Free Republic

At an event in Cleveland on Wednesday, President Obama endorsed a system of mandatory voting, a policy that would penalize eligible voters who don't make it to the polls on Election Day. The idea is not universally embraced, though it has significantly boosted turnout in Australia, where it's in place. It's very easy to see why Obama likes the idea. He spoke longingly of increased turnout during the 50th anniversary ceremony in Selma, Ala., earlier this month. There's value in getting more people involved in the democratic process that doesn't tie directly to the success of his party, but it's...

If Bernie Sanders has his way, “Democracy Day” will be the crowning holiday of America’s dystopian future. Imagine: Everyone in slab-gray uni-gender tunics and biodegradable Crocs, all lined up in perfect uniformity to cast a legally mandated vote for the single party that remains. Democracy! Pharrell’s “Happy” will play over loudspeakers in the background. On loop. To the country’s credit, a future in which Americans submit en masse to the shame of Crocs is unlikely. But Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is proposing, in the wake of November’s midterm-election turnout numbers, a new federal holiday: Election Day, or, as he would...

Donna Brazile, who managed Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign two years ago, sent a memo to Democratic lawmakers last month warning that they need to do more to reach out to African-Americans or risk losing their support in coming elections. "The Republicans are in the House," Brazile said in the controversial memo, quoted in Sunday editions of New York's Newsday. "They came in through the window and they want to play." The former Gore official, who now heads up the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, urged party officials to "roll up their sleeves and box (the GOP)...

Low Democratic voter turnout has been blamed for the decisive Republican victory in Tuesday’s midterm elections. It has quickly become the scapegoat, even though the Democrats invested millions of dollars in an expansive effort to persuade young and nonwhite voters who do not usually participate in midterm election to head to the polls. There is no question that turnout among core Democratic groups was lower in 2014 than it was in 2012 or even 2010. Many Democrats would have won if turnout had resembled a presidential election year. But Democrats also lost in states where turnout surpassed 2010, according to...

SITREP: Turnout. Tell us how turnout is where you are.

Election Day Forecast: Rain May Factor Into Turnout in Central US Friday, October 31, 2014 18:21 ET By Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather.com senior meteorologist. While rain could deter voter turnout on Election Day in part of the Central states and the Northwest, dry weather is in store in the East and the balance of the West. Gubernatorial elections will be held on Nov. 4, 2014, in 36 states, along with elections for many other state and local government offices. Unsettled Swath From Texas to Western New York Rain is forecast to fall on areas from Texas to the lower Great Lakes...

Headline only from DrudgeReport: SOURCES: According to latest early voting data from AP, Republican have 10% lead in ballots cast...

Attorney General Martha Coakley is locked in a dead heat for governor with Republican Charlie Baker because she’s struggling to win over the two demographic groups she needs most. Partisan Democrats and women voters formed the backbone of the recent Democratic victories in Massachusetts. But three weeks before Election Day, Coakley is still struggling to close the sale with the state’s Democratic base. Democrats have established a winning formula in recent contests: Roll up big margins with women voters, turn out the party faithful and capture just enough independent voters to allow Democrats’ built-in numerical advantage to overwhelm Republicans. This...

In school, I researched voter participation rates. I concluded that countries that haven’t been invaded in a long time, generations and centuries, have the lowest voter participation rates.

I don’t think there is any way to overestimate the importance of the mid-term elections. Although I wish I could view the world through nonpartisan eyes, Barack Obama and Harry Reid have conspired to make that impossible. I’m just hoping that a sufficient number of Americans come out of their collective coma before the fat lady has a chance to warble “Nearer My God to Thee” at this nation’s funeral. The trouble is that we have a president who seems to lie awake nights trying to come up with new ways to destroy America. For openers, he is terrified –...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had vowed to crush the tea party in this spring’s primaries. His decisive win on Tuesday over a tea party challenger in Kentucky’s GOP primary has fueled plenty of establishment-over-tea party stories. Let’s just say the war ain’t over. “After the primary is over, it’s really the responsibility of everyone who wants to see a change in Washington, D.C., come November to support our candidates,” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, McConnell’s deputy GOP Senate leader, who survived a much more tepid tea party onslaught in his own primary in early March. Cornyn singled out Kentucky’s...

