Dissecting the Changing Electorate

One way to consider Barack Obama’s success last Tuesday is to consider John McCain’s failure. By virtually every electoral measure — including age, sex, race, religion, income and region — Mr. McCain lost ground won by George W. Bush four years ago.

For Mr. Obama, the opposite happened. He performed better than John Kerry did among nearly every voter group — significantly better, in some cases.

Use the above link to read the entire article.

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

October Video Message to Independents

Jackie Salit of IndependentVoting.org offers pre-election commentary on the financial crisis, the campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama, the impact of independents in this election season and more.

Use the above link for more information about IndependentVoting.org.

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

Independents Support Obama

AMERICA’S LARGEST ORGANIZATION OF INDEPENDENT VOTERS ENDORSES DEMOCRAT BARACK OBAMA

(“Partisan politics have gotten us into this mess & both parties are responsible, but, we need to change Washington D.C. and Senator Obama is best equipped to do that.” Francine Miller, Operating Committee IndependentMovement.Org)

TODAY, USA, October 7th, 2008

In two online polls conducted by IndependentMovement.Org, Senator Barack Obama has emerged as the number one choice of the largest organization of independent voters in the United States. “In spite of the venomous dialect we take for political discourse in America, Obama has remained true to his message. This campaign is about bringing Americans together, not driving them apart,” says Jim Mangia, CEO and founding member of IndependentMovement.Org.

As independent voters are predicted to decide the outcome of this presidential election, IndependentMovement.Org, a political action committee, is launching a nationwide campaign in key swing states across America to swing independent voters towards supporting the Obama/Biden ticket. “Obama was the first choice among over 59% of the voters we polled online,” says Jason Olson the communications director for IndependentMovement.Org. Online voters who have voluntarily participated in the polls have demonstrated a clear desire to see political reform. Last month polls conducted by IndependentMovement.Org, revealed a majority of voters want to see redistricting reform (taking the drawing of legislative districts out of the hands of incumbent elected officials and turning the process over to independent panels) and the expansion of open primaries.

Founder of Independent Texans, Linda Curtis, an advisory board member of IndependentMovement.Org, says a letter has been written to Senator Barack Obama by the group. “In endorsing the candidacy of the Democratic candidate for president we are strongly urging support of key reforms including redistricting, and promising to take an active leadership role in holding an Obama/Biden administration responsible to deliver the changes America wants to see in the White House.”

Independents have made the difference in the selection of both the Democratic and Republican candidates who are now vying for the White House. “We independents produced an election between the two change candidates, Senator Barack Obama, and Senator John McCain. Now independent voters who have listened to both campaigns, and heard the first debate, have indicated they are ready to endorse Obama as their choice for President of the United States,” continued Jim Mangia, CEO and founding member of IndependentMovement.Org.

A political action committee, IndependentMovement.Org, has a non-paid advisory board made up of reform minded Americans from across the political spectrum.


###

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

An Open Debate in NYC

Trevor Lyman is the man who organized the Ron Paul money bombs. One Lyman money bomb raised $4 million in one day. Another raised $6 million in one day.

Now, Lyman is at it again. Lyman wants to hold a third party debate in New York City. Lyman was inspired by Ron Paul's press conference a couple of weeks ago. At that press conference, Paul called on his followers to ditch the two major parties and throw their support to one of the independent or third party candidates.

If Lyman gets 10,000 pledges by October 8, he and the other sponsors will organize a debate in New York City. All major candidates -- Nader, Barr, McKinney, Baldwin, Obama and McCain will be invited. Already, with no publicity, Lyman has close to 1,000 pledgers.

Use the above link for want more information and make a pledge.

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

NY Independence Party Presidential Nomination

The New York Independence Party formally nominated the McCain-Palin ticket in Albany on September 21. Approximately 40 state committee members attended. Proxy voting dominates such meetings. McCain received 83% of the weighted vote, and the other 17% abstained. The entire meeting, which was a combination reorganization meeting and a state convention, last less than an hour. Frank MacKay was re-elected state chair.

As a member, I was part of the 17% that represented about 100,000 voters.

