Woodruff the political campaigns know more about you than you think. We have the first of two reports from Hari Sreenivasan on efforts to track voters online. This could be the year that Digital Strategies decide what is shaping up to be a razorclose election, but who is watching us and how much do they know about us . Ifill Jeffrey Brown talks with author bill ivey about his prescription for remaking americas democracy. Well, i think what we need is to rediscover progressive values and put them forward. Im arguing for not bigger government but i think different government. Woodruff and Scott Schaefer of public televisions kqed profiles a photographer who uses googles street view images to create art. You have this distinct feeling of decay. The images almost challenge the viewer. Ifill thats all ahead on tonights newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by moving our economy for 160 years. Bnsf, the engine that connects us. And the william and flora hewlett foundation, working t solve soci and environment problems at homand oundhe world. And with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. And. Friends of the newshour. And. This program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Ifill Hurricane Sandy beg battering its way ashore today, threatening days of destruction. The huge system had 50 Million People in its sights and was already being called a superstorm. The winds grew stronger by the hour. And the rain poured harder, soaking the east coast as the hurricane closed in. Nine states declared emergencies, and people up and down the coast braced for heavy flooding, wind damage, and resulting Power Outages. I just got another load of sandbags to put around the doors to keep the water out. Got the generator ready to go. And were going to sit there and ride it out. No place else to go. I am worried. Theres a reason to be worried. But were going to hope for the best. Thats all. You know what . Its just a home. Its just a house. Were safe. Thats what we care about. Ifill forecasts have the center of sandy striking in southern new jersey and then turning north with Tropical Storm force winds blasting a broad path through the mid atlantic and northeast. Seen from space the storm looks even more enormous stretching nearly 1,000 miles from end to end. It threatened to dump a foot of rain in places and hit shorelines with a storage surge of four to eleven feet of water. The hurricane had already killed 69 people as it passed through the caribbean. With that in mind, new Jersey Governor Chris Christie issued a blunt warning to anyone thinking of riding out the storm. This is not a time to be a showoff. This is not a time to be stupid. This is a time to try to save yourself and your family. Everybody thinks theyre smarter than we are here. Maybe they are. But not about this. Ifill in new york city officials shut down all Transit Services and ordered nearly 400,000 people to evacuate lowlying areas. Hours before sandy hit, high water blew on to the board walk in battery park at the southern tip of manhattan. High winds also left a construction crane dangling from the top of a 55story building. Even the stock market closed due to weather for the first time in nearly 30 years. It will remain closed tomorrow. The Nations Capital followed sut, shuttin down public transportation, schools, and federal offices. President obama canceled a Campaign Rally in florida and flew back to washington, appearing early this afternoon to promise federal help. Im extraordinarily grateful for the cooperation of our state and local officials. The conversations that ive had with all the governors indicate that at this point there are no unmet needs. I think everybody is taking this very seriously. Weve got. Prepositioned all the resources that we need. But right now the key is to make sure that the public is following instructions. Keep in mind that for folks who are not following instructions, if you are not evacuating when youve been asked to evacuate, youre putting First Responders at danger. Ifill on sunday things seemed less urgent for some, taking pictures at ocean city maryland. But by this afternoon, waves were pounding that beach. Governor Martin Omalley warned of much worse. We are ordering and urging all marylanders to stay off the roads for next 36 hours. There are very dangerous conditions out there. We ask you not to put yourselves or your family in jeopardy. Ifill norfolk, virginia also had flooding as the storm passed on sunday. In addition a number of states closed schools for at least two days. And canceled was the word of the day for air travel as well. With more than 7,000 flights grounded at east coast airports. I really hope that i get to get out of here before the heavy weather hits. I come from florida. So im kind of hoping just to get out of the way of the storm. Ifill but not everyone managed to get out of the way. The coast guard rescued 14 crew members from a replica tall ship, the h. M. ; bounty sailing off Cape HatterasNorth Carolina. Two were still missing. For more about the hurricane and whats to come, we turn to James Franklin of the National Hurricane center. I spoke with him this afternoon. James franklin, welcome. So tonight, is sandy picking up steam . Sandy accelerated during the day today. Taking it a little bit faster towards the coast, thats right. Ifill where is it going to hit . Well, were looking at the southern part of new jersey, somewhere in there. But its really more important to talk about the overall effects of the storm because the effects are spreading from new england all the way through the mid atlantic states. The Center Location is not particularly important. Ifill does this feel to you like a once in a lifetime weather event . I have been in this business for 30 years now. I cant remember anything