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
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C-SPAN to Cover Nader-McKinney-Baldwin Debate

UPDATE:
On October 21, a presidential debate for candidates who are on the ballot in states containing a majority of the electoral vote was announced. It will be Thursday evening, October 23, 9 pm thru 10:30 pm, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. It is likely that C-SPAN will cover it, since both Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin have said they will participate.
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C-SPAN will broadcast the October 19 debate between Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Chuck Baldwin, although it is not yet known if it will be broadcast live. The debate will be Sunday evening, October 19, at Columbia University in New York city. The moderator will be Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio. It is possible that Pacifica Radio will also broadcast it. The debate is sponsored by Free and Equal Elections.

Bob Barr declined to participate because he is scheduled to speak somewhere else that evening. According to this MSNBC story of October 14, he will be campaigning at colleges in Ohio and Virginia during the period October 14-23.

Free & Equal Elections Coalition (FREE) is a coalition of political parties, independent citizens and civic organizations formed to promote free and equal elections in the United States.

Use the above link to go to the FREE site.

Michael H. Drucker
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Elections officials deny illegally purging voters

The New York Times reported Thursday that tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states. Election officials lined up to defend their registration procedures and said they had done nothing wrong.

It based its findings on reviews of state records and Social Security data, and said it had identified apparent problems in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.

Use the above link to read the article.

Michael H. Drucker
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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.


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Michael H. Drucker
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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
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FL Voting Glitches

With 41 days to go before the presidential election, election officials and political operatives in Palm Beach County — famous for overvotes, undervotes, butterfly ballots and hanging chads — are worried about a repeat performance of the chaos that clouded the outcome of the 2000 presidential race.

Those concerns have been fueled by an otherwise obscure local judge’s race. County Circuit Judge Richard Wennet faced a strong challenge from William Abramson, a local criminal lawyer, last month. When the ballots were counted, Abramson led by 17 votes out of more than 102,000. An automatic recount was conducted, which put Wennet ahead by 60 votes. But this time, about 3,500 ballots were missing. The state elections board refused to accept the result. Off to court they went. A state judge ordered another tally. No result was announced because, while the missing 3,500 votes were found in a warehouse, a fresh batch of 159 that were counted the first time could not be read. Another machine recount was conducted Tuesday. It said Abramson won, but the machines kicked out 160 ballots they could not read. After those were counted by hand, the county canvassing board declared Abramson the winner. However, Wennet said he might continue the fight. This back-and-forth has some fearing far worse in November.

The punch cards are gone. Security cameras monitor all activity in every county election office. Random spot-checks review each ballot in 2 percent of all precincts. But the “improved” system may not be much better than the old one. “There’s a lot of improvement needed here and throughout the state of Florida,” said Judge Barry Cohen, chairman of the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board.

For example, to ensure that each voter is properly qualified to vote, the state imposed stringent ID requirements. The rules say a voter’s driver’s license or approved alternative identification must match up exactly with the voter database. Two problems: Some driver’s licenses have typos. And the voter rolls have never been proofread for errors. “Requiring to be matched up perfectly to databases which have never been tested for accuracy is simply a prescription to have people disenfranchised,” said Ion Sancho, elections supervisor in Leon County, the location of the state capital, Tallahassee.

Or take the new ballots, which are read by optical scanners. The rules are simple but precise: Voters must blacken in the space between the head of an arrow and a rectangular base beside their preferred candidate’s name, creating a whole arrow by connecting them. But some voters didn’t understand the directions. So far, election officials say, many ballots have been rendered unreadable by voters who wrote in X’s, checks, boxes, stars or dots. One voter kissed the ballot and made her mark with lipstick.

Having learned its lesson in 2000, the Democratic Party is taking no chances. Obama’s campaign has an unprecedentedly large staff in Florida — 350 paid workers in 50 offices running the length and breadth of the state, more than four times the size of McCain’s operation. Obama said that given the difficulties in Palm Beach County, he planned to station a team of election lawyers in the state. “I’m not going to anticipate a problem,” Obama said Saturday at a rally in Jacksonville. “I’m just going to prepare for a problem by making sure that we’ve got lawyers in precincts all across the state." “We are going to make sure the election is run the way it’s supposed to be run,” he said. “The state Democratic Party has registered 300,000 new voters this year alone, but will their votes be counted?”

