With Election Day only four days off, the Justice Department is planning to send 780 observers to polls in 23 states including Texas, California and New York.
DOJ lawyers and other employees will monitor voting in Harris, Fort Bend, Dallas and Jefferson Counties in Texas; Alameda and Riverside Counties in California; and Orange County in New York.
The Justice Department observers will join a growing throng of lawyers and poll watchers sent by the presidential candidates as well as state and local candidates. In addition, Houston-based True the Vote, self-proclaimed poll integrity organization, has pledged to deploy a virtual army of watchers to sniff out alleged voter fraud at polling stations in Texas and elsewhere across the nation.
DOJ regularly sends Election Day observers to guarantee ballot access under the Civil Rights Act of 1965. On Tuesday, they’ll be on the lookout for whether voters are subjected to different voting qualifications or procedures based on race or speaking a language other than English. Some of the observers will be able to converse with voters who primarily speak Spanish, or Asian or Native American languages. Others will check that those who are blind or otherwise disabled get the assistance they need.
Several states including Texas had voter ID laws struck down in federal courts. But confusion remains. Pennsylvania, for instance, also has a voter ID law on the books that civil rights advocates and lawyers fought in court as discriminatory against minorities. A judge ruled that poll workers can still ask for ID but must let those without them vote anyway.
Some analysts are predicting that with so many partisan and non-partisan lawyers jamming into polling places, particularly in battleground states, the chances of a close finish winding up in court are greater than ever.
Before about 100 people in Bridgeport’s Holiday Inn this morning, Republican challenger Steve Obsitnik of Westport and U.S. Rep. Jim Himes of Greenwich held the last of their 4th District debates. Only three were held, because of the cancellation of last Sunday’s League of Women Voters debate in Wilton. But this one, sponsored by the AARP, highlighted their differences. Himes defended the Affordable Care Act and the federal stimulus program, while Obsitnik criticized them.
“I want to solve the greatest problems of our time,” Obsitnik said. “Anemic job growth, sagging debt. I want to serve you and only you, if I’m lucky, for four terms, eight years and I come back and I live by the same rules I helped to put in place. We can rebound, we can be prosperous again. We can return this country to where we’ve been.”
Himes: “…When I arrived in Washington in January of 2009 we were spiraling into a depression…I am proud of that after 50 years of time we actually got a system of universal health in place so that no American will ever die because they don’t have access to a doctor. I’m proud that a gay person will no longer be told that they can’t serve this country because of their sexual proclivity. I’m proud that we took $60 billion out of the student-loan industry that was going to the banks and gave it now to the students in the form of a lower interest rate…”
The tone of media coverage of President Obama and Mitt Romney changed dramatically after the first presidential debate, a new study by Pew Research Center has documented.
Before the Denver debate, which voters overwhelmingly believed that Romney won, 22 percent of all stories about Obama had a positive tone, while the ones about Romney were positive only half as often.
Then things changed.
As Romney gained in the polls in the aftermath of the debate, he got substantially more favorable media coverage: 20 percent positive, 50 percent mixed and 30 percent negative. Obama’s coverage suddenly became more negative. Nearly three times as many Obama-related stories had a negative tone than a positive one: 13 percent positive, 51 percent mixed and 36 percent negative.
Overall, however, Obama still has received slightly more favorable coverage this year. The reason, Pew discovered, is that much of the TV coverage of the campaign involved polling and the daily “horse race.” Since Obama led for much of the year, much of the positive coverage reflected his advantage in the polls.
Excluding such horse-race stories, the tone of media coverage was very similar for both candidates, Pew found.
When looking at the different media types, more distinctions become clear. The so-called mainstream media maintained a pretty balanced tone in their coverage, Pew reported. But the tone tended to get more negative with blogs and social media. Facebook and Twitter posts and conversations were particularly negative — with Romney at a big disadvantage there.
Network news viewers received a different narrative about the candidates depending on when they watched. The morning shows on CBS, ABC and NBC set up a tone that favored Romney more. On the evening news shows, though, Obama was better off.
Cable coverage on Fox News was far more negative toward the president than its positive stories. Still, Pew found that MSNBC was even more one-sided: against Romney.
Linda McMahon, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, upset some in her party last month when she launched a new television advertisement urging supporters of Democratic President Barack Obama to split the ticket and also vote for her.
But other Republicans saw her Obama commercial as brilliant strategy in a reliably blue state.
Considering McMahon is not a supporter of Obama’s policies and has pledged to reverse some if elected, it’s hard to imagine too many people following her suggestion to split their ticket, but who knows?
So today her Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, released the following ad featuring an appeal straight from Obama.
Sparks, NV – Nevada is one swing state that is still very much in play. Look at the polls. Both tickets have passed through there in recent days and will continue stopping by Reno and Vegas through Tuesday.
While we recently were catting around in the all-important Washoe County — home of Reno and Sparks — we met Jim Laudrisen. The Sparks resident is a 63-year-old retired janitor.
He’s an Obama supporter — like he was four years ago. But in the past few months, he’s discovered that a lot of his close pals are voting for Mitt Romney.
