Mission of Boehner

The ballad of Johnny Boehner (swampland.time.com)

People will blame Congressional Republicans much more than President Obama and Congressional Democrats by wide margins, according to recent polls, if the sequestration cuts take place and the economy lags.

In spite of a last minute attempt to re-brand these unpopular spending cuts as Obama's cuts (pictured above*), the public is not falling for it. The Republican party has spent four years preaching austerity. You can't suddenly reverse yourself and have any credibility on the issue. That was their brand and Speaker Boehner and the Tea Party was boasting about these budget cuts not too long ago. And at the time Boehner said he got 98% of what he wanted.

This is yet another reminder that the ideology the Republicans have espoused in recent years is incredibly unpopular outside the bubble. So Boehner and the GOP's goal now is to try to shift the blame to President Obama.

Good luck with that.

* Is this the first time a political re-branding campaign had the slogan represented by a Twitter hashtag?

Florida Polling

 (Geology.com)

Most polls in the last week show Romney ahead in Florida. The last polls in the state show Obama +1, Romney +3, Romney +7, Romney +4, Romney +1, and Romney +1.  Average them together as RCP does and it's Romney up 2.5.

The poll showing Obama up 1 is the oldest so obviously the trend line is moving in Romney's direction since the debate. I don't usually like to get bogged down in the internals of polls, since almost every poll's sample is off a bit and that's why it's best to just average them. But the poll showing Romney up 7, had him winning among Latino voters. Some other recent polls show Florida Latino voters moving toward Romney with Obama's lead being cut from high teens to single digits, so again that is also trending in Romney's direction. Florida's Latino voters tend to be more conservative than Latino voters in the rest of the country so this isn't a huge surprise. But Obama won Florida Latinos by 15 points in 2008, so he hoped to do at least that well in 2012, especially considering that nationally he's leading Romney among Latinos by around 50 points.

Here are some demographic changes to think about, though. According to reports there are 44,000 less white voters registered in Florida in 2012, while there are 55,000 more black voters registered and 195,000 more Latino voters registered.

The caveat here is that in Florida, it depends what type of Latino voter you're talking about. If most of the 195,000 newly registered voters are Cuban, then Romney may end up having a net gain in this demographic.

In 2008 Obama won the state 51%-49% by a margin of 236,450 votes.  White voters made up 71% of the electorate in 2008. Depending on turnout, registrations at least so far show that white voters will make up less than 71% of the electorate in 2012.  Anyway, I did a little estimation that is hardly scientific, but I subtracted 44,000 from the number of white voters who voted in 2008, while adding 55,000 to the number of black voters who voted in 2008 and 195,000 to the number of Latino voters who voted in 2008.

But let's try this and play around with the numbers and give Romney 60% of the white vote (up from 56% in 2008), give Obama 55% of the Latino vote (down from 57% in 2008) and black support remaining at 95%, this election is a toss up, with Romney ahead 4,190,075 to 4,176,404, a lead of less than 14,000 votes. If you tweak the Latino support to give Obama the 57% he got in 2008, he's ahead by about 40,000 votes, 4.2M to 4.16M.

If you play around with the numbers further and give Romney a 2 point lead among Latinos, as the one poll showed, then he'd be winning the state by 180,000 or so votes 52-48, or roughly what some of the polls are finding.

So I think the keys in Florida are: 1) how much, if any, did Romney increase his share of the white vote, 2) how much, if any, did Romney increase his share among the Latino vote, and 3) turnout, turnout, turnout.

Polls are simply predicting and estimating all three of these factors. But no matter what the current polls show, I'd be shocked if either side won this state by more than 100,000 votes this time around.

Block the Vote

(source: thepeoplesview.net)

With polls holding steady for months now showing President Obama with a lead over Governor Romney in PA settling somewhere in between 6 and 12 points, you'd think PA would be moving from "toss-up" to "leans Obama" to "likely Obama" in all of the electoral college models. The demographic trends of the voters in PA are making it increasingly less swing-y than most of the other dozen or so "swing states", and it seems destined to move toward a "leans Democratic" state in future Presidential elections.

Yet with all of this news, why does PA still look to be hotly-contested this year? Well, obviously the economy is first and foremost on everyone's minds and could swing any election from incumbent to challenger fairly quickly. But secondly, and probably even more importantly is the new PA Voter ID law. If large numbers of Obama supporters are not able to vote in November due to this new law, the state becomes a toss-up.

In 2011 the state passed a new law that as it stands now would disenfranchise over 750K voters or roughly 10% of the electorate. And they made the law intentionally confusing, with some forms of government issued IDs acceptable and others not.

If your goal is to make sure everyone eventually gets the ID and is able to vote, you'd perhaps have a waiver/notice in place for this election and have the new ID be official next election. That way you would have accurate data for roughly how many waivers were issued and thus how many people this actually affected. Then there'd be an education campaign by interested groups to get them the proper ID. And at least initially it would  take steps to ensure that they are given the proper ID in a timely way at little or no cost.

If your goal is to try to prevent people from voting, who are likely to vote for candidates in the other political party by a wide margin, then the implementation of the law would look a lot like what is happening now. PA House Republican leader, Mike Turzai, admitted as much a few weeks ago.

The obvious point of these laws is to frustrate and confuse the very young and very old, poorer, non-white demographic groups who usually vote Democratic by large numbers, and ultimately suppress their votes. Someone like myself with more money and flexible work hours, who is more educated about this law, would find the time to get any proper ID questions straightened out. Someone who is an hourly shift worker, using public transportation, and not reading news sites on the internet on a regular basis, has neither the same level of knowledge about the law, nor the equal ability to ensure their vote is protected.

Voters in Norfolk, VA wait in long lines to vote in Nov. 2008 (source: USA Today)

There are so many other "real" voting problems in this country; from poorer neighborhoods being forced to use shoddier voting machines than wealthier neighborhoods (resulting in things like more "under-votes" that aren't counted - remember those from the 2000 election?), poorer neighborhoods often given fewer voting machines forcing voters into ridiculously long lines just to vote (see image above), to no paper trails to verify the votes in electronic voting machines. If the problems with voting in the 2000 election didn't inspire people to implement voting reform laws, so the ability to vote and you have your vote counted is more equal no matter who you are or where you live, it's likely nothing will.

All of these things could be fixed with some more funding and a little effort at the state and local level. Instead GOP legislatures are using scarce budget funds to implement a new voter ID law, whose ultimate result will not be preventing voter fraud (which is virtually non-existent), but in preventing thousands of eligible voters from exercising their constitutionally protected rights, due to a technicality created by the new law.

There is a hearing on this in the PA Commonwealth Court on July 25. I expect them to throw out or halt this law, citing the equal protection clause among other things, but stranger things have happened. If the law is upheld, voting rights activist groups are going to be forced to spend time and money trying to educate and organize the voters who need the new ID between now and the registration deadline in September.

An editorial in the Philadelphia Daily News has more background on this and information on how to get assistance obtaining proper voting ID.

In the meantime, Pennsylvanians without current PennDOT identification can act to protect their rights by beginning the process to obtain acceptable identification. A nonpartisan coalition of more than 100 organizations is ready to help. Check the Committee of Seventy's website (seventy.org) for information or call 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683).

Don't let your right to vote be taken away.

Update: Dave Weigel of Slate has an excellent take on this here.