Stories tagged with “Election 2012”

Florida Lawmakers: GOP Packed Ballot With Unnecessary Initiatives To Lengthen Lines And Suppress Votes

By Josh Israel on Nov 13, 2012 at 5:40 pm

Credit: Joe Skipper/Reuters

After Florida voters had to spend up to seven hours waiting to vote last Tuesday, Gov. Rick Scott (R) and the Republican-legislature have come under heavy criticism for their efforts to suppress the vote. But while much of the focus has been on their unconstitutional restrictions on voter registration and their reductions in early voting, Florida officials note another major factor behind the long lines: 11 lengthy state Constitutional amendments.

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher told ThinkProgress that the length of the ballot played a huge role in the slow-moving lines on election day and during early voting. The six-page ballot, she noted, took voters “30 to 45 minutes” for voters to read and comprehend. “There were 11 amendments and no one knew what they were,” she observed, noting that one voter took two hours in a poll booth. With such a long ballot, the lines moved slowly. “Our last voter, the Saturday early voting ended, was at 2:30 in the morning,” Bucher said, adding, “It’s atrocious someone had to wait 7 hours.”

The amendments — mostly defeated by the voters — dealt with implementation of Obamacare, restrictions on abortion rights, and allowing public funding for religious institutions. All were placed there by the Republican-controlled Florida legislature and many could have been accomplished by legislative action.

Two Florida state representatives told ThinkProgress they believe the larger than usual number of ballot initiatives were part of an intentional strategy aimed precisely at creating long lines and discouraging citizens from voting.

State Rep. Perry Thurston, the incoming House Democratic Leader, said:

Without a doubt it was intentional. The items in those amendments were not items that needed to be placed in our constitution. Such a long ballot that requires so much reading, you see so many of them were defeated. That, along with the cutting back on the days for early voting, the hours. You could just see it coming and it was gonna be turmoil. … It clearly was [the Republican majority's] intention to make it more difficult, and to discourage individuals. There is no way people should be waiting six to seven hours, but four to five hours is too long as well. It’s a sad reflection on our state when you require that kind of time to do something that’s not a privilege but a right.

Rep. Mark S. Pafford (D), agreed that the amendments were designed to slow down voting:

Basically what they did was load up the ballot so more people would have to take time either reading through or standing in lines of five to six hours in Palm Beach County— and make a decision after a long wait. I don’t think there’s any question that what occurred was designed to suppress voters in FL. … We had amendments – the ballot was full of things that, during the holidays, you don’t talk about at home. Religion and politics.

Pafford said that he believes that the amendments were designed to bring out voters in conservative counties — and keep them away, in more populous Democratic counties. “I knew what was on the ballot very well,” he added, “and I took probably 10 minutes to make sure I wasn’t putting an arrow somewhere I shouldn’t have put it.”

At least one state senator all-but-admitted that voter suppression was a priority for the Republican majority. Sen. Mike Bennett (R) said last year that voting should be a more difficult process: “I wouldn’t have any problem making it harder. I would want them to vote as badly as I want to vote. I want the people of the state of Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who’s willing to walk 200 miles…This should not be easy.”

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NEWS FLASH

Gay Voters Were Essential To Obama Winning The Popular Vote | The Human Rights Campaign has crunched some numbers about the impact of lesbian, gay, and bisexual voters (exit polls were not transgender-inclusive), and found that LGB voters may have made the difference that guaranteed President Obama won the popular vote. According to the data, 76 percent of LGB voters supported the President Obama, accounting for 4,593,136 votes, significantly more than the margin by which Obama beat Mitt Romney in the popular vote (3,305,710). HRC also found that same-sex marriage did not seem to mobilize Republican voters, as more Romney voters supported marriage equality (27 percent) than Obama voters opposed marriage equality (18 percent).

