McCain Sides With Leading Dems on Global Warming (NH voter reminder ALERT)

A panel discussion on global climate change Tuesday found Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) staff agreeing with representatives for the leading Democratic presidential contenders. A cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, they agreed, is the most promising solution to "global warming."

A cap and trade system would involve limits or caps (lower than current levels) on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced by polluters like power plants. But companies able to cut their CO2 output at a low cost would be able to sell their left-over pollution permits to companies facing higher costs.

John Raidt, a policy advisor to McCain, said during a discussion at the left-leaning Brookings Institution that the Arizona Republican is a "foremost proponent of carbon cap-and-trade."

Raidt said McCain supports a cap-and-trade system above taxes on carbon emissions because "cap-and-trade is a market-driven, proven way."

The position put McCain in league with leading Democratic contenders - Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina - whose policy advisors also participated in the discussion.

Representatives for the three Democrats said they all support a carbon cap-and-trade system.

Discussion moderator Rick Klein, a reporter for ABC News, said the Brookings Institution invited former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, but representatives declined to attend.

Romney has previously expressed skepticism about global warming "alarmism" - the dramatic predictions for catastrophe if humans continue releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

As governor of Massachusetts in 2006, Romney pulled out of an agreement with northeastern states that would have committed the states to reducing their carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system. The retreat has sparked charges of "flip-flopping" against Romney, who had spent years supporting the agreement.

In April, the Carbon Coalition, an environmentalist coalition, quoted Romney as saying, "If there is a carbon cap, I'll make sure it's global and not just domestic." A spokesman for the campaign did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Giuliani's campaign website does not mention global warming or the candidate's energy policy, and a spokesman did not return calls requesting comment Tuesday.

The representatives for Clinton, Obama and Edwards said their candidates agree that cap-and-trade efforts are preferable to a carbon tax. The advisors to Clinton and Obama said nuclear power "should be on the table" as an alternative to fossil fuel-based energy, although they expressed concerns over reactor safety and nuclear waste management.

Edwards "does not think we should be building more nuclear power plants until we resolve the waste question," his advisor James Kvaal said, adding that nuclear power is "never going to be a large part of our solution."

Questioned about the agreement between McCain and the Democratic contenders, Raidt said the candidates agree on the broad approach, but will likely spar over specifics of any plan to address the problem.

"When we get into the details of exactly what's required ... I expect there will be fights," he said, adding that there will be "plenty of time for dissent, healthy dissent."

it's inconceivable to me how McCain can get even one vote in a Republican primary.

Too many idiots voting.

This nation is doomed, its all over but the shouting, the decline started in the late 1950's and is now irreversible.

The Socialists have won, the coup de grace was motor voter further expanding the right to vote to illegal aliens.

The Founding fathers warned against this.

Who Voted in Early America?

Voting Before the Revolution

For the most part, American colonists adopted the voter qualifications that they had known in England. Typically, a voter had to be a free, adult, male resident of his county, a member of the predominant religious group, and a "freeholder." A freeholder owned land worth a certain amount of money. Colonists believed only freeholders should vote because only they had a permanent stake in the stability of society. Freeholders also paid the bulk of the taxes. Other persons, as the famous English lawyer William Blackstone put it, "are in so mean a situation as to be esteemed to have no will of their own."

Becoming a freeholder was not difficult for a man in colonial America since land was plentiful and cheap. Thus up to 75 percent of the adult males in most colonies qualified as voters. But this voting group fell far short of a majority of the people then living in the English colonies. After eliminating everyone under the age of 21, all slaves and women, most Jews and Catholics, plus those men too poor to be freeholders, the colonial electorate consisted of perhaps only 10 percent to 20 percent of the total population.

The act of voting in colonial times was quite different from today. In many places, election days were social occasions accompanied by much eating and drinking. When it came time to vote, those qualified would simply gather together and signify their choices by voice or by standing up. As time went on, this form of public voting was gradually abandoned in favor of secret paper ballots. For a while, however, some colonies required published lists showing how each voter cast his ballot.

Voting fraud and abuses were common in the colonies. Sometimes large landowners would grant temporary freeholds to landless men who then handed the deeds back after voting. Individuals were paid to vote a certain way or paid not to vote at all. Corrupt voting officials would allow unqualified persons to vote while denying legitimate voters the right to cast their ballots. Intimidation and threats, even violence, were used to persuade people how to vote. Ballots were faked, purposely miscounted, "lost," and destroyed.

After declaring independence on July 4, 1776, each former English colony wrote a state constitution. About half the states attempted to reform their voting procedures. The trend in these states was to do away with the freehold requirement in favor of granting all taxpaying, free, adult males the right to vote. Since few men escaped paying taxes of some sort, suffrage (the right to vote) expanded in these states. Vermont's constitution went even further in 1777 when it became the first state to grant universal manhood suffrage (i.e., all adult males could vote). Some states also abolished religious tests for voting. It was in New Jersey that an apparently accidental phrase in the new state constitution permitted women to vote in substantial numbers for the first time in American history.

"Of Government in Petticoats!!!"

The provision on suffrage in the New Jersey state constitution of 1776 granted the right to vote to "all inhabitants" who were of legal age (21), owned property worth 50 English pounds (not necessarily a freehold), and resided in a county for at least one year. No one is sure what was meant by "all inhabitants" since the New Jersey constitutional convention was held in secret. But it appears that no agitation for woman suffrage occurred at the convention.

After the state constitution was ratified by the voters (presumably only men voted), little comment on the possibility of women voting took place in the state for 20 years. Even so, one state election law passed in 1790 included the words "he or she." It is unclear how many, or if any, women actually voted during this time.

In 1797, a bitter contest for a seat in the New Jersey state legislature erupted between John Condict, a Jeffersonian Republican from Newark, and William Crane, a Federalist from Elizabeth. Condict won the election, but only by a narrow margin after Federalists from Elizabeth turned out a large number of women to vote for Crane. This was probably the first election in U.S. history in which a substantial group of women went to the polls.

Newspaper coverage of women voting was widespread in the state and included the publication of a new song titled, "The Freedom of Election." The sarcastic last verse illustrates pretty much what the attitude of most New Jersey men must have been:

Then freedom hail! thy powers prevail o'er prejudice and error; No longer shall man tyrannize, and rule the world in terror: Now one and all, proclaim the fall of Tyrants! - Open wide your throats, And welcome in the peaceful scene, of government in petticoats!!!

New Jersey newspapers debated whether the state constitution really intended for women to vote. Some argued that the words "all inhabitants" surely did not include children, slaves, and foreigners. If this were the case, they continued, women should not be allowed to vote either because they never had before. Others maintained that perhaps widows and single women who owned property worth 50 pounds should be able to vote. Married women were automatically excluded from voting since at this time all property in a marriage legally belonged to the husband.

One New Jersey opponent of woman suffrage wrote in 1799, "It is evident, that women, generally, are neither, by nature, nor habit, nor education, nor by their necessary condition in society, fitted to perform this duty [of voting] with credit to themselves, or advantage to the public."

In 1806, Newark and Elizabeth again faced off at the polls, this time over the site of a new county courthouse. During three days of voting, partisans from both towns used every legal and illegal device to gather the most votes. Men and boys, white and black, citizens and aliens, residents and non-residents, voted (often many times). Women and girls, married and single, with and without property, joined the election frenzy. Finally, males dressed up as females and voted one more time.

Newark, with 1,600 qualified voters, counted over 5,000 votes; Elizabeth, with 1,000 legal voters, counted more than 2,200 votes. Although Newark claimed victory, the voting was so blatantly fraudulent that the state legislature canceled the election.

The following year, the state legislature passed a new election law to clear up the confusion over who was qualified to vote in New Jersey. The law declared that since it was "highly necessary to the safety, quiet, good order, and dignity of the state," no persons were to be allowed to vote except free white men who either owned property worth 50 pounds or were taxpayers. Such voters would also have to be citizens and residents of the county where they voted. The campaign for this new election law was led by John Condict, the legislator who was nearly defeated in 1797 when many women voted for his opponent. Thus, in 1807, with little debate in the all-male state legislature, and no public protest from the state's female population, the experiment with woman suffrage in New Jersey came to an end.

Expanding the Right to Vote

Although for a time some states like New Jersey wanted to limit suffrage, the trend throughout U.S. history has been to expand the right to vote. At first, the main debate was over property tests. But by the Civil War, most states had replaced the freehold and other property requirements with universal white manhood suffrage or something close to it.

With the end of slavery, reformers turned to securing the right to vote for black freedmen. While this was accomplished constitutionally with the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, another century passed before discrimination against black voters was finally suppressed. Women did not win the right to vote until the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920, over 100 years after women lost the vote in New Jersey.

In 1964, the 24th Amendment prohibited denying anyone the right to vote in federal elections for failing to pay a voting or any other tax. Finally, in 1971, the 26th Amendment reduced the legal voting age to 18 in all elections.

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