The final tally

...is still not known a week after the election because absentee votes and provisional votes are still being counted in some places.

But the very latest results are:

Barack Obama - 62,600,051 (50.6%)
Mitt Romney - 59,123,945 (47.8%)
All other candidates - 1,961,276 (1.6%)

So the total vote (at this point) was nearly 124,000,000 and not 120,000,000 as originally reported.

You wanna know what I think?

Here’s what I think:

A million here, a million there, pretty soon we’re talking a significant number of people.

All 51 races from bluest (“most democrat”) to reddest (”most republican”)

I’m hoping that by now you are all aware that the U.S. doesn’t have “a presidential election,” it has 51 presidential elections (each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, better known as Washington, D.C.) and each one is important because of our Electoral College approach to choosing our president.

In president-choosing years, ours is an indirect democracy in which each state chooses a slate of electors who will meet in their respective state capitals on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December (this year, December 17th) to do the actual choosing of the next president. The slates vary in size from 3 for the District of Columbia (because it has a single member in the House of Representatives and two Senators in the Senate) to 55 for California (because it has 53 members in the House of Representatives and two Senators in the Senate). Each race is distinct, unique, and separate from all the others. The total national popular vote is ignored completely.

This is the reason that although Al Gore in 2000 and Richard Nixon in 1960 received more popular votes nationally than their opponents (George W. Bush and John F. Kennedy, respectively), they did not win the presidency. Also, the electors are supposed to vote for the party they were elected to vote for, but there are no hard and fast rules. In reality, the electors can vote for whomever they darned well please. This has made for some interesting elections in the past.

Here’s an interesting table from Nate Silver’s column in The New York Times. His predictions regarding the late unpleasantness the 2012 U.S. Presidential election were more accurate than any other pollster in the country.

I’m hoping that the chart will become larger (and hence easier to read) if you click on it. If it does not, get out a magnifying glass.

[Editor's note. Apparently the chart does not enlarge here in my post. Forget the magnifying glass. You can see the chart much better here. --RWP]

From Nate Silver’s interesting perspective, it was Colorado, not Ohio, that put Barack Obama over the required 270 electoral votes.

To my great surprise, Nate Silver’s chart also indicates that my state, Georgia, was the second-least Republican state in 2012 (North Carolina was the least, barely falling into the Romney column). Perhaps the once-solid Democratic South that turned into a solid Republican South with the Johnson-Goldwater election of 1964 is closer than ever to being not as solid as a lot of people might think.

In the meantime, let’s hear it for Nate Silver!

Maybe he’ll stop posting about the election soon.

One can always hope.

An interesting phenomenon in the late unpleasantness was that fewer voters went to the polls in 2012 than in 2008. Here are the statistics:

2008:
Barack Obama received 69,492,376 votes (53.0%).
John McCain received 59,946,378 votes (45.7%).
Other candidates received 1,703,390 votes (1.3%).
Total 2008 vote for president: 131,142,144

2012:
Barack Obama received 60,899,564 votes (50.4%).
Mitt Romney received 57,961,119 votes (48.0%).
Other candidates received 1,889,137 votes (1.6%).
Total 2012 vote for president: 120,749,820

In round numbers, 8.6 million fewer votes were cast for the Democratic candidate and 2.0 million fewer votes were cast for the Republican candidate. Minor party candidates, however, received 0.2 million more votes this time around.

In 2008 the U.S. population was estimated to be 303 million. In 2012 the U.S. population is estimated to be 313 million. So we have 10 million more people and 10 million fewer voters.

What does it all mean?

Your guess is as good as anyone else’s.

But this is also a fact: If all 2,015,000 missing Republicans had voted for Mitt Romney, Barack Obama would still have won the election.

For people living on Mars who may not have heard

...here are the results of the 2012 Presidential Election in the United States:

Popular vote (unofficial): Obama 60,899,564 (50.4%); Romney 57,961,119 (48.1%)

Electoral vote (the one that really counts, with 270 required to win) currently sits at Obama 303 (blue), Romney 206 (red), with Florida’s 29 votes “leaning” toward Obama 49.8% to 49.3%

The nation remains in gridlock. In the Senate, where 33 out of the 100 seats were up for election and 51 are required for a majority, the Democrats increased their number from 53 to 54. In the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats were up for election and 218 are required for a majority, the Republicans dropped from 242 to 234 but retain their majority.

Basically, nothing has changed.

I suppose the most important sentence in this post is this one:

The nation remains in gridlock.

[Editor’s note. The numbers in this post are as of 1900 hours, Eastern time, November 8, 2012. --RWP]

Since the final debate between Messrs. Romney and Obama occurs this evening and time is of the essence....

...let’s cut to the chase.

Dr. Barbara Bellar, a candidate for the Illinois State Senate, District 18, said the following:

”So let me get this straight.

”We’re going to be gifted with a healthcare plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers at least ten million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS* agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a Treasury Secretary who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke.

”So what the blank could possibly go wrong?”

I did not make this up. Here’s a video to prove it.

* For my UK, Enzed, Aussie, Canadian et al friends, IRS means the Internal Revenue Service, the tax-collecting arm of the U.S. federal government.

We voted today

...by which I mean, by the time you are reading this, if you read it on the same day I finally got around to posting it, yesterday. Is that clear?

The U.S. presidential election will be held on Tuesday, November 6th. Many states, however -- but certainly not all of them -- have instituted an “early voting” process. In Georgia it seems to be limited to the more populous counties.

Cherokee County’s early voting began on Monday. Our county has 44 precincts. From October 15th through October 26th -- except Saturdays or Sundays -- early voting is permitted at one location only, the County Board of Elections building in the town of Canton, which is the county seat. Beginning on Saturday, October 27th, and then again from Monday, October 27th, through Friday, November 2nd, four of the county libraries will be added as advance voting locations. Any registered voter who lives in Cherokee County can go to any one of the five locations to vote early. On election day itself (Tuesday, November 6th), when all 44 precincts will be staffed, voters must vote in the precinct in which they reside.

Monday night’s news was filled with shots of long lines waiting to vote early in various counties around metro Atlanta. And although more than 1,100 people voted on Monday in Cherokee County, we encountered no lines and no wait whatsoever when we showed up at the Board of Elections building Tuesday afternoon around 4:00 p.m.

We waltzed in and we waltzed out.

The whole thing, from start to finish, took less than ten minutes.

So there won’t be any standing in long lines on election day for me. Nosirree. Nosirree, Bob.

For me, there will be a lot of sitting at a table inside the precinct and helping people who have been standing in the long lines.

Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up

“Man on the street” interviews sometimes reveal more than you might expect.

As reported today at RealClearPolitics.com, America’s king of radio shock jocks Howard Stern sent a couple of his guys to Harlem to ask people about the 