Thanks to: Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. Kerry Sanders is a correspondent for NBC News. NBC News political director Chuck Todd and NBC affiliates WJHG of Panama City, Fla., and WPTV of West Palm Beach, Fla., contributed to this report.

How is your state doing with voting machine problems?

Michael H. Drucker
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Ron Paul urges third-party vote

Texas Congressman Ron Paul is to urge voters to reject Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain and vote for a third-party US candidate instead.

Dr Paul, who dropped his own bid for the Republican nomination earlier this year, has a big internet following. He is backing independent Ralph Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr, Constitution Party contender Chuck Baldwin and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic congresswoman for Georgia.

"The strongest message can be sent by rejecting the two-party system," he will tell a Washington news conference. "This can be accomplished by voting for one of the non-establishment, principled candidates."

According to an advance copy of Dr Paul's remarks, he will say the mainstream parties have no major differences on important issues, such as balancing the budget and civil liberties.

Mr Nader is quoted by the Associated Press as saying the gathering of third-party candidates would "raise the eyebrows" of commentators sceptical about their chances in November's presidential election. "This is the beginning of the realignment of American politics," he told the AP.

There was one empty chair next to the other candidates, set aside for former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia. Barr is the Libertarian Party's candidate, and he decided to hold his own conference immediately after the unity event.

Barr told the audience at his press conference, "I'm not interested in third parties getting the most possible votes. I'm interested in Bob Barr as the nominee for the Libertarian Party getting the most possible votes."

Michael H. Drucker
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The Ground Game

The 2008 election may well be determined by some of the legal and election administration skirmishes going on now in several key states. Those in the know may be surprised by not acknowledging the other presidential candidates in this years race. Barr, Nader, McKinney and others could take over 10% of the vote and really swing a state. But which way?

Pennsylvania: In 2004, Democrats successfully kept Ralph Nader off the presidential ballot, fearing he would draw votes away from John Kerry. Kerry beat Bush in Pennsylvania by only two percentage points; Nader's presence on the ballot could well have cost Kerry the state. Nader will be on the ballot again this time in Pennsylvania, but Republicans are now fighting to keep former Republican and current Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr off the ballot. There hasn't been any polling of Pennsylvania since late August, and the polling then showed an Obama lead among registered voters and little support for Barr. But the race could have tightened up since then, and the presence of Barr (and Nader) on the ballot could make a difference.

Virginia: Virginia is neck and neck this year, to the surprise of Democrats and Republicans alike. At this point, Democrats appear to have an advantage, thanks to an aggressive voter registration effort by the Obama campaign, which has been especially successful in registering young voters. Republicans have responded to the surge in voter registration by raising the tried-and-true boogeyman of voter fraud. In addition, some local registrars in Virginia have been incorrectly—though perhaps innocently—telling college students who legally register to vote in their college towns that by doing so they "could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax return … and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents' car and health insurance." Which candidate wins Virginia could well depend on which campaign is able to turn out its voters.

Ohio: Ohio, too, is very close. Democrats hope to take advantage of a new Ohio law that provides a five-day window in late September and early October for residents to register to vote and to vote absentee at the same time. Republicans say the practice encourages voter fraud. Democrats, meanwhile, are complaining about a new "vote caging" effort and worrying about whether residents who are forced to move because of foreclosure won't be able to cast valid ballots. Remember that a small shift in Ohio votes in 2004 would have handed the presidency to John Kerry.

Colorado: The 2006 midterms in Denver were a true election meltdown. Officials promise that things will be better this time around, but there's been a major battle over the secretary of state's decision to decertify, then recertify, some touch-screen and optical-scan voting machines. The Internet publication Election Law, which tracks election litigation the way a weatherman tracks an approaching hurricane, concludes that because of issues related to voting machines and other factors, if "election integrity groups or political parties see their fortunes resting with Colorado's 9 electoral votes, litigation there will be likely."

