78,000-plus write-ins for president

Those of you who have read We the Purple may recall that I became a political animal when I was denied the opportunity to write in the name of my choice for president in the 2000 election. I got so miffed that I voted against the current superintendent of elections that year.

This year 78,346 voters (and counting) cast write-in votes for president, making “write-ins” the seventh largest vote-winner—after Obama, McCain, and these runners-up:

• #3, Ralph Nader (independent), 705, 875 votes
• #4, Bob Barr (Libertarian), 511,362 votes
• #5, Chuck Baldwin (Constitution), 186,335 votes
• #6, Cynthia McKinney (Green), 153,698 votes

Actually, the write-ins could rack up many more votes, because they are among the last votes to be counted. It’s likely that we won’t know the exact number of ballots cast for write-ins until well into the new year.

You can check out the current tally of votes for the top 25 presidential candidates—including “None of these candidates,” who weighed in at #13—at the U.S. Election Atlas web site.

Jackie Salit on the Election

No one knows independent politics better than Jackie Salit does, and no one is a better spokesperson for independents than she is. The ever-articulate political director for CUIP and editor of The Neo-Independent offers her analysis of the 2008 presidential election and how independents affected the outcome.

Our long national nightmare is (almost) over

There's not much I can add to the eloquent and emotional words so many have spoken and written in an attempt to express what Barack Obama's victory means to them. What I can add is a personal perspective and a few memories of growing up during the civil rights movement and witnessing segregation first hand.

When I was a child, our family visited the South every few years. My mother was born in Georgia and had family in Florida; my produce-selling father had lived and worked in Florida seasonally and met my mother there. I don't have any race-related memories of the times we traveled by train from Philadelphia to Gainesville, but traveling by car was another story.

Car trips meant stopping in Southern states and being exposed to segregated restrooms, water fountains and restaurants. Those memories are hazy; I can mostly remember this vague sensation that Negroes, the term our family used, were lesser people, diseased and dirty and definitely to be feared. This impression didn't come from my parents. It came from simply walking the streets of Georgia or South Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s.

Even in the North, I can remember using coin-operated public restrooms (remember those?) in train stations and especially on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, and hearing women admonish their children not to use a toilet that a Negro had just used. A child couldn't help but absorb some of that trepidation.

Then came the race riots. I won't go into that history; all I will say is that if you didn't live through that time, you cannot imagine the terror people felt.

In April of 1968, I visited Paris on a high school trip. Race riots were the furthest thing from my mind---until the day before we were scheduled to return to New Jersey. The news was all around us: Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis. The fear returned. I recall looking out the window of the plane as it descended toward Philadelphia International Airport; I fully expected to see Philly and Camden, its neighbor across the river, engulfed in flames.

Today I heard someone mocking Jesse Jackson for crying as he listened to Barack Obama speak the night before. I don't care who your presidential preference was; I don't care what you think of Barack Obama---if you can’t understand why people were crying and taking to the streets in sheer jubilation last night, then you're far too cynical for me.

Our long national nightmare, the one that's (almost) over, isn't our history of racism. I'm hopeful about the future, but I'm also realistic about the deep racial divide among some segments of our society. Racism isn't the nightmare I'm referring to. The nightmare is the Bush administration. Free at last, free at last---thank God Almighty, we're (almost) free at last.

My day as a poll monitor

Looks like early voting in Colorado really paid off. I visited four five polling places and found no significant lines at any of them.

I wasn’t able to help a single voter at any polling place. But the day wasn’t a total loss. My bright yellow “nonpartisan volunteer” T-shirt attracted the attention of a young woman in a coffee shop where I was taking a break. She told me she had just found out that today was the last day to vote. She was registered in Pueblo (an hour away), but could she vote online? How about in Colorado Springs? Could she re-register today? What about her friend, who was registered to vote in Alamosa (more than two hours away)? Could her friend vote in Pueblo?

Oh my. I managed to maintain my composure as I answered her many questions.

Here’s how the rest of my day went, in Colorado Springs and its environs:

• My first gig was at an exceedingly quiet precinct—and an exceedingly confusing one. It was on a college campus, and the signage was woefully inadequate. About the only action for several hours occurred when classes changed. One of the election judges told me that a neighboring precinct was swamped, so I went to help out at:


• Site number 2, where there were even fewer voters. At noon I went inside to ask an election judge how things had gone so far. They told me that they expected to close up shop by 2 p.m., because nearly every registered voter in the precinct had already voted.


