Posted by Bob Lord For those who follow me, I'm asking a small favor. The intractable situation in Isreal / Palestine is truly depressing. Anyone with an open mind who is willing to read all that's out there, objectively, likely will understand that Israel, especially the Israeli government, lost the moral high ground a long, … Read more
by David Safier A budget is a moral document, which makes Arizona's cuts to education over the past few years immoral bordering on obscene. Prop 204 went down in flames, unfortunately, and now the lege can do as it will with education funding, including cutting it further. Brewer is talking about raising school funding in … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: H/T The Arizona Republic. Provisional voters can check status of ballots: Voters who had to cast provisional ballots on Election Day can check to see whether their vote counted. The information will be available on the Arizona Secretary of State's Office website as counties tabulate and process provisional ballots: voter.azsos.gov. Provisional ballot … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I previously posted about the massive number of provisional ballots on election day due mostly to the incompetence of those who manage our elections.
There is some good reporting on the scope of this problem in Arizona. The Arizona Republic reported Phoenix-area voters frustrated by long lines, provisional ballots:
Voters in Tuesday’s
presidential election faced unusually long lines that were exacerbated
by a large number of provisional ballots.
Officials with Promise
Arizona in Action, an organization that advocates immigration reform and
fights discrimination, said they are concerned that poll workers were
given pre-election instructions, which may have forced the huge number
of provisional ballots.
They also said in Tuesday’s
late night news conference that numerous voters reported their names
were not on lists used by precinct workers.
Petra Falcon, executive
director of Promise Arizona, said she was told that 200,000 provisional
ballots were cast, as well as 200,000 early ballots. She said counting
of those votes will not even begin until Wednesday morning and she was
fearful that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s race will be called before
then.
* * *
“Four hundred thousand ballots – that’s a lot,” said Falcon. “Even if it’s an Arpaio win, those votes should be counted.”
Roopali Desai, Promise
Arizona’s attorney, said the number of provisional ballots is
“unprecedented” in Arizona, or anywhere. “Nobody can explain it,” she
added. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of it.”
But Arizona Secretary of
State Ken Bennett told 12 News that the number of provisional ballots is
normal. The number is closer to 100,00 to 125,000, Bennett said.
Bennett said the majority of
voters who cast a provisional ballot was because of an address change
that needed to be updated or didn’t turn in the early ballot on time.
* * *
“Everything will be counted in the next couple of days,” Bennett said.
It appeared that most of the provisional ballots cast were in Maricopa County.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Jamelle Bouie writes at the Plum Line that the Septegenarian Ninja Turtle, Mitch McConnell, is already back to obstruction at all costs:
Negotiations about the “fiscal cliff” are set to begin soon, and
Mitch McConnell is already signaling that he doesn’t intend to budge or
cooperate. If anything, in the wake of Tuesday’s election, he is signaling that Republicans will adopt a strategy of categorical opposition even faster than he did after Obama’s victory four years ago:
“The American people did two things: they gave President
Obama a second chance to fix the problems that even he admits he failed
to solve during his first four years in office, and they preserved
Republican control of the House of Representatives,” McConnell said in a
statement. “The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of
the President’s first term, they have simply given him more time to
finish the job they asked him to do together with a Congress that
restored balance to Washington after two years of one-party control.”
What an asshole. First, this election was the "referendum" election that the Tea-Publicans claimed they always wanted. The American people just ratified the Obama agenda and gave him a mandate to continue. They voted for increasing taxes on those making more than $250,000 year, preserving social security and Medicare (no vouchers), implementing "Obamacare," implementing Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, etc. In other words, the voters rejected the Tea-Publican scorched-earth "repeal everything Obama has done" alternative agenda.
Remember when George W. Bush was elected president by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000? The man who who lost the popular vote to Al Gore had the brass to claim he had a mandate for his agenda. And a handful of Democrats, to their great discredit, worked with Bush to pass the Bush tax cuts that eliminated the budget surpluses that were paying down our national debt and gave us massive budget deficits instead. President Obama has an agenda that has been ratified in a referendum election by the voters. He has a mandate for his policies that he is entitled to have enacted. The people have spoken loud and clear.