What the—?

Once a day, "Google Alerts" sends me links to new posts on the web that include certain phrases I've requested: "independent vote," "purple voter," "purple state," "swing vote," and the like. Google kindly searches not only websites but also news feeds and blogs. Sure, Google misses a lot of mentions, but I'd rather get an email with a dozen relevant links than one with a thousand. So I forgive Google for the omissions and move on.

One of the phrases I've requested is "evangelical vote." Normally, the daily email I get for that phrase—if I get one at all—includes a half-dozen or fewer links. Nearly always, about half of the links are irrelevant, referring to an internal church vote or an election in another country.

On Monday, though, Google alerted me to a whopping 236 mentions of "evangelical vote" that had posted in the previous 24 hours. Even after I sifted through the list and eliminated the irrelevant posts, I was left with 196 links to stories and blogs relating in some way to the impact of the evangelical vote on the 2008 election.

It's going to take a while to check out all 196 stories, but based on the one-line teasers that accompany each link I can already tell that there are still way too many journalists, commentators, and bloggers out there who are determined to place all evangelicals squarely in the Republican camp.

I aim to prove them wrong. If you're an evangelical and an independent, I'd love to hear from you. And then I want them to start hearing from us.