• Off to polling place 3. No voters, no lines, no cars in the parking lot except those belonging to election judges.


• Same for number 4.


• Polling place 5, my wonderful hometown, where the wind chill was below freezing and I had to wear that bright yellow T-shirt over several layers of warmer clothing. This was the one place where I think I could have actually helped, because the lines were longer than at the other places I went to. But I had to stay beyond the 100-foot “electioneering” point, even though I wasn’t electioneering, and the lines weren’t nearly 100 feet long. The wait was only 15 minutes.

All in all, it was a frustrating day because I didn’t feel like I was much help. But it served one purpose: it exposed a few more problems that need to be fixed, liked signage and maybe better predictions about where to expect long lines and problems.

Bottom line, this seems to have been a fairly glitch-free election in Colorado. We'll see later on.

One scary election

 

This is the 10th presidential election in which I am eligible to vote. In the 36 years since that first vote, which I unashamedly cast for George McGovern, I have never witnessed a voting season so characterized by fear—not even the 2004, post-9/11 presidential election.

I tend to get into more political conversations than most people do because of the political book I wrote, the social networking site I maintain and my volunteer work with Just Vote Colorado. And thankfully, most of those conversations are thoughtful and intelligent. As an independent voter, I avoid partisan free-for-alls, and that makes genuine dialogue possible.

In so many conversations this year, the one descriptor I’ve heard used most often is this one: scary.

“This is the most scary election of my entire life,” a 60-something man told me. His yard sports a McCain-Palin sign, the first political sign he’s ever placed there.

“We can’t let McCain win. Sarah Palin is just too scary,” said a 20-something woman, an obvious Obama-Biden supporter.

Here’s why the candidates are all so scary, based on what I’ve been hearing:

• John McCain: He’s a warmonger, a mere shadow of the true maverick he was in 2000, a much-too-close reminder of George W. Bush, and an elderly man who may die in office and turn the reins over to:
• Sarah Palin: She’s a loose cannon, an inexperienced and inept candidate who needs a basic understanding of how the government works,* and a mean-spirited, sarcastic, tactless running-mate who has no place on a presidential ticket.
• Barack Obama: He’s so liberal that he’ll turn the country into a socialist nation, so pacifist that he’ll leave us vulnerable to attack, and so subversive that he and his friends will overthrow the government. Oh, and he’s an Islamic Arab—and an African-American, making him the No. 1 target for white supremacist hate groups who will target him, leaving the White House in the hands of:
• Joe Biden: He’s scary, it seems, only because you never know what’s going to come out of his mouth. His gaffes are legendary.

Granted, there are thousands of other reasons why the public considers these candidates to be scary, such as their voting records or lack thereof, their stands on the issues and all that. But the points above encapsulate what people have said directly to me. They didn’t get into the issues as much as they did the overall perception they had of the candidate.

So should we be scared? Like a few other people I’ve heard say this, I’ve joked about moving to Canada depending on the results of the election. (For my husband and me, that’s not exactly radical; we’ve been talking about doing that since we met in 1978.) But if I do head north, it won’t be out of fear. It will be a result of pure cultural fatigue.

I understand why people think this election is scary. Though it sure has its scary elements, I refuse to be scared. I have too much hope for that. Between God and the fearless political activists I’ve met, I have reason to hope. We’re in a new political and cultural era, one in which grassroots activism is truly and tangibly making a difference. (For better or worse, this election is evidence of that; neither McCain nor Obama were their party’s anointed one.)

Let’s keep fear at bay and help others do the same. This is no time to be afraid. It’s time to be courageous.

*Okay, so they actually called her stupid. I'm being gracious.

Warning: your write-in vote won’t be counted

Not if you live in certain states, anyway. Ballot access expert Richard Winger* says write-in votes aren’t even counted until as late as January, if they’re counted at all:

Certain areas of the country illegally don’t count them at all. Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and the District of Columbia all refuse to provide a tally for the declared write-in candidates. In the case of the District of Columbia, this is especially egregious, since a D.C. court explicitly ordered such tallies for declared write-in presidential candidates, in 1975…New York city habitually fails to count any write-in votes for the declared write-in presidential candidates. The Board says it is too much work to take down the heavy rolls of paper from the mechanical voting machines and look at them.

