Bush Vs Kerry

[rainbowdemon]

Good idea!!

[Redneck4sure]

He seems like a very astute individual with impeccable credentials and unimpeachable integrity.

[Wolfie]

He seems like a very astute individual with impeccable credentials and unimpeachable integrity.

No comment.

[rainbowdemon]

unimpeachable

For a president, that would be a good thing!!

[Redneck4sure]

integrity.

For a president...that would be a good thing!!

[Wolfie]

astute

Me thinks you left out a extra "s" .

[DudeAsInCool]

Election Scorecard

Analysis Oct. 26, noon ET: Trouble for the president. He's trending down in the Reuters/Zogby tracking polls in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The map appears to be firming up: Nevada, New Mexico, and Iowa to Bush; Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania to Kerry. The back-breaker is Florida, where Bush has won only two of the last seven polls. One (Gallup) is clearly out of whack. If the other (Zogby tracking) drops again tonight without countervailing evidence, Bush will be out 27 electoral votes, needing Ohio and Wisconsin just to tie.

http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2108689/

[Malicious Intent]

What happens in a tie?

[Redneck4sure]

What happens in a tie?

I believe it goes to the House Of Representatives per the 12th amendment to the Constitution.

[Article XII.]

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;--The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;--The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. (See Note 14)--The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

Proposal and Ratification The twelfth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several States by the Eighth Congress, on the 9th of December, 1803, in lieu of the original third paragraph of the first section of the second article; and was declared in a proclamation of the Secretary of State, dated the 25th of September, 1804, to have been ratified by the legislatures of 13 of the 17 States. The dates of ratification were: North Carolina, December 21, 1803; Maryland, December 24, 1803; Kentucky, December 27, 1803; Ohio, December 30, 1803; Pennsylvania, January 5, 1804; Vermont, January 30, 1804; Virginia, February 3, 1804; New York, February 10, 1804; New Jersey, February 22, 1804; Rhode Island, March 12, 1804; South Carolina, May 15, 1804; Georgia, May 19, 1804; New Hampshire, June 15, 1804.

Ratification was completed on June 15, 1804.

The amendment was subsequently ratified by Tennessee, July 27, 1804.

The amendment was rejected by Delaware, January 18, 1804; Massachusetts, February 3, 1804; Connecticut, at its session begun May 10, 1804.

[Amber]

Don't worry bout that, Kerry's gonna kick his ass

[Redneck4sure]

Here is an article explaining what happens if no one gets 270 electoral votes.

[DudeAsInCool]

Some think the battleground may be Florida. But Wisconsin is increasingly being discussed as the state that swings the election. Here's some background from Slate, which in an updated article today thought Kerrry would take the state and the election:

The blue state Kerry could easily lose.

By Julia Turner

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004, at 3:48 AM PT

The corner booth at the Culver's in Dodgeville, Wis., could probably seat a family of six, but on a recent afternoon, there was just enough room for me, Steve Freese, and Steve Freese's map. Freese is the Bush campaign chairman for Wisconsin's rural Iowa County. As I took my seat, he unfurled a county map so big and so detailed that it listed the owners of each plot of land. Freese was able to point out the names of individual voters and explain why they'll cast ballots for Bush, but he seemed more interested in showing me the purple-and-green stickers that dotted the county. They were the sort usually employed by first-grade teachers. Each one read, "WOW!" "Wherever you see a 'WOW!'," Freese said with satisfaction, "we've got a 4-by-8 sign." There were eight WOW!s on the map.

The 4-by-8 yard signs are significant in campaign-land: Because they're allocated by Victory 2004, the state party's turnout campaign, they indicate how important the campaign directors think your county is. In 2000, Bush ignored rural southwestern Wisconsin. ("We didn't get yard signs until the weekend before the election!" Freese said.) Gore, on the other hand, lavished attention on the area, chartering a boat and idling down the Mississippi River along Wisconsin's western border. Bush lost the region—and the state—to Gore. But the margin was tantalizingly small. Gore won Wisconsin by just 5,708 votes, or 0.2 percent. So for the past four years, local Republicans have been hatching plans to paint the state red this Nov. 2. The question is whether the Kerry campaign—and independent outfits like America Coming Together, the League of Conservation Voters, and the countless other left-leaning groups planning get-out-the-vote initiatives here—will be organized enough to compensate for the Republicans' head start. So far, most polls show the state leaning slightly to Bush.

