A machine built by a handful of companies in California is now helping decide American elections, and not one of those companies will tell you what political assumptions they built into it.

Justice Samuel Alito told CBS News that he now thinks about retirement every term. He is 76 years old. Clarence Thomas is 78. Both were appointed by Republican presidents, and both sit on a Court whose conservative majority rests on a margin that disappears with a single vacancy filled by the wrong Senate.

The Senate has the entire month of October off, plus the first week of November. So does the House. Both chambers are home, and they will not return in any meaningful way until after Americans have finished voting.

Nine days ago we argued in these pages that data centers had become the sleeper wedge of this election, that voters were connecting them to their electricity bills, and that Republicans needed an answer built on a simple principle: ratepayers should not subsidize the power consumption of trillion-dollar companies.

The Trafalgar Group released a run of Senate general election surveys over the past two weeks covering Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Voting Already Started. Stop Planning For October.