Politics
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It’s No Surprise—Study Shows Why Nonvoters Are the Voters Who Need to Vote the Most
When I was growing up in the Midwest, my father worked for one of the largest defense contractors in the United States. And he was exactly the type of voter sought after by politicians. Why? He worked for the largest employer in the state, he was part of the middle class, he was a married…
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Are Missouri Dems Pushing the DOJ to End Michael Brown Investigation?
Questions have been raised in Ferguson, Mo., about the role of that state’s senior U.S. senator: Did either Sen. Claire McCaskill or her staff communicate to the Department of Justice that it should end its Ferguson investigation after the local grand jury ends its own? It’s been widely speculated that the St. Louis County grand jury—empaneled by…
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40,000 Ga. Voter-Registration Applications Are Still MIA
In the ongoing saga of the estimated 40,000 voter-registration applications that went missing in Georgia, Brian Kemp, the secretary of state, initially said that he processed the missing applications and that the registrants (who are predominantly black and Hispanic) were now on the rolls and would be able to vote on Election Day. However, a new Al-Jazeera report suggests that the issue is…
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Program Used to Stop Voter Fraud Is Allegedly Flawed
Republican election officials in some states have been cracking down on what they believe is massive voter-fraud activities under way in some districts. The officials are championing the Interstate Crosscheck program—an initiative that allows states to crosscheck their voter-registration files to see which individuals are registered to vote in more than one state and which individuals have, in fact, voted…
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Midterm Elections 2014: This Is Where We Break It Down for You
If the commercial breaks between your must-watch shows are clogged with silly attack ads or your street is lined with yard signs, chances are you’re finally realizing an election is coming. Only five days away, we’re in the final stretches of some of the bloodiest (metaphorically speaking) political campaigning in recent memory as Democrats and…
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It’s a Mistake for Democratic Candidates to Distance Themselves From Obama
Less than one week before the midterm elections, President Barack Obama has, in many parts of the country, become the man who wasn’t there. Swing-state Democrats are afraid to mention his name in public, and consultants are cringing over interviews in which Obama has proclaimed that the upcoming election represents a referendum on his administration’s…
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Young Midterm-Election Voters Will Likely Vote for Republicans
Not so fast, Democrats. You don’t have young voters in the bag. A new Harvard University poll reveals that slightly more than half of young Americans (ages 18-29) who say they’ll definitely be voting in the upcoming midterm elections are planning to vote red. That’s right—for the Republicans. “The new survey, released Wednesday, found a preference for Republican…
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6 Reasons Down-Ballot Races Are Just as Important as the Top of the Ticket
Oh, OK. You’re not too concerned about the upcoming midterm elections on Nov. 4. You don’t mind sitting this cycle out because you’ve convinced yourself that presidential elections are what matters the most. Think again. In addition to a slate of U.S. Senate races that could determine which party controls Congress for the next two…
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Newark’s Mayor Meets One-on-One With Gangs to Forge Peace
With his first-100-days marker past, Newark, N.J.’s new mayor, Ras Baraka, is trying a variety of actions to keep crime down in his bullet-riddled city. And variety means not just within the range of conventional, public-official thinking: Last week he had a secret meeting with gang leaders in a city church, with inside security provided…
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Dems and Some GOPers Condemn Nebraska Willie Horton Redux Ad
A political ad aired by the National Republican Congressional Committee is being called out by many as racist. The ad, which has political circles buzzing and has gone viral, with more than 150,000 views on YouTube, has political observers pointing out that it’s effectively a duplicate of the infamous Willie Horton spot from 1988. That ad was…