2012 – Page 29 – Shall Not Be Questioned

What is Philadelphia Hiding?

Folks on the left tell us that actual voter fraud is not nearly the problem that Republicans imagine. I would tend to agree that it’s likely not extremely widespread, but I’ve seen enough close elections in my lifetime that it’s not something I am willing to risk. However, I have to question just how widespread it might be when I see Philadelphia election officials fighting oversight at every turn.

Hours before polls opened today, the Philadelphia election officials booted 75 Republican poll watchers from multiple polling places. The GOP has minority inspectors who were told by election officials that “no Republicans will be allowed in the polling place” at all today. There are some reports that the ban on Republicans in polling places got violent and that GOP inspectors were assaulted. The election officials who refused Republicans entry had to be ordered by the courts not to ban people based on their party affiliation.

Meanwhile, these same election officials set up voting machines right in front of a giant Obama mural promoting his 2008 campaign messages. Somehow, it escaped their notice. Yeah… And it took a court order to get it covered after it had been on display for hours.

This is a city that has unbelievably bloated voter rolls that they know contain dead people and others not eligible to vote. Clean elections advocates admit that their voter registration rolls are ripe for fraud because of how many invalid folks they have on them.

About two of every three residents of Pennsylvaniaâ€™s largest city are registered to vote â€“ more than 1 million of the cityâ€™s 1.5 million residents â€“ and that doesnâ€™t sit well with Zack Stalberg of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that works for fair and open elections.

Stalberg said the city has not done enough to trim its voter rolls to remove inactive voters, dead voters and former voters who have moved out of the city. Bloated voting rolls increase the chance for fraud to take place, he said, and in a one-party town like the City of Brotherly Love that can be a particular concern.

â€œThe numbers have been out of whack for some time now,â€ Stalberg told PA Independent. â€œIt just defies logic to think that two out of every three people living in the city can be registered to vote.â€

Yet, the city’s elected officials opposed voter identification measures at every turn. They have even opposed the education efforts to let people know about voter identification laws that will be in effect for the very next election. At some point one has to wonder, what exactly are they afraid Republicans will see in Philadelphia?

Don’t Vote Ignorantly

Ilya Somin makes a case against ignorant voting. When I first started voting, I felt like I had to cast a ballot in every race, no matter what. I tended to vote party in races I didn’t know about. Now I will abstain from races where I don’t know the candidates or the issues. Ignorance is a good reason to not vote.

NRA’s Outreach to the Undecideds

Adage has a really good profile on NRA’s recent campaign expenditures targeting undecided/low information voters in swing states. Here are some highlights:

[NRA has] invested upwards of $11 million this fall in TV, radio and online ads (not including a direct-mail and phone piece) aimed at undecided voters in the usual-suspect list of swing states that includes Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin and Virginia. A hefty 32% of that budget has been allotted for digital, including pre-roll video ads, full-page interstitial ads on news sites like denverpost.com, and page skins on Pandora, according to Brad Todd, a partner at the Republican media shop On Message Inc., which is handling the buying in electronic channels. …

[I]t’s suburban men who aren’t active hunters or shooters but who agree with the NRA philosophically or on the grounds of self-defense who are the focus of the ad campaign, which entered full throttle in October and will continue through Election Day. A decision was made to invest heavily in sports content and to mostly eschew news, a departure from the tack taken by Priorities USA and Restore Our Future, the super PACs backing President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Mr. Todd said.

“We believe that premium content matters for undecided voters because they don’t seek political news,” he said. “If they were political news seekers, they likely wouldn’t be undecided in October.”

Emphasis added by me. I just have to laugh about it. Low information voters are both annoying and a source of comic relief for those of us who follow politics. Hell, I had to raise an eyebrow at the woman wondering out loud this morning why we needed two lines – one of which was much shorter than the other. She didn’t even know that they were for two different precincts. I informed her, but I’m not sure she knew what a precinct was, she just kind of said “ah” and went quiet. But back to the topic of NRA spending, this is the breakdown compared to the campaigns in their October spending:

During the week of Oct. 15, for example, the NRA’s TV mix for the swing-voter campaign was 78% sports, 12% late-night (centered on the likes of David Letterman and Jay Leno), 7% prime time and just 2% news. Meanwhile, data Mr. Todd pulled for Obama backer Priorities USA for a week in October shows 40% of TV spending going toward morning programming — which suggests a focus on women — and that sports accounted for roughly 1% of gross ratings points purchased. Estimates for Romney backer Restore Our Future show spending more evenly balanced across times of day, but only 14% of GRPs going toward sports, Mr. Todd said.

There’s more detail in the story, so go read the whole thing if this sort of thing interests you.

We’ll probably be talking more about some of the things that NRA has done to really create a GOTV structure independent of parties and individual candidate campaigns this year that both Sebastian & I think has real promise at keeping the Second Amendment in the minds of voters who lean our way.

Time to Question Turnout Models

I know that many conservatives have been attacking polls that show their candidate down, and I have mixed feelings on it. It’s generally not a good idea to question everything you lose. You just can’t win every state. But when people started diving deeper into the presumed turnout models for these polls, it seemed like they were taking 2008 turnout to be the assumed baseline when we know that’s not realistic.

