Friday’s political round-up

February 2, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) announced yesterday that his administration was moving forward with a plan to abandon touch-screen electronic voting machines altogether. The controversial machines, installed after the 2000 debacle, proved to be even less reliable, and Crist vowed that a new paper-ballot system, counted by scanning machines, will be in place in time for the 2008 election. Given Florida’s size and significance, some experts are referring to the change as the “death knell” of paperless e-voting.

* It’s been apparent for a while that Hillary Clinton would likely be the best financed of the Democratic presidential candidates, but the senator’s campaign is taking steps to ensure that’s the case. Clinton is setting a $1 million benchmark for the honor of being in her top echelon of supporters. In contrast, Bush’s “Pioneers” were expected to raise $100,000 for his 2000 race.

* In what appears to be part of a trend, Mitt Romney has successfully recruited several top aides from Jeb Bush’s political operation. Yesterday, the Massachusetts Republican announced the hire of five Jeb aides, including the former Florida governor’s press secretary.

* Barack Obama caught some flack yesterday when The Politico discovered that his new national finance chair, Penny Pritzker, donated $2,000 to Bush/Cheney in ’04. As National Journal noted, “In Pritzker’s defense, it’s smart for a billionaire executive of a major company to max out to the president’s re-election campaign. And Pritzker endorsed John Kerry in ’04. And almost every check she’s written over the past few cycles have been sent to Democrats.”

* And today, the Democratic National Committee’s annual winter meeting kicks off, and 10 presidential candidates (and likely candidates) will address the party’s faithful. The meeting has become a key event for aspirants — in 2003, Howard Dean used his speech at the winter meeting to catapult himself into the top tier of the ’04 race, and 1992, a young governor named Bill Clinton did the same thing.

guess we know who Romney’s VP choice would be. . .

  • I don’t know anything about Charlie Christ but he’s starting off really well if he means what he says about the paper balloting thing.

  • Ms Carpetbagger,

    Speaking to inanimate objects is a sign of stress….tell Mr. CB it might be time for a spa day.

    Have a great weekend!!

  • So everyone doesn’t think Gridlock has lost his mind, I had a couple of test comments, and the site ate my test comment the first couple tries, so I therefore cursed the system which Gridlock saw

    ….but having superpowers, I deleted my comments. However, because I don’t have *real* superpowers, Gridlock commented before me deleting my comments.

    And more proof I don’t have real superpowers…I have no clue why the system eats the comments. So stop complaining about that….copy/paste dammit!

    ok, enough venting for the day

    oh, and by the way, I’m trying out a new anit-comment-spam thing (hence my testing comments). we’ll see how it goes

  • If anyone from the Clinton campaign is reading this – please don’t call me or send me crap though the mail. I will not be giving money to Hillary – ever.

    P.S. Don’t look for me to voter for her either.

  • I sure hope the Florida decision is the beginning of the end of touchscreen machines, and that scantrons will become the norm. In the last election, one of our touchscreen’s printers got jammed up and we didn’t know about it for an hour, when the systems guy walked around and checked all of them.

    I wish that it would mean that Diebold would get out of the voting business, but the scantrons that we used before were Diebold as well.

  • Ms. Carpetbagger the Magnificent (do you have a prefered superhero nomme de guerre?),

    oh, and by the way, I’m trying out a new anit-comment-spam thing (hence my testing comments). we’ll see how it goes

    Woohoo! Best of luck with it. As The Carpetbagger Report continues to grow in audience and influence, the persistence of the spammers will also increase. Just let us loyal readers know what we can do to help!

  • Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) begins a reversal of his party’s (and the Bush Crime Family’s) shameless theft of the 2000 election, and I’m glad. Now if only election officials there, and elsewhere, will bring a halt to their other non-democratic practices — hiring out of state private firms to purge voter lists, making sure the worst voting arrangements happen in all-black districts, hardly checking voter registration among Cuban partisans, etc.

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