quite like it. Ifill can you explain for us how this hybrid storm came together. Normally what happens as we get towards the latter part. no audio a very large area of High Pressure that got in the way of sandy, turned it back and at the same time we had a shot of energy from the upper levels of the atmosphere that came all the way from pacific canada across the united states. It reached the system at the upper levels earlier today, spun it up. Allowed it to get stronger at a time when systems usually weaken. Ifill were used to hearing about hurricanes in late summer, early fall. How unusual is it to see an october hurricane . October hurricanes are not unusual. In fact after sandy is gone, we will have another full month of the Hurricane Season to go. It runs through november 0. The normal favored area for those late season storms is more of the caribbean. But we can certainly have them here as we do now. Ifill you mentioned the breadth of the storm. As this one comes ashore, where is it more dangerous . The center of the storm or the edges . Every single tropical sigh lone the different. We have different hazards. We have a wind hazard, rain, flooding, storm surge and we have tornadoes. In this case we have one that we normally dont talk about and thats snow because again its a combination of hurricane and wintertime low. In this case, the threat that were most concerned about is the storm surge because we could have eleven feet of water in Long Island Sound or american bay and amounts almost that high along the jersey coast and southern new england. Those are water levels high enough to kill people if they stayed when they shouldnt have. Ifill is it the cumulative effect of all of that rainfall that makes up the storm surge . What were talking about with those six to eleven feet is the combination of surge and tide. The amount of water above the ground. Im 56, and eleven foot of water puts me in a real bad place. Were talking about water above your head. Thats why people needed to evacuate. Ifill how would you compare this storm on other major storms weve lived through like katrina or like irene . Every storm is different, as i said. We have their own hazards. Irene was a storm that moved parallel to the coast with most of the heaviest weather to the right so there were a lot of folks very close to the center in new jersey, for example, that didnt really know that there was a lot going on. This storm instead, first of all, its much larger than irene. Its coming directly at the coast instead of parallelling it. The effects are spanning hundreds and hundreds of miles, much more so than irene. Ifill this storis hovering withotsf rain centered over one area. How many days do you expect well be coping with the fallout from all of that . Well, i think that its going to take until wednesday before conditions really significantly improve so that people can get back and start looking at what happened. Tomorrow its still going to be a bad day because the system is going to slow down once it gets towards pennsylvania. It will weaken, but its going to take a long time for this system to wind down. Ifill James Franklin of the National Hurricane center, thank you. Youre welcome. Woodruff now, a closer look at what officials on the ground have been doing to prepare for the storms blow. Ray suarez spoke by phone a short time ago with cory booker, the mayor of newark, new jersey. Suarez welcome to the program. Whether youre looking at the video from ground zero or looking at newark from space, it looks like the area is going to get hit pretty hard. What have you seen on the streets of your city . Its starting to get bad already. Already we see branches coming down, power lines coming down. We have not seen the worst of it. Were going to see in many ways a pretty savage alignments of high tide, the peak of the storm surge, a full moon, all going to bring an unprecedented amount of water. Into our city. This is an epic storm. Very unpredictable. Its going to bring a lot of challenges to emergency workers. That is why we need residents to use common sense. If theyre in flooded areas, use remaining hour or two before the peak of the storm to evacuate. Call for needed information. Stay hunkered down ad off the road. Ifyou are in safe location now. Suarez mayor, we should give people a newark geography lesson. While you arent right on the ocean, you do have an awful lot of waterfront. Are there areas in the city that are vulnerable to flooding . Absolutely. Our city is right along the river. Many people do know newark for being a port city. We are right into the bay there. So a lot of new jersey is on coast line. A lot of cities like mine and new york city, jersey city, were all right along water. Weve seen traditionally, especiallyast year with ire, sigfint flooding. But whats different this year is this storm is, as i said before, epic. It will last in duration perhaps twice as long as irene and it will bring about a significantly more water into our city. So were expecting roads being backed up, communities really being under large amounts of water, Power Outages that could last for days if not well more than a week. All of this means that we have to now fight the storm as it is but the after math will be a very difficult time of cleanup as well. Suarez whats the best advice youre getting about when the worst of the storm is going to hit newark . Well, we know in about an hour or two, thats when the significant time, 6hour period, which we are going to be at our peak of this state of emergency, by 8 00 tonight, thats when high tide will come and the storm surges will really bring on the water and, unfortunately, we think were going to have from then more than a 24hour period of challenges rain, wind, waters. As this storm sits on us and slowly moves over. So this is just not a time to not use common sense. If theres a moment to embrace prudence, common sense and proactive thinking in these remaining hours if not minutes, we need everyone to be focused first and foremost on safety and security. And get yourself into a location where you can be safe. If you cant, reach out to authorities like those in my city thelp get you into a shelter. But this is going to be a very difficult, very long time. And the best advantage we have is the common sense, intelligence and forwardthinking of our community. Suarez newark is a pretty densely populated place. Its got a lot of multiple dwellings. Also a lot of elderly and lowincome people. Are there any special challenges that come with your particular profile during a National Disaster like this one . You know, absolutely. Urban areas are often areas that bring a lot of homeless folks for the resources, transportation and soe spanned out earlier today to identify places where homeless folks congregate and move them into shelters. We have people that are heavily reliant on public transportati transportation. That obviously was shut down in the state of new jersey hours ago. So it always puts the burden on us to be a far more proactive and assist people. Frankly this is what i like about the spirit of my city is during times of crisis its good to see everybody helping other people out, reaching out to seniors who are shut in. Making sure they have supplies. So were operating in every way psie from using aditional means of communication, using social media. Im on my twitter account throughout the day and night just trying to respond to people who might be in need. But again the most powerful force we have against this storm is the common sense, the prudence, the caution of our community. Last year in irene, i saw unfortunately people making bad decisions, going out in the storm, thinking their car could move through a flooded street and see my Emergency Personnel have to do heroic thing puttg eir lives at risk. Puttng their families in jeopardy. By having to wade into very difficult situations to rescue people. We do not want to see that this year. What we want to see this year is more of what i know is the spirit of our city which is the spirit of intelligence, the spirit of forwardthinking, caution, prudence. That will get us through this difficult time. Suarez cory booker is the mayor of newark, new jersey. Good luck, sir, and thanks for joining us. Thank you for keeping the focus on the problem and alerting the people to all the ises. Ifill still to come on the ifill still to come on the newshour, the president ial contest, eight days out; the campaigns gather Digital Information about voters; a progressives vision for remaking government; and creating art from googles street view. But first, with the other news of the day, heres Hari Sreenivasan. Sreenivasan americans are showing greater confidence in the economy and buying more. The Commerce Department reported today that Consumer Spending rose. 08 last month, the best showing since february. Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70 of the u. S. Economy. The potential for government eavesdropping americans was back before t u. S. Supreme court today. Lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists argued they should be allowed to challenge parts of the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act. They argued innocent americans could be caught up in electronic spying on foreign targets. The Justice Department called that claim a cascade of speculation. In syria, heavy air raids pounded the suburbs of damascus, syria, after a temporary truce collapsed over the weekend. This was supposed to be the fourth and final day of a u. N. Backed ceasefire, timed to coincide with a muslim holiday. But today, as many as 60 Government Air strikes hit rebel targets around the country. A car bomb also went off in the capital city, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 40 others. Activists also reported at least 150 people were killed in violence on sunday. The city of San Francisco celebrated the giants latest world series championship today. Fans poured into the streets last night after their team swept the detroit tigers. The giants won 43 in ten innings to take their second title in three years. No National League team had swept a world series since the 1990 cincinnati reds. Those are some of the days major stories. No back to judy. Woodruff its become a ritual of modern president ial elections to look for an october surprise, a Late Breaking Development that requires both sides to recalibrate. This year, its come in the form of a massive storm. Crowley scrambled campaign plans whether they were in the area affected by the hurricane or not. Republican challenger mitt romney went ahead and held a rally in avon lake, ohio, this morning but said everyones thoughts should be with those in the storms path. U. S. With full hearts and clear eyes can see whats happening across the country right now. And on the eastern coast of our nation, a lot of people are enduring some very difficult times. We face these kind of challenges before. As we have its good to see how americans come together. This looks like another time when we need to come together all across the country, even here in ohio, and make sure that we give of our support to the people who need it. Woodruff romney planned an afternoon even in iow before suspeing his schedu tonght hen the rricane is is coming ashore. Instead, his campaign loaded emergency supplies on to the romney bus in virginia to deliver to storm Relief Centers after sandy hits. President obama had been in orlando, florida, last night. He delivered pizzas to a local Campaign Office but called off an appearance there today with former president clinton. Which means that, you know, t