Today, we saw that in person at our voting location. We voted at about the same time of day as we did in 2008, and the sight could not have been any different. We have two precincts that vote in different rooms at the same school, and one has a far higher percentage of Democratic voters while the other is predominantly GOP. Our neighborhood is in the mostly GOP precinct.

In 2008, the Democratic leaning precinct line was out of the room (typical), down the hall leading to the voting room (typical), and down the main hall (not atypical), and out the door (extremely out of the ordinary), and halfway down the outside of the building (unheard of), with poll workers telling people it was more than a 3 hour wait. In 2012, the line was only about an hour long and did not grow while we voted. In fact, I overheard two female voters in the line complaining that they couldn’t get their friends interested in showing up this year.

In 2008, our precinct line was short – a couple of folks in front of us and a few people behind us. IIRC, we were around 140 for the voter count for the day. Today, we were 271 & 272, and the line was longer than anything I’ve seen in 2008 or even 2010 (where it was longer than 2008’s line). Interestingly, it continued to grow while we were voting. It was still only about a 15 minute wait, but the sign in sheet was extremely heavily Republican. My name went on the sheet about 2/3 of the way down, and there were only two Democrats signed in on the page.

Enthusiasm gap much?

Tomorrow, it Gets Real: Vote!

Tomorrow marks the end of this silly season, and I will be glad for that no matter what the outcome. For the past week or so, I have tried to tune out election related news, polls, etc. The only poll that matters is the one tomorrow.

They Can Harmonize

Hey, NRA members… you’re racist! Put this crap in the realm of feel good nonsense that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when it comes to making phone calls, knocking on doors, and getting people out to vote:

CSGV: Against the First Amendment as much as the Second

CSGV tried to have Examiner.com censor Kurt Hoffman, a number of bloggers stood up for his right to speak. A free exchange of ideas is what healthy free societies support. I’ve had my issues with the III percent philosophy, which I have not been shy about criticizing on this blog, but I absolutely believe they have a right to speak and publish on their viewpoint. This is yet another desperate attempt by CSGV to silence dissenting opinions.

I read Kurt’s post which started all this hubbub, and as best I can tell he told people to read a book. I will forthrightly back people’s desire to publish and read materials, even controversial or potentially dangerous materials. The book Das Kaptial contains ideas that are responsible for the deaths of millions of people in the 20th century, but I’d still suggest people read it. Does that make me a marxist or violent left-wing revolutionary? The adult thing to do in these situation is to counter speech with more speech. If you don’t agree with the insurrectionist idea, understand what it really is, and speak out against it in a serious manner. But that’s not what the straw men builders at CSGV have chosen to do; they have chosen to attempt to silence and intimidate people who stand up for our rights and freedoms.

Canadian Long Gun Registry Destroyed

Good news for Canadian gun owners, but there’s still a dispute about Quebec registrations, and that is sticking around until that dispute is resolved.

While the then-governing Liberals sold the registry to gun owners as a minor, reasonable bureaucratic nicety, they also had the bad habit of trotting it out in public as a sign of their governmentâ€™s commitment to public safety and ending gun violence. You canâ€™t blame the people who had to register their firearms for feeling like the government was treating them as mass-shooters in waiting. Or, at the very least, a political punching bag.

That’s one of the primary things that motivates my opposition to gun control, because in fact, they do think we’re all mass-shooters in waiting. It’s patently obvious from their rhetoric that’s the case. But I don’t think they can solicit donations being nice to gun owners. The reason all the anti-gun groups have become so hateful is likely because that keeps the checks rolling in from those looking to buy a stronger self-image at the expense of looking down on others.

Canadian gun owners are well within their rights to thank the Tories for scrapping the hated registry while still demanding changes â€” clarifications and improvements, mostly â€” of Canadaâ€™s gun laws. Clarifying safe storage laws and rationalizing the classification system that divides guns into non-restricted, restricted and prohibited groups (with different regulations for each) would be a good place to start.

It is very important for Canadian gun owners to build on that victory, and not just go home and savor the victory. Canada will likely never be like the United States in terms of gun laws, but it could probably be better than it is today.

LEO Cover for Anti-Gun Groups in Minnesota

The retiring police chief in Minneapolis is going to lend his name to the anti-gun cause. Every once in a while you get a true believer among police brass, and I guess this guy is one. Joan Peterson must adore him.

“I think, basically, he will be a resource on gun policy … and give feedback on legislation,” Martens said. “He has always been a voice for preventing gun violence.”

He’ll likely be someone they trot in front of the legislature or TV cameras every time they need an authentic law enforcement voice to tell the public how bad whatever bill X or Y that expands Second Amendment liberties is. Let’s just hope we can keep Tim Dolan very busy with that line of work.

From Breezy Point, New Jersey to Brooklyn

Apparently a bar just floated off, and arrived in Brookyn still well stocked. What would have made this story a truly humorous component to this otherwise cluster fsck of a storm would be if the NYPD had opened it up to find a few drunks still inside drinking.