Justice

Poll: Latino Republican Sen-Elect Ted Cruz Received No Boost From Latinos

By Ian Millhiser on Nov 13, 2012 at 3:20 pm

After President Obama cleaned house among Latino voters last week, Republicans are already considering how they can reach out to this growing demographic that showed little interest in what the GOP was selling this election cycle. Polling data from the state of Texas, where Latino Republican Sen-elect Ted Cruz was on the ballot, suggests that Republicans will not be able to close this gap simply by running Hispanic candidates. Although there is no exit polling from Texas in the 2012 election, polling data from Latino Decisions indicates that Texas Latinos overwhelmingly favored Cruz’ opponent:

Although Cruz did outperform GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney among Latinos, Cruz actually performed slightly worse among Latinos than white Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) did in 2008 — when Cornyn received 36 percent of the Latino vote.

The likely lesson of these results is that candidates such as Cruz or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) do not possess a magic wand that can vanish away the Republican Party’s electability problem. If Republicans want to attract Latino voters, they will need to do so by embracing policies that Latinos actually want to see enacted.

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Election

Five Ways The Religious Right Imploded In 2012

By Guest Blogger on Nov 13, 2012 at 11:10 am

Our guest blogger is Jack Jenkins, a Writer and Researcher with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative.

When election returns began pouring in on Tuesday, progressives were quick to declare the election a resounding victory for President Obama, Democratic candidates, and progressive ideals such as marriage equality and the DREAM Act. A deeper look at Tuesday’s results reveals that the 2012 election season was also a resounding defeat for the political engine that has long catapulted the GOP to power: The Religious Right.

Here five ways the Religious Right imploded during the 2012 election:

1) Evangelicals failed to produce a viable candidate. While Rick Perry looked to be the evangelical darling in the early days of the Republican primary, his various “oops” moments forced evangelical Protestants to flock to Rick Santorum, a conservative Catholic. But while Santorum won the support of many evangelicals, his passionate embrace of evangelical positions on abortion and contraception made him unappealing to many women voters. In the end, the machinery of the Religious Right failed to produce a candidate that fired up conservative Protestants, forcing the Romney campaign to work twice as hard to excite the GOP’s evangelical base.

2) Conservative efforts to shift the Catholic vote flopped. After the Obama administration announced the HHS contraceptive coverage requirement earlier this year, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops launched a “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign criticizing the Obama administration and urging Catholics to cast their votes in support of “religious freedom.” The effort failed miserably: Not only did Obama win the Catholic vote overall in 2012 (50% of Catholics voted for Obama while 48% supported Romney), but Pew Research found that the vast majority of American Catholics (78%) knew little to nothing about the bishop’s expensive campaign. Instead, Catholic voters appeared more supportive of the efforts of Sister Simone Campbell and the Nuns on the Bus who spoke out against Paul Ryan’s budget.

3) Evangelical voter turnout efforts fell short. Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition targeted Ohio this year in an effort to increase evangelical turnout, promising to go “all in” by sending voter guides to churches and launching a “major push” to get evangelicals to the polls through a robust get-out-the-vote effort. But when the results came in on Tuesday, Obama had actually performed better among white evangelicals in Ohio than he did in 2008: White evangelicals in Ohio favored John McCain by a 71%-27% margin in 2008, but favored Romney by a smaller margin – 69%-30% – in 2012. Despite all the energy expended by the Religious Right, their turnout efforts failed to have any marked impact on the most crucial state of the general election.

4) Traditionally evangelical candidates lost en masse because of radical views and bad theology. Conservative Christian and then-Missouri Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin caused a stir within the Republican Party when he spoke about “legitimate rape,” but evangelical leaders were quick to come to his aid. But when Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who attends an evangelical church, referred to women impregnated through rape as having been given “a gift from God,” voters across the country – including many evangelicals – began asking questions about this new breed of politician. Ultimately, voters decided that Akin and Mourdock’s radical theology was simply too extreme: They and several like-minded candidates suffered a series of staggering defeats all across the country on Tuesday.

5) The efforts of anti-gay religious leaders didn’t stop voters from supporting marriage equality. When marriage equality amendments were put on the ballot in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington this year, conservative Christian groups moved quickly to try and dissuade people from supporting the freedom to marry. Famed evangelist Billy Graham even launched a massive “Vote Biblical Values” ad campaign, which, among other things, urged voters to oppose candidates who supported marriage equality. Undaunted, pro-marriage equality activists capitalized on groundswells of support among religious groups and ran ads featuring pastors and other religious leaders passionately endorsing same-sex marriage. In the end, Americans voted in favor of marriage equality in three (and probably four) states, dealing a resounding defeat to the anti-gay bastions of the Religious Right.

