In a democracy that can only boast that 71 percent of its citizens are registered and able to exercise their civic duty in any given election, access to the franchise is crucial. For decades, millions of citizens have relied on either voter registration drives or government agencies to help them get on the voter rolls. Today, however, private voter registration drives are under attack, while some states are ignoring their responsibilities to reach unregistered citizens. If community-based drives are prevented from helping Americans get registered, and government agencies won't help them, then who will?
In several states, elected officials and partisan groups are intent on stifling the proven effectiveness of voter registration drives run by private individuals and organizations. Despite the partisan-spun "scandals" that come with third-party voter registration drives, they are undeniably effective in reaching large portions of the population.
"According to the 2008 CPS, nearly 9 million citizens [or 8 percent] reported having registered 'at a voter registration drive,'" wrote Doug Hess and Jody Herman in Project Vote report, Representational Bias in the 2008 Electorate. "This likely seriously undercounts the total impact of voter registration drives, however, as 9.4 million citizens (another 8 percent) reported that they registered 'at a school, hospital, or on campus'-all locations where voter registration drives are often conducted by civic organizations and student groups."
Another 9.7 million registered to vote through mail-in voter registration applications, many of whom presumably received these applications from voter drives or organizations that distributed the forms through the postal or electronic mail.
Voter registration drives are protected as a form of free speech under the First Amendment, as well as provisions under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (which directly protects and encourages community-run voter registration drives as the law's primary purpose is to ensure more citizens are registered to vote). Yet lawmakers and election officials in states like Nevada are looking to regulate and criminalize voter registration drives so thoroughly, that they can create a "chilling effect on community-based voter registration, causing many organizations to curtail or cease their voter registration efforts."
Meet Katrina Swett. That’s her on the right. Why are we talking about her?
Well, the Democratic primary for New Hampshire’s open congressional seat is just 4 days away, and it’s neck-and-neck.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has endorsed bold progressive candidate Ann McLane Kuster, who is running against Joe Lieberman’s presidential co-chair Katrina Swett. Kuster and Swett met in a big debate Wednesday night, and Swett attacked Kuster for being the "very progressive candidate," saying, "The country is moving away from the more left, progressive point of view."
Seriously? Attacking a Democrat for being progressive in a Democratic primary? Swett’s attack is all you need to know about the type of Blue Dog she’ll be in Congress.
Last week, I wrote about two efforts to repeal marriage equality- one in Iowa, one in New Hampshire. Previously, the New Hampshire House Judiciary Committee voted down two efforts to repeal marriage equality.
Lurleen over at Pam's House Blend has the news that today, the full New Hampshire House voted down a move to subject the rights of LGBT people to a ballot vote via a constitutional amendment, 201-135, as well as a bill to repeal the law altogether (a law which the same New Hampshire House passed), by a vote of 210-109.
Great news, and go New Hampshire. I remain interested to see how married same-sex couples will play into the 2010 Republican Presidential primary in that state, particularly given that it's a semi-open primary (undeclared voters can vote in either party's primary).
There's cold. There's New Hampshire cold. And then there's New Hampshire cold in January when even for a boy from Boston, it was freezing. I still remember how incredibly bitterly cold it was the Saturday before the primary in 2004 (yes, more than five years later, I still am warming up.) I was there working for the Kerry campaign, and we were doing a series of events to promote John. As I stood listening to his speech I noticed that one of the people who braved the bitter cold to attend the event that morning was a New Hampshire man in his 50's. With him was his 10-year old son. He had a notebook and listened intently to what Senator Kerry had to say. After our event, I spoke with him and learned that father-son team planned to go hear Senator Edwards speak, and then Governor Dean. The father was both making up his mind by listening to each of the candidates' views, and teaching his son a powerful lesson in fulfilling his duties as citizen of the United States of America. For anyone who has asked me since what I think about New Hampshire having the first primary, I always tell this story because, to me, they deserve to have it.
Hampshire is a state that often leads the union, and I have had the pleasure of working with some dedicated Granite Staters on building an online resource worthy of the citizens of New Hampshire like that father I saw back in 2004. Today, the Live Free or Die Alliance launches its new website and with it, a model for online citizen engagement for the rest of the nation to consider. The Virtual Town Hall is built to be a resource for informed discussion and debate of issues facing the Granite State. The Live Free or Die Alliance lays out the facts of an issue that both sides agree to, and then invites citizens to share their thoughts and debate the pros and cons with their neighbors and others from across the state.
Regardless of your political inclination, we all can see that pressing problems are everywhere. Yet the rancor, and partisan spin that dominates the public debate at every level of government keep reasonable and rational, fact-based discussion underground where it exists at all. In that environment, many citizens find little they can contribute to the mutual understanding that can allow compromise to happen and solutions to emerge. Seeing this problem, New Hampshire citizens Paul Montrone, Anna Grace Holloway and others decided to create an interactive, nonpartisan venue to inform New Hampshire citizens and stimulate their interest and engagement in the issues facing their state and their communities.
New Hampshire's politicians have already started to take notice. Governor John Lynch (D) will participate in an online chat in which members of the Live Free or Die Alliance can ask the Governor questions on a range of topics. In keeping with its purpose and to make sure the chat isn't just an opportunity for the Governor to put his spin on the questions, the LFDA has secured as a moderator for the event, none other than former New Hampshire Governor Steve Merrill (R). If you are in New Hampshire, I encourage you to join the Alliance(link), get actively involved in the Online Town Hall(link), and join the current and former governors on December 21st.
Thanks to all who have worked on this project, and to the people of New Hampshire for taking a stand for the duties of citizenship in America.
And thank you to that father and his son back in 2004. I don't know if you voted for my guy that Tuesday but I know you voted and, ultimately, that's what matters the most.
We should not send Bob Sununu back to Washington. Schaffer has blindly supported the failed Bush economic doctrine of tax breaks for Wall Street, and reckless deregulation that has gotten us into our current mess.
Bob has done a "heckuva" job at taking care of Wall Street, while neglecting Main Street. He's also voted with Bush 90% of the time. How many times has he voted with the citizens of New Hampshire?
New Hampshire's main streets need a friend in Washington, but it's not Bob Sununu.
Here are a few items for a fine Wednesday evening:
Two new national polls, from NBC and CBS, both show Obama up by 3%, down from 6% in both a couple weeks ago. Obama continues to lead, but McCain continues to catch up.
"If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system," Obama told some 1,800 people at a town-hall style meeting on the economy.
That's cool. Although, I do wonder about single payer sometimes. I mean, France isn't single payer, and they have just about the best system in the world (not to mention a lot of private, supplemental insurance), so it isn't exactly the end-all, be-all of good health care systems.
QUESTIONER: If we don't reenact the draft, I don't think we'll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.
[Appaluse]
MCCAIN: Ma'am, let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said.
No matter the context, a competent, properly vicious, attack minded Democratic campaign would go after McCain hard for this.
Speaking of attacks, during the Democratic national convention, just about every speaker should mercilessly attack Republicans for their convention themes: peace, prosperity and reform. That is just bald face lying, and it needs to be called such. It needs that these are the three things that have been most lacking under Republican governance. Republicans brought us nothing but war, corruption, and an erosion of our national wealth. And, to boot, they continue to lie about it, by claiming they are bringing the opposite. During the convention, Democrats must hammer this home by directly, repeatedly attacking Republicans for their convention themes. Do it.
I have been very spotty on checking my email over the last few days. I just don't want to do it all the time anymore. Weren't there times in our lives when people would call other people if they had something important to say to them? Now, I get hundreds of emails a day, most of them I either don't want to read because they are press releases and email list discussions, or because it is just piling another hour or more onto my workday. Email has become an omnipresent source of work related stress-you are never done or free from work, because you have to check your email. Aarrggghhhh. It just never ends, and I need a breather.
This is an open thread. What are you thinking, reading, or doing tonight?
Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters
Weekly Voting Rights News Update
By Erin Ferns
The debates surrounding the issue of expanding or restricting access to the right to vote are in high gear this legislative session at both state and Congressional levels. Bills filed range from proposals to lower the voting age to voter ID requirements. Project Vote's Election Legislation monitoring project has identified a surge of contentious election bills this year, but whether this is simply the result of the standard impact of a presidential election year or the byproduct of increasingly fractious partisan politics, the future of the foundational right of American democracy is being set right now.
This week Project Vote examines the progress of four hot-button voting rights issues through legislatures and the media. Youth voting in primary elections, voter identification (and its harbinger; accusations of voter fraud), felon disenfranchisement, and vote caging were all in play.
Advocates concerned with any of these issues as well as the entire spectrum of voting rights and election administration legislation can follow the progress of these types of bills through 21 state legislatures at Project Vote's ElectionLegislation.org tool (registration required).
What follows is a multiple regression analysis that attempts to predict a candidate's 2008 vote share based on the 2004 vote shares of candidates in the same city. I've run the regression on all New Hampshire towns that had at least 100 Democratic voters in 2008, weighting larger towns more heavily.
This regression produces a number of coefficients that represent how much support was transferred from one candidate to another. For example, if the coefficient between John Kerry and Hillary Clinton is .73, that means that for every percentage point that Kerry had in a district in 2004, Hillary tended to pick up .73 percentage points in 2008.(...)
Liberman
.66 Clinton
.15 Obama
.05 Richardson
-.16 Edwards
It might also be helpful to turn these numbers around and look at where each of the '08 candidates' support is coming from.(...)
Obama
.93 Dean
.45 Clark
.38 Edwards '04
.15 Lieberman
.09 Kerry
Poblano's analysis means that Barack Obama is winning virtually all Dean voters from 2004, and a plurality of Clark voters from 2004. In other words, Barack Obama has combined the coalitions of the two main netroots fueled candidates in 2004. It certainly shows, too, given that Obama has raised more money from small donors than Dean and Clark combined from four years ago, and that he is drawing crowds even larger than the ones for Dean that caused the media to ooo and aaahhh four years ago.
So, let's see here: a campaign that uses extensive internet organizing, huge campaign rallies, heavy youth and creative class support, a record breaking number of small donors, a fulfilled promise of record turnout, and combination of Dean and Clark voters to force the best possible candidate the Democratic establishment could offer down to the wire?. Correct me if I am wrong, but in terms of structure, that seems to be exactly what the emergence of the progressive blogosphere suggested could happen in a Democratic Presidential primary in 2004. Just because the campaign in question was not, seemingly, single-handedly plucked from relative obscurity by a few prominent bloggers does not mean the Obama campaign is not using the exact same energy and exact same new, political trajectory that the blogosphere was riding back in 2003-2004.
Barack Obama's campaign is the manifestation of the contemporary progressive movement after it exploded from its original early adaptors and disseminated widely into American culture at large. What Obama is doing would simply not be possible without the explosion of new progressive activism that started in the late 1990's with such seemingly disparate events as the founding of MoveOn.org, the Seattle WTO protests, and the multiple outrages over the 2000 Presidential election. Hell, no matter the problems we have with him at different time, Obama was really the first netroots candidate to be elected to the Senate. In Chicago in early 2004, I saw him use the Dean coalition plus African-Americans (and a colossal, timely, flame-out by a self-funded front-runner) to win his Senate primary. Obama was also the only top-tier candidate who opposed the war from the start this time around, and I don't think you will find Obama's campaign is to the right of Dean's on pretty much anything.
It feels like the butterfly effect, the Frankenstein monster, or some sort of self-mutating computer virus. The political zeitgeist that the progressive blogosphere first seized upon five or six years ago was released into the population at large and came back, unexpectedly, as the Barack Obama campaign. That energy certainly didn't turn out with the same rhetorical approach it started with, but otherwise it is nearly structurally identical. In other words, the whole people-powered thing turned out exactly the way we planned it would, only that it sounds a little different. It is like a bunch of loose molecules forming a cloud, once the energy that started almost ten years ago grew, it took on a like of its own, reached a critical mass, and seized onto the first available nucleus. Soon enough, we will find out whether that could covers the Democratic Party in a flood.
Looking at exit polls from Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan, I am left with several questions about the coalition many of the candidates seem to be building:
In all three states, Clinton lost the under 40 vote, but won the over 60 vote. Considering the amounts involved in these swings, sometimes as much as 30%, age is shaping up to be an even bigger divide in the Democratic primary than gender. Why do older and younger Democrats have such sharply divided preferences of Clinton and Obama?
In all three states, McCain has done better with voters who say they are either "dissatisfied" or "angry" with the Bush administration. He has lost those who are "satisfied" or "enthusiastic" with the Bush administration in all three states. If McCain has really made his comeback on the surge, then why are his voters so unhappy with Bush? Also, he has also virtually swept newspaper endorsements. Would McCain have any chance at all without the established media?
Ron Paul does much better among younger voters, and among those who are "angry" with the Bush administration. In fact, if you are a young Republican who is "angry" with the Bush administration, you seem almost guaranteed to be a Ron Paul supporter. Is there a new generation of Republicans coming through the ranks that is very different from the current generation?
There does not appear to be any divide in the Democratic primary between union members and non-union members. As such, do union endorsements mean anything outside of the resources they provide for campaigns?
There is simultaneously an income gap, education gap, and race gap in the Democratic primary. Lower income, lower education voters prefer Clinton, while African-American voters prefer Obama. This means that Clinton is really racking it up among low-income, working class whites. Why is this, and why isn't Edwards doing better among this group?
Anyway, I have to run, but these and other questions about the emerging coalitions in the primary are very interesting. A lengthy primary campaign should provide us with continuing insights to the intra-party coalitions for both Democrats and Republicans, something we have lacked for quite some time the recent string of primary season blowouts.
If you compare Obama's victory in Iowa with his loss in New Hampshire, the story by the numbers is pretty simple. In New Hampshire, Obama tied Clinton among the very liberal, and lost the somewhat liberal, the moderate, and the somewhat conservative groups by 1-2%. That is within the margin of error for all groups. In Iowa, Obama tied Clinton among conservatives, beat her by 2% among moderates (within the margin of error), beat her among 'somewhat liberals' by 11% and crushed her among the very liberal by 16%. This tracks the angry with Bush block that Obama lost from the Iowa to New Hampshire, as angry with Bush voters are probably more liberal than not.
And now, Chris isomewhat despondent that voters are choosing candidates based on identity and not issues. I think though that what has happened is not that identity is paramount, but that ethnic identity and not ideological identity has become paramount. To some extent you can't disentangle these, but if you look at what happened from Iowa to New Hampshire, it's clear that the contest is not between ethnic groups but between competing identities among voting blocks themselves. If the contest is ideological, Obama wins. If it is based on ethnicity and gender, Clinton has a bigger coalition.
In the New Hampshire primary, according to exit polls, 44% of voters who said that the economy was their top issue voted for Hillary Clinton. Also, 44% of voters who listed Iraq as their top issue voted for Obama. Leaving aside the 5% or primary voters who indicated that they wanted to keep troops in Iraq, the following factors were all more determinative of someone's vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary than any of the candidate's position on any issue:
60% of those under 25 years of age voted for Obama
52% of Christians who are neither Catholic nor Protestant voted for Clinton
51% of unmarried women voted for Clinton
50% of unmarried men voted for Obama
50% of those making less than $30K a year voted for Clinton
48% of those over 65 years of age voted for Clinton
48% of those who did not attend college voted for Clinton
46% of women voted for Clinton
45% of seculars voted for Obama
Age, gender, marital status, income, and education were all more determinative of how someone voted in New Hampshire than any issue. In other words, the New Hampshire primary, just like the Iowa caucuses before it, was determined by identity, not issues. Sure, 58% of those vote took the exit poll claimed that issues were more important to them than personal qualities, but the other exit poll numbers show otherwise. People want to think that they are voting on issues, but in reality most of them are not.
Now, I have been writing about the intersection between identity politics and elections for three years. In fact, it is one of my most frequent topics of discussion, as a glance at the demographics archive of both Open Left and MyDD will demonstrate. However, I admit that most of this discussion has been triumphalist, in that I argue demographic trends point to a nearly inevitable Democratic dominance over Republicans, and to a nearly inevitable progressive dominance over centrists in the Democratic Party. What I wasn't prepared for was to face electoral defeat in the Democratic primaries as a result of the identity scales tipping against my favorite candidates.
