour's time. they are expecting record turnout. that's because this state has just gotten so much attention from the two campaigners. they have had star power and katy perry and bruce springsteen campaigning for president obama but also because mitt romney's running mate, paul ryan, is from wisconsin and was born here and grew up here and he has been doing a lot of campaigning here. but also the two campaigners

do as well tomorrow as they did on election day in 2008, they win. do they have a point? >> no. because they're not looking at accurate numbers. we do have a significant margin in particularly the ohio early vote. and you know, we're not running a 2008 campaign. we're running a 2012 campaign. we're running -- >> do you wish you were running a 2008 campaign because you did pretty well. >> well, yes. but that's four years ago. we're a day out from election day so here we are in 2012. you know, we've invested heavily in the early vote and we are beating mitt romney with pretty high margins. according to some public polls, just looking at the public data out there, he'll have to turn out a six to ten point advantage on election day. that's going to be really tough for him. that's a herculean effort. the bottom line is this is going to be a close race. we're not taking anything for granted. >> i want to bring in john king because he's much smarter than i am and has the magic wall. >> let's stick with honesty. you said you would rather be running 2008. if you talked to democrats, you look at the toss-up battleground states, they say the president is confident about nevada, because there's

who do people in ohio credit for that? ernor, or do they credit barak obama, the democratic president? >> well, in the polls that i have seen, most recent polls by a big margin, they give the governor credit. and i think that's absolutely correct. he came in, very tough situation. he's dealt with the taxes, taking down regulations, created a better business climate in the state. i think people understand that. what we feel in ohio is people are just not particularly happy with president obama. i think this race really got reset in ohio after the first debate. the obama campaign had been painting this picture of governor romney as some individual and people looked at the stage and they said, look what governor romney was saying and they said, he could be president. he could be a leader. >> steve: sure. >> and i think it's made a big, big difference. >> steve: and governor, i know that you're happy that the unemployment rate is lower in the great state of ohio, and that is the number one reason people are going to be casting

romney needs to run the table and do well in ohio and pennsylvania. those are must-wins for him. >> charles, when you look at both campaigns from start to finish, what do you think has run the better campaign? >> i think that this campaign has been what most campaigns are, a series of ups and downs for both sides, and so there have been some performance issues and the first debate was a performance issue for barack obama. what mitt romney has not been able to do has been to get enough momentum to ever get himself over a hump and get shooting himself in the foot either by things coming out he didn't time or saying things in realtime that did him real damage. so mitt romney was never able to take advantage of a bit of momentum and ride that to a leading position over barack obama. and i think that -- at the end of the day, that will be a real issue that republicans will look bat and say we did not put forth the best candidate to run against barack obama in this election. >> carol, do you agree with that? >> i do not agree with that. mitt romney is the be