Caught on a flight from Washington to Texas Sunday, Karl Rove, the guru of the GOP political establishment, was not pleased with a statement by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, a member of the House Republican leadership team, which sounded like a surrender in the fight to overturn Obamacare. Asked if the comment by Republican leadership acquiescing to the continuation of the Affordable Care Act was helpful to GOP chances in November, Rove said, “It doesn’t. It absolutely doesn’t.” Rove had not had a chance to read the article in the Spokane Spokesman-Review that quoted McMorris Rodgers as saying...

If President Obama’s 2012 campaign was known for anything, it was its voter mobilization operation, said to be the most sophisticated ever assembled in a presidential campaign. Which makes David Plouffe’s comments over the weekend all the more telling for Democrats as they look nervously toward the November midterm elections. When Republican David Jolly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in Florida’s 13th Congressional District a week ago, Democratic leaders explained away the outcome by arguing that the district tilted heavily in favor of the GOP in midterm and especially special elections. Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign...

TAMPA -- Some Florida Republicans fear, and some Democrats hope, that a November referendum on legalizing medical marijuana in Florida will drive young and liberal voters to the polls, helping Democratic candidates including gubernatorial challenger Charlie Crist. The initiative, still not certified for the November ballot, is generating charges of political motives from both sides. Some Republicans call it an expensive ploy by Crist's backers to help him win. "It is no coincidence that Charlie Crist's law partner and biggest supporter, John Morgan, is financing medical marijuana," said Gainesville-based GOP consultant Alex Patton. "It's a plan." Some Democrats, meanwhile, say...

Just because California Democrats hold every statewide office and a supermajority in the Legislature doesn't mean they're not worried about 2014. Some Democratic insiders fret that, essentially, life may be too good for the party right now. Their lurking fear: Without a high-profile presidential election or a big-name Republican challenger lined up yet against Gov. Jerry Brown, Democratic voters won't be interested enough to cast ballots in November. If that happens, the GOP could pick off a few seats in the Legislature, wrecking the Democrats' two-thirds majority and damaging Brown's ability to move his agenda. Adding to Democratic insiders' anxiety...

In the immediate aftermath of the election, Republicans slammed Mitt Romney for not being able to match the popular vote totals of John McCain, but many forgot that the full totals in the popular vote take a few weeks to finalize. This past week, Romney's totals surpassed McCain's in an election that had a smaller overall turnout, Kimberly Strassel reports for the Wall Street Journal --- and Romney did significantly better in swing states than the GOP did in 2008 as well (via Scott Johnson at Power Line): Mr. Romney beat Mr. McCain's numbers in every single battleground, save Ohio....

In the wake of Mitt Romney's loss, many Republicans say the GOP must make far-reaching changes to be competitive in future elections. White voters are a smaller and smaller part of the electorate, they point out, while Latinos and other minorities are growing as a percentage of the voting public. Unless the Republican Party reinvents itself to appeal to those voters, the argument goes, the GOP can get used to being out of power. There's something to that. The electorate is changing, and the Republican Party needs to keep up with the times. But the more fundamental answer to the...

President Obama’s campaign organization is the greatest political machine in modern history. How it was possible to take a moribund economy, high unemployment, and no detectable foreign policy and turn it into a sweeping electoral victory over a credible opponent is one of the great political stories of our time. Plouffe, Messina, Axelrod. Political geniuses who wiped away forever the Clinton campaign axiom, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and replaced it with, “It’s the Community Organizing, Stupid.” A few years ago, I was talking to a Democratic member of Congress who is close to Obama. She who told me of seeing...

.....No, the real story is that three states held votes and nobody came. Almost nobody, that is. Consider that the total turnout for Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota combined was barely over half of the turnout of South Carolina alone and -- worse yet -- barely over half the turnout for the same three states in 2008. Thus, after South Carolina's record-setting primary turnout, the Republican Party has now seen a total of five events in a row where turnout was down compared to 2008. This includes the three events from this week along with Nevada and Florida. Yes, something has...

The states examined are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Michigan. The trend for Obama was across the board: fewer votes in all swing states. However, the Republicans were able to increase the votes for Romney in seven of the nine states.