So all of you who are planning to write in Ron Paul for President, go ahead and exercise your right to vote for your candidate of choice but expect to be ignored, at least for several months and possibly forever.

If you want to find out your state’s law on write-ins, you’ll find it here.

* Thank you, Richard. I always learn something new from you.

My Early and Not-So-Private Vote

I sure wish the Colorado ballot looked like the one above. This year we have so many candidates, amendments* and referenda on the ballot that Tuesday could be a nightmare at the polls. The voter information booklet sent out by the legislature totaled 140 pages, and that just covered amendments, referenda and retention of judges.

I’ll be working as a poll monitor on Tuesday, so for that and other reasons I voted early. I had to chuckle the other night when I heard a talking head on TV suggest that those of us who vote early miss out on the benefit of the full campaign. Please. He was kidding, right?

Nearly every day for the past God-knows-how-long, the two major party candidates and their running-mates have said or done something that made me not want to vote for any of them. I doubt that the next three days will matter, barring some calamitous event. Besides, who says I voted major party anyway?

Only I know who I voted for…I think. The voting procedure here in Teller County was the least private I’ve ever experienced.

We had the option of electronic machines or paper ballots, and being the intelligent creature I am, I chose paper. After all, I do want my vote to count. That meant I had to sit at a table with partitions separating me from three other voters. So far, so good.

However, even though the ballot was placed inside a privacy sleeve, it was also something like 18 inches long. Whatever column I was filling out had to be outside the sleeve, and it took some time to complete the entire column.

Anyone walking behind me could easily have looked over my shoulder to see my ballot. When you’re standing at an e-machine you can do a body block, but not so when you’re sitting. But even if it means that my privacy was compromised, I would choose paper again without hesitation.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, no, the Colorado ballot didn’t offer the “None of the Above” option. Rats!

* I’m a huge advocate of citizen-initiated measures, so I’m not complaining. Honest.

New presidential survey from Barna

Fascinating results today from a survey conducted by highly respected pollster George Barna. As he points out elsewhere, most polls simply ask if a person is evangelical; The Barna Group asks specific questions about religious beliefs and determines from that if the respondent is evangelical.

Here's an indication of the staggering difference in results using the two methods:

Using the common approach of allowing people to self-identify as evangelicals, 40% of adults classify themselves as such. Among them, 83% are likely to vote in November. Among the self-reported evangelicals who are likely to vote, John McCain holds a narrow 39% to 37% lead over Sen. Obama. Nearly one-quarter of this segment (23%) is still undecided about who they will vote for.

Using the Barna approach of studying people’s core religious beliefs produces a very different outcome. Just 8% of the adult population qualifies as evangelical based on their answers to the nine belief questions. Among that segment, a significantly higher proportion (90%) is likely to vote in November, and Sen. McCain holds a huge lead (61%-17%) over the Democratic nominee. Overall, just 14% of this group remains undecided regarding their candidate of choice.

Wow. Those are some crazy wild disparities. You can find the full survey results here.

Calling All Colorado Independents!

In late August I'll be hosting a caucus where Colorado independents can get together and talk about the presidential election and the political reform issues we want the next White House to address.

Because we're so spread out here, we'll likely do this via conference call. If we get enough responses from one area—say, Denver—some of us may be able to get together in person and do a conference call with those unable to physically attend.

I think this will be a great opportunity for Colorado independents to finally talk to each other about the things that are important to us.

Stay tuned for the date, time and possible location. Meanwhile, I'd love to hear from everyone who wants to participate!

On Nader's Candidacy

I try so hard to be gracious and all that when it comes to politics or anything else in life. But some people make it so doggoned hard at times.

I speak today of the anti-Nader brigade. That would be the bloggers and commentators who have over the past few days have resorted to name-calling and all manner of evil-speaking directed at Ralph Nader, who on Sunday announced his candidacy for president.

