Free Republic

Nearly 2 million dead Americans are still on active voter registries, and 1 in every 8 registrations in the United States is invalid or has major inaccuracies, according to a new study. Research released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States shows that the country is spending more on voter registration while getting worse results than other nations such as Canada. The study points to antiquated systems that don’t reflect modern technology and fail to address the biggest obstacles to maintaining accurate, up-to-date voter-registry databases. Almost 3 million Americans are actively registered to vote in multiple states, while about...

The 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court upheld District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s overturning of the voter-approved amendment (Proposition 8) banning the state’s recognition of same-sex “marriage.” “Voters have no right to amend their state’s constitution in ways that contradict clearly established federal policies,” the Court wrote in its decision. “To allow such ‘willy-nilly’ revisions on a state-by-state basis would lead to a patchwork of divergent laws across the nation. Things that are permitted in some states might be disallowed in others. Uniformity and equality of rights throughout the 50 states would be sacrificed to a misguided notion of state and...

What a sad state of affairs. Well, what do you expect? When schools don’t teach history or government and focus on community organizing this is what you get… An ignorant population of leftists ready to hand control of their lives over to some dictator-wannabe. 39% of American voters believe it’s OK for Obama to trample on religious freedom. Rasmussen reported: Half of voters do not agree with the Obama administration’s action forcing Catholic institutions to pay for birth control measures that they morally oppose. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the...

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court on Tuesday declared California's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional, putting the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for likely consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a lower court judge correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedents when he declared in 2010 that Proposition 8 was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/07/appeals-court-rules-californias-same-sex-marriage-ban-unconstitutional/#ixzz1lnwo1NBK

Two elections supervisors are taking action after an NBC2 investigation uncovers flawed record keeping and human error allowing people who are not citizens of the United States to vote. No one knows how widespread this problem is, because county election supervisors have no way to track non-citizens who live here. So NBC2 did something election officials never thought to do, and found them on our own. "I vote every year," Hinako Dennett told NBC2. The Cape Coral resident is not a US citizen, yet she's registered to vote. NBC2 found Dennett after reviewing her jury excusal form. She told the...

The Republican National Committee is encouraging voters to submit a resume to President Obama, after he offered to help an unemployed semiconductor engineer find a job during an online townhall. The committee has launched NotBetterOff.com, a site that offer a resume delivery service straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. "Upload your resume, and we'll drop it off at the White House!" the RNC website says.

When has 2 percent of anything been considered a major factor? The answer: the crucial Jewish support at election time. And Jews are vital to whatever party woos and wins their allegiance. While their slice of the population sits at a mere 2 percent, they account for 4 percent of the votes cast. And it's been estimated that two-thirds of Democratic funding is from Jewish sources. Put these figures alongside Obama's jagged relationship with Israel and his pandering to the Muslim world, and that's enough to send tremors through the ranks of the party leadership at the thought of the...

The Wisconsin State Journal is reporting that a glitch in the state elections database is causing some Wisconsin voters to be listed in the wrong wards, municipalities, or school districts following the switch to the new, Republican-drawn maps in the state voter registration system. The GAB has known about the potential for error since at least Nov. 18, when the board sent a memo to county clerks saying it was related to the Census Bureau data by which voters’ locations were tracked. Previously, districts were assigned based on ranges of street addresses, which could be a problem if communities had...

ORLANDO, Fla. — Despite trailing in the polls, GOP contender Newt Gingrich was in Orlando on Friday to focus on Florida. The latest Rasmussen poll puts Gingrich in a distant second place in Florida. Gingrich opened up his campaign headquarters in Orlando on Friday. Gingrich's campaign said it feels Florida, with its size and diversity, is a good gauge of how the rest of the country could go. Gingrich may trail in the polls, but he can still fill a room. "I know in some parts of the political process it's unusual to have a candidate who thinks on his...

If you are a conservative and believe in their principles, you may be upset with Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry. Their vicious attacks on Mitt Romney and capitalism have been relentless, and the fallout is just beginning. Perry has lost a top supporter in Barry Wynn who hates the anti-capitalism rhetoric. Gingrich has garnered sharp criticism from Republican heavy weights like Rush Limbaugh and Rudy Giuliani.

