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News and information about the national, state, and local elections next November.
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Below are the latest articles about Election 2012.
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During the November 2012 election, Black and Hispanic voters waited nearly twice as long to vote as whites, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis. New York Times graphs summarizing the analysis show that white voters waited an average of 12.7 minutes, while Black and Hispanic voters waited an average of 20.2 minutes:
Long lines in several swing states were a major concern during this election, and the longest lines were in Florida, where another recent study estimated that at least 201,000 people may have been deterred from voting by lines that were hours long.
MORE: Blacks, Hispanics Waited Almost Twice As Long To Vote As Whites In 2012 | ThinkProgress.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) became one of the most notorious election officials in the country after his many attempts to restrict voting and discard ballots. Husted banned evening and weekend voting hours in all 88 boards of election, in spite of multiple counties‘ requests to stay open to accommodate people who could not leave their jobs to vote. The 2012 election was the first time election boards were not allowed to set their own hours.
A new report by the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates found that these uniform voting hours created longer waits in urban counties. Residents of cities like Columbus experienced marathon lines on the last day of early voting. Even though more people turned out to vote in smaller counties than did in urban counties, rural Ohioans experienced little to no wait to vote:
MORE: Report: Ohio Secretary Of State’s Restrictive Voting Hours Hurt Urban Voters | ThinkProgress.
This morning, at 11:55 AM Eastern Time, President Obama delivered his Second Inaugural Address. The speech was 2,137 words long and took 15 minutes to deliver.
“America’s possibilities are limitless,” he said, “for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together.”
MORE: The Second Inauguration of Barack Obama | The White House.
Tax-exempt groups that spent hundreds of millions on the 2012 elections without disclosing their donors have stirred no response from federal regulators but have drawn the ire of state officials who are moving aggressively to restrict them.
From California to Idaho, Montana to Maine and New York, state attorneys general and election officials are fighting in court to force big-spending tax-exempt organizations to comply with their disclosure laws.
State officials and lawmakers have also proposed new disclosure rules, in the form of regulations or legislation, along the lines of the DISCLOSE Act, the campaign finance transparency bill that stalled last year in Congress.
By contrast, the IRS and the Federal Election Commission have largely ignored a long string of complaints by watchdog groups that big-spending nonprofits violated tax and campaign finance laws in the recent election.
In the first presidential election since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC ruling, outside groups spent record sums, many without disclosing their donors.
“It’s clear that because of the failure of the federal government to act in this arena, it’s necessary for the states to become more active,” said Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
MORE: States Target Politically Active Nonprofits : Roll Call Influence.
An Arizona political non-profit that spent millions in 2012 supporting Republicans and opposing President Obama told the IRS in September that it would not spend money to influence elections, according to documents obtained by ProPublica.
The organization, Americans for Responsible Leadership, run by a group of mostly little-known Arizona Republicans, also spent millions of dollars on ballot initiative efforts in Arizona and California. Its $11 million donation to a California group prompted a lawsuit from California’s campaign finance watchdog, which eventually forced it to disclose that it served only as a pass-through for the donation.
ProPublica obtained Americans for Responsible Leadership’s application for federal tax-exempt status, as well as applications submitted by a number of other conservative “dark money” groups active in the 2012 elections, after submitting a public records request to the Internal Revenue Service.
MORE: Americans for Responsible Leadership’s IRS Application Published | TPMMuckraker.
Michael Moore put together an excellent list for those of us pushing for the President’s agenda and more. Number 10 may be the most important, and I don’t think it could be said any better.
