E-Mail This Article to a Friend CAMBRIDGE NOTEBOOK Election Day goings-on in the People’s Republic BY MIKE MILIARD

As I cross the all-but-empty Mass Ave Bridge into Cambridge, the sky is slate gray and the Charles is choppy. The MIT campus is desolate, too, save for squirrels in piles of leaves and lines of students filing out of afternoon classes.

Inside the Great Dome, however, things are a bit more bustling. A scrawny kid with an adenoidal voice is hollering at passers-by, drawing only the occasional glance. "Vote, or I’ll eat you!" he shouts. He has, incidentally, a moss-green, red-eyed octopus enveloping his head. From his black T-shirt hang floppy sheets of paper, each scrawled with marker: VOTE OR CTHULHU WILL DEVOUR YOU.

Ah, Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft’s tentacled, flesh-hungry extraterrestrial demigod. "We’re with Campus Crusade for Cthulhu," says the beast’s handler, Amanda. She tells me that, although the green guy ran for prez in 2000 (campaign slogan: "Vote for the Greater Evil"), he’s staying out of the race this year. Ralph Nader beat him in Massachusetts last time around, and he still hasn’t gotten over the sting. Plus, this election is just too important for him to siphon votes either way. So Cthulhu is using his ordinarily malicious powers for good: to get out the vote.

"In 2008, maybe he’ll run again," Amanda says.

Did he vote for someone else today?

"No, unfortunately, he’s not a citizen," she replies. "He’s from the outer rim of the universe."

Across campus, in the Stratton Student Center, there’s a more conventional, if slightly less efficacious, get-out-the-vote effort afoot. Behind a folding table piled with a dazzling, multicolor array of leftover Halloween sweets sit Armando and Leila, two volunteers for Rock the Vote. Next to them, an Asian DJ in a Red Sox hat bobs his head intently as he spins tracks by the Jungle Brothers and Warren G.

So, I ask, over the loud music, have you guys been getting a big response today? Lotta people coming over? Y’know, getting the facts?

"No, not really," says Armando, barely looking up from his laptop. "Pretty much just people stopping by for free candy."

Further up Mass Ave, in Central Square, there are signs of a momentous Election Day. A placard hangs in a clothes-store window: vote or die. A elderly man walks by dangling a copy of Boston Haitian Reporter from his left hand; the headline splashed across the top reads vote — nov. 2. Inside a darkened, deserted Indian restaurant, a lone waiter watches on a TV above the bar as early exit polls roll in.

In front of Cambridge City Hall, a woman with a blond bob and black beret stands alone, waving a Nader/Camejo sign. I almost stop to ask her how she thinks Ralph will do this year, but decide not to rub it in.

Further up the road, I see a red Phoenix box, bereft of newspapers. It’s stuffed instead with chapbooks, in English and Spanish, putting forth the Communist Party USA’s election platform. "BUILD UNITY!" they scream. "DEFEAT BUSH and the Ultra-Right."

This gives me an idea. I head further up Mass Ave to Revolution Books, the redoubtable red-agitprop purveyor that still, amazingly, has a foothold in gentrified Harvard Square. Inside, it’s empty, except for piles and piles of leftist tracts, leaflets, and various other literature. A portrait of Karl Marx hangs unsmiling above the cash register.

"We say a big ‘no’ to George Bush and all he stands for," says David Rose, the bald, round, African-American volunteer behind the counter. "But not only that, we don’t support Kerry and don’t think people should get on the voting bandwagon. We’re not gonna stop them from voting, per se — we say to preserve the rights people successfully fought for in the 1960s. But we’re very outraged by this whole movement to put a mandate on this election for more war and empire." He hands me a copy of The Revolutionary Worker. "This explains why we’re diametrically opposed to it."

You don’t think Kerry would be any better than Bush?

"No. He says that the war was done the wrong way, but he’s not gonna pull the troops out, he’s gonna commit more troops."

Does the Communist Party have a candidate this year?

"No. We’re the Revolutionary Communist Party, we’re Maoists. We’re not the CPUSA. We think the CPUSA betrayed people a long time ago." (In fact, the CPUSA chose not to field a candidate, either.)

"It’s so hypocritical," he continues. "That this country has a nerve to talk about leading the free world. We’re not gonna say defeat Bush, we’re just saying look at this whole system and come to some conclusion and unite against it."

Do you think you have a realistic chance of changing the system by not voting?

"Well, that’s gonna be up to the people," Rose says. "It’s not gonna happen overnight. We’re not in that business. Elections are not the way that things are solved in this country."

He offers me some more pamphlets, we shake hands, and I leave.

In the pit in front of the Harvard T station, a trio — sax, drums, upright bass — is wailing away at some righteous hard bop and free jazz. Over the din I can hear someone shouting maniacally into a megaphone, and it sounds terrific. Closer inspection shows that it’s another member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. He’s haranguing passers-by in front of a spray-painted banner: NO TO BUSH AND ALL HE REPRESENTS! THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE WILL NOT BE EXPRESSED IN THIS ELECTION.

True enough. But I rather like another sign, a small photocopied caricature of George W. Bush tacked to a nearby telephone pole. Beneath the president’s unctuous smile is emblazoned a simple command: REVERSE THE CURSE.

Hey, it worked last week. Besides, the Red Sox don’t need that one anymore.