The dark gray of a typical Ithacan overcast sky contrasted sharply Saturday afternoon with the rainbow-hued umbrellas held by community members and students who were assembled on the Commons to protest Proposition 8, as well as Propositions 2 and 102, which ban marriage between same sex couples.

The protest was organized by Lambda, Cornell Law’s LGBT and ally group, but was meant to be part of Join the Impact, a movement created in the days following Election Day to protest Proposition 8. Saturday, people from across the country held coordinated protests at 1:30 p.m. According to the Join the Impact website, the combined protests included over 1 million people in 300 cities in the United States, as well as in 10 other countries.

On Nov. 4, voting was a particularly arduous task in Colorado. Apart from choosing the next president of the United States, as well as Senators and House Representatives, Coloradans were also asked to vote on a grand total of 14 ballot measures.

Across the nation, 153 ballot initiatives were presented to voters in this year’s election. Apart from Colorado, the ballots of a few other states were also crowded with up to 12 questions. While it is possible that voters may get worn out by the seemingly never-ending list of questions, Prof. Josh Chafetz, law, believes voters can still make sensible choices.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the Cornell community watched Keith Olbermann ’79 lead MSNBC’s television coverage, read the blogs of Ann Coulter ’84 and watched Bill Maher ’78 on HBO and live in Barton Hall. And when it came time for Election Day, C.U. saw its alumni rise to the top, winning coveted seats in public offices.

Last week’s election ballots featured a slew of Cornell alumni, and many of them won the races they ran in. Cornell graduates won five seats in the House of Representatives and one seat in the New York State Senate.

A recent collaboration between the Cornell Survey Research Institute, UWIRE, CBS and the Chronicle of Higher Education produced a study comparing Cornell students’s political views with those of college-aged students in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Colorado.

Polls for the School of Industrial and Labor Relation’s 2008 mock presidential election opened yesterday, giving ILR students a preview of how their colleagues will be voting come Nov. 4. The mock election was organized by “Educate for ’08,” a non-partisan group within ILR whose goals include running “get out the vote” drives and informing the campus community of relevant issues.

In addition, volunteer ILR students represented the positions of candidates McCain and Obama on five major issues yesterday in Ives Hall during ILR Educates for 2008, a mock debate sponsored by the ILR Student Government Association, the ILR Women’s Caucus, the Minority ILR Student Organization and Educate for ’08.

Last night in Donlon Hall, Prof. N’Dri Assie-Lumumba, Africana studies, and Prof. Robert Odawi Porter, law at Syracuse University, presented international and indigenous perspectives on this year’s presidential election. The event, “Politics in Context: Who Came First?,” was part of the “Educate the Vote!” series.

Assie-Lumumba focused on how the American presidential election is viewed internationally.

According to Assie-Lumumba, one’s status as a minority arises from different social, economical and historical factors that must be questioned and challenged. In addition, although issues of welfare and poverty are often associated with the black population in America, these social issues concern all Americans, not only the minorities, she said.

We sat outside CTB, incognito, each wrapped in blankets and R’s face masked by her fedora —

R: It’s a “lady hat!”

— sipping our espressos, discussing the upcoming election, Proust, the human condition and Project Runway. R and R’s political discussions never seem to result in much r-and-r, and this instance was no different.

R: You don’t have to hold me down and spray Fantastik in my mouth every time.

R: That last time was an accident.

Watching the third and final presidential debate from the Media room at Hofstra University was like being in a gym lined with dozens of rows of tables spanning the length of the room, each equipped with several phones, extension cords, and high-definition televisions.

In the hours leading up to the main event, politicians and media members milled about — eating, schmoozing, and sporting their souvenir Hofstra mugs. As Bob Schieffer took the stage and said a few words to the audience — “welcome all, turn off your cell phones and shut up during the debate” — the media members scurried to their seats and began typing away.

The reaction in the room was fairly muted until the fifteenth shout-out to “Joe the plumber,” which drew a chorus of hearty laughter.

Prof. Jeff Rachlinski, law, and Greg Parks, law ’08, discussed the role of unconscious race and gender biases in the presidential race yesterday in Sage Chapel. Such implicit biases affect the voting process, they said.

“Although some Americans certainly are explicitly biased when it comes to race and gender, such individuals constitute a very small percentage of voters and it is our view that implicit or unconscious bias is the far bigger problem,” Rachlinski said.

Rachlinski explained that there are two types of voting — rationally and intuitively. “Whereas rational voting seems to override unconscious bias, intuitive voting is usually in line with it,” he said.

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — The high security fortress known as Hofstra University was brimming with energy yesterday in preparation for the third and final presidential debate. Barricaded off by the Secret Service, orange parking cones, police cars and officers patrolling the crowds on horses, the outwardly militant environment conveyed a strong message: no messing around on debate day.