"Spoiler," of course, is the most common charge hurled by those who blame Nader for George W. Bush's win in 2000. Conventional wisdom says Nader took votes away from Gore; my unconventional wisdom says Gore took votes away from Gore. But more importantly, the nearly 3 million Americans who voted for Nader that year were able to vote for the candidate of their choosing rather than the candidates of the major parties' choosing. That is what counts. I want to vote for the candidate of my choosing, and I will continue to defend the right of every other American to do the same. Here's Nader's response:

Nader said Democrats should "concentrate on the thieves who steal elections" instead of "scapegoating the Greens," a reference to the Green Party, the ticket he ran on in 2000.

"The Democrats ought to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves why they have not been able to landslide the worst Republican Party and the White House and Congress over the last 20 years," he said.

Other critics have called Nader a narcissist or an egotist. I don't know Nader personally, and I'm sure many of his critics don't know him either. But I do know this: it takes a whole lot more than shallow egotism to go the distance as a third-party or independent candidate. I may never vote for Nader, but I admire his tenacity and sense of purpose.

2008: An Historic Election?

As a chronic multitasker, I seldom pay close attention to partisan political coverage on television, except for the real deal on Comedy Central. One thing I have managed to hear, as I'm reading or knitting or researching or writing, is the phrase "historic election year," over and over again, for months on end now. Each time I heard it, I'd mentally nod in agreement. Yes, this truly is an historic election year, and it feels good to be a part of it.

Before I make an astonishing confession, please bear in mind that I was only half-listening to said pronouncements. I consider myself to be politically aware and reasonably intelligent. What's more, I'm not blind.

Now to my confession: For the longest time, I was not consciously aware that the talking heads were referring to the whole race and gender thing when they were using the word "historic." Honest. I'm not kidding.

And here's why I was unaware: I consider this to be an historic election on so many other levels that race and gender didn't even factor in to my assessment. That's not to say that turning the reins over to a different race or gender isn't a significant milestone; what that is to say is that I've gotten so accustomed to the possibility of having a female or black president that I don't give it much thought any more. And I know I'm not alone.

Here are all those other factors that make this an historic election year:

• Independent voters' concerns are finally being taken seriously, with some major candidates, like Barack Obama, listening carefully to us even as others, like Hillary Clinton, dismiss us as annoying pests at a picnic.
  
  
• We have a more engaged electorate than we've had in recent memory, meaning my memory.
  
  
• Not only is the electorate more engaged, the electorate is actually doing stuff, like voting in primaries and participating in caucuses. Except for independents in closed primary states, that is. We just find other stuff to do, like hammer away at the need for political reform, starting with open primaries.
  
  
• After seven-plus years of President Bush, even Republicans are ready for a major change. I can't ever remember a time when the party in the White House was so relieved to see the resident of the White House get ready to move out.
  
  
• Evangelicals are no longer walking in lockstep with the GOP. Of course, many evangelicals never did, but you can't convince the media and non-evangelicals of that.

Help me finish this list. What are some of the other factors that make this an historical election year?

Obama's Appeal to Iowa (and Other) Independents

The proof is finally in: independents prefer Obama over Clinton. We already knew that, didn't we? But Iowa proved it, with those independents participating in the Democratic caucus choosing Obama 2 to 1 over Clinton.

One reason for Obama's appeal to independents is, of course, his transpartisan perspective. He's not just willing to cross major-party lines to get things done; he's also willing to bring third parties and independents into the mix. But there's an even stronger reason for independents' support of Obama: instead of just reaching out to us for our votes, he listens to us and seeks our input. By contrast, Clinton treats us as if we're an annoying but necessary evil. She doesn't understand us at all.

Anyway, our good friend E.J. Dionne Jr., in an op-ed piece ("A Whiff of Revolution from Iowa") in today's Washington Post, offers his always spot-on analysis of the Iowa caucus. For independents or anyone who wants to understand their impact on yesterday's vote, it's a must read.

But let's move on to his take on the upcoming New Hampshire primary, from the same article:

Tuesday's New Hampshire primary will have a much larger turnout, and independents -- roughly 40 percent of the potential electorate -- will play a far greater role than they did in Iowa. Until recently, it appeared that independents, who are on the whole alienated from President Bush and his party, would vote in large numbers in this state's Democratic primary, as they did in the Iowa caucuses. This would benefit Obama...[who in NH]was drawing 46 percent of his support from independents, while Clinton drew 33 percent of her backing from voters who did not declare a party affiliation. By coming into New Hampshire strong, Obama may keep independents on the Democratic side. This could hurt McCain, who leans far more heavily on independents than Romney does.

...Democrats, particularly Obama, are fighting for the middle ground and the independents, while Republicans are largely talking to each other.

The Iowa results, especialling Clinton's third-place showing, Giuliani's barely-there outcome, Huckabee's win, and Ron Paul's strong-for-him placement, may help energize us a bit and help us overcome the election fatigue that started to set in, oh, at least six months ago.

Clinton Doesn't Get It

Bill Clinton that is. Not Hillary. She doesn't seem to get it either, but that's fodder for another post.

Proof that the former president doesn't get independent voters is apparent in this snippet from an interview with him that appeared in the Concord (N.H.) Monitor on Dec. 21:

"I think independents are absolutely pivotal to our political system," [Bill Clinton] said. "But they don't like politics; that's why they're independents. So to them, you become polarizing if someone else attacks you."

Let's break down his quote sentence by sentence.

"I think independents are absolutely pivotal to our political system." He gets it! He really gets it! This part, anyway.

"But they don't like politics; that's why they're independents." Um, no. Many independents are politically zealous. What they—we—don't like is rabid partisan politics and politics as usual. I'll give him a partial pass on this one, because it's possible that's what he meant.

"So to them, you become polarizing if someone else attacks you." No, no, no. If that was true, we'd consider nearly every politician—partisan or independent—to be polarizing, since most of them are targets for attacks. It's not being attacked but doing the attacking that is polarizing. Otherwise, we'd be guilty of blaming the victim.

In a subsequent issue of the Monitor, Donna Lee Richards, an independent voter from Nashua, N.H., provided this response to Clinton in a letter to the editor:

Independents do not label themselves as belonging to a political party. This does not mean that they are not interested, informed or involved in politics and government. This simply means that they do not limit their views, issues or votes to those favored by one political party...We are not snoozing between presidential elections only to be woken and wooed by candidates, returning to our slumber in between because we "don't like politics."

Actually, I do most of my political snoozing during our seemingly interminable presidential elections. Or at the very least, I want to.

Many independent voters are interested, informed, and involved. We do not limit our views, issues, and votes to those favored by one political party. Donna Lee Richards gets it. If our elected officials and candidates—and the population in general—understood what Richards understands, they'd realize what a formidable constituency independent voters are.

Now It's Getting Interesting

There's been a lot of speculation that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg might enter the presidential race. Now Newsweek's Eleanor Clift is reporting that Bloomberg and Kevin Sheekey, his political adviser, are "meeting with pollsters and consultants to assess the mayor's chances as a third-party, independent candidate." Bloomberg is surprisingly popular, especially considering he took office shortly after 9/11 when outgoing mayor Rudy Giuliani's popularity was at its peak. What's more, by all accounts Bloomberg is an effective mayor who has made difficult decisions that have helped the city despite the potential damage to him politically. (Makes you wonder: is this guy for real?)

Six months ago, pollster Frank Lutz identified Bloomberg as the only viable candidate for an independent (or third-party) run for the presidency. Given that 81 percent of the electorate has indicated a willingness to vote for an independent candidate, Bloomberg could make an impressive showing and mess things up for the major parties in '08.

Here's what Jackie Salit had to say about a Bloomberg candidacy in the winter issue of The Neo-Independent:

The Bloomberg Revolution, as his 2005 reelection victory has come to be known, forged a new coalition of independents, reform-minded Republicans, non-sectarian Democrats, and black and Latino voters looking for a way out of their blank-check contract with the Democratic Party. An unprecedented 47% of black voters broke with the Democrats to back Bloomberg and 30% of Latinos joined them, even with a Latino, Fernando Ferrer, heading the Democratic ticket against Bloomberg.

Far from unifying or “transcending” the major parties, as current conventional wisdom suggests is the recipe for a viable independent presidential campaign, in the New York scenario Bloomberg took over the Republican Party...allied with the Independence Party, and split the Democratic Party. Projecting Bloomberg’s trans-partisan popularity into a possible independent presidential run requires an accurate reading of his new coalition—with a black and independent alliance at its core—and what it produced on the ground in New York City.

One thing's for sure: if Bloomberg announces, his candidacy will have a significant effect on how the 2008 presidential race is run—and on the way independent candidates are perceived.