Wednesday’s political round-up

February 7, 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:

* Mitt Romney will make if official on Tuesday, Feb. 13, when he formally kicks off his presidential campaign. Romney’s announcement speech will be delivered in his original home state of Michigan, instead of Massachusetts, but will hold a major fundraiser in Boston a week from tomorrow.

* Roll Call reported today that more than 140 members of the House have unveiled a bill that would require electronic voting machines in federal elections to produce a paper trail. It’s about time. (Who’s going to vote against it?)

* The Politico ran a very interesting item today about widespread Republican beliefs in DC that Hillary Clinton, if she wins the Dem nomination, is better positioned than the GOP candidates to win the general election next year.

* Remember Alan Schlesinger, the Republican who ran against Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont last year? Schlesinger is apparently considering another run for Congress — this time in Florida against freshman Rep. Ron Klein (D). The Palm Beach Post reported, “Schlesinger says he’s been spending a few months a year in Palm Beach County for about 20 years and has family here. He recently spoke to the Boca Raton Republican Club.”

* And on Long Island yesterday, Democrat Craig Johnson won a key State Senate seat yesterday with 53% support. Why is this notable? Johnson will be the first Democratic state senator in a century to represent that part of Long Island.

“Who’s going to vote against it?”

The whole Republican’t caucus I’d suspect. And lots of Democrats sadly.

The Republican’ts are just saying that Hillary is “better positioned” because they don’t want to admit they are going to be whipped, and whipped bad, by a girl 😉

And boy will we get to laugh at them!

  • The Politico ran a very interesting item today about widespread Republican beliefs in DC that Hillary Clinton, if she wins the Dem nomination, is better positioned than the GOP candidates to win the general election next year.

    What was that about electability? This is a good reason for us to never, ever listen to Rebublican “advice” for us, since it’s always tailored to help them win.

  • Roll Call reported today that more than 140 members of the House have unveiled a bill that would require electronic voting machines in federal elections to produce a paper trail. It’s about time. (Who’s going to vote against it?)

    OK, paper trails are nice, but they have their own limitations. A strategic “paper jam” here or there could cover a lot of chicanery. So how about another really crazy idea… Let’s let some software experts from the actual government see the source code, you know, the stuff that actually counts and reports the votes?

    I know… that’s crazy talk.

    If the source code is checked and is clean, MAYBE we’ll have a handle on this thing. Until then, e-voting needs to be shelved.

  • I’m worried about what the details in the paper-trail bill will be like after it emerges from the sausage grinder. After all, trying to fix the problems of the 2000 election is what gave us the Help America Vote Act and the insane system of unauditable electronic machines we have now — all to help the voting machine manufacturers.

    A paper trail does no good unless it’s actually checked, and that won’t happen unless the results are close enough that a recount is triggered.

    I’d rather see a bill mandating that the ballots be paper. That is, the paper spit out by the machine is the official ballot (presumably readable by optical scan), and the election results are determined by counting those paper ballots (with some random audits of the counting machines).

    Effectively, the electronic machines would be ballot printers that help people through the process of completing a ballot, not voting machines that actually register the official vote. Even better, the huge lines that result from shortages or malfunctions of machines (which amazingly tend to concentrate in urban areas) could be avoided by allowing people to fill in ballots manually if there’s a problem. Setting up extra voting stations is cheap and easy if all they require is a pencil and a privacy shield of some sort.

  • Here’s an idea for you, CBR that we could all help develop: Create and maintain a Republican candidate checklist of qualifications such as:

    –always has been against abortion choice
    –recent convert to anti-choice
    –against taxes for rich
    –pro war in Iraq
    –pro surge
    –pro war in Iran
    –against withdrawal
    –against timetables
    –against dissent
    –against Social Security
    –pro privatization of Social Security
    –against gay marriage
    –againt civil unions
    –against flag burning
    –against amnesty for illegal immigrants
    –pro Border wall
    –Evangelical Protestant
    –white
    –male
    –heterosexual
    –married
    –never divorced
    –never committed adultry
    –being investigated for corruption
    –has catchy sobriquet (“Maverick,” “America’s Mayor”)

    basically, let’s break down the issues of importance to Republicans (not actual Americans as they’ve expressed themselves in polls) so we can then get a sense of where they actually stand. conceivably each quality could be given a point value so someone with several lesser qualities can be compared to someone with one or two big qualities.

  • The Politico ran a very interesting item today about widespread Republican beliefs in DC that Hillary Clinton, if she wins the Dem nomination, is better positioned than the GOP candidates to win the general election next year.

    If the general elections were held today, a bag of dog crap would beat the Republicans.

    Gotta enjoy watching the Republicans peeing their pants right now, they see the train coming and they’re still tied to the tracks.

    Choo Choo!

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