Democrats (and privately, some Republicans) talk about how powerful The Reid Machine is in getting out votes in Nevada. The Senate Majority Leader, backed by organized labor, is indeed formidable there.. And Reid’s pollster, Mark Mellman, just released a memo saying Obama is up six points there.
Mellman did accurately predict Reid’s 2010 Senate race. But that sounds ambitious. Nevada has one of the highest unemployment (12 percent) rates and number of foreclosures in the country. There is no deep well of support for Obama there like there is for Fightin’ Harry.
Just ask Jim Laudrisen. Here is yet another chapter of our vaunted series of Voices of the West video blogs, courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com’s Shaky Hands Productions:
More than $2 million of independent expenditures has been funneled this week into the 5th Congressional District battle between state Sen. Andrew Roraback, a Republican, and his Democratic opponent Elizabeth Esty – making it the fourth most expensive congressional race in the country, according to OpenSecrets.org, and one of the most expensive in the state’s history.
More than $16.6 million has been spent on the race to date, according to OpenSecrets.org, including about $5 million from outside groups hoping to influence the outcome.
The most recent source of outside cash comes this week from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC, which spent $1.1 million for an advertisement in support of Roraback that calls the candidate a “rare moderate” and an “independent voice.”
Bloomberg, who recently came out in support of President Barack Obama’s re-election bid, started the PAC earlier this month and reportedly plans to spend up to $15 million in support of local, state and congressional races.
“I am proud to have the support of Mayor Bloomberg’s PAC which supports socially moderate, fiscally prudent candidates who have the courage to be independent and who will work in a bi-partisan manner to help solve the many challenges America faces today,” Roraback said in response to the media buy.
Officials with the Esty’s campaign, however, said it makes sense for a billionaire like Bloomberg to support Roraback, claiming that the congressional candidate is “such a vocal supporter of tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.”
“We are up against millions in superPAC expenditures, that’s what his (Roraback’s) campaign is now,” said Esty spokesman Jeb Fain.
He also pointed to the $1.1 million media buy earlier this month in support of Roraback by the “shadowing right wing” superPAC from Ohio, the Government Integrity Fund Action Network.
Fain said what matters most in the waning days of the campaign is the grass roots ground game and the “hundreds” of volunteers who have been making phone calls and knocking on doors on Esty’s behalf.
“At the end of the day shoe leather will beat superPAC’s,” he said.
Esty, however, has had an equal share of outside money flowing into the race in support of her campaign.
The House Majority PAC funneled more than $940,000 worth of media buy’s in support of Esty’s campaign this week releasing an ad that claims Roraback “fought to raise taxes on the middle class.”
Esty has also received about $1 million worth of expenditures in support of her campaign from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Meanwhile in the campaign, the Cook Political Report changed the race from “leaning Democratic” on Thursday to a toss up.
The report stated that “socially liberal GOP state Sen. Andrew Roraback is a good fit for this district’s upscale voters. The likelihood Roraback will outperform Romney in the Farmington Valley has earned this race a place in the Toss Up column.”
According to the latest Federal Elections Commission reports, Roraback has raised $1.3 million in his bid for hte congressional seat while Esty has amassed a war chest of $2.9 million during the campaign, including nearly $600,000 of her own money.
5 hits and 5 misses on the campaign trail, Oct. 29-Nov. 2
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Hits:
1. Bipartisanship in a crisis. What a concept. Rush Limbaugh derided it as “man love,” but what we actually saw with Barack Obama and Chris Christie in New Jersey was the way things are supposed to work. Politics and party should be subordinated to the work at hand when the country faces a crisis. Unfortunately that is no longer the norm, so it looked all the more startling. Cynics will point to the fact that a Christie presidential bid could be four years closer if Romney loses. Alternatively, it could just have been about two leaders, leading. Advantage: New Jersey and the country.
2. 171,000. Jobs, that is. The unemployment rate, announced Friday morning, ticked up from 7.8 to 7.9. But the decent job-growth total, announced at the same time, coupled with upward revisions of jobs number from the last couple of months, gave new credence to the president’s mantra that things are slowly but steadily getting better. The Obama camp simply needed to avoid a disaster. The Romney camp needed a startling return to an unemployment rate over 8 percent. That would have given the campaign a huge lift, but it may have been the last news-related chance for Romney bounce. Advantage: Obama.
3. From Flohiva to Minnegania. The Romney campaign declared this week that the electoral map was getting bigger because the challenger was surprisingly competitive in Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and they scheduled ad buys and campaign stops there. State polling shows those races tightening, particularly in Pennsylvania, but they also showed Obama’s small swing-state leads in Ohio and Virginia to be enduring. Democrats scoffed at the notion that the map was truly expanding — but with plenty of money and an abundance of caution, they placed their own ad campaigns and sent Bill Clinton and Joe Biden out on the hustings, even as the President tended to Hurricane Sandy business. Who’s right about the situation on the ground in these states? We’ll see, but the president has consistently led the polling. Advantage: Obama.