Wisconsin is a funny swing state. A century ago, Robert LaFollette Sr. launched the Progressive movement here, and his success may explain why so many Wisconsinites still think taxes and government services are reasonably sound ideas. Many of those voters reside in Wisconsin's rural areas, which aren't necessarily Republican. (Gore won nearly 40 percent of the state's rural counties in 2000; he won just 18 percent of rural counties nationwide.) Wisconsin's cities, meanwhile, aren't reliably Democratic. (Bush took metro Milwaukee, with lots of help from the suburbs.) And the state doesn't even swing that much: The last time Wisconsin chose a Republican for president, it was Reagan in 1984. But Wisconsin's consistent record belies how closely contested it usually is. Seven of the last 11 presidential elections have been decided by five points or fewer. Sure, the state produced Democrat Russ Feingold, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. (Feingold's up for re-election this year, and the most recent polls suggest he'll win handily.) But Wisconsin also gave us Tommy Thompson—Bush's secretary of health and human services—who was a beloved Republican governor here from 1987 to 2001. It's no surprise Republicans saw Wisconsin as ripe for the picking.

Continue Article

As in most swing states, the GOP got organized early. Victory 2004 is coordinating efforts in every county, and has placed particular emphasis on the rural areas Bush took for granted in 2000. "I've been focused on this campaign for four years," said Linda Hansen, the Bush campaign chairman for Crawford, a rural county that Gore won by 13 percentage points. Hansen seems more competent than Superwoman: She's still home-schooling two of her six kids while working 80 hours a week on the election. (She did take a day off from campaigning—to run a marathon.) Hansen has volunteers working phone banks to identify Bush voters and going door-to-door to hand out absentee ballots. (Wisconsin, which allows voters to register on Election Day, will also let anyone cast an absentee ballot.) She got President Bush to come speak in Prairie du Chien in May. She had get-out-the-vote teams in place and trained by the beginning of October. When local women whose husbands are in Iraq meet for a monthly support group, Hansen arranges for the Teenage Republicans to babysit their kids. If Bush and Cheney win Wisconsin, it will be because they have a Linda Hansen in every county—a local Republican who knows the community well and has been working very hard for a very long time.

The Kerry campaign has been slower to get organized. Many of the Kerry field offices are run by campaign workers who come from out of state and arrived sometime in July. When they tried to recruit local volunteers, some Kerry staffers found they faced competition from ACT and other independent groups, most of which had arrived in Wisconsin before July. One field director, who has three counties to keep track of, has tried to coordinate with local Democrats, but found that in at least a few areas, the county parties were "defunct." And the county parties that areactive aren't getting much direction from the campaign—Dale Klemme, the president of the Democratic Party in Crawford County, has been doing yeoman's work, but said the Kerry folks seem focused on the cities. ("We had trouble getting yard signs," he noted; the locals made their own.) In Milwaukee proper, the Kerry campaign is faring slightly better, in part because Gwen Moore, a black woman, is the Democratic candidate for the 4thCongressional seat. She's expected to win, and Democrats are hoping that black voters will turn out in greater than usual numbers to support her. Still, most Kerry staffers freely acknowledge that the Bush folks got a head start.

It certainly seems like Kerry is quietly waiting for the independent groups—which his campaign can't coordinate with—to pick up the slack. The question is whether they can save the state for him. The independents are here in force—ACT, the LCV, the Young Voter Alliance, NARAL Pro-Choice America, USAction, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, AFSCME, the AFL-CIO, and the SEIU, among others—and the America Votes coalition is coordinating their efforts. I met with Peter Shakow, America Votes' man in Wisconsin, in the Madison office he shares with ACT. Shakow has a map, too. The America Votes groups share a voter file; he keeps tabs on which groups are canvassing where to make sure they don't overlap. His map of Milwaukee shows which wards have been allotted to which groups. "So your poor person at 123 Elm Street doesn't get seven knocks in one day," Shakow explains.

Despite Shakow's best efforts, the people of Wisconsin have knock fatigue. Liz Lundeen, a canvasser with the League of Conservation Voters, is prepared. "We call this the 'friendly knock,' " she says, demonstrating on a door in West Allis, a pretty working-class suburb* in Milwaukee. The knock has a little syncopation at the end: Tap-tap-tap-tip-tap. "It's less of a police knock." Lundeen would be a sophomore at Wake Forest, where she's on the debate team, but she's taken the semester off to work toward Kerry's election. As we stroll past pumpkins and leaf bags, Liz knocks on 56 doors in about three hours. The people who answer listen politely, but you can tell they've heard similar pitches before, whether from canvassers, phone-bankers, or the pitchmen in ubiquitous television and radio ads. One man, standing over his hibachi in sweat pants, nods resignedly as Lundeen explains, "Wisconsin was decided by less than 6,000 votes last year." As she speaks, he mouths, "I know."

