Presidential Elections 2008

When you leave the polls today, don't throw out that "I Voted" sticker -- it could be your ticket to a free meal or half-price haircut. To encourage people to vote, several businesses -- including restaurants, coffee shops, salons and bars -- are doling out freebies and discounts on election day, despite some concerns about whether such promotions are legal. "We can't guarantee that your candidate of preference will win on Nov.

California, the ATM for politicians nationwide, has spit out cash for Barack Obama at an extraordinary clip. One of every five dollars he has raised in itemized contributions to his campaign has come from the Golden State. At last count, in mid-October, the Democratic presidential nominee had withdrawn $84 million from California, or 20% of his contributions of more than $200 -- the threshold at which campaigns must disclose detailed information about donors.

In a presidential race that has never lacked for drama, another riveting scene unfolded on the eve of the election as Barack Obama teared up before a crowd of 25,000 on a rain-drenched football field. Madelyn Dunham, the 86-year-old grandmother who helped raise Obama and was ill with cancer, died early Monday in Honolulu, just hours shy of an election he had prayed she would survive to witness.

"Politics," the media philosopher Marshall McLuhan once said, "will eventually be replaced by imagery." Such a sentiment may have sounded radical in its time. But today McLuhan's observation seems more like a matter-of-fact reckoning of the campaign of '08, which has taken political image-making to new heights -- and sometimes shocking depths -- on television and the Internet. It all adds up to an election cycle in which politics and imagery have completely fused.

In a campaign appearance in Marietta, Ohio, Sarah Palin criticized comments made early this year by Barack Obama -- which surfaced Sunday in an audiotape posted on YouTube -- in which the Democratic presidential candidate discusses how his proposed emissions policy would affect the coal industry. "He said that, sure, if the industry wants to build new coal-fired plants, then they can go ahead and try . . .

Gov. Sarah Palin had some advice for Tina Fey at a rally in Columbus, Ohio, Sunday night: Get ready for four more years in the role. The writer and actress has done an impression of the Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate in "Saturday Night Live" skits over the last two months to great acclaim. "Did anyone catch John McCain last night on 'SNL'? . . . He was just a pro in those skits there with Tina Fey," she said as the crowd roared. "And a little advice for Tina.

John McCain has targeted this wealthy area just north of Columbus as one of 15 counties in Ohio where he needs to drive up his vote tally if he is to beat Barack Obama on Tuesday in this must-win state. But on Friday night, only nine volunteers manned the 24 phones in the McCain campaign office. The phone bank began operating on a daily basis just two weeks ago. And since then, only five people have shown up on most weekdays to canvass local neighborhoods.

Will Hairston, a white Virginian, admits it freely: When he goes into the voting booth Tuesday, he will take Barack Obama's race into consideration. It will be, he said, one more good reason to pull the lever for the Illinois senator. "For me, the Obama thing is a giant step forward for America," he said. The 47-year-old's ancestors once lorded over black slaves as owners of one of the Old South's largest plantation empires.

The brisk pace of campaigning in as many as four states a day takes a toll on the hardiest candidates, and John McCain was showing a little of that wear at his first event Saturday in Virginia, where he did his best to suppress a worsening cough. But by the time he reached his third stop at an airplane hangar in southeastern Pennsylvania, he'd fought through it and was relishing the role of the underdog.

From a discount store in Virginia to the trendy shopping malls of Nevada and Florida, from a farmer's market in North Carolina to a public library in Colorado, Americans consulted head and heart Saturday to determine what they alone controlled as the endless presidential campaign comes to an end: the choice. The stakes were obvious, and not just for Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. There was little talk of the sideshows that have occasionally diverted the campaign.