The problem I face is that it now seems to me that Clinton is positioned for victory in the Democratic primary because, as it is presently constructed, the identity politics coalitions within the Democratic primary electorate favor her. She has women, older voters, and lower income voters who are not African-American. Even though I had assumed otherwise, right now, it seems like that coalition can win a national Democratic primary against a coalition of African-Americans, young voters, seculars, and high education voters. As someone who falls primarily within the latter coalition, I admit it doesn't feel good when the identity politics are stacked against you. To put it a different way, I actually write about identity politics all the time, I just don't like when I am on the losing end of elections based on identity politics (which is, actually, almost all elections).
I don't hate identity politics, as I see it as an unavoidable factor in the American political system. If you want to play in American politics, you better be willing to play in identity politics. Granted, as we have seen in numerous recent remarks from the Clinton and Obama campaigns, it also isn't the most edifying form of discussion around. I left academia because, after several years, it seemed like a series of incredibly smart, stimulating discussions about issues that weren't really that important. Unfortunately, at least partially due to the dominance of identity politics, I have found being a political professional to be exactly the opposite: a series of pretty stupid arguments about incredibly important issues. But there is no way to avoid it, and if you want to play in American politics, you better be prepared to play in identity politics. Identity is far more determinative of ideological and partisan tendencies than any "issue" could ever be. This even goes for dominant issues like Iraq.
Whoever wins this nomination will ultimately do so because s/he put together a larger, identity-based coalition. I wish that weren't the case, but I don't think there is a way to avoid it. If you support a candidate, and want to help him or her win the nomination, you would be wise to start thinking of ways to effectively connect that candidate to the identities of those voters with whom you come into contact. As far as I can tell, on both a micro and macro level, that is the key to the nomination.
Once again the polls published before the New Hampshire primary demonstrated the difficulty of forecasting a primary. For most of his career George Gallup shunned pre-primary polling. Wise man! The problems are almost insurmountable.
Mystery Pollster has more on how large polling error of this sort is not unprecedented, especially in the New Hampshire primary. Really, with the myriad of explanations flying around as to why the polls were wrong, including my own explanations, perhaps the simplest reason is the correct one: it is just as difficult to poll primaries as it ever was. Primaries are much more difficult to poll than general elections for many reasons, and as time goes on we don't appear any closer to solving the problems associated with polling primaries.
No matter what was the actual cause, it is probably accurate to say that African-Americans are more likely than whites to think that white voters lied about supporting Obama in New Hampshire. There has been long-standing semi-anecdotal, focus group evidence that African-Americans were more concerned than whites about white Democrats nominating Obama. Also, to no one's surprise African-Americans do perceive greater racism in America than do whites, as its easier to pick up such things when you are on the business end of them. My question in this post is not to definitely determine whether or not there was a Bradley effect in New Hampshire, but to ask if the perception of such an effect will help or hurt Obama as the primary season moves forward.
On the one hand, the perception of a Bradley effect could have a demoralizing impact on the African-American vote for Obama, which would obviously be a negative for his campaign, for the Democratic Party in general, and for the African-American community. On the other hand, it could solidify African-American support for Obama, and spur on even more African-American activist for Obama, due to a perception that more work and organization will be needed in order to overcome white racism in the primary season. I honestly have no idea which scenario is more likely. In Survey USA polls of South Carolina before and after Iowa, Obama gained 26 points among African-Americans, and 19 points among whites. He can still win narrowly South Carolina even without the boost he received from white voters, but he probably can't win South Carolina without the boost he received from African-American voters. So, this is a very important question for the Democratic nomination season.
When I came home to see OBAMA WINS IOWA on my hotel TV screen I started for the first time in my young life to feel hope. I was desperately hoping for it, I even thought it would happen. But deep inside I never really expected it too. Over the next few days I basked in the victory and relished the increasingly likely possibility that Obama would cruise to the nomination. Then their was New Hampshire. Again I was not prepared for the outcome. I was crushed. How could New Hampshire, the state that seemed to be Obama's base, hand him the loss? I just didn't know how it could have happened. I didn't know what to do or what to think.
The media narratives are out. The Clinton's, once again the Comeback Kids, the race is thrown into disarray. With New Hampshire and Iowa finished, and we have no idea who will be the nominee on either side of the aisle, no clear frontrunner on either side.
So let me take a few of the media narratives and throw in some facts. You know, the basic elements of TRUTH and Reporting?
STATE BLOGS