After review of the local articles, I agree with this assessment.

The state Independence Party's endorsement of Republican John McCain has very little to do with the race for the White House. It's really a move to help Senate Republicans retain their majority. MacKay is gambling big time on McCain, who is widely expected to lose in Democrat-dominated New York despite a recent poll that showed him trailing Obama here by just 5 percentage points among likely voters.

MacKay didn't deny that providing McCain with a third ballot line in New York was really designed to help the endangered Senate Republicans, who are just two seats away from losing the majority. The Independence Party has long been allied with the Senate GOP and bent over backward this year to endorse Republican incumbents and candidates in key races, even changing its own rules to do so. The hope is that disaffected Republicans and independents will pull the lever for McCain on Row C in November will continue down the line and support GOP Senate candidates there, too. In close races, the votes on third-party lines could prove crucial in the battle for control of the Senate.

This is the IPNYC response:


Statement by New York City County Chairs on the
State Party's endorsement of John McCain

September 21, 2008


“The Independence Party's cross-endorsement of John McCain is one step in the sham that the state party has become. The deal with McCain was made by one man, the State Chairman, Frank MacKay. Members of the State Committee, the body empowered to select a presidential nominee, were not informed or consulted about MacKay's plan.

This dictatorial way of doing party business has become MacKay's standard operating procedure. MacKay spent the last week trying to distrupt meetings of IP members who were democratically forming county committees in New York City, made up of 4,000 IP members. At this point, the New York City Independence Party is the only wing of the party with a genuine track record of independence and democratic participation.

MacKay has corrupted and virtually destroyed the State Party taking it from a vibrant, pro-democracy force for political reform to a corrupt manipulation of people's genuine desire for change. If John McCain thinks that the State Independence Party is a symbol of independent thinking and activism, he is sadly mistaken.”

- Cathy L. Stewart: Chair, New York County IP
- Robert Conroy: Chair, Kings County IP
- Molly Honigsfeld: Chair, Queens County IP
- Keith McHenry: Chair, Bronx County IP
- Sarah D. Lyons: Chair, Richmond County IP


Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

Who's Undecided?

In this election year I always thought the pollsters were missing the third-party/independent vote. Last night a CNN pollster proved my point.

In FL the poll showed Obama & McCain at 46% and 8% Undecided. But when the voters were given a bigger choice the vote was:

Obama - 48%
McCain - 45%
Nader - 4%
Barr - 1%
McKinney - 1%
Undecided - 1%

First it seems McCain is the loser this year to the Third-Party/Independent Candidates in FL. Second the voters are not as Undecided as some think. But I still can not explain why Obama gained.

Some other states - Registered Voters:

COLORADO
Obama - 42%
McCain - 43%
Barr - 3%
McKinney - 2%
Nader - 7%
Undecided - 3%

NEVADA
Obama - 41%
McCain - 41%
Barr - 5%
McKinney - 3%
Nader - 6%
Undecided - 4%

NEW MEXICO
Obama - 50%
McCain - 36%
Nader - 8%
Undecided - 6%

PENNSYLVANIA
Obama - 47%
McCain - 38%
Barr - 1%
Nader - 7%
Undecided - 7%

Do you think I am on to something?

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

Make Debate Contracts Public!

Debate watchdog group Open Debates calls on the Commission on Presidential Debates to make public the secret debate contract negotiated by the Obama and McCain campaigns.

Senator Lindsay Graham of the McCain campaign and Representative Rahm Emanuel of the Obama campaign have negotiated a detailed contract that dictates the terms of the 2008 presidential debates, including who can participate and the structure of the formats. The Commission on Presidential Debates has agreed to implement the debate contract.

Yet, in order to shield the major party candidates from criticism, the Commission on Presidential Debates has refused to release the debate contract to the public.

”It is vital that the public has full access to information in a sound democracy,” said George Farah, executive director of Open Debates. “Unfortunately, the Commission on Presidential Debates is more concerned with the partisan interests of the two candidates than the democratic interests of the public, and it has denied voters access to critical information about our most sacred political forums.”

The Commission on Presidential Debates was created by and for the Republican and Democratic Parties. In 1986, the Republican and Democratic National Committees ratified an agreement “to take over the presidential debates” from the League of Women Voters. Fifteen months later, then-Republican Party chair Frank Fahrenkopf and then-Democratic Party chair Paul Kirk incorporated the Commission on Presidential Debates. Fahrenkopf and Kirk still co-chair the Commission on Presidential Debates, and every four years, it implements and conceals contracts jointly drafted by the Republican and Democratic nominees.

Use the above link to find our more about Open Debates.

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

Is this Going to be a Paper Ballot Year?

Record number of US voters may cast paper ballots!

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Come November, more Americans might cast their ballots on paper than in any other election in U.S. history.

That wasn't supposed to happen. If everything had gone according to the government's $3 billion plan to upgrade voting technology after the hanging-chad fiasco in Florida in 2000, that sentence would read "electronic machines" instead of paper.

Instead, thousands of touchscreen devices are collecting dust in warehouses from California to Florida, where officials worried about hackers and fed up with technical glitches have replaced the equipment with scanners that will read paper ballots.

An Associated Press Election Research survey has found that 57 percent of the nation's registered voters live in counties that will be relying on paper ballots this fall.

The number of registered voters in jurisdictions that will rely mainly on electronic voting machines has fallen from a high of 44 percent during the 2006 midterm elections to 36 percent. (Much of the rest of the electorate consists of voters in New York state, who will be using old-fashioned pull-lever machines.)

In fact, because of growth in the electorate over the past decade, expansion of absentee voting rules, and expectations of high turnout for the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain, some experts are predicting a record number of Americans will cast ballots on paper this year.

"More people will be using computer-read paper ballots than at any other time in the nation's history," said Kimball Brace, head of Election Data Services, a consulting firm. "As you get more registered voters and more people in the pool, it exacerbates this bigger issues of paper."

In 2000, about 97 million registered voters lived in counties that relied on some form of paper ballot, Brace said. That figure is expected to top 100 million this fall, according to the AP data.

The return to paper creates extra stress on an already-strapped election system. Cash-poor counties will have to spend tens of millions of dollars printing ballots. Voters, many of them first-timers, may wind up confused by the ballot formats and frustrated by long lines of people waiting to use the scanners. And counting all the paper could hold up the results of the election.

"After 2000, there was a widespread revulsion about paper -- everyone had the mental image of the guy cross-eyed looking at the punch-card ballot," said Doug Chapin, director of the watchdog organization Electionline. "But there's no silver bullet. You're trading one set of problems for another."

All states but Idaho have junked the punch-card ballots that caused so much trouble in Florida. But many plan to use paper ballots that require voters to fill in ovals with a pen. The ballots are then read by digital scanners.

Unlike touchscreens, paper can't malfunction or be hacked into. But it has to be printed, shipped and securely stored before and after Election Day. Counties already paying to warehouse electronic machines will have to buy reams of card stock, print extras in multiple languages, pay for delivery and eventually destroy the unused ballots.

In counties that are on their third system in three presidential contests, officials are retraining workers in how to use the equipment and demonstrate it to voters. Broward County, Fla., which was caught in the punch-card maelstrom in 2000, has produced guides showing voters how to feed their paper ballots into the scanners.

Other counties making the switch, including some of California's largest, are planning to collect ballots at polling places and pay workers overtime to feed them into industrial-size scanners at central offices.

None of that is likely to prevent voters from making other sorts of mistakes, such as filling in the wrong oval or using the wrong color pen.

"A lot of officials are in damage-control mode because they're going to try to limit the problems of switching to paper," said Mike Alvarez, an expert in voting technology at Caltech in Pasadena. "You will have ballots not showing up, being printed wrong, the litany of mistakes voters make with these ballots, and then there's incredible pressure in a crowded polling place for people who are trying to make their decision."

As Brace put it: "Paper is traditionally the device that the public is really good at screwing up."

In 2000, about 61 percent of registered voters lived in counties that relied on some form of paper ballot, whether punch-cards or fill-in-the-oval forms, according to Election Data Systems. Only 13 percent of voters lived in counties that used touchscreens or other e-voting devices; the rest used pull-lever machines.

With fewer than 100 days until Nov. 4, the first concern for many election officials is making sure they will be able to get all their ballots printed between the time the national, state and local slates have been selected and Election Day.

California, the nation's biggest electoral prize, with more than 16 million people registered to vote, abruptly outlawed most electronic machines last summer, creating a potential crunch in the highly specialized ballot-printing industry. San Diego contracted with a Washington state company after local businesses said they couldn't produce the 3.5 million extra ballots in the two-month window.

Many paper ballots may wind up in the shredder.

Last week, Ohio's secretary of state ordered all 53 counties using electronic machines to print paper ballots to accommodate voters in November who opt out of e-voting. A similar order during the primary resulted in the pulping of more than a million unused ballots after only 14,484 voters asked for them.

How will you vote this November?

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

The Change in Voter Rolls

Well before Senators Barack Obama and John McCain rose to the top of their parties, a partisan shift was under way at the local and state level. For more than three years starting in 2005, there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among voters who affiliate with Democrats and, almost as often, with no party at all.

While the implications of the changing landscape for Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are far from clear, voting experts say the registration numbers may signal the beginning of a move away from Republicans that could affect local, state and national politics over several election cycles. Already, there has been a sharp reversal for Republicans in many statehouses and governors' mansions.

In several states, including the traditional battlegrounds of Nevada and Iowa, Democrats have surprised their own party officials with significant gains in registration. In both of those states, there are now more registered Democrats than Republicans, a flip from 2004. No states have switched to the Republicans over the same period, according to data from 26 of the 29 states in which voters register by party.

But it is the growing involvement of independents in open presidential primaries that has brought the Democrats to where they are today. Independents have done something unprecedented: they have, literally, decided the Democratic nomination by giving Barack Obama his competitive edge. Independent voters, leveraging the Democrats' own delegate selection rules, became the "deciders" in this year's primary elections.

The Democratic Party has been at odds with itself, and independents have taken advantage of the fact. The McGovern-Fraser reforms cleared the way for state run primaries, many of which allow independents to vote. The Mondale-Kennedy-Hart counter-reforms aimed at stabilizing the party and enhancing the power of party elites. On the one hand, the party has adjusted to greater voter participation and popular control. On the other hand the party desires a strong central organization and party control. In the mist of this tug-of-war, independents, in the greatest of all unintended consequences, have become the unlikely kingmakers.

What do you think of the power of the independent movement in 2008?

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

IPNY Still to Pick Presidential Candidate

Thanks to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News for this one:

"The New York Independence Party has a tradition of choosing its presidential nominee at the last possible moment. In 2000, it chose John Hagelin on September 24. In 2004, it chose Ralph Nader on September 26.

State chair Frank MacKay says this tradition will continue this year. The most likely date for the party to choose its presidential candidate is September 21, a Sunday.

New York state is able to cope with late decisions because it uses mechanical voting machines. One advantage of mechanical voting machines is that they can be easily and quickly set up. Elections officials don’t need to print entire ballots; they merely must print up narrow strips of paper which are inserted into the right slots on the face of the machines. However, New York will be giving up its mechanical voting machines after the November 2008 election, since the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) outlawed them."

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us

Year of the Independent Voter

Independent voters could be pivotal in November. While membership in traditional parties has weakened in recent decades, independent voters increased -- the number of people registering as "unaffiliated" or "other" since 1987 jumped from 16 percent to 24 percent. For example, in Florida, an important battleground state, the number of "other" voters has more than quadrupled, surpassing 20 percent of the electorate. In another key state, California, since 1988 the percentage of voters "declin[ing] to state" a party preference rose nearly 8 percentage points -- to almost 18 percent.

The looming battle between McCain and Obama for independent voters is evident in polling. On Wednesday, Gallup released a poll that showed McCain and Obama share nearly equal support among independents -- 44 percent for Obama and 42 percent for McCain. So this election would ultimately be about who attracts the most independent voters.

Use the above link to read the entire article by By Jeremy P. Jacobs on The Washington Independent.

Michael H. Drucker
Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us