The schedule for the election process is still as it was in the 18th Century, when there was little more than horseback, and some few trains for transportation,and all election results were by handcount, courier, and the mail. It would be nice to have it changed to speed things up a bit,
Many states have switched to electronic voting. If I remember correctly, thirteen states are distributing ballots to servicemen by email. About seven of them are allowing them to vote by email. This can be a way of testing elections by email, if they can find secure ways of doing that. In the military they have secure email, so they can.
WA or OR, forget which, is voting by mail, and counting all mail in ballots.
Can’t see why that could not be done in more states, bet it saves money.
Ive everyone did, than all states would count all absentee ballots.
By Deborah Hastings - ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated: 05/07/08 6:40 AM
Nuns lack photo ID, can’t vote in primary
Twelve Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a primary polling place by a fellow sister because they didn’t have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.
Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary’s Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote but didn’t get one.
“One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, ‘I don’t want to go do that,’ ” McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.
The convent will make “a very concerted effort” to get proper identification for the nuns in time for the general election, McGuire said. “We’re going to take from now until November to get them out and get this done.”
Secretary of State Todd Rokita was unapologetic.
“Indiana’s Voter ID Law applies to everyone. From all accounts that we’ve heard, the sisters were aware of the photo ID requirements and chose not to follow them,” he said.
Elsewhere across Indiana, voting appeared to run smoothly, despite the fears of some elections experts that the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to strike down Indiana’s controversial photo identification law could cause confusion at the polls.
Indiana’s photo ID law is the strictest in the country. The Republican- led effort was designed to combat ballot fraud, according to supporters, although they acknowledged that no case of voter impersonation at the polls has ever been prosecuted in Indiana.
The state’s American Civil Liberties Union sued, calling the law a poll tax that disproportionately affected minorities and elderly voters who are most likely to lack such identification. On April 28, the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the law did not violate the Constitution.
In a primary expected to draw record numbers, a voter hotline set up by the secretary of state’s office mostly received calls concerning precinct locations, a spokeswoman said.
But a group of voting rights advocates that established a separate hotline reported receiving several calls from would-be voters who were turned away at precincts because they lacked state or federal identification bearing a photograph.
One newly married woman said she was told she couldn’t vote because her driver’s license name didn’t match the one on her voter registration record, said Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center Justice at New York University Law School, coordinator of the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline. Another woman said she was turned away from casting her first-ever ballot because she had only a college-issued ID card and an out-of-state driver’s license, Perez said.
“These laws are confusing. People don’t know how they’re supposed to be applied,” she said.
According to the New Voters Project, sponsored by Student Public Interest Groups, about a dozen college students at Notre Dame, Butler University and Indiana University said they were told at the polls they didn’t have the right form of identification.
In some counties, polling locations ran short on ballots as voters flocked to Indiana’s first meaningful presidential primary in 40 years.
"Secretary of State Todd Rokita was unapologetic.
“Indiana’s Voter ID Law applies to everyone. From all accounts that we’ve heard, the sisters were aware of the photo ID requirements and chose not to follow them,” he said."
Good for Todd…I back him 100%…the laws do apply to everyone, even nuns. I bet if the law required the church’s people who pass the collection plat on sundays had to have a picture I.D. you know they would be all over that…
[i]–Indiana’s photo ID law is the strictest in the country. The Republican- led effort was designed to combat ballot fraud, according to supporters, although they acknowledged that no case of voter impersonation at the polls has ever been prosecuted in Indiana.
One newly married woman said she was told she couldn’t vote because her driver’s license name didn’t match the one on her voter registration record…another woman said she was turned away from casting her first-ever ballot because she had only a college-issued ID card and an out-of-state driver’s license, Perez said.
“These laws are confusing. People don’t know how they’re supposed to be applied,” she said.–[/i]
Whatever man. While I am not opposed to voters identification, this law is nothing more than a cynical effort to disenfranchise people from participatory democracy and is being unfairly prosecuted in the absence of a Federally mandated national ID as it can be enforced unevenly and is open to interpretations…
And creating laws for problems that really don’t exist is hardly anything “conservative” nor libertarian…
I wish proof of citizenship was required to even register to vote, and that the registration card would have a photo. As it is now I don’t have to show any I.D. here in California, I show up with my sample ballot that was mailed to my house and I’m good to go. However, the card should be re-validated every 5 or so years. I fail to see what’s so horrible about this. Everyone has to renew their driver’s license and passport after a stated period. I have to renew my DL 51, hunting license, fishing license periodically.
A citizen has the right to vote. However, the government has the right to determine that the person is a legal citizen, and that he is in fact who they say they are. That’s essentially what the Supreme Court said. To be eligible to vote, you have to be a citizen, not a convicted felon, and have to be who you say you are. Nothing more. And the Supreme Court agreed with that, as long as the same conditions were imposed on everyone.
