After 12 long hours of Election Day voting, polls closed at 7 p.m. in Texas.

Well, sort of.

El Paso, which lies in the westernmost part of Texas, is in the Mountain time zone. The state has to wait for that part of Texas to finish polling before anyone can call it.

But now the countdown has begun, and polls are officially closed all across the state.

Many students had to wait in long lines at polling locations. I talked to a few students as they left the polls about the wait. The line at the Old Fish Hatchery in San Marcos, Texas, which is the polling place for most students at Texas State University-San Marcos, snaked in front of the building and out the side. The university is located about 30 minutes south of the capitol, Austin, Texas.

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Texas is buzzing this morning with voters lined up at polls and political parties hard at work getting people to vote for their candidate.

I'm hanging out at the University of Texas-Austin in the University Democrats "War Room," where they are phone banking and telling voters where to cast their ballot.

I spoke to Andy Jones, public relations chair for U.Dems, and asked him a bit about  what they are doing to get out the vote and his anticipation for tonight.

Locksley is on the road telling fans to do one important thing: Vote in this election. The garage rock band is hitting up venues across the nation for the Choose or Lose Tour through Election Day to rock out and get you to vote.

I met up with the band in Austin, Texas to chat about the tour, voting and how the current economic climate is affecting them. See my video here.

Early voting records have been broken this week throughout Texas, just like in many other areas of the country. Thanks to strategic polling locations, it has never been easier to cast your ballot.

Early voting began in Texas on Monday and will go through Oct. 31. Imagine this: You can put on your Halloween costume on the last day of early voting, cast your ballot and head off to your first party. That is, of course, if you wait to the last minute. Hopefully you won’t because reports of long lines at polling stations have been common, but it does beat the alternative of standing in line throughout Election Day.

You have 140 characters or less to tell me what you think. Go.

That’s the basis behind Twitter, a microblogging site that is changing the way we communicate, particularly with news in this year’s election.

Twittawhaaa?

If you haven’t checked it out, the layout is very simple. In fact, it looks a lot like a blog. For all you whippersnappers out there, you are probably already following bloggers, media organizations or random people who just love politics. The people you follow are like the people that update a blog. Their posts will show up on your feed and you have a constantly updated source of news from the people you know or media organization you trust.

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The WHO Farm, or the White House Organic Farm Project, is a simple idea with a simple purpose: to get the next president to grow an organic garden on the lawn of the White House.

Daniel Simon Bowman and Casey Gustowarow are behind the wheels of this project, both literally and figuratively. The two have been driving across the country in a bus with a bottom side up promoting their petition for The WHO Farm. I met up with the traveling duo at the Austin Farmer’s Market Saturday to hear about the project and see their topsy-turvy bus. Check out the video here.

The WHO Farm bus will be in New Orleans, La. throughout the weekend and moving east until it arrives in Washington, D.C. around Election Day. Check out the full itinerary and learn more about The WHO Farm.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain made a surprise announcement yesterday saying he would be suspending his campaign to return to Washington and work on the proposed $700 billion economic bailout.

But it turned out it wouldn’t be that easy. McCain requested that the presidential debates be postponed as well, but Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said the campaign and debates scheduled for Friday at Ole Miss in Oxford, Miss. should go on.

Maybe Obama will have to debate himself.

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Hurricane Ike brought destruction to parts of the Texas Gulf Coast, but it also brought out politicians from every corner.

Well, a lot of them anyway.

One of the  races this year has been between Republican Sen. John Cornyn and his Democratic opponent Rick Noriega. The two beefed up their sites with information for Ike victims. But in addition to that, they both decided to stop campaigning indefinitely.

While Cornyn and Noriega may have stopped campaigning, natural disasters are nonetheless a way for candidates to get publicity. Cornyn has done tours of disaster areas with President George Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The senator may not be out spreading his reelection campaign message, but he is getting face time in the media and meeting those affected by the storm.

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They all share a similar quality: Each has a passion for politics that started at an early age. Now several young Texans will represent their districts as delegates to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

Take Alex Karjeker. He is only 19 years old and was elected by fellow state delegates to become one of the youngest delegates at the Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Denver, Colo. next week. Karjeker, who attends the University of Texas at Austin and works for Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), said he admires Barack Obama and is looking forward to his acceptance speech.

“I’m really excited about the conventions,” he said. “I’m also looking forward to the VP announcement to see how the ticket is going to look from top to bottom.”

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