Don't forget, you need to go vote today. Here are your options:

Republican Ballot:

Governor: Nathan Deal vs. Karen Handel
Attorney General: Sam Olens vs Preston Smith
Insurance Commissioner: Ralph Hudgens vs Maria Sheffield
Public Service Commission: John Douglas vs Tim Echols
State Senate District 47: Shane Coley vs Frank Ginn (Only if you live in the 47th District, obvs.)

Democratic Ballot:

Secretary of State: Gail Buckner vs. Georganna Sinkfield

To find your polling place, etc, check out sos.georgia.gov/mvp

Look out, world. Erick Erickson and I agree on not one, but two things in the same day. I don't know what he's smoking, but I guess we have the same connection.

First item of agreement: Erickson's keeping his wildlife tag, and so am I. Even though your renewal fees are going up, it's still worth it.

Second item of agreement: Graduation tests. Specifically, letting students substitute ACT and SAT scores instead of taking the statewide graduation test. Seems pretty logical to me; if a kid has got to take the test anyway because they want to go to college, why throw one more, essentially meaningless test on them?

In a word, yes.

Deal, who is grasping at just about any straw he can find to give him a leg up on Tuesday, found a new straw to grasp - Karen Handel's lack of a college degree. Since Democrats often get tagged (sometimes rightfully) as being intellectual elitists, it's nice to see the Birkenstock land on the other party's foot for once.

And, playing the intellectual snob card is exactly what Deal is doing - make no mistake. Whether it's going to work or not is another story. Frankly, I doubt this is going to fly with GOP runoff voters. As Galloway points out, there are still a lot more Georgians without a four-year degree than with one.

Can bloggers go on strike? Well, apparently, yes. It seems that a handful of writers for scienceblogs.com are going "pencils down" as it were, thanks to some suspect decisions by their bosses. Scienceblogs.com, by the way is a very heavily-trafficked site, so this might have some legs.

The central issue appears to be a corporate decision to allow PepsiCo to sponsor a blog about nutrition and food science.

What's more interesting to me is that this could be a very big deal. Scienceblogs.com has high traffic, as I noted above, and the bloggers involved are using their platforms to make their grievances well-known. There's also some talk among insiders in the labor movement about getting behind the scorned science bloggers.

And if bloggers can go on strike ... well, you're on notice, McGinty!

[Updated to add a response from Teilhet's campaign at the bottom of the post - msm]

...you get suspicious emails that smell a lot like astroturf. Like, for instance, this little gem that just popped up in my inbox. From "Lisa Wilson," telling me some important facts about Rob Teilhet. JMac has the text of the email, typos and all, right here.

Now, this raises a lot of questions. Let's explore the seamy underbelly of 24-hour-out-politics, shall we?

An interesting list:

The first thing that stood out to me was the list it was sent to - a who's who of journalists and bloggers. I won't list everyone on the recipient list here, but suffice it to say that every major daily newspaper, as well as most of the weekly ones, and just about every television station in the state was on the list. (Note to presumptive astroturfers: If you're going to spam, remember that bcc is your friend. Otherwise, we all know who your list is.)

Over the next 48 hours or so, the people who want you to vote for them tomorrow are flying, driving, and for all I know, pogo-sticking across the state, stumping for votes. Among the folks trooping around grabbing last-minute support are Roy Barnes, Carol Porter, and Ken Hodges. I know there are a few others roaming around as well.

And none of them are coming to Athens.

At first, I was a little annoyed. After all, Athens is possibly the most progressive city in the state - a little blue island in an immense red ocean. Excepting Atlanta, we're the best thing going for Democrats north of Augusta. And I was going sit down and excoriate the statewide candidates for blowing off Athens on the cusp of the Democratic primary.

Then I did the math, and turns out that Athens voters have got some splainin' to do.

Reading through Galloway's coverage of yesterday's final (whew!) Republican debate for governor, this little item stood out to me. According to John Oxendine, "You take money from the taxpayers of Georgia, take it out of their pockets, it is a tax.”

That's a bit of a sweeping statement, and it's both easy to mock and fundamentally disturbing as well. Fortunately, we can do both. What Oxendine is actually saying here is that any time the gummint charges you for something, it's a tax. That may be a politically popular thing to say, but it's far from true.

Overview:

This is it, baby. The whole enchilada. The big cheese. The man who will carry the statewide Democratic standard to victory (we hope) in November. And in this case, most political observers will tell you that the question, ultimately, is not who's going to win, but whether this thing goes into extra innings.

At the top of the heap, according to the polls, is former Gov. Roy Barnes. Barnes kept Democratic insiders guessing for months while he did a passable version of Hamlet in deciding whether to grace Georgia with his leadership one more time. With his fundraising prowess, statewide connections, a mostly favorable legacy (especially after eight years of Sonny Perdue), and the highest name recognition in the race, Barnes seems poised for victory, but with six other candidates in the race, will he pull it out on July 20, or does this thing go to a runoff?

The ABH writes about, and Johnathan notes, the situation with Highway 316. Long story short, it's dangerous, we've had beaucoup deaths over the past years, and something needs to be fixed prontissimo. ("Prontissimo" in transportation funding-speak signifying "sometime in the next hundred years or so" but you get my meaning.)

But, as happens from time to time, Johnathan and I read the same thing and came away with two different takes on it. My colleague says, "The answer, obviously, is to turn Highway 316 into a toll road." I'm not so sure about that, and here's why.

Overview:

Yikes. Well this one got real ugly, real fast. In one corner, you've got Ken Hodges, former District Attorney for Dougherty County. In the other, Rob Teilhet, the charismatic former State Rep. from Smyrna. Both spent the first six months or so warily circling each other, and then, all of a sudden, the gloves came off and the brass knuckles came out.

According to each candidate, the other guy is Satan in a necktie, and while the back-and-forth was interesting for awhile, now it's just getting tiresome. Hodges wants you to know that he's a prosecutor, not a politician (despite having been an elected official longer than Teilhet), while Teilhet plays up his work for victims' rights. But this race has really become more about the dirty laundry than the resumes of the candidates. Teilhet is talking about how Hodges allegedly botched a major murder case; Hodges fires back with charges that Teilhet has lied about everything from his record to his shoe size. And the beatdowns go on.

Next to the race for Governor, this is the most well-funded and media intensive race going on on the Democratic side.