After a strong start Monday, early voting in Travis County picked up even more on Tuesday – 5,753 voters, about 700 more than Monday. Throw in the mail-in ballots received, and that makes 13,488 total, or 2.43% of the county's registered voters. The current pace points to a possible 40%-45% turnout by the end of election night. So far, the most popular polling spot is the Randalls at 10900 Research, with 1,058 voters, followed by the University of Texas with 927. Click here for a full list of early voting sites. Keep voting, Travis!

Or at least for this election: "Vote Twice for Bob Smither"

No, the Friendswood Libertarian doesn't want you to break the law. It's just that Congressional District 22 in the south Houston area has a weird circumstance – the seat is on the ballot twice. Because disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay resigned the seat earlier this year, a special election is on the ballot to fill out the remainder of his unexpired term – the winner would serve from the date of election until the term ends in January. Dist. 22 is also on the general election ballot – the winner of that election will serve the normal two-year term of 2007-09. Smither is the only candidate on the ballot in both elections. (Democrat Nick Lampson, who is favored to win the general election because there is no Republican on the ballot, is not entered in the special election.)

When Nebraska wide receiver Terrence Nunn hauled in that third-and-three pass from quarterback Zac Taylor with a mere two minutes remaining in Saturday’s game at Lincoln, he held the fruition of a significant upset in his hands. The Cornhuskers were then leading 20-19 and all they had to do from that first down on was run out the clock on the half-frozen Texas Longhorns. Fortunately Aaron Ross had other plans. As Ross and his magnificent helmet jarred the ball from Nunn’s grasp, momentum dramatically switched once Marcus Griffin fell upon it. Through sheer luck and a touch of resiliency, the defending national champion Longhorns salvaged any hopes of Texas repeating its glorious 2005 title run.

Houston 27, Jacksonville 7. Those are really the only numbers that count at the end of the day, but if you were to glance at the box score you would see that the final score accurately reflects Houston’s utter statistical dominance of the visiting Jacksonville Jaquars with the Texans playing their best all-around game of Gary Kubiak's coaching tenure.

The most promising breakthrough for the Texans on Sunday was the emergence of an actual running game. Rookie Wali Lundy ran for 93 yards and one TD, averaging 4.9 per carry – far surpassing any previous effort by the Texans as of date – and most likely securing him a start next week against the Titans.

Need any further proof that the Iraq War is a failure? Just look at last Thursday's televised debate between the Texas candidates for U.S. Senate, and note that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has joined the GOP rats who have jumped from the ship. Okay, maybe that's overstating it a bit, but the fact that Hutchison distanced herself at all from President Bush’s Iraq policy after almost six years as a staunch ally is telling.

Gov. Rick Perry must put more stock in public opinion polls than he'd like us to believe. Stumping in East Texas on Tuesday, Perry blasted the "liberal vision" of Democratic opponent Chris Bell, who moved within 10 points of the gov in a new SurveyUSA poll released early this week. Perry, at 36%, even gained a point over last month's poll, while Bell picked up three points at 26%. An assortment of earlier polls had shown greater distance between Perry and his three challengers. The new numbers show independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn at 19% (four points higher than last month), while fellow indie Kinky Friedman bottomed out at 16%, a seven-point drop. With Bell moving up in the charts, Perry's "Proud of Texas" bus tour is going the extra mile on anti-Bell rhetoric. Perry's bus stops Tuesday took in Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Henderson, Marshall, Longview and Tyler.

Sure, we could tell you to attend tonight's fundraiser for prop-pushers Yes on 2 and 3 for the beer and food, plus the chance to get your elbows greasy with the likes of Perry Lorenz and Bill Bunch. But for us old hands, the real draw is the music. The Bouldin Creek Bobkats feature none other than the Save Our Springs Alliance's own Colin Clark. With the recent Stones sojourn into Zilker Park, it's tempting to ascribe a Jagger/Richards dynamic to Bunch and Clark, but the age differential torpedoes that. No, if any meaningless pop-culture signifier can be draped around the duo, it's probably that new Kevin Costner/Ashton Kutcher vehicle, in all its cross-generational hotness. And the reviews are in!
Seriously, the soirée starts at 5:30, at the Zilker Clubhouse. A $20 donation gets you the rock.

If you're as fascinated by polling and maps as I am, these are my two favorite sites for trying to predict how the battle for Congress is shaping up: For the Senate, I like Electoral-Vote.com, which posts the results of the most recent poll in each race and plugs in the new numbers daily into an easy-to-read U.S. map, and differentiates between states that are "strong," "weak," or "barely" for the leading candidate. On the House side, another great way to waste time at work is to study Majority Watch, a project of the Constituent Dynamics polling firm. They are polling 54 congressional districts that appear to be in play, and like Electoral-Vote.com, they keep a running tally of which party appears to be headed toward that 218-seat majority. Majority Watch has very nice pop-up graphics that give instant info on the seats they are tracking. Have fun surfing; try not to let your boss catch you.

Candidates for Congressional District 21 will answer questions from a panel of news reporters (including yours truly) on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 7-8:30pm, at the LCRA Board Room in the Hancock Building, 3700 Lake Austin Blvd. Because it is a special election open to anyone, necessitated by a Supreme court decision, Dist. 21 is a crowded field of seven candidates, five of whom will be at the forum: independents Tommy Calvert, James Lyle Peterson, and Mark J. Rossano, Democrat John Courage, and Libertarian James Arthur Strom. You'll notice a very important name missing from that list: the Dist. 21 incumbent, Republican Lamar Smith.