[A] majority of the Court seems committed to invalidating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and requiring Congress to revisit the formula for requiring preclearance of voting changes…It is unlikely that the Court will write an opinion forbidding a preclearance regime. But it may be difficult politically for Congress to enact a new measure.SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein earlier this morning. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires certain states with a history of voter disenfranchisement to obtain approval from the federal government before making any changes to their voting laws. One possible outcome: The court strikes down the criteria used in Section 5, but doesn’t strike down the requirement for preclearance itself. If that happens, a new criteria for preclearance would have to be constructed and enacted. And who would be responsible for that? John Boehner and Harry Reid, of course. Sigh. More on today’s arguments here. source
When any American, no matter where they live or what their party, are denied [the right to vote] because they can’t afford to wait for five, or six, or seven hours to cast a ballot, we are betraying our ideals. So tonight I’m announcing a non-partisan commission to improve the voting experience in America, and it definitely needs improvement. …we can fix this, and we will. The American people demand it, and so does our democracy.President Obama, calling for reforms to the voting process.This was foreshadowed in a single line during his victory speech on election night 2012 (“we have to fix that”), and as Obama explained, attorneys from both his campaign and that of his opponent, Mitt Romney, will participate in the effort.
201,000 Floridians didn’t vote in November because the lines were too long source
We must compete in every state and every region, building relationships with communities we haven’t before…Simple ‘outreach’ a few months before an election will not suffice. In fact, let’s stop talking about ‘reaching out’—and start working on welcoming in.Planned remarks by Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus for the group’s upcoming winter meeting. Since November, we’ve heard a lot from the GOP about “re-calibrating” its message to appeal to demographics it lost in 2012 (Hispanics, women, young people, African-Americans, LGBT folk, and others). What we haven’t yet heard is how, if at all, those recalibrations will manifest themselves policy-wise. Will Priebus, or anyone else at this RNC meeting, be able to articulate what policies the GOP has to offer the people who voted to reelect President Obama last year and expand the Democratic majority the the Senate? Or will they insist that it’s just a matter of messaging? Speaking of messaging, Priebus probably isn’t too happy about Republican darling Allen West’s latest. source
It was not my bill…The Legislature passed it. I didn’t have anything to do with passing it.Florida Governor Rick Scott, insisting to his state’s Legislative Black Caucus that he isn’t responsible for the voter ID laws the state passed in 2011. Of course, Scott signed the bill into law, and his administration spent more than $500,000 defending it in court once it became law, so this is a spurious claim, to put it nicely. In other news, a new poll suggests trouble for Scott when he runs for reelection next year. source
Which voters waited on long lines to cast their ballots on Tuesday? According to a survey by the AFL-CIO, Obama voters were much more likely to wait on lines longer than 30 minutes than Romney voters, with blacks and Hispanics especially vulnerable.
The long lines were so bad, it took just two minutes for President Obama to mention them in his victory speech on Tuesday, with a rare flash of anger: “By the way, we have to fix that.”
It’s hard to believe that with forethought, planning, and some sort of standardized elections system, our country couldn’t ensure that voting lines and snafus of the kind we saw on Tuesday won’t happen again. It’s a big deal.
Robert McDonald learned the hard way that every vote counts.
McDonald, who is known to most people as Bobby, finished in a dead heat Tuesday with Olivia Ballou for the sixth and final seat on the Walton City Council.
Each candidate captured 669 votes, but one ballot McDonald is sure would have gone his way was never cast. His wife, Katie, who works nights as a patient care assistant at Christ Hospital and is finishing nurse’s training at Gateway Community and Technical College, didn’t make it to the polls yesterday.
“If she had just been able to get in to vote, we wouldn’t be going through any of this,” McDonald said. “You never think it will come down to one vote, but I’m here to tell you that it does.”
Did anybody else immediately think of Jerry Gergich, from Parks & Recreation, upon seeing this story? It might be good to keep this in mind, particularly if you think you’ll have friends questioning the value of an individual vote during the next round of elections. Unfortunately, for Robert McDonald, there won’t be a run-off either. The tie is likely to be broken by a coin flip some time next week.
He was dead. He had no heartbeat and he wasn’t breathing. I started CPR, and after a few minutes, he revived and started breathing again. He knew his name and his wife’s name. The first question he asked was ‘Did I vote?’Ty Houston • Recounting a particularly shocking series of events that took place while he filling out his absentee ballot at a township office in Oakland County. The 48-year-old home care nurse is responsible for saving the life of an elderly voter who collapsed while filling out his own ballot at a nearby table. After recovering, and once his wife took a moment to remind him that personal health is important too, the unidentified man responded that only two things were important to him. “That I love you and that I finished what I came here to do … vote.” source
A Pennsylvania electronic voting machine has been taken out of service after being captured on video changing a vote for President Obama into one for Mitt Romney, NBC News has confirmed.
http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/06/machine-turns-vote-for-obama-into-one-for-romney/
(Photo by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images)
This situation was directly affected by a video posted to Reddit — which had initially pinpointed it as fraud. It appears to have been a mis-calibrated machine. Anyone else see stories like this today in their neck of the woods?
— Ernie @ ShortFormBlog
Today in the internet having a direct effect on the election.
The question of why poor people vote Republican is not simply an issue of income but primarily race and partly region and gender. Poor people may be more likely to vote Democrat; poor white people are not. In 2008 McCain won a slim majority (51%) of white Americans who earn less than $50,000 (this is just below the national median income which is not poor but the only figure available from exit polls that breaks down votes down by race and income), while Obama won a whopping majority of non-whites in the same category (86%). Asked in May which candidate would do more to advance their family’s economic interests middle-class white voters who say they are struggling to maintain their financial positions gave Romney a 26 point lead over Obama.
But that support is less pronounced among white women than white men and is not uniform across the country. In Mississippi 84% of whites who earn below $50,000 backed McCain: in Vermont 70% in the same category voted for Obama. Of the nine states that backed Obama in 2008 in three less affluent whites went for McCain, in five they backed Obama and one was a tie. In all of them non-whites voted Democrat.
The Guardian’s Gary Younge takes a closer look at what he believes to be the driving forces behind poor and working class Americans’ ballot decisions.
— Scott @ ShortFormBlog
Hat tip to this headline writer.
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Romney did something last night that I didn’t expect him to do, and obviously Obama didn’t expect him to do. He suddenly became the moderate Massachusetts governor again.Michael Tomasky, chalking Romney’s success last night up to the adoption (or re-adoption) of a moderate political ideology. In returning to his circa-2002 policy positions, Romney “disavowed or contradicted virtually everything he’s been saying for the past 18 months,” Tomasky says, citing Romney’s stated positions on preexisting conditions, taxes, Medicaid and school funding. source
This is a big win in that no one will be turned away on Election Day because they don’t have the new strict voter ID. The state has a large budget to spend on advertising this fact, and we want to make sure it does it.Benjamin D. Geffen, lawyer with the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia • Speaking on the decision by a Pennsylvania judge today to delay implementation of the state’s new voter I.D. law until after the election. Judge Robert Simpson ruled that identification will be requested at Pennsylvania ballots, but will not be required — it was he who’d upheld the law back in August, but the state Supreme Court ordered further hearings, narrowing the examination to whether easy access to forms of I.D. had been provided. source
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