It’s to help eliminate fraud but some may need fraud to win…
It is. The proof is provided when you registered along with residence. And feel free to show an election where non-citizens are believed to have had any sort of impact whatsoever…
As it is now I don’t have to show any I.D. here in California, I show up with my sample ballot that was mailed to my house and I’m good to go. However, the card should be re-validated every 5 or so years. I fail to see what’s so horrible about this. Everyone has to renew their driver’s license and passport after a stated period. I have to renew my DL 51, hunting license, fishing license periodically.
A citizen has the right to vote. However, the government has the right to determine that the person is a legal citizen, and that he is in fact who they say they are. That’s essentially what the Supreme Court said. To be eligible to vote, you have to be a citizen, not a convicted felon, and have to be who you say you are. Nothing more. And the Supreme Court agreed with that, as long as the same conditions were imposed on everyone.
It’s to help eliminate fraud but some may need fraud to win…
Actually, in the United States, voter registration in itself is made to be a hurdle. Voting is not a privilege allowed for a fee as driving and fishing are. It is an inherent right. One cannot register at the DMV for instance and there certainly are those that seek to minimize the electorate. With voter turnout shamefully low to the extent that it is a national embarrassment, I doubt many of these issues of fantasy voter fraud really exist. And as of yet, nobody (despite much disingenuous innuendo) has shown an election to have been altered by widespread voter fraud. Indeed, many of the interest groups behind this bill are the ones having the most credible accusations against them. Vis-a-vis, Katherine Harris’ purging of Florida voter rolls (of blacks) deemed most likely Democratic prior to the 2000 election, when of course the candidate with less total votes was appointed by the Supreme Court anyways. Or the use of Diebold electronic voting machines that have been shown to be easily susceptible to being hacked and altered with viruses.
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/04/voter_file/print.html
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/06/diebold-voting-machine-hacked-in-four-minutes-flat/
These laws are little more than a means to deny minorities their inherent democratic rights in the absence of a nat’l voter ID card…
If I translated my British political viewpoint into US terms, I would probably vote for the Democratic party.
My choice of the two Democratic candidates would be Obama, as I think Hilliary has too much baggage as the ex-first lady.
I’m kind of sick of the the US being run by political dynasties such as Bushes and Clintons…
Whoever is the best candidate, surely?
It does seem to be a long and exhausting slog to election, and that’s even before you get onto the Presidential elections. Do the candidates have the time to govern?
I did read (somewhere?) that there was a consideration, at some time or other, of cutting the Presidential terms of office down to one term, but making this a six year term so as to allow more time for matters of government. Others wish to extend the number of terms of service.
There’s a guy I heard interviewed on NPR a few months back that advocates that. He wrote a book on how the US needs a new “Constitutional Convention” and among his reforms is making the Presidency a one-term, six year office. I think that president could run again after the next election though…
Makes sense, from the point of view of allowing the President to get on with matters of government.
well i would vote for Barack Obama , first of all because i think he believes what he says and i think he is going to make the difference but i don’t know why . Also , i’m no racist , but i would like to see how a colored-person would govern the USA
I believe that the Republicans will win because Obama and Hillary can’t stop throwing insults at each other and making themselves look bad. Darn, Obama would be a good prez…
I think the Republicans have a better chance, purely because I doubt that most Americans are ready for a black or a woman as their president, at least from the black and woman currently offered.
NYT: Obama, McCain map fall strategies
Two sides say they would be open to holding unmoderated debates
By Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny
The New York Times
updated 6:46 a.m. ET, Sun., May. 11, 2008
Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are already drawing up strategies for taking each other on in the general election, focusing on the same groups — including independent voters and Latinos — and about a dozen states where they think the contest is likely to be decided this fall, campaign aides said.
In a sign of what could be an extremely unusual fall campaign, the two sides said Saturday that they would be open to holding joint forums or unmoderated debates across the country in front of voters through the summer. Mr. Obama, campaigning in Oregon, said that the proposal, floated by Mr. McCain’s advisers, was “a great idea.”
Even before Mr. Obama fully wraps up the Democratic presidential nomination, he and Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, are starting to assemble teams in the key battlegrounds, develop negative advertising and engage each other in earnest on the issues and a combustible mix of other topics, including age and patriotism.
Mr. McCain, of Arizona, will spend the next week delivering a series of speeches on global warming, evidence of his intention to battle Mr. Obama for independent voters, a group the two men have laid claim to. Those voters tend to recoil from hard-edged partisan politics, and presumably would be receptive to the kind of bipartisan forum that Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama seemed open to on Saturday.