10. ASK US TO DO SOMETHING. One thing is clear: none of the above is going to happen if you don’t immediately mobilize the 63,500,000 who voted for you (and the other 40 million who are for you but didn’t vote). You can’t go this alone. You need an army of everyday Americans who will fight alongside you to make this a more just and peaceful nation. In your 2008 campaign, you were a pioneer in using social media to win the election. Over 15 million of us gave you our cell numbers or email addresses so you could send us texts and emails telling us what needed to be done to win the election. Then, as soon as you won, it was as if you hit the delete button. We never heard from you again. (Until this past year when you kept texting us to send you $25. Inspiring.) Whoever your Internet and social media people were should have been given their own office in the West Wing — and we should have heard from you. Constantly. Need a bill passed? Text us and we will mobilize! The Republicans are filibustering? We can stop them! They won’t approve your choice for Secretary of State? We’ll see about that! You say you were a community organizer. Please — start acting like one.
via Michael Moore: An Open Letter to President Obama.
This is good news. One of my biggest complaints is that the political fight is much bigger than getting a President elected, and the Obama campaign seems to give up on the grassroots until three months before an election. The 2012 campaign was a bit better than 2010 — but not by much. Even the bluest states have a lot more red when you go down ticket.
The other thing that we need is the promotion of a larger agenda; tax reform, ending wars and helping returning veterans, and improving our education system.
The Obama campaign continues to refine, update and expand its vast database, working the muscle to increase its value for 2014 and 2016. The organization wants to avoid a post-2008 lull, when Obama’s high command was so focused on building a government and staving off a depression that some in the grassroots network felt neglected. This time, supporters are already being asked if they are interested in running for office, and “how many hours per week” they would be willing “to volunteer in your community as part of an Obama organization.”
via POLITICO Playbook – POLITICO.com.
Here are my picks for the Dade county ballot.
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Please remember- it seems like a lot, but there are important issues further down the ballot, and they are often decided by a few votes. Please vote all the way down. Use this guide – it’s not as hard to get through as it may seem at first.
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THE HIGHLIGHTS
♦ Barack Obama
♦ Bill Nelson
♦ Vote DEM for your Representatives, State Senators, or Attorneys
♦ Vote to RETAIN ALL justices/judges
♦ Vote NO on Amendments 1 through 10
Here is a link to a nice break down of the issues, with recommendations I agree with 98%.
RECOMMENDATIONS WITH EXPLANATIONS:
http://www.discourse.net/2012/10/downballot-recommendations-november-2012/
REMEMBER, DOWN BALLOT QUESTIONS CAN BE DECIDED BY A FEW HUNDRED VOTES. PLEASE VOTE THE ENTIRE BALLOT.
While Obama cited only one oil company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, the Romneys’ 2010 and 2011 tax returns show investments in at least 10 Chinese companies, a total investment of at least $391,800.
Among them were New Oriental Education and Technology, a company in which the Romneys’ blind trusts invested nearly $60,000. New Oriental is famous for stealing copyrighted U.S. academic tests, and was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars by a Chinese court for it.
MORE: Presidential Debate 2012: Live Updates On Final Obama-Romney Showdown.
A BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
An average of 50% favoured Mr Obama, with 9% for Mr Romney, in the survey of 21,797 people in 21 countries.
MORE: BBC News – BBC poll: Rest of world favours Obama.
The main battlegrounds: Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida and Wisconsin. The late inclusion of Wisconsin on this list reflects a bet by Romney — buoyed by some polls showing an opportunity for him there — that he can turn a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1984.
Romney officials, eyeing steady gains in the polls, have not ruled out attempting to broaden the map in other states — claims met with disparagement by Obama aides, who say they remain confident their electoral college firewall is intact even amid a tightening national race and signs that three swing states in the South are looking more favorable for the GOP nominee.
Republicans are genuinely intrigued by the prospect of a strike in Pennsylvania and, POLITICO has learned, are considering going up on TV there outside the expensive Philadelphia market. But what Romney officials worry about, both in Pennsylvania and Michigan, is that if they put some cash down or use precious hours to send their candidate there Obama will respond by crushing their offensive with a big ad buy of his own.
MORE: 2012: The battle for 7 states – Jonathan Martin – POLITICO.com.
Arizona’s Apache County is obscuring the collective power of the Native vote in an unprecedented way. The County, which has previously violated the Voting Rights Act, has inaccurately placed more than 500 people who attempted to register on a list that could permanently purge these would-be voters from the rolls. And most, if not all, of those affected are Navajo.
Naomi White wanted to vote in Arizona’s primary in August, and wants to vote on Election Day in November. White had previously voted in Utah, and when she moved back to live on the Navajo Nation’s capital of Window Rock, she registered to vote in Arizona when she updated her license last year. But she told me she never received correspondence confirming her registration.
The 30-year-old attorney still primarily resides in Window Rock, but works some 300 miles away as a prosecutor for the Gila River Indian Community. Sometime before August’s primary, she called the Apache County Recorder’s office to see if she could vote early in the election, since she would be out in the field on the date of the primary. She says she was told that the physical address she listed was too obscure, and the Recorder couldn’t assign her to a precinct.
Like most people living on the Navajo Nation, White uses a PO Box. The US Postal Service doesn’t deliver to homes because many of them are far off from paved highways where there are no streets—much less street names. The occurrence is so common that Arizona’s voter registration form includes a large box on which people can draw the location of their home, in order to help identify their precinct. White says that after she was told she couldn’t be assigned a precinct, she asked of she could vote absentee instead. She says the Recorder’s office told her that she wasn’t technically registered, and couldn’t vote by mail, either. As a result, White was disenfranchised from August’s primary. According to Geneva Honea, who coordinates voter registration for the Apache County Recorder’s office, at least 528 people are in the same predicament as White.
MORE: Democracy in Suspense: Why Arizonas Native Voters Are in Peril | The Nation.
Romney gained in a few areas, but not at Obamas expense despite the incumbents lackluster performance in the first presidential debate on Wednesday.
On the broad question of who they will vote for in November, Obama kept his slim 2 percentage point lead over Romney among likely voters – 47 to 45 percent – in the online survey.
The gap was unchanged from Friday, when Obama led by 46 to 44 percent in the tracking poll. His lead was 6 percentage points before the two men first went head-to-head in Denver.
“We havent seen additional gains from Romney. This suggests to me that this is more of a bounce than a permanent shift,” Ipsos pollster Julia Clark said.
The poll did not show Obama backers shifting to Romney. Rather, Romneys small gains on a few of the issues came from people who had been undecided.
Obama even gained ground in some voters assessment of his character since before the debate, even though a majority – 55 to 23 percent – felt Romney did a better job during the encounter in Denver, the survey showed.
Forty-seven percent of registered voters deemed Obama “a good person,” compared with 31 percent who felt that way about Romney. In a similar survey on September 28, Obama led by 43 percent to Romneys 32 percent.
MORE: Obama still more liked than Romney despite poor debate | Reuters.
Tax cuts for the rich are unpopular, unaffordable and have repeatedly failed to deliver any measurable economic benefits to the rest of the country. So it’s no wonder that during last night’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney didn’t want to embrace a policy of massive new tax cuts for the rich. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans,” Romney said.
It would be nice if Romney really was abandoning the failed theory of “supply-side” economics, but his actual tax proposalstell a very different story. Below is a screenshot from Romney’s own website, taken this morning:
MORE: Romney’s Own Website Refutes His Claim About Tax Cuts For The Rich | ThinkProgress.
“And these [clean energy] businesses, many of them have gone out of business, I think about half of them, of the ones have been invested in, have gone out of business.”
The New York Times, one of the few mainstream organizations to follow up on this claim, called Romney’s comment a “gross overstatement.”
Actually, it’s much more offensive than that.
At a time when the U.S. clean energy industry is supporting thousands of innovative businesses in every state (many of them small businesses), hundreds of thousands of jobs (including tens of thousands in Romney’s home state of Massachusetts), and leveraging tens of billions in private capital, Romney casually tried to claim that “half” of businesses that received federal incentives have gone out of business. That’s not even remotely close to the truth.
Okay, let’s throw the Romney camp a bone. To the small number of people who actually monitor this topic, it was clear that he probably meant the loan guarantee program — a tool that provides government backing of private loans in order to leverage capital for “first of a kind” renewable energy projects
After numerous tweets last night calling Romney out, Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald confirmed today via twitter that the campaign was backtracking: “Now Romney camp tells me he misspoke, only meant to single out loan program.”
Here is a sample of what’s being reported about the truthiness of what Obama and Romney had to say Wednesday night on stage at the University of Denver:
— One of the biggest disputes was over tax cuts. Obama argued that Romney’s plan to stimulate the economy includes a tax cut totaling $5 trillion that, Obama said, isn’t possible because the Republican nominee is also promising to spend money in other places.
Romney flatly disputed that number. “First of all, I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut,” he said.
Who’s right? The Washington Post’s Fact Checker says the facts on this one are on Obama’s side. The New York Times notes that Romney “has proposed cutting all marginal tax rates by 20 percent — which would in and of itself cut tax revenue by $5 trillion.”
FactCheck.org has weighed in too, tweeting during the debate that “Romney says he will pay for $5T tax cut without raising deficit or raising taxes on middle class. Experts say that’s not possible.”
PolitiFact has given a “mostly true” rating to the charge that “Romney is proposing a tax plan “that would give millionaires another tax break and raise taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year.”
MORE: Romney Goes On Offense, Pays For It In First Wave Of Fact Checks : It’s All Politics : NPR.
In the last few days, the President’s approval hit 54%.
Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president.
via Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval.
During the next five weeks – and three debates – Romney will make an appeal to voters aimed at overcoming an Obama campaign that has outflanked his own for much of the past four months. Romney enters the final sprint to the November 6 election behind in national polls and trailing in most of the nine or so politically divided “swing” states that are likely to decide the election.
Just as important, Romney trails Obama among likely voters on a broad array of issues and personal ratings that reflect the scope of the challenge Romney faces in trying to come from behind and snatch the presidency from the Democratic incumbent.
A series of Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls through Sunday indicated that Obama has 7-point leads over Romney on separate questions about which candidate would best handle the economy and who could create more jobs, even though Romney has made his business experience as the head of a private equity firm the centerpiece of his campaign.
Obama held double-digit leads on who would do better on taxes, 45 percent to 34 percent, and on dealing with the Social Security retirement program for seniors, 44 percent to 29 percent.
MORE: Analysis: Reuters/Ipsos polls show scope of the challenge facing Romney | Reuters.
President Barack Obama is a campaign messaging guru, while Mitt Romney is struggling to find a theme that works, according to a new poll Wednesday that used methods for measuring the effectiveness of corporate branding and applied them to political candidates.
Pollsters from the Democratic firm of Penn Schoen Berland said there were several striking findings in their survey — for one, Obama is successfully making the election a referendum on Republicans, while Romney’s attempt to make the race a referendum on the last four years is falling flat with voters. And the Republican hopeful had only one theme that was breaking through with independent voters – his attacks on Obama’s handling of violence in the Middle East, the survey showed.
Of the 24 messages tested — 12 quotes by each candidate from their respective convention addresses and subsequent stump speeches — the top eight were all from Obama.
Obama’s highest scoring message was his line at the Democratic National Convention last month telling voters they should not choose Romney and Republican policies because “we have been there, we’ve tried that, and we’re not going back.”
MORE: Poll exclusive: President Obama winning message war – Mackenzie Weinger – POLITICO.com.
Here are the latest polls from the battleground states, updated as needed through the day:
Florida: Obama 47%, Romney 46% (WSJ/NBC/Marist)
Ohio: Obama 51%, Romney 43% (WSJ/NBC/Marist)
Virginia: Obama 48%, Romney 46% (WSJ/NBC/Marist)
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