4. New Jersey’s present, America’s future? Many of the Northeast’s leaders met the challenge of helping their citizens through the disaster. Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo all did admirably. But nobody could top the incredible public-service work of Christie, who was seemingly everywhere in his state, reaching out to people in distress and making things happen one-on-one. Ditto Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who was seen for days personally delivering emergency supplies and constantly interacting with citizens of his damaged city on his Twitter feed,. Both were inspiring to many — and both clearly have national political futures. (Question: What if Romney had chosen Christie as his veep candidate, and he had gone from campaign to this work in New Jersey? That’s an Obama nightmare.) Also, it’s wonderful to see Booker, Malloy, etc., using social media as a force for good, not just politics. Advantage: Citizens.
5. Nicer Mitt. The softening that began during the debates, from “severe conservative” to moderate, suffused the candidate’s final week of campaigning (with the noted exception of the Ohio attack ads — see below). With Sandy distracting much of the country, Romney correctly sensed it was not time for hyperpartisanship. He’s been … human on the campaign trail. Call it Etch-a-Sketch if you want, but you could also call it essential to victory. Whether it’s enough or in time is the question. Advantage: Romney.
Misses:
1. Where’s the money from? John Cornyn’s credibility is on the line — not in the Lone Star State but in Missouri. Somewhere, Todd Akin got $1.75 million to run a last-weekend barrrage of advertising. The state party didn’t have the money and neither did Akin’s campaign. Cornyn has repeatedly said the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, which he heads, would not fund Akin’s campaign after his “legitimate rape” remarks. But Akin has managed to stay very competitive in the race up to the final weekend. So did Cornyn and RSCC go back on its word? They’re not saying, and neither are Akin or Missouri party officials. Campaign disclosure reports won’t come out until after the election. But come out they will. Cornyn is in the unenviable spot of either having to go back on his word or watch hopes for a GOP majority in the Senate evaporate with a Democratic hold in Missouri. Advantage: Akin, but at what cost?
2. Power and gasoline. As the federal government rushes to help the victims of Sandy however it can, it’s impossible not to notice what it can’t seem to do — get gasoline to the storm-damaged areas or goose the electric utilitities to restore power faster. People are grumbling and fed up about being without power. Fistfights and even gunplay have broken out in gasoline lines, giving us a chilling reminder of our continued fossil-fuel dependence. Those conditions are a red flag for Obama, who will, rightly or wrongly, take the lion’s share of blame for such frustrations. The president will still easily carry New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. But it could hurt in Pennsylvania, particularly in key suburbs. Advantage: Romney.
3. Don’t let the facts get in the way. And if they do, suppress them. The Congressional Research Office, a nonpartisan part of the Library of Congress which has been valued by both parties over the years for its analysis of complex issues, withdrew a tax research report after complaints from the Republican congressional leadership. The problem: It dared refer to the “Bush tax cuts” and “tax cuts for the rich,” language the Republicans found to be politically loaded. A bigger problem: It undercut a central tenet of the conservative conversation on taxes and the wealthy: The old trickle-down theory that holds if you cut taxes on the wealthy, everybody benefits. The flap over the report is a perfect illustration of how far we have to go before we can arrive at a “grand bargain” on taxes and budget. Advantage: None.
4. Too little, very late on climate change. Suddenly this week, politicians like Chuck Schumer and Andrew Cuomo were talking about climate change as a real issue. Now we know what it takes to focus attention there — a storm that crippled Manhattan. To his credit, Michael Bloomberg has consistently spoken forcefully about issues that dare not be raised in presidential politics — climate change and gun control major among them. This week, he was moved to endorse President Obama. The reason: He believes the president will be more courageous on the issue than his own party’s candidate. It was a surprising and pointed move. Unfortunately, it comes too late to force enough attention to the issue in the presidential campaign. Neither candidate has done the country any kind of a service by consistently avoiding the issue on the campaign trail. Advantage: Obama.
5. CEOs lash out — against Romney? “Cynical campaign politics at its worst,” said GM spokesman Greg Martin. He was referring to the Romney auto-bailout advertisement that suggested Chrysler and GM were shifting jobs to China. Sergio Marchionne, Chrysler’s executive, was equally blunt: “Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.” It was most unusual for corporate leaders to take a swipe at a GOP standard-bearer this late in a campaign. Whether the ad was a sign of desperation, or a move to take Romney over the top in a razor-thin race, it clearly exposed the candidate to a dangerous backlash. Advantage: Obama.
Gay marriage supporters learned a lot from the missteps made by like-minded Californians during the 2008 Proposition 8 battle. Here is state Rep. Laurie Jinkins — the first openly lesbian member of Washington’s legislature — and Ryan Mello, the first openly gay member of the Tacoma City Council telling San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com’s Shaky Hand Productions what they learned from Prop 8:
And spent some time going door-to-door with Karlene Rytkonen, a field organizer with the Washington United for Marriage campaign. Here is a snippet from our walk through Seattle’s Central District. Or walk-and-talk with the Shaky Hand:
