The New York Observer has put together a comprehensive guide to watching the returns online including links.

The Washington Post is anchoring live Election Day video on tonight beginning at 6 pm ET, which will combine the Post‘s and Newsweek‘s political teams including: Chris Cillizza, Jon Meacham, Dana Priest, E.J. Dionne, Len Downie, Dana Milbank, and Jonathan Alter. Users will also be able to interact with guests during the show through a live discussion platform below the video screen.

Finally, our very own TVNewser will be liveblogging all the election coverage tonight and if you’re not already following FishbowlDC‘s Twitter you definitely should start.

We told you last week how WaPo‘s Dana Milbank had complained in an online Q&A that at a recent Palin rally he’d covered in Florida the Secret Service had expanded its role of protecting the candidates to include keeping the press away from rally participants. Not so! Says Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan:

It’s not a function of the Secret Service to prevent or limit reporters from interviewing the people at events. We’ve never been asked by any campaign to do that…Being in a press pool gives them special access. But the other side is that they have to stay together. You keep national press away from the local press for the same reason.

So, basically if you want access to the unwashed masses you have to attend the rally as one. But wait. Is that entirely accurate?

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After last night’s debate it looks pretty certain that we are going to have a President Obama. Of course, with three weeks to go we hesitate to make any predictions — after the last three weeks we barely feel equipped to guess what the world will look like by dinner time. However! Should something unexpected happen WaPo reporter Dana Milbank‘s recent experience with the Secret Service might afford a glimpse of what the press could expect from a McCain presidency.

I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they’ve started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty — protecting the protectee — and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it’s unfounded because the reporters can’t get close enough to identify the person.