Courting independents
Clearly concerned that questions about such things as his association with his former pastor had damaged his standing with independents, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, is likely to embark on a summertime tour intended to highlight the life story that was once central to his appeal. Preliminary plans include a stop in Hawaii, his birthplace, and a major address there at Punchbowl Cemetery, where his maternal grandfather, who fought in World War II, is buried.
Mr. Obama’s campaign is firing up voter-registration efforts and sending troops to Ohio and Pennsylvania, states that he lost in the primaries but that his aides said he must win to capture the White House. Mr. McCain’s advisers said they had tracked Mr. Obama’s struggles with blue-collar voters there and would open campaign headquarters in both states in early June.
Beyond that, aides to the two men said Latino voters would be central to victory in a swath of Western states now viewed as prime battlefields, including Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.
These decisions by Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama to look ahead to the fall reflect their conclusion that it is only a matter of time before Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York steps away from the fight for the Democratic nomination.
Mr. McCain is looking first to states where President Bush narrowly lost in 2004 and where Mr. Obama lost primaries, starting with New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Mr. Obama is looking to states where he won caucuses and primaries — including some, like Virginia, that have been solidly Republican in recent presidential elections — as well as others where he has organizations in place.
Ads aimed at undercutting
And the two sides have produced television advertisements that will be rolled out as soon as the Democratic contest is officially resolved. These advertisements are directed less at promoting themselves than at undercutting their opponents.
The Republican National Committee is planning a $19.5 million advertising campaign to portray Mr. Obama, 46, as out of touch with the country and too inexperienced to be commander in chief, seeking to put him on the defensive before he can use his financial advantage against Mr. McCain, 71, party officials said.
“In 1984, Ronald Reagan said, ‘I’m not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience,’ ” said Frank Donatelli, the deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Well, we are going to exploit Obama’s youth and inexperience.”
On the Democratic side, Mr. Obama’s aides this week put finishing touches on advertisements intended to tether Mr. McCain to Mr. Bush and chip away at his image as a maverick, an identity that the aides said they found remained strong with voters.
“By November, every voter will know that McCain is offering a third Bush term,” said Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe.
Advisers to Mr. Obama said their research suggested that Mr. McCain, notwithstanding his high profile in American politics for more than a decade, was not well known to many voters. In particular, Mr. Obama’s aides said they would highlight Mr. McCain’s opposition to abortion rights to try to stem the flow of disaffected women who backed Mrs. Clinton in the primaries and whom Mr. McCain’s aides said they would aggressively court.
The strategies reflect a lesson from the 2004 presidential campaign, when top aides to Mr. Bush, some of whom are working for Mr. McCain today, began a well-financed television campaign to define and undercut Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the moment he became his party’s nominee.
Mr. Obama’s advisers said they were mindful that he had not yet won the nomination and that six contests remained. Still, they said it was crucial to begin engaging Mr. McCain as soon possible.
Independent voters have been critical in presidential elections as the country has become polarized along party lines. What makes this election different is the extent to which Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain have turned to independent voters for support throughout their careers.
Historically, independent voters have responded to specific issues and concerns, in particular an emphasis on government reform and an aversion to overly bitter partisan wrangling. Accordingly, Mr. McCain’s advisers said they would present him as a senator who frequently stepped across the aisle, while portraying Mr. Obama as a down-the-line Democratic voter who is ideologically out of touch with much of the country.
“We believe America is still a slightly right-of-center country, and that is what McCain is,” said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. “If you look at Obama’s base and his record, he is a pretty conventional liberal.”
Mr. Obama’s advisers, meanwhile, intend to present Mr. McCain as a product of Washington who moved closer to the Bush administration to win the Republican nomination.
The two men also have sought to build their candidacies around images of reform, unconstrained by traditional political molds. The rivals are openly discussing staging forums across the country to speak directly to voters, an idea that is by any measure unconventional for a general election campaign.
Asked about the idea on Saturday, Mr. Obama told reporters in Oregon, “If I have the opportunity to debate substantive issues before the voters with John McCain, that’s something that I’m going to welcome.”
Hiscpanics drawing attention
Hispanic voters could find themselves drawing more attention from presidential candidates than ever before. Their votes could prove critical in determining whether Democrats capture states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico and whether Republicans have any chance of being competitive in California.
Mr. McCain’s identification with legislation that would have permitted some illegal immigrants to attain citizenship, a position he moved away from in the primaries but never renounced, gives him an opportunity to compete for those voters, who except for Cubans in Florida appear to have largely settled into the Democratic camp in recent years.
Mr. Obama also supported measures that would have allowed immigrants to attain citizenship but struggled to win over Hispanic voters in his primary fight, signaling a potential problem for him in the fall campaign. Mr. Obama’s aides said the endorsement by Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, one of the nation’s most prominent Hispanic leaders, could prove more critical in the general election than in the primary.
Both sides say the states clearly in play now include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Republicans said they hoped to put New Jersey and possibly California into play; Democrats said African-Americans could make Mr. Obama competitive in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Mr. Obama’s advisers said they had a strong chance of taking Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia away from the Republican column.
Mr. Obama has a clear financial advantage. By March 31, Mr. McCain had raised about $80 million and reported about $11 million in cash on hand. Mr. Obama had raised three times as much — about $240 million — and had more than four times as much in the bank.
But the Republican National Committee, which is permitted to spend money on Mr. McCain’s behalf, has raised $31 million, compared with just $6 million by the Democratic National Committee. And Republican officials said they were not concerned about being outspent between now and the conventions.
Cont’d
Disadvantage in Fla., Mich.
Mr. Obama’s advisers said that as a result of the five-month series of primaries and caucuses, he had a nearly national campaign apparatus in place and had identified and registered thousands of new voters. That said, they acknowledged that they were at a disadvantage in two important states — Florida and Michigan — because those states had early primaries in defiance of the Democratic National Committee, and the candidates agreed not to campaign there.
“Organizationally, we have now built very powerful organizations in every state but Michigan and Florida,” Mr. Plouffe said. “That is one huge silver lining to how long this nomination fight has gone on.”
Republicans will seek to portray Mr. Obama as out of touch with many voters on issues like abortion and gay rights. Some of Mr. McCain’s advisers said they also thought that Mr. Obama had displayed a number of vulnerabilities as a candidate that they would seek to exploit: they argued that he was prone to becoming irritated when tired or pressed on tough questions, that he had trouble connecting with voters in smaller settings and that he had run a campaign light on substance.
In the eyes of the Obama campaign, Mr. McCain’s chief weaknesses include continuing to embrace the Iraq war, his support for extending the administration’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (he once opposed the idea) and his suggestion that the economy had made “great progress” in the last eight years.
Mr. Obama has said he has no intention of making age — Mr. McCain is 25 years older — an overt issue in the general election campaign. Yet in recent weeks, the Obama campaign has made a point of showing their candidate in settings, on the basketball court, as well as surrounded by his young family, that could be seen as telegraphing the message without explicitly raising the issue.
Copyright © 2008 The New York Times
Extract from an e-mail i received today:
In case you were wondering, the news stories have proven once again that in America, everything bowls down to RACE. Now that Obama has handed Mrs. Clinton
“a good thrashing” – as you Brits like to say, she’s playing the ultimate trump card – RACE – to keep her chances of winning the nomination alive.
There are so many subtle and not so subtle subtexts to what she is doing. She has shown her true colors – She is a White Woman – in the darkest sense of the word – forgive my deliberate play with words.
She is playing on classism, racism and sexism to try and grab a hold of the Democratic nomination. She has shown how much she truly despises Black Americans – who once embraced her and were stupid enough to call her husband the first Black President – although I always felt they were totally undeserving of such affection.
Now, in my cynical view, I’m sure she will try for vice presidency, if she is unable to win the nomination for president. If she becomes vice president, look out. As sure as my name is *^%, the Clintons will arrange for something tragic to befall Mr. Obama so they can assume the presidency. During their reign, there was a lot of speculation that they killed at least two of their followers who fell out of favor – Vince Foster – who was a financial advisor, and the other is Ron Brown, the former Secretary of Commerce, whose plane mysteriously fell from the sky – killing all on board.
In my book, the Clintons are a personification of evil and I hope they can rot away quietly in some corner of Arkansas although I don’t care where it is as long as they rot quietly.
I would hate to vote for John McCain, but I will never vote for the Clintons.
He may believe what he says, that does not mean what he says is correct. Especially when he says you can go to a church like Rev Wrights for over 20 years, and it has not effect. When you can have a personal friend like Bill Ayers, one of the first terrorists in the US, and it has no effect on what you believe. When you serve on the same Board of Directors of an organization which promotes hate. When he says no one would leave a church, just because of the Hate a pastor preaches, etc… he is either out of touch with the majority of people or he is lying, and either way I’d not vote for him.
Ive been an Independent all my life, and vote for who I believe is the best person for the job, regardless of their affiliation. There is no way that I could vote for a person who attended a church like Wrights for 20 years, and defended him. Sure now he does not, but that is self-serving, it does not mean that he believes any differently. He still attends that church, and the new Pastor was hand picked by Rev Wright, to continue in his footsteps. He has already been shown to be preaching hate.
Ive attended churches for over 75 years, and left many of them that I did not agree with, had many relatives do the same. Looking for one where we agreed with all they preached. Found what we was looking for in the Salvation Army. They practice what they preach.
Was Obama’s use of the term “Sweetie” such a big deal?