For most people, voting means standing in line with other grudging citizens on a specially designated day every couple of years. But in many places around the country, a single election "day" doesn't really exist. Thirty-four states allow some form of early voting (alas, not New York), and around 30 percent of the electorate took advantage of it in 2008. Which means that even before Election Day, early voting provides a sample of the voting patterns that could determine the outcome of the election. According to the AP, Democrats — perhaps surprisingly, considering the enthusiasm gap everyone's been talking about for months — have an edge so far. More Democrats than Republicans have to date voted in "Iowa, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisiana and Nevada's heavily Democratic Clark County, which supplied two-thirds of the state's voters in 2008," while more Republicans have voted in Florida and Colorado. Take it all with a grain of salt, though, because this all represents only 3 million votes cast nationwide.

Meanwhile, in a look at races around the country, Lisa Murkowski supporters think they can handle a write-in vote, Sharron Angle wonders how Harry Reid got so rich, and a Republican congressional candidate in South Dakota doesn't want people to know that she's a terrible, terrible driver.

Gossip Girl starlet Blake Lively "is a teen icon of high fashion and we haven't really seen something like it," says show costume designer Eric Daman. "She's like the Jackie O of her time." Now, we here at Daily Intel are not fashion experts, but we are experts on Blake Lively. As much as we love and respect Eric Daman, might we present our counter-evidence to his "Jackie O" theory?

Fifty Nine Reasons Why Blake Lively Is Not "the Jackie O of Her Time."

There. It felt good to get that off our chest.

Gossip Girl Costume Designer Eric Daman Says He Loves Blake Lively Cause She Has Curves — She’s All ‘T*ts & A**’! [HollywoodLife via The Cut]
Related: Gossip Girl Stylist Eric Daman’s Eleven Favorite Looks From the Series [Vulture]

At this point in human history, anyone planning to commit a lewd act in the public sphere should know there's a strong chance they're going to get caught, and when they do, whatever excuse they come up with, no matter how clever, is not going to fly, because after all the thing about committing lewd acts in the public sphere is that people see you do it. Yet time and time again, everyone from subway masturbators to United States senators attempt to come up with some rationalization of their behavior, as though this is going to be the one time police, who are of course known for their infinite tolerance, are going to say, "Oh, okay then, carry on." In this grand tradition, earlier this week when police confronted a Connecticut man with the unfortunate name of Marian Wegiel for reportedly "inappropriately touching a horse ... in a sexual manner," Wegiel attempted to utilize the old "my hand went up the horse's bum accidentally" line of reasoning.

Witness Steve Jobs's business card, from back when he still went by Steven. The card features a less illustrious title than the often bombastic Apple co-founder was entitled to give himself at the time. Mozilla Labs head Pascal Finette, who took the photo, does note the sophisticated typography and embossed Apple logo, however. (Patrick Bateman would be so jealous.) Finette told Intel that his colleague, Richard Milewski, found the card in a stash of old stuff the other day. Jobs gave it to him in 1979, along with an early Apple II (with a serial number in the 5000s), when he was trying to get Milewski to develop software for the machine that would help popularize the idea of a personal computer. At the time, Jobs was still six years away from being fired from Apple by the man he hired to become the company's new CEO. Wonder what Steve's calling card looked like when he came back to the fold in 1996 after Apple paid him $429 million for the company he built during his exile. That card was probably more of a Zuckerberg original.

Steve Jobs Apple VP Business Card, Circa 1979 [ObamaPacMan]

True, the rent is too damn high, there are rats everywhere, and occasionally the smell of actual human feces will fill your nostrils for like twenty seconds at a time, but 84 percent of New Yorkers are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the city, according to a "livability survey" conducted by the Municipal Art Society of New York. Mostly because we're so jaded, we can't imagine life would be that much better anywhere else. “It’s the only place we would want to be, so in that way, we are satisfied," Municipal Art Society president Vin Cipolla told the Times. "Compared with other parts of the nation, unemployment is lower here. In terms of the foreclosure rate nationally, we’re No. 72 out of 366 markets. So relatively speaking, we’re faring a little better.”

First MAS Survey on Livability Finds Differing Views of City Life [Official site]
Surprise: Most New Yorkers Say They Like the City [City Room/NYT]

Every year, people all over America nurture pumpkins until they are swollen to gigantic proportions and beyond edible. Why? Because they can? Because we are privileged enough to grow food for sport instead of sustenance? Because dudes get bored and need something to occupy themselves? We don't know, we're not a shrink. The point is that this year, John Zambito of Kensington grew a pumpkin that weighs a shocking 502 pounds, and do you know what? He feels damn good about it.

The legendary conservative litigator, who is currently pursuing the federal case to overturn California's Proposition 8, suggested last night that Obama's solicitor general is not in fact obligated to defend "don't ask, don't tell" in court to the hilt. For example, the administration could signal that, since the Supreme Court privacy ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, the policy is now unconstitutional. “It would be appropriate for them to say ‘the law has been deemed unconstitutional, we are not going to seek further review of that,'" said Olson, voicing an opinion echoed by former Justice Department counsel Walter Dellinger in today's New York Times, and several experts in a Newsweek analysis posted yesterday. Of course, signing a bill from Congress overturning a law passed by Congress would obviously be preferable. But with the military changing its policy on gays serving openly almost day-to-day now, a rapid exit strategy might not be the worst PR call.

Ted Olson: ‘It Would Be Appropriate’ For Administration Not To Appeal DADT Injunction [Think Progress]

In a debate between Chris Coons and Christine O'Donnell earlier this week, both Delaware Senate candidates were shown to be lacking in their familiarity with the First Amendment. O'Donnell couldn't remember what the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments were, and doubted, even after the relevant passage was quoted to her, that the First Amendment prevented Congress from establishing a religion — the basis for the separation of church and state. As for Coons, later in the debate he declined to recite the five freedoms the First Amendment guarantees. Who fared worse? Probably O'Donnell, since she matched Coons on the "not remembering stuff" part, but also, as Slate's William Saletan writes, "was repeatedly presented with a correct answer and repeatedly rejected it."

Ireland has brought the world many things: James Joyce, whiskey, the image of a freckled redhead standing on a grassy cliff side with a faraway look in her eyes, and now a tax law that tech companies and other multinationals are exploiting to legally avoid paying roughly $60 billion in taxes to the U.S., just as it's trying to close a projected $1.4 trillion budget gap. Over the past three years, reports Bloomberg, Google has managed to sidestep paying $3.1 billion, getting its tax rate to a shocking 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five American tech companies. Corporate income-tax rate in the U.S. is 35 percent. Like Facebook and Microsoft, Google uses the tax law that lets companies move profits into and out of subsidiaries in Ireland, leveraging strategies known to lawyers as the "Double Irish" (because it relies on two Irish companies) and the "Dutch Sandwich" (because profits make a stopover in the Netherlands between Ireland and Bermuda or the Cayman Islands). Hey, it's tax law — they have to sex it up somehow.

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes [Bloomberg]

Not because she doesn't bathe, but because she'll turn her tub on and then forget about it, according a lawsuit lobbed against her by the people who live beneath her. Pardus Capital president Karim Samii and his wife, Tina, allege that Guinness has flooded their $12 million apartment from her $15 million apartment by taking aggressive baths on more than one occasion. Guinness moved into the Fifth Avenue building situated across from the Met in 2008 and has flooded the Samiis' apartment four times since — twice a year! — according to the suit.