The 2012 election season appears to have been an ominous one for the Religious Right, and – if the trend continues – may very well signal the end of their traditional dominance of Republican politics. Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, has already voiced the opinion that the Religious Right is hemorrhaging support across the country, and should put less focus on abortion and gay marriage and give more attention to issues such as immigration reform, poverty, and increasing adoptions and foster care opportunities. Whether or not religious conservatives can make that shift remains to be seen, but, in the meantime, the Religious Right looks to have already lost persuasive power with many American voters.

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Election

INFOGRAPHIC: The 113th Congress Will Be The Most Diverse In History

By Scott Keyes, Adam Peck and Zack Beauchamp on Nov 13, 2012 at 9:48 am

Though Congress remains whiter, older, and more male than the nation as a whole, the incoming class will be the most diverse in history.

The 113th Congress will be more representative of the United States from race to religion, and from gender to sexual orientation. It will look more like America with 4 new African American representatives, 10 new Latinos, 5 new Asian Americans and 24 women in the House or Senate.* It will believe more like America with the first two Hindu congresspeople, the first Buddhist senator, and the first non-theist to openly acknowledge her belief prior to getting elected. It will love more like America, with 4 new LGBT congresspeople or senators, including the first openly bisexual congresswoman and the first openly gay congressman of color. And it will be younger, with four new congressmen born in the 1980s.

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Politics

Paul Ryan: I Didn’t Lose Because Of The Issues, I Lost Because Of The ‘Urban’ Vote

By Igor Volsky on Nov 13, 2012 at 9:05 am

In his first interview since losing the election, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) wouldn’t admit that voters rejected his economic vision and instead chalked up President Obama’s victory to a large turnout of the “urban vote.” “I don’t think we lost it on those budget issues, especially on Medicare, we clearly didn’t lose it on those issues,” Ryan to local station WISC-TV. “I think the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race.”

But Ryan’s post-election analysis contrasts sharply with his view of the race before Election Day. Throughout the campaign, Ryan — who was selected for the ticket because of his budget plan — insisted that the race presented voters with a “choice” between two different economic paths for the nation and repeatedly tried to sell the merits of his proposal on the stump. Republican lawmakers bragged that should the GOP ticket win, “they can justly claim a mandate” to push through Ryan’s initiatives. Here are just three examples of the former Vice Presidential candidate making the same argument:

– “The president, I’m told, is talking about Medicare today… We want this debate. We need this debate. And we will win this debate.” [8/16/2012]

– “We have a big choice to make. We’re not just picking the next president for a few years. We are picking the pathway for America for a generation.” [8/27/2012]

– “We’re entering what we call the debate and choice phase of this campaign. And we’re going to give the people of this country the right and opportunity to choose a different path.” [10/01/2012]

Indeed, Obama made raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans a centerpiece of his campaign and voters overwhelmingly agreed with his approach. Exit polls showed that 6 in 10 voters nationwide say they think taxes should be increased and Ryan’s budget proposal played an important role in Senate races where Democrats picked up seats.

And while seniors backed Romney/Ryan at the same rate as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008, a survey commissioned by the AFL-CIO “showed that by 64 to 17 percent, voters want to protect Social Security and Medicare benefits and address the deficit by increasing taxes on the rich, rather than address the deficit by cutting entitlements.”

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Security

International Election Monitors: Good Job, America, Despite Your States

By Hayes Brown on Nov 10, 2012 at 4:50 pm

Polling board members in Arlington, Virginia, demonstrate touch screen voting machines to OSCE observers in 2004

Election monitors from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have released their preliminary findings on the U.S. 2012 elections, determining they “took place in a pluralistic environment and were administered in a professional manner.” The monitors — subject of mass hand-wringing by the right-wing — completed their observations despite numerous threats and instances of non-cooperation by state-level officials.

As part of a mission they have undertaken every two years for the past decade, the OSCE observers were spread across the country to study the election process from beginning to end, taking note of the role of campaign spending, how the media influences voting, and the ease in which citizens could access the polls. The observers were not hesitant to point out the ways in which their job was made harder by certain states:

Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the District of Columbia explicitly provide for international election observation, while other states interpreted their laws in a way that permits access or delegated the decision to county officials. In several states OSCE/ODIHR observers were not provided full and unimpeded access to polling stations. In some cases, OSCE/ODIHR observers were publicly threatened with criminal sanctions if they entered polling stations. This is in contravention of paragraphs 8 and 10 of the 1990 OSCE Copenhagen Document.

Each of the states listed by the OSCE as acting to impede the monitors’ mission — Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas — have a Republican Secretary of State overseeing the election process. The criminal sanctions noted by the OSCE were not hyperbole, having actually faced the possibility of arrest. Texas Attorney-General and Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schulz both threatened to arrest international observers who entered polling stations.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland roundly dismissed the idea of state officials being able to hold observers, due to the reciprocal protected status granted to Americans during observation missions. The OSCE still did not appreciate the sentiment, as Ambassador Janez Lenarčič, the Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a letter.

The report as a whole noted the well-run nature of the election and the competitiveness of the various campaigns, while pointing out that “further steps should be taken to improve the electoral process, in areas such as voting rights, the accuracy of voter lists, campaign finance transparency, recount procedures, and access of international election
observers.” In the midterm elections in 2002, 2006, and 2010, as well as the Presidential elections of 2004and 2008, the OSCE has issued a mostly positive final report on the U.S. elections. The 2012 final report will likely be issued in the next two months.

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Justice

Why Republicans Caught Committing Voter Fraud Show Photo ID Laws Are Unnecessary

By Josh Israel on Nov 9, 2012 at 4:10 pm

Over the past two years, state legislators affiliated with the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council mounted a furious push to enact strict vote-suppressing voter ID laws. But while advocates claimed these laws are necessary to prevent voter impersonation fraud, two arrests Tuesday demonstrate that the opposite is true.

Talking Points Memo reports two Republican voters attempted to “test” whether they could commit voter fraud in New Mexico and Nevada. Neither state requires identification to vote, but both discovered that that does not equate to voter fraud being legal — or easily committed.

In Nevada, 56-year-old Roxanne Rubin, a Republican, was arrested on Nov. 2 for allegedly trying to vote twice, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The newspaper quoted a report by an investigator with the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office that said Rubin “was unhappy with the process; specifically in that her identification was not checked.” … She was arrested at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and charged with a category “D” felony.

On Tuesday in New Mexico, a Republican poll watcher was taken into police custody after also apparently trying to test the system. According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, the man voted, then obtained a second provisional ballot and announced he was simply “testing the system to see if people could get away with voting twice.”

There are many reasons why in person voter fraud — the “problem” these voter ID laws purport to solve — is virtually non-existent. Most people accept the principle of “one person, one vote” and don’t try to cheat the system because doing so is morally wrong. Others recognize that doing so is illegal and do not want to risk being charged with a category “D” felony. And with more than 121 million votes cast in Tuesday’s presidential election, voting twice would be a hugely inefficient way to influence the election.

While polls initially showed statewide support a voter ID measure in Minnesota, once voters learned that such a measure was unnecessary (no one has ever been convicted of voter impersonation in the state’s history), would create hurdles that could keep citizens from voting, and would potentially cost the state millions, it failed with nearly 54 percent of voters refusing to back the effort.

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Health

Meet The Republican Governors Who Still Won’t Implement Obamacare

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Nov 9, 2012 at 4:10 pm

President Obama’s re-election confirms his landmark health care reform isn’t going anywhere, but Republican lawmakers will likely continue their attempts to undermine Obamacare even if they no longer push for an full repeal of the law. In fact, uncompromising Republican governors will likely keep preventing Obamacare from taking effect in their states by standing firm in their resistance to setting up health exchanges and expanding Medicaid.

As Politico points out, whether or not the health reform law is able to operate as it was intended — and expand coverage to about 30 million previously uninsured Americans — largely depends on the extent that governors agree to cooperate in their states. But some Republican governors have already made it clear that they don’t plan on playing nice during Obama’s second term:

Bob McDonnell (R-VA)

McDonnell acknowledged that federal health reform is inevitable now that Obama has been re-elected — but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to cooperate. McDonnell confirmed that Virginia will not be setting up its own health exchange and will continue to refuse to participate in the expansion of the Medicaid program. “I don’t want to buy a pig in a poke for the taxpayers of Virginia,” he said on Wednesday.

Nathan Deal (R-GA)

On Thursday, Deal said his state still doesn’t want any part of Obamacare during the president’s second term and likely won’t work toward setting up its own health exchange. “We’ve pretty well indicated that we don’t like the way that the program has evolved,” he said. Unfortunately for his state’s low-income residents, Deal doesn’t plan to expand the Medicaid program in Georgia either.

Sam Brownback (R-KS)

Brownback chose to put off the decision about setting up a health exchange until after the election, in hopes that a Romney win would eliminate the need to implement Obamacare in his state. But now that the future of the health reform law is secure, Brownback noted on Thursday that he still won’t cooperate with the federal government. “My administration will not partner with the federal government to create a state-federal partnership insurance exchange because we will not benefit from it and implementing it could costs Kansas taxpayers millions of dollars,” Brownback said in a statement.

Rick Scott (R-FL)

Even before the election, Scott made it clear that he wouldn’t set up a health exchange or expand Medicaid in his state. And now that Obama has won a second term, he is holding firm in his opposition to heath care reform, even though Florida has some of the highest rates of uninsurance in the nation. On Wednesday, Scott confirmed that Obama’s re-election doesn’t change anything for him.

Nikki Haley (R-SC)

Like Scott, Haley announced her intention to opt out of both a state-run health exchange and the expansion of the Medicaid program during Obama’s first term. And her administration is showing no signs of changing course now that the election is over. On Thursday, South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services director Tony Keck reiterated that the state will not be pursuing its own exchange. “We’ve let them know we’re not going to set up a state-based exchange. It’s a federal program and it’s their responsibility to make it work,” Keck said.

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Education

Obama Swept States With The Most Educated Workforces And The Highest Paid Teachers

By Scott Keyes on Nov 9, 2012 at 2:45 pm

Barack Obama fared well across the country Tuesday night, winning 332 electoral votes en route to a second term as president. Nowhere did he perform better, however, than in states that place the highest emphasis on education.

Of the 10 most educated states, measured by the percentage of residents over 25 years old who have a bachelor’s degree or higher, Obama swept all 10. Conversely, among the 10 least educated states, Obama lost 9 states.

Here are the 10 most educated states, with those Obama won underlined. The percentage of residents over 25 with a college degree is in parentheses:

Most educated states	Least educated states

Massachusetts (39.1%)	West Virginia (18.5%)
Maryland (36.9%)	Mississippi (19.8%)
Colorado (36.7%)	Arkansas (20.3%)
Connecticut (36.2%)	Kentucky (21.1%)
Vermont (35.4%)	Louisiana (21.1%)
New Jersey (35.3%)	Alabama (22.3%)
Virginia (35.1%)	Nevada (22.5%)
New Hampshire (33.4%)	Indiana (23.0%)
New York (32.9%)	Tennessee (23.6%)
Minnesota (32.4%)	Oklahoma (23.8%)

Similarly, states that invested the most in teachers went overwhelmingly for Obama. He swept the 10 states with highest average public school teacher salaries. Among states in the bottom 10 for average teacher salaries, Obama won just one.

Here are the best and worst states for teacher salaries, with states Obama carried underlined and average salary in parentheses:

States with highest average teacher salaries	States with lowest average teacher salaries

California ($63,640)	South Dakota ($35,378)
Connecticut ($60,822)	North Dakota ($38,822)
New Jersey ($59,584)	Mississippi ($40,182)
New York ($59,559)	West Virginia ($40,531)
Massachusetts ($58,257)	Utah ($41,156)
Illinois ($58,246)	Montana ($41,225)
Maryland ($56,927)	Missouri ($41,751)
Rhode Island ($55,956)	Nebraska ($42,044)
Michigan ($55,526)	Maine ($42,103)
Pennsylvania ($54,970)	Oklahoma ($42,379)

HT: Happy Place.

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