Free Republic

Barack Obama’s campaign prides itself on grassroots organizing, with thousands of staff members targeting numerous subsets of the population for voter registration and persuasion. One even sought to register inmates. An internal email from the Michigan Department of Corrections in August describes a request from the campaign to enter jails to register those inmates set to be released before Election Day. An Obama spokesman in Michigan acknowledged that a new organizer made the request, but supervisors nixed the idea as soon as they found out about it. The campaign denied all association with a second request to the Department of...

An historic spike in Democratic voter registrations in Pennsylvania could help Barack Obama cut into Hillary Clinton’s vote in Tuesday’s primary, robbing her of the big victory margin she needs to justify continuing the primary fight. The changing party demographics also are contributing to an overall bluing of the Keystone State that could dim Republican John McCain’s hopes of competing there in the fall. A county-by-county analysis by Politico suggests that the hard-fought primary between Obama and Clinton has accelerated an ongoing partisan shift in Pennsylvania that could soon move it out of the battleground presidential states and ripple across...

President George W. Bush has undertaken the onerous task of converting Muslim dictatorships and theocracies in the Middle East into enlightened democracies. The president apparently believes that America can, and should, determine the form of government that more than a billion Muslims live under. But while our commander-in-chief is downright eager to impose American ideology on Muslims in nations thousands of miles removed from our shores, he is downright squeamish when it comes to defending America’s own borders and enforcing our immigration laws. Most distressing is Bush’s assertion that deportation of millions of illegal aliens is “impossible.” How in the...

More than 25 percent of the new registration forms sent to the state since Jan. 1 have been returned to the counties, most because they lack the driver's license, state identification or Social Security numbers now required by federal law. ---snip--- Problems with a new statewide voter registration system could keep tens of thousands of Californians from showing up on election rolls this June. More than 25 percent of the new registration forms sent to the state since Jan. 1 have been returned to the counties, most because they lack the driver's license, state identification or Social Security numbers now...

My middle daughter worked her heart out with high school friends this election, even though she doesn't turn 18 until next month. Thanks to her and a group of like-minded friends, she not only was able to help deliver our area for GWB, but also able to help retire Al Kukovich, the Tom Daschle of the Pennsylvania Senate, and replace him with a pro-family conservative. The kids of both candidates attend her high school, so it got pretty heated at times, though the conservative kids held their ground. Anyway, she has asked for an election celebration theme for her 18th...

While the mainstream media has grudgingly conceded that the GOP had the better turnout operation in this year's election, no one in the MSM has bothered to explore exactly how much better it was. Perhaps it is done out of desire to not fully discourage the Democrats. And, indeed, the Democrats have been pointing to their efforts in order to boost spirits among their base. For example, in the Arlington Advocate, Gloria J. Steiner wrote: …an entirely different variable should not be overlooked. Conservative-leaning author James Q. Wilson pointed out the key might have been the sheer numbers of new...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) Illinois residents could register to vote as late as two weeks before an election under legislation the House approved Tuesday. People who take advantage of the new ``grace period'' in which to register would have to vote by mail or at a special location. The current deadline is a month before Election Day. The bill passed 68-49 and now goes to the Senate, which approved similar legislation in the spring. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson, the bill's sponsor, said voter-registration rules must meet voters' needs. ``People get more interested in voting and elections as the time draws nearer,''...

IT'S NOT DIFFICULT TO DETECT a level of demoralization among some Democrats that can't be explained by the loss of a single presidential election by three points. One reason may be the death, on November 2, of a myth that has long nourished the hopes of the American left--the idea that tens of millions of non-voters (if only they could be turned out) were an ace up their sleeve. For decades, liberals and progressives pointed out that Americans vote at much lower rates than Europeans. Since non-voting is especially high among groups that normally lean to the left--minorities and those...

More than 96,000 people registered to vote on Election Day overall. They made up about 15 percent of the state’s turnout. Orville Fitch, who has been overseeing election issues for the state’s attorney general, said he hopes to compile a "snapshot" of the affidavit’s use. He said the research may show if affidavits are used more often in some areas, such as southern border communities, when compared with central or northern areas. "Many people have expressed concern that Election Day registration or registration with domicile affidavit, or the two combined, are creating some opportunity to fraudulently register," he said, "and...

I consider myself politically informed and I find this statement flies in the face of the conventional wisdom which is why I am posting it to breaking news.

I inputted the numbers into my spreadsheet. In a perfect replay of 2000, If Each county in Ohio voted according to the same percentages Republican and Democrat With the same turnout figures Bush gets 157,431 more votes Kerry gets 120,780 more votes than Kerry did.That makes for a 37,000 vote advantage which would increase Bush’s margin of 166,000 to over 200,000.source: http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/mediaguide.htm Keep in mind that I did not factor out the huge 163,000 Franklin increase which was due almost entirely to their not purging any inactive voters. Franklin was almost half/half so it did not matter that much in...

Milwaukee mayor says many may have to re-register at polls Between 15,000 and 20,000 Milwaukee residents who registered to vote in recent months have not had their forms processed and may find themselves unregistered at the polls Tuesday, Mayor Tom Barrett said today. Barrett said the problem was the sheer volume of registration forms that were completed by groups conducting voter drives, with many forms submitted "at the last minute." The revelation could add a new level of frustration for voters tomorrow, extending waits that are already expected to be long, if voters find out they need to wait in...

In the meantime, charges of voter fraud continue. Democrats cried foul over news reports of the alleged destruction of voter registration forms by a Republican-funded registration group and National Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe charged the Republican National Committee of engaging in voter fraud in at least two states. But Republicans are also pointing fingers. America Coming Together and Acorn, nonprofit groups that have conducted voter registration drives in poor neighborhoods, have both been accused of turning in fraudulent voter registrations. Kerry strategist Tad Devine has called the work of third-party groups to bring in new voter registrations “unprecedented.” Notwithstanding,...

A litle analysis that may allay some of the panic over "floods of new registrations." Michigan just posted the final county registration figures. It could be read as "OMIGOD! 250,000 new registrations! Over 75,000 in Wayne and Washtenaw Counties (Detroit and Ann Arbor)! We're doomed." BUT The site above can give you the actual numbers for every county, and for election 2000 as well. Here's what you find. Since July of this year, statewide registration is up 3.6%; Wayne is up 4.2%; Outstate (outside top 15 counties) is up 2.9%. SLight, but not massive, edge to Dem areas. BUT If...

More extremely good news. The Columbus Dispatch reported an analysis of registered voters in the higher populated Ohio counties. The last 3 paragraphs are extremely misleading concerning Cuyahoga county. This article reports Cuyahoga at 1.005 Mil registered voters. This is a net decrease from 2000. That’s important so I’ll say it again. Cuyahoga county, the most Democratic county in state and Kerry’s hope of winning Ohio has lost 5,000 registered voters since the 2000 election! All those stories about thousands of new registered voters are just so much BS. Hard raw data does not lie. Color Ohio red. Meanwhile other...

Due to copyright restrictions, I cannot link directly to the source of this story that nationwide voter registration is up a "moderate" degree of about 3 percent nationwide since 2000. But you can find one story about it on the Liberal newspaper in Washington, DC in their daily tracking poll box which shows Bush in the lead again. The study was done by the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate headed by Curtis Gans (who is not a conservative). The study did find registrations up more in battleground states such as Florida. There are about 10 million more...

SACRAMENTO - One of the most closely contested presidential races in modern history fueled a record rise in voter registrations across California during the past two months, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said Thursday as he announced that 16.5 million residents are registered for Tuesday's election. Shelley predicted at least 12 million of them will vote, an estimated turnout of 73 percent. The secretary of state reported that nearly 1 million Californians signed up to vote during September and October, driving registrations 1.5 million higher than the March 2 primary that helped nominate President Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry...

State's voting rolls increase By John Greiner The Oklahoman More than 80,000 Oklahomans registered to vote in Tuesday's presidential election during the eight days before registration closed Oct. 8, a state election official said Wednesday. Registered voters in Oklahoma Democrats: 1,102,423 Republicans: 817,771 Independents: 225,397 Libertarians: 687 Reform Party: 32 Total: 2,146,310

There's a new force in Colorado politics, an elusive voting bloc that both parties want on their side: the young voter. Almost twice as many Coloradans 18 to 24 registered to vote in 2004 than in 2000, according to state records. The 115,000 new young voters this year are mostly without party identity: Those unaffiliated outnumber Republicans or Democrats by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio. "It's more difficult for me to align myself with any one group," said Tanya Wollerman, 20. "We're trying to figure that out. Both as a generation and as individuals, we're trying to figure out what our...

Local voter registration increases Kevin Olmstead Sun-Gazette Staff Voter registration drives held throughout the summer and autumn by the two major political parties appear to have worked in Lycoming County, according to county figures. “We’ve had 6,036 new registrations since Jan. 1,” said Sandy Adams, county voter services director. There are 69,399 people eligible to vote in Tuesday’s general election, Adams said. There were 63,657 voters registered for the 2000 election, according to the state Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation. The gap between the number of Republicans and Democrats in the county widened by more than 1,000 voters over...

Non-partisan Survey by Pace University and Rock the Vote Shows New Registrants Motivated to Vote, Worried About a Military Draft NEW YORK, Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- First-time presidential voters are pessimistic about the direction of the country. Only two in five new voters (40%) believe America is headed in the right direction and 49% think it is on the wrong track, according to a non-partisan survey by the Pace University Pace Poll and Rock the Vote (http://www.pace.edu/PacePoll), conducted between October 14 and 21 among voters who registered after the 2000 Presidential Election. Pessimism runs especially rampant among Americans of color....

First-Time Voters' Tracking Study: Because Once is Never Enough A Pace University Pace Poll/Rock the Vote Survey Research Study October 27, 2004 by Jonathan Trichter (Director, Pace Poll) & Chris Paige (Assistant Director, Pace Poll) Executive Summary First-time voters are motivated to vote; 83% report that they are certain to turn out on Election Day. Their enthusiasm does not spring from their optimism regarding the country’s current direction, however. Only two in five new voters (40%) believe America is headed in the right direction, while 49% think it is off on the wrong track. Despite their pessimism, new voters trust...

Sometimes, two fascinating pieces of information come to the Kerry Spot e-mail box almost simultaneously.Kerry Spot reader Steve, a fountain of fascinating information, broke down the numbers of how the undecided voters would have to break to give each swing state for Bush or for Kerry.Using the most recent averages of the Battleground polls found on RealClearPolitics.com I created a table that determines the number of undecided voters from each state that would be required for either Bush or Kerry to win. This is done by assuming that 20% of the overall ranks of the undecided won't vote at all...

Net 2004 2000 2000 COUNTY DEM  REP  OTHER PARTIES ALL PARTIES DEM REP OTHER PARTIES PARTIES DEM  REP  OTHER PARTIES ALL PARTIES Turnout Dem Production Rep Production ADAMS 2,165 5,341 2,049 9,555 18,090 32,115 7,773 57,978 15,925 26,774 5,724 48,423 69% 73% 78% ALLEGHENY -16,035 -2,455 9,687 -8,803 552,525 258,336 95,230 906,091 568,560 260,791 85,543 914,894 64% 58% 90% ARMSTRONG -164 1,791 529 2,156 20,436 20,718 4,077 45,231 20,600 18,927 3,548 43,075 64% 54% 82% BEAVER 349 4,051 1,378 5,778 73,394 37,502 11,397 122,293 73,045 33,451 10,019 116,515 63% 53% 97% BEDFORD 545 2,444 500 3,489 11,045 19,399 2,445...

Counties swamped with voters Shira Kantor, Star Tribune October 27, 2004 SVOTE1027 Interest in Tuesday's election is running high among south-of-the river voters -- so high that getting all the new voters registered has proven to be challenging, county officials say. In Dakota County, elections staff have had to work overtime and borrow employees from other departments to process all the registration cards, said spokeswoman Jane Vanderpoel. In May, there were 207,146 voters registered in Dakota County, Vanderpoel said. As of Oct. 12, the day pre-Election Day voter registration closed, the county had 214,425 registered voters and roughly 5,000 cards...

Newswise — First-time presidential voters are pessimistic about the direction of the country. Only two in five new voters (40%) believe America is headed in the right direction and 49% think it is on the wrong track, according to a non-partisan survey by the Pace University Pace Poll and Rock the Vote conducted between October 14 and 21 among voters who registered after the 2000 Presidential Election. Pessimism runs especially rampant among Americans of color. Just 18% of blacks think the country is headed in the right direction; 76% think it is on the wrong track. Just 31% of Latinos...

They had a felon who said he was given them by someone else working for ACRON or whatever the name of that Dem group is saying they were photo copying them because that how they got paid.....He found out it was illegal to turn them in so he took them to his laywer.......... See I think this is what are these new register are people ripping off these Dem groups to get paid........

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Posted on Wed, Oct. 27, 2004 Thousands of Floridians won't be able to vote in five urban counties because they failed to complete their voter registration applications, a Miami federal judge said. A Miami federal judge on Tuesday tossed out a lawsuit that sought to allow thousands of Floridians to vote in next week's general election, saying county and state officials didn't have to process incomplete voter registration applications. U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King ruled against three prospective voters who sued Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood and election supervisors in Duval, Orange, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade...

They put it off till the last minute, but thousands of Utahns refused to let Monday's rain and snow stop them from registering to vote. Monday was the last day for voter registration statewide. And in keeping with the trend in a year that has seen dramatic increases in voter registration, county clerks' offices and satellite registration sites were busy with long lines of would-be voters — right up to the 8 p.m. deadline. "I think the issues kind of called me out to vote this year," Salt Lake City resident Brad Smith said Monday evening after registering to vote...

CARSON CITY - Voter registration for the Nov. 2 elections ended Tuesday, with election officials saying preliminary numbers show a record 1.1 million Nevadans have signed up to cast ballots. While final numbers won't be available for several days, reports from state and local election officials indicated Republicans were hanging onto a slim registration lead over Democrats. As of late last week, Republicans were up 2,267 over Democrats in several Nevada counties where most of the state's voters live. Updated late Tuesday to include latest figures from the Las Vegas area, the state's biggest city, the margin was down slightly...

Sneaky voter-drive employees are to blame for submitting hundreds of faulty registration applications in Colorado, said an official with the nonprofit organization that mobilized the effort. These workers were able to thwart the drive's system of checks and balances, said Jim Fleischmann, regional coordinator of the voting registration effort of the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, commonly known as ACORN. But he stressed that it was only a small number of employees involved in the deception and a small percentage of the total voters the organization registered. ACORN was one of several organizations across the country to aggressively...

After spending millions of dollars and untold energy to register voters this year, Republicans and Democrats are running neck and neck in registration drives in five battleground states, while Democrats have made notable gains in two others, a survey of recent figures suggests. Neither party has gained a significant registration advantage in such hard-fought states as Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire and New Mexico, a Washington Post study shows. The strongest gains for one party belong to Democrats in Pennsylvania and Iowa. Still, advocates and analysts said unprecedented efforts by political campaigns and independent groups leave them better placed...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Voter registration numbers in all 36 of Oregon's counties have increased noticeably since August, the fruits of an intensive get-out-the-vote campaign that looks likely to be the largest, and bitterest, the state has ever seen. Every county clerk is still processing ballots. Most have hired extra staff, and are working around the clock to make a dent in the piles. The Secretary of State's office is not likely to have final tallies, including breakdowns by party affiliation, until late next week. But a count based on totals as of Friday by The Associated Press shows an...

...there are plenty of newly minted U.S. citizens, expatriates and older people like Dethman and Godat joining the tide of voting neophytes, according to Teresa Van Deusen, the creator of the Voter Virgin, a campaign and Web site promoting voter registration among new and lapsed voters. ...."Everyone has an excuse as to why they didn't vote in the past, ... Buoyed by their new power, Godat and Dethman are more than ready to join the political fray, though on opposite sides. Both want to make up for lost years and decades of regret over not helping to choose the right...

Kerry Spot reader Milton asks, "Can you say who will benefit most from increased voter registration? Clearly there have been efforts on both sides but who is being more effective? The answer could tell us how these close state races will turn out." Milton, I can't answer with 100 percent certainty, but I can point out that Jay Cost has found some good signs for Bush in the voter registration numbers in Minnesota. Minnesota does not list voters by party registration, so I have had to draw some (reasonable) inferences. What I did was look at the percentage of support...

New Voter Registration: Not Enough for KerryThere have been a lot of stories pushing the idea that a whole bunch of new voters are being registered in Ohio. What is underreported is that there are huge increases in Republican counties as well. Especially read the Enquirer article below. Sources: Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Cleveland PDWhat I've done is scour through these newspaper articles trying to figure out how many new registrations there are and in what counties. I then extrapolate from 2000 election results how many of these registrations are new Bush voters and new Kerry votes. what I have...

DENVER - With just 21 days left until an election in which every vote will count, the 9News I-Team has uncovered voter registration fraud that could cause chaos on Election Day for hundreds, possibly thousands of Colorado voters. 9News has discovered a record number of fraudulent voter-registrations across the state. Secretary of State Donetta Davidson tells 9News she is concerned about what the I-Team has uncovered and wants those responsible prosecuted. "It has just gone rampant," she told reporter Deborah Sherman in an interview Monday afternoon. Most of the fraud has come from registration drives, where people at grocery stores...

Grace Lopez watched nine presidential elections come and go, never paying much attention to the hurly-burly of campaigning or the exhortations to register and vote. But when a volunteer with a registration form approached her on a Los Angeles skid row street, something clicked. "I just want to be counted as a citizen," said Lopez, 58, who listed her address as a homeless drop-in center a few blocks from the dirty and cracked sidewalk on Main Street where she sleeps. While the presidential candidates try to impress suburbanites, swing voters and soccer moms, social advocates are working to increase the...

Jessica Smith is a junior at Penn, and she knows a lot of people on the campus in West Philadelphia. But she says she can't think of a single one who isn't registered to vote. "It was hugely successful," Smith, a poli-sci major from Washington, D.C., said of the registration drive by the Penn Democrats that she headed. With tables on Locust Walk every day since the semester began and a floor-by-floor operation that reeked of old-time ward politics, her group registered more than 1,200 students, the majority voting here in Philadelphia. While voter registration is up across the state,...

A surge in voter registration that is setting records in the battleground states has led election forecasters to predict the largest increase in turnout in more than a decade. Signaling the possibility that many newly registered voters may be challenged on Election Day, an RNC official Friday said there were numerous reports of independent Democratic groups who were registering voters using bogus names. "The Democrats have played differently this year. They are trying to keep people out of the process by blocking Ralph Nader's efforts to get on the ballot, while at the same time they've outsourced their voter registration...

On the eve of New York State's voter registration deadline for next month's presidential election, immigrant community leaders and individuals stuck in the federal immigration service's backlog of citizenship cases gathered in front of the Federal Building today to protest over the loss of tens of thousands of potential New York voters in next month's elections. Carrying signs with slogans such as 'Citizenship Delays Prevent Fair Elections,' many of the protesters wore bandannas tied over their mouths, symbolizing the loss of immigrants' voices and votes in the hotly contested November elections. "Roughly 60,000 immigrants in New York have lost their...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- The state Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit accusing Florida's secretary of state of violating federal law when she told elections supervisors to reject incomplete voter-registration forms. The party asked a judge to order Glenda Hood to reverse her instructions to the state's 67 counties. Hood's office told counties they should disqualify voters who failed to check a box confirming they are U.S. citizens, even if they signed an oath on the same form swearing they are. She and other state officials maintain that state and federal laws require the box to be checked. "The Secretary...

New suit expands pre-election battles The lawsuit is at least the fourth pending against Secretary of State Glenda Hood before the Nov. 2 elecions TALLAHASSEE - As Florida inches closer to the presidential election, lawsuits are piling up against Secretary of State Glenda Hood. On Thursday, the Florida Democratic Party filed the latest in a series of lawsuits that will be heard in state and federal courtrooms over the next few days. The increasing number of suits is reminiscent of the 2000 election, when dozens of lawsuits were filed over a recount that saw President Bush win by 537 votes....

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The state Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit accusing Florida's secretary of state of violating federal law when she told elections supervisors to reject incomplete voter-registration forms. The party asked a judge to order Glenda Hood to reverse her instructions to the state's 67 counties. Hood's office told counties they should disqualify voters who failed to check a box confirming they are U.S. citizens, even if they signed an oath on the same form swearing they are. She and other state officials maintain that state and federal laws require the box to be checked. "The Secretary of...

More than 2,000 voter-registration cards turned into the San Joaquin County Registrar's Office for the November election are fraudulent, Registrar of Voters Deborah Hench said. The problem stems from the two major parties pushing to register more people and paying independent vendors to do the work, she said. Because vendors get paid based on how many people they register to vote, some are handing in made-up names to existing addresses or signing the cards themselves. If a vendor gets paid $8 for every registration card turned in, and there have been only a few people registered, it's easy to make...

(10-07) 17:34 PDT CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) -- Nevada's voter registration total now stands at nearly 1.1 million, with Republicans overtaking Democrats who briefly had an edge in voter numbers, reports from state and local election officials showed Thursday. A breakdown of the figures, updated to show latest totals in seven Nevada counties where most of the state's voters live, show the nearly 1.1 million registered voters include 428,063 Republicans and 425,796 Democrats -- a 2,267-registrant edge for the Republicans. Statewide, Republicans account for 40.5 percent of all voters while Democrats represent 40.3 percent of the total. The rest are...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1000137 sandnsea (1000+ posts) Thu Oct-07-04 09:04 PM Original message Another "my son" story (this is GOOD) So he just came home and said his friend had registered 9 voters today... wohoo! All Republican... boo. But wait. His friend got a voter registration job. Tough time registering voters, either they don't want to register or certainly DO NOT want to register Republican. Until he tells them... you don't have to VOTE Republican and you'll be taking $15 out of the RNC coffers. Does the trick every time! Bwahahahahhaha! ______________________________ sandnsea (1000+ posts) Thu Oct-07-04 09:15 PM Response to Reply #1...

The presidential election is less than 4 weeks away. In the height of the political season, the public often sees a large response from older voters, but what about the young voters? Recent polls show the younger voter will have a major impact this year. What's on their mind? Four young, East Texans, gathered for a roundtable, to share their opinions and concerns with KLTV. Now 18, Greg, Brenna, Russell and Julia will vote for the first time, participating in a race to name the next leader of the country. Q: If the election were held today, who would you...

TALLAHASSEE — Law enforcement officials are investigating voter registration irregularities in at least three counties in Florida, and election supervisors fear that the problem is so widespread it could lead to massive confusion on Election Day. Third-party groups, including tax-exempt organizations known as 527s that engage in political activity, have been conducting voter mobilization drives in an attempt to persuade new or apathetic voters to turn out in support of their causes — mostly Democratic — on Nov. 2. But problems with the applications, already reported to authorities in Miami-Dade, Duval, Monroe, Leon, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, could result in...