"Of all strategic mistakes the leadership of large corporations makes, one stands out: Taking the customer for granted."

A well-informed, interested public is often hailed as the 'ideal' of democracy. But a new Princeton study suggests that the opposite could be the case - and that people who have no interest at all could be vital to the working of a democratic society. The uninformed are essential to democracy because their apathy helps to dilute the effect of powerful minority interests - for instance, highly educated elites - who would otherwise dominate public life.

The Newt Gingrich campaign has opened its national phone banks for supporters nationwide to make calls to Iowa voters prior to the upcoming caucuses. You just have to join the Newt 2012 campaign, and then are provided access to the call center, with the name and number of a potential Iowa voter. A easy-to-read script is provided. This is a great way for Freepers nationwide to participate in the Iowa campaign, even if they are out of state. They don’t provide an 800-number, I guess they can’t afford it yet. What I have done - and others too - myself...

Herman Cain once again walked back his joke about building an electrified fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, telling Univision in an interview that the comment “wasn’t intended to offend” Latinos.Then Cain outlined a border policy he supports – relying on state-level initiatives to control illegal immigration – and specifically praised the Arizona and Alabama immigration laws that Latinos loathe: SANDRA PEEBLES: Mr. Cain, many Latinos were offended by your comment on the electric fence. I understand that you support legal immigration, but regardless of the fact there are 11 million undocumented people in this country. What do we do with...

We are just a few weeks from the first primaries and caucuses, when Republican voters will begin choosing a nominee. In light of this, I'd like to offer some advice for their consideration -- specifically, four enduring truths of American elections that conservatives and Republicans would do well to take heed of as they consider the candidates seeking their support. The Democrats ignored these truths in 2009 and 2010, and they paid the price in the 2010 midterms. If Republicans ignore them by choosing a bad nominee, they will pay a similar price next year, giving President Obama an opportunity...

East metro voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved extending school district levies already on the books, but mostly rejected requests for more cash. West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan was the anomaly. It was the only district that successfully passed a tax increase for operating costs.

Some statewide and local elections on Tuesday could serve as a barometer for next year's battle for the White House.

The phone banks have been humming for three weeks straight in the headquarters of the teachers' union for Minnesota's largest school district, as Anoka-Hennepin teachers and their allies plead with voters to renew an operating levy worth $48 million a year. "If this levy were to fail, I don't know what our district would look like," said Julie Blaha, president of the local chapter of Education Minnesota.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have slipped badly in recent weeks of polling, but he's doing the best of any Republican presidential candidate attracting political contributions from females. According to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics, Perry is receiving a little more than a third of his donations (33.5%) above $200 from women. Former Sen. Rick Santorum is second with 32.3%. About 27.5% of all political contributions to Republican presidential candidates have come from women, according to the Center study.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer suggested Tuesday that voters are to blame for the partisan bickering and standoffs that have defined Congress this year. The Maryland Democrat said voters are “absolutely right” to think that “Congress isn’t working very well.” But that dysfunction, he said, is largely of their own making.

Obama Responds to Black Voters’ DiscontentBy Charlotte Young September 27, 2011 02:03 PM **SNIP** In Monday’s interview, Obama defended his record asserting that he is working hard to help those in the south side of Chicago to those living in Los Angeles barrios and Appalachia. But he remained firm in his stance to keep government programs issue-focused, as opposed to race, stating that “that’s not how America works.” “And so when we put forward a program like, for example, the health-care bill, our focus is people who don’t have health care,” Obama said in the interview with BET News. “Now...

After the midterm elections, Democrats argued that the Tea Party-inspired turnout was a fluke, and that grassroots voters would start turning on Republicans as soon as they had a share in responsibility for governance. According to the latest Democracy Corps survey of battleground Congressional districts, neither are true, at least not yet. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg surveyed voters in 60 Republican-held purple districts and found that voters are even more sour on Democrats than in 2010: One of the Democratic party’s leading pollsters released a survey of 60 Republican-held battleground districts today painting an ominous picture for Congressional Democrats in...