Still, Lundeen's task is as much to identify the voters as to persuade them. The LCV wants to know who's supporting Bush (so they don't waste any more time), who's supporting Kerry (potential volunteers), and who's truly undecided. (These voters get follow-up visits and customized mailings about the issues that concern them.) While I was with her, Liz talked to 22 people. Three were undecided. Seven were for Kerry and three were leaning toward him. Another seven were for the president and two were leaning toward him. (Although one of the Bush leaners seemed to have his mind made up: When he answered the door with his young daughter in tow, she hopped up and down with a sing-song chant: "I love Bush! I love Bush!") When Lundeen went back to the office, her results were entered into the master voter file, where they'll be available for groups like ACT to access. The weekend before the election, America Votes will use the voter file to marshal its resources accordingly, sending turnout volunteers to Democratic houses and neighborhoods, primarily in Madison, Milwaukee, and Milwaukee's swingable suburbs.

This GOTV strategy may succeed: The people behind independent groups are smart, energized, and working full-tilt. But it doesn't seem particularly tailored to the ways in which Wisconsin is different from other hotly contested states. Like GOTV drives everywhere, the Wisconsin effort is concentrating on urban areas, where left-leaning voters are abundant, and the small lots are canvass-friendly. But in Wisconsin, a substantial portion of Democratic voters live in more sparsely populated regions. Except for some ACT organizing in the counties surrounding Stevens Point in central Wisconsin, the independent groups have largely neglected rural areas. Bush lost Wisconsin in 2000 by ignoring its rural counties. Could the independent groups lose Wisconsin for Kerry by making the same mistake?

Correction, October 28, 2004: This piece originally called West Allis a neighborhood in Milwaukee. It is a suburb of the city. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Julia Turner is a Slate assistant editor. You can e-mail her [email protected].

Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.

http://www.slate.com/id/2108710/

[Redneck4sure]

Damn, Dude! That's too much reading! The election results will be posted before I read all that.

[Kooperman]

You'd think he'd at least post the spoken mp3 link of an article that long....

[Redneck4sure]

He's young and from Californie so I make allowances.

[DudeAsInCool]

Tucker Carlson calls it for Kerry

Here's yet another October surprise: the bow-tied wonderboy is calling the election for Kerry. That's right -- "Crossfire's" Tucker Carlson predicts in a "2004 Crystal Ball" roundup for the Opinion section of the Sunday Washington Post that the Democrat will win with 51.5 percent of the popular vote and 278 electoral votes. As a blogger over at Daily Kos uncharitably remarks, "Perhaps Jon Stewart slapped some sense into him after all."

You will be less bug-eyed to hear that Ann Coulter, that voice of dispassionate analysis, calls it for Bush (52 to 47, popular, 317 to 221, electoral) as does Fox News gabber Tony Snow and the Weekly Standard's heavily war-bunkered neocon Bill Kristol, by the same popular margin. The Wonkette and public radio host Kojo Nnamdi give it to Kerry.

-- David Talbot

[12:40 PDT, Oct. 30, 2004]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

[DudeAsInCool]

Rugrats for Kerry

James Wolcott is calling the election: Kerry 55, Bush 45. How did he arrive at this precise outcome? He cribbed from the Nickleodeon kids poll -- which, compiling responses from some 400,000 rugrats, gave the election to Kerry by an even wider margin -- 57 to 43. Wolcott is no dummy. The Nickleodeon survey has correctly predicted the last four presidential elections. But why is Wolcott making it a closer race than the Sponge Bob Squarepants fan base sees it? "Since kids are naturally exuberant, until it's beaten out of them by the System, I shaved off two points from Kerry, gave those two to Bush."

-- David Talbot

[16:10 PDT, Oct. 29, 2004]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

[Wolfie]

I always liked the rugrats.

As for Ann and Tucker, who would have guessed? <_>

[DudeAsInCool]

As for Ann and Tucker, who would have guessed? <_>

The Carlson prediction was a surprise. He apparently is following the Slate.com line that it all comes down to Wisconsin, where Kerry is gaining momentum, and the new voters, who are predominantly democrats :bigsmile:

[DudeAsInCool]

Focus Narrowing as Close Contest Nears Finish Line

By R. W. APPLE Jr.

Published: October 31, 2004

CLEVELAND, Oct. 30 - The 2004 presidential campaign is ending as it began, focused with blazing intensity on no more than a dozen hard-fought states, with the tinglingly close contest between President Bush andSenator John Kerry depending most, both parties agree, on three pivotal states: Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The candidates have invested tens of millions of dollars on advertising there, deployed armies of field workers and spent hundreds of hours on the stump, including visits in the campaign's final weekend. As a result, cities like Orlando, Pittsburgh and Columbus, and their suburbs, have watched the struggle from close range while Chicago, Dallas, New York and Los Angeles have squinted at it from bleacher seats.

In the end, the outcome is likely to be decided by what political pros call "the ground war": the effort by both parties to get every supporter to the polls on Tuesday. Although there are almost limitless ways either candidate could reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to win, whoever wins two of the big three states would have an advantage that would be difficult to overcome.

With only 72 hours left until the polls begin opening, Pennsylvania, with 21 electoral votes, appeared to be trending Mr. Kerry's way, with most but not all opinion surveys showing him ahead by about three percentage points. Mr. Bush has failed to dent the four suburban Philadelphia counties, whose liberal attitudes on social issues like abortion and gun control have overshadowed their economic conservatism.

Florida, with 27 electoral votes, was agonizingly close four years ago, with far-reaching consequences, and it is the hardest of the big states to read this year. If anyone holds an advantage, it is probably Mr. Bush, if only because of the influence of his brother Jeb, the governor. But the Democrats, energized by the sting of their agonizing defeat in 2000, seem to be benefiting more from the outpouring of early voters.

Here in Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes, Mr. Kerry has capitalized on job losses during the Bush administration. He seems to hold a tenuous lead as volunteers from both parties pour into the state, often seen as a microcosm of the nation, to get out the vote. He has taken to carrying a lucky buckeye in his pocket. No Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio, and the state has gone with the winner in all but two elections since 1892.

"It's as close as it could conceivably be," said Eric Rademacher, who directs the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll. "Closer than I've ever seen before. Close here and several other states. We may not know the outcome until mid-November."

Searching for ways to salvage a victory even if beaten in the big shows, both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush belatedly began wooing the voters of Michigan (17 electoral votes). A win there could very nearly make up for a loss in Ohio. They have also intensified their pursuit of a troika of smaller Midwestern states that Al Gore won by narrow margins in 2000: Minnesota and Wisconsin (10 each) and Iowa (7). All three are treacherously close this time, withRalph Nader a real threat to Mr. Kerry in Minnesota, a state notably fond of third-party candidates.

Colorado (9), New Mexico and Nevada (5 each) and New Hampshire (4) are all in play as well, with the potential of contributing to a winning equation.

A series of hairbreadth finishes could plunge the nation into treacherous straits, with lawsuits in multiple states, a far more complex prospect than the legal contest in 2000, which was confined to Florida. Several suits have already been filed. But the huge numbers of newly registered voters could confound all the forecasts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/politics...artner=homepage

[Wolfie]

I was at one of the early voting polls today and they had pretty good turn out. I had to wait for an hour to vote.

[slum_goddess]

what state, wolfie? i finally downloaded my emergency ballot last week and sent it to NYC (fuckin 4 quid! dammit) there's a site where you can register your info, if you're an expat, so they can collate all votes just in case. i'm hoping it's all cool and they count my damn vote.

[Wolfie]

I am in New Mexico, slum_goddess. I knew the Nov. 2nd would be nightmare to vote. This being battleground state and all.

[DudeAsInCool]

My sister lives in Santa Fe. We should hook up next time im in your universe, Wolfman

***

Analysis. 12/31/04. We haven't moved any states since Thursday, but looking over previous polling and the data of the last two nights, we think we see three states separating from the rest. Several of the states we've been watching closely—let's call them Tier 1--are pretty consistently going to one candidate or the other: Nevada, New Mexico, and Iowa to Bush; Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Hampshire, and now Wisconsin to Kerry. Of these, only Wisconsin and Iowa show signs of vulnerability. Florida, Ohio, and Minnesota have not settled into such a pattern. In those three states—let's call them Tier 2--polls are far from agreement. Our tentative theory is that these are the states in which poll results are most influenced by variations among likely-voter screens. To put it another way, these are the states in which turnout will most certainly decide who wins. If the Tier 1 states are distributed as current data suggest, then the election reduces to a simple equation. Whichever candidate takes two of the Tier 2 states is the next President.

http://slate.com/id/2108751/

[Wolfie]

I am in Albuquerque which about 45 minutes from Santa Fe.