Fox News

President-elect Barack Obama plans to kick off his inaugural celebration by taking the train to Washington, D.C., the weekend before his swearing-in.

Obama and his family will start their daylong journey with an event in Philadelphia before boarding the train. They’ll pick up Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his family in Wilmington, Del. The president-elect and his group then will make a stop in Baltimore before making their way to Washington.

Aides say Philadelphia and Baltimore were chosen because of the roles they played at pivotal moments in U.S. history and because they fit in with the inauguration’s theme, “Renewing America’s Promise.”

Baltimore Sun

Maryland’s representatives to the Electoral College will formally cast their votes today for Barack Obama for president and Joe Biden for vice president, according to the Maryland Democratic Party. The ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. in the Miller Senate Office Building in Annapolis. The 10 electors will cast their votes verbally before the ballots are certified, sealed and delivered to the president of the U.S. Senate. Congress will meet in joint session Jan. 8 to count the Electoral College votes. By law, Maryland casts all of its electoral votes for the winner of the state’s presidential election, the state Democratic Party said in a statement. Among those expected to attend today’s ceremony are Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings and state Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler.

Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore County Public Library and the League of Women Voters will hold “Election 2008: Returns after Dark,” the final installment of the Election 2008 Speaker Series, from 8 p.m. to midnight tomorrow at the Towson library branch, 320 York Road. Participants can watch and discuss the election returns. Political analyst Matthew Crenson, a retired Johns Hopkins University political science professor, will provide commentary throughout the evening.

Daily Record

Around election time, Washington players and reporters do a lot of speculating about who will win plum posts when the new president comes to town. Although these types of things interest me, political appointments at the national level rarely affect my work directly at The Daily Record, so I tend to do a little less nosing around.

However, this year, word has it that environmental-industry types are whispering that Maryland’s own U.S. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest could snag the job of director of the Environmental Protection Agency if Sen. Barack Obama, a Democrat, is elected president.

The combo seemed slightly odd to me, since Gilchrest is a Republican, albeit a champion of the Chesapeake Bay who recently received kudos from the Maryland League of Conservation Voters. With a little digging, I found out that Gilchrest — who lost in the primary to Andy Harris — endorsed Obama in September.

Examiner

When Sen. Barack Obama rallied voters in Missouri over the weekend, an estimated 30,000 people showed up. Sen. John McCain commanded a more modest 10,000 in Columbus, Ohio.

But Ralph Nader’s University of Maryland, College Park, rally Sunday afternoon drew a fraction of the major candidates’ audience: a mere 150 people — most of them students at the university.

[...]

Nader, 74, whose running mate is lawyer and activist Matt Gonzalez, said several factors contribute to the difficulty third-party candidates have running for office.

Nader cited ballot access restrictions, the fact that third-party candidates are not invited to debates and lack of media coverage.

“Joe the Plumber has gotten more publicity than the Nader-Gonzalez campaign,” he said.

Christine Wirth, 19, an undergraduate, said she had not decided her vote.

“I wanted to hear what he had to say,” she said of Nader. “If I vote for Nader, I think it’ll just kind of protest the two-party system.”