With little more than a year remaining before the 2012 vote, even the hyper-arrogant Barack Obama must be getting a bit edgy about his dwindling chances of re-election. Three years ago, mouthing vacuous speeches and making vacant promises, Obama lied, schemed and intimidated his way into the White House while his campaign committee of left wing journalists provided critical cover for personal and political histories which would have doomed the candidate had they seeped through the wall of media silence. But although Obama could be presented as a relatively “unknown quantity” prior to the 2008 election and depend upon media...

Angry at the failure of his tax and jobs plan to gain enough support in the state legislature, California’s Governor Jerry Brown (D) tore into Republicans for what he termed their “unconstitutional delegation of power.” Brown said that several Republican state senators told him they would like to vote for his package, but wouldn’t for fear of voter disapproval. “Since when do voters have the right to intimidate legislators on how to vote?” Brown asked. “The State Constitution clearly grants the decision on tax bills to members of the legislature. Republicans shouldn’t be using such a lame excuse and voters...

If the polls are right, the voters in the solidly Democratic New York City district that Anthony Weiner represented until earlier this year are about to elect long-shot Republican businessman Bob Turner to Congress. Of course, this will be read by Republicans as a sign that the Obama administration has lost support even in bluer-than-blue areas (which is partially true) and written off by Democrats as a fluke produced by the highly irregular demographics of New York’s Ninth District (also partly true). However, both of those blanket statements mask the true reason that Bob Turner will win this race —...

Even after an op-ed in USA Today and a strong exposition of his position in last night’s debate, Rick Perry still draws heat for his characterization of Social Security as a “monstrous lie.� A new CNN/ORC poll, for example, reveals that 72 percent of registered voters say Perry’s description of the program is “inaccurate,� while just 27 percent say it is “truthful.� More of the breakdown from WSJ’s Washington Wire: The survey also shows that 59 percent of tea party supporters disagree with Mr. Perry’s characterization.Still, 55 percent of those polled say there’s a serious problem with Social Security that...

The Hamilton County Election Commission and state officials are attempting to clarify the new photo voter ID requirements. Election Commission Administrator Charlotte Mullis-Morgan said her office has received dozens of calls in recent weeks about acceptable forms of ID and how voters can get one if they don't already have one. Mullis-Morgan also has been working with state officials to make the process smoother at the election commission and reduce wait times at local driver safety centers, she said. "People just go in and take a ticket," Mullis-Morgan said. "They don't have to wait three or four hours, the normal...

Recent polling has shown huge gaps between the Political Class and Mainstream Americans on issues ranging from immigration to health care to the virtues of free markets. The gap is just as big when it comes to the traditional right direction/wrong track polling question. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 67% of Political Class voters believe the United States is generally heading in the right direction. However, things look a lot different to Mainstream Americans. Among these voters, 84% say the country has gotten off on the wrong track. Twenty-four percent (24%) of Mainstream voters consider fiscal policy...

<p>44EAGLE RIVER, Wis (Reuters) - Voters in two Wisconsin State Senate districts head to the polls on Tuesday in the last of nine recall elections triggered by the fight earlier this year over Republican-backed curbs on the union rights of public workers.</p>

The buzz about Michele Bachmann's crazy eyes photo on the cover of Newsweek refused to go away on Tuesday, a day after the magazine came out. Editor-in-chief of Newsweek and The Daily Beast Tina Brown defended the photo on Twitter. Her one-line response was simply: 'Michele Bachmann’s intensity is galvanizing voters in Iowa right now and Newsweek’s cover captures that.'

California’s next presidential primary will be one of the last in the nation thanks to a measure signed Friday by Gov. Jerry Brown ...

Speaker Boehner, please take a break if possible, and have all the Republican House members go home and have town hall meetings.

A research paper published in Psychological Science has spurred concern among leading Democrats that Republicans may gain an unfair advantage when the American flag is displayed at campaign events. The study—“A Single Exposure to the American Flag Shifts Support Toward Republicanism up to 8 Months Later”—confirmed a recent Harvard professor’s finding that children attending Fourth of July celebrations were more likely to favor Republicans later in life. Democratic Nation Committee Chairperson, Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla) is reportedly weighing whether to ask the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to step in. “It is important that we have a ‘level playing field’ for...

WE BELIEVE it’s vital to maintain the integrity of our election system. That’s why we support laws that require photo IDs to be presented at the polling place. Carrying a photo ID has become a part of American life. You can’t cash a check, board a plane, enter a federal courthouse or even buy full-strength Sudafed over the counter without one. Yet it was disconcerting when 16 Democratic U.S. senators, including Colorado’s Michael Bennet, recently asked the Department of Justice to review new voter ID laws in six states. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder they claimed that...

Ky. sees increase in homeless votersPosted: 9:39 PM Jul 5, 2011 FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Kentucky election officials have reported an increase in the number of voter registration forms from the homeless, raising concerns among some about potential election fraud. After the small increase, State Board of Elections Executive Director Sarah Ball Johnson wrote in a memo to county clerks last week that applications should be approved if they have "homeless" or "place to place" listed as addresses. Boone County Clerk Kenny Brown said Tuesday he fears the policy could lead to vote fraud. He objected to the longstanding procedure...

Angry voters, helped by social media and 'tea party'-like fervor, are organizing recall votes at a record pace against politicians they don't like. [snip] Joshua Spivak, who studies recalls and blogs about them at recallelections.blogspot.com, said there had been only 20 attempted recalls of state legislators in U.S. history. This year, 10 are already on the ballot. Much of that is because of an unprecedented outbreak of recalls in Wisconsin, where the newly elected Republican governor's proposal to limit the power of unions led to recalls against six Republican state senators who voted for the bill, and three Democrats who...

Obama has to get his “crack” vote ready for 2012. So what a better way then to give at least 12,000 early releases from jail via the “Fair Sentencing Act.” Did you know the Democrat controlled Congress last year passed this bill? I guess everyone was focused on the ObamaCARE bill and the nightmare Frank-N-Dodd bills. The so called “Fair Sentencing Act” is describe by the Washington Post as “narrowing the huge disparity in punishment” given to those convicted of possessing crack cocaine versus those found with the drug in powder form. Wow, I’m sure glad they cleared that up...

District Voters Don’t Sugarcoat It: They Want Weiner OutCBS 2's Unscientific Poll Reveals Embattled Congressman Not Welcome June 7, 2011 9:20 PM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Congressman Anthony Weiner’s district encompasses a huge part of Brooklyn and Queens. Several of the city’s iconic neighborhoods are inside his district. CBS 2′s Pablo Guzman went to each borough on Tuesday and found voters are not happy about the “Weiner-gate” scandal. “He should go, absolutely. Absolutely. He don’t belong in public office,” one woman from Woodhaven said. Over in Howard Beach, Brooklyn, Gail Gisehaltz said, “We all believed in him. And if a...

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) predicted that the Democrats will win a majority in the 2012 elections because “voters will have tired of Republican efforts to cut spending and resist tax increases.” “The whole ‘Tea Party’ notion that voters oppose taxes is out-of-date by more than 200 years,” Pelosi averred. “The money isn’t going to the King of England. It’s buying Medicare, Social Security, welfare, corporate bailouts, you name it. Voters love these programs. Bigger government is the only way they can be sure that they continue. Republican demands for ‘fiscal sobriety’ require a self-discipline among voters that just...

"......It was one of the most difficult things I've watched in a long while: Last night, the Assembly debated AB7, the Voter ID bill, for almost six hours before a final vote saw the measure pass, 60-35. Protestors watching the proceedings from the gallery erupted into angry shouts at the passage, and as one gentleman was escorted from the room, he summed up the feelings of many well – "Welcome to Wisconsin, Jim Crow!" This bill is, at its core, a rollback of the right to vote that impacts the most vulnerable and already disenfranchised populations in the state. It...

By now you have probably seen the anti-Scott Brown ad sponsored by the League of Women Voters. This is not your mother’s League of Women Voters. For years Republicans have been frustrated by their slanted candidate debates that earned them the nickname — the League of Women Vultures. But now, after decades of pretending to be nonpartisan, the League has finally publicly outed itself as an extension of the left-wing attack machine.

In an effort to ensure the integrity of elections in the state,Kansasrecently enacted legislation requiring registered voters to show a photo ID at the polls. The law also requires those seeking to register to vote to prove citizenship by providing a birth certificate or another official document that can establish citizenship. The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the law calling it “a giant leap backward.” “This law will narrow the franchise and reduce voter turnout,” complained ACLU spokesman Bertram Petty. “What masquerades as an even-handed across-the-board requirement has a disproportionate impact on historically marginalized groups. As we have seen from...

Obama Faces Hard Times With Catholic Voters Over Abortion When Barack Obama won 54 percent of the Catholic vote in the 2008 presidential election, commentators barely noticed that John McCain won a majority of the religiously-active Catholic vote (51 percent to 49 percent). This was a small margin, to be sure, but it doesn't bode well for the 2012 presidential race, after all the worst predictions of Obama's support for abortion became reality. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/25/obama-faces-hard-times-with-catholic-voters-over-abortion/

California voters may have a new governor, but they remain pessimistic about the economy and the direction the state is headed, according to a new Times/USC Dornsife poll. Less than a third of voters surveyed, 29%, said they believe the economy is starting to improve, with 39% predicting that things will get worse and 28% saying the economy has bottomed out but isn’t getting better. “A very negative mood in the state continues despite new leadership,” said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which co-directed the bipartisan survey. Only 19% of respondents said the state is going in...

“People have been pissing in this lift. What are you going to do about it?”

Green Lake, Wis. — On the frozen lip of sprawling Big Green Lake, local Republicans gathered in a small hotel ballroom this afternoon for their annual Lincoln Day dinner. Mark Slate, a 39 year-old candidate for county judge, was decked in a stovepipe hat, but the real attraction was state supreme-court justice David Prosser, who gave a rousing speech, urging conservatives to support him on Tuesday, when he faces JoAnne Kloppenburg, an environmental lawyer, at the polls. In his remarks, Prosser noted that the race has gone national. Union-friendly groups are pouring millions into the contest, hoping to tilt the...

Detroit congressional districts likely to cross Eight Mile Road in search for black votersBy Associated Press, Wednesday, March 23, 8:51 PM LANSING, Mich. — Mostly black Detroit, facing diminished congressional clout after losing a quarter of its population over the past decade, likely will have to reach farther into its mostly white suburbs to keep black majorities in its two congressional districts. **SNIP** Nearly four decades after the 1967 riots that hastened white flight, four of every five Detroit residents are black. So are the city’s two congressmen, 81-year-old veteran John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee,...

Gov. Jerry Brown, always the frugal one, has resorted to posting his latest message urging you to tax yourself some more on YouTube, where presumably at least that won’t cost taxpayers anything. (Until California gets around to taxing the Internet, that is.) Here’s his video: . . .

-and see if you're any better than the average idiot! This is a terrific test, albeit a couple months dated... very enlightening. But not in a good way... the pitiful results betray the fact that a solid majority of Americans have absolutely no idea what's going on in this country. 80% of the voting public doesn't have a clue- and got less than half right! This goes some ways towards explaining how a shady post-turtle like Barack Obama found his way into the Oval Office- and how the public can continue to be so easily manipulated by the thoroughly-discredited MSM hacks that...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Governor Jerry Brown pressed California lawmakers in his state-of-the-state address on Monday to let voters decide on his budget plan, saying any attempt to block a special election on the issue would be irresponsible. California, the most populous U.S. state, faces a more than $25 billion deficit caused by the combined effects of recession, high unemployment and turmoil in financial and housing markets. Brown, a Democrat, wants to fill the gap with a split of $12.5 billion in spending cuts and $12 billion in tax hikes. He urged lawmakers to help him prepare a ballot measure...