New Mexico: A battleground state, New Mexico was the site of allegations of voter fraud and election administration incompetence in 2004. God help us all if the presidential election comes down to the counting of provisional ballots here. An astonishing 12 percent of all votes cast in the primary between Obama and Clinton were provisional ballots, and it took a long time to get them counted. And election-law experts Ned Foley and Tova Wang have warned that "state laws are incredibly vague and incomplete with regard to casting and counting provisional ballots." No doubt armies of lawyers are standing by for deployment in New Mexico if the election is as close this year as it was in 2004, when Bush won by 5,988 votes.

Florida: Any list of battleground states and potential problems would be incomplete without a discussion of Florida. After the 2000 election, political battles in the state have turned to voter registration. Left-leaning voting rights groups have threatened to sue Florida for failing to make enough efforts to register low-income voters. Meanwhile, the state has issued new rules that may be deterring independent groups like the League of Women Voters from registering voters. Once the registration period is over, we can go back to worrying about whether Florida (with many counties having moved to their second or third voting system since 2000) can actually count the votes fairly and accurately—especially with 13 candidates to appear on the Florida presidential ballot and thousands of new voters.

What problems do you see in your state?

Michael H. Drucker
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2008 Rock The Vote

Rock the Vote’s mission is to engage and build the political power of young people in order to achieve progressive change in our country.

Rock the Vote uses music, popular culture and new technologies to engage and incite young people to register and vote in every election. They give young people the tools to identify, learn about, and take action on the issues that affect their lives, and leverage their power in the political process.

They empower the 45 million young people in America who want to step up, claim their voice in the political process, and change the way politics is done.

Use the above link to get involved!

Michael H. Drucker
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Puerto Rico to Hold Democratic Primary

Seizing on a rare opportunity to influence U.S. politics, Puerto Rico's Democratic Party has chosen to hold a presidential primary instead of a caucus to encourage more islanders to participate in the June 1 contest, an official said Friday.

Roberto Prats, party chairman in the U.S. territory, said the switch approved Thursday by the central committee will put pressure on Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to campaign in the Caribbean island.

Michael H. Drucker
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FL. Second Primary

Florida Governor Charlie Crist said he'd support a repeat of the Democratic presidential primary so the state's delegates can be counted at the party's national convention.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said he's open to the possibility. Primary elections are paid for by a state's taxpayers, so the offer from Crist, a Republican, is ``very helpful'' because money is an issue, Dean said.

Dean said the dispute over seating delegates is the fault of party leaders, not Florida voters. ``If they would like to fix that problem so that we can seat Florida without any problems, and pay for it, of course we would like to seat Florida,'' he said.

What do you think about a FL. do-over?

Michael H. Drucker
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Grassroots 2008

I was watching a C-SPAN conference about the 2008 Presidential campaigning. The panel indicated this is a grassroots year and maybe the last year of top-down politics. They spoke about how Obama using web 2.0 tools has given the grassroot a way to use their power to affect this election. One of the most effective has been the Caucuses. They explained how he has put 150,000 grassroot voters on the ground in Texas. The web 2.0 tools has created both the money effort but just as important the way to organize and give the grassroots a voice. Thet discussed how Obama understood how to energize the grassroot voter and Clinton ignored it and this would be the major blunder of 2008.

What are your thoughts about Grassroot 2008.

"I've just never understood why, just because you're a member of a party, you have special rights. That's not the civics that I learned in junior high school, and if Ralph Nader wants to run, good luck to him." - Mayor Bloomberg

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has added more fuel to the fire with his latest comments in regards to Ralph Nader's announcement on Sunday that he is running for president. Bloomberg declared there's no such thing as a spoiler and said time is running out for third-party contenders to get into the race.

"This business of Ralph Nader being a spoiler -- you know, in any three-way race, two of the three are going to be spoilers," Bloomberg said. "Come on. Everybody's got a right to do it -- you're not spoiling anything."

"If people want to vote for you, let them vote for you, and why shouldn't they?" he added.

Michael H. Drucker
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Nader Launches Presidential Bid

Ralph Nader today threw his hat into the 2008 Presidential ring. Nader announced his candidacy on NBC’s Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

I worked on his last campaign. But I think he would be a better advisor for organizing the new youth of the Obama wave in the issues of the 21st Century.

Use the above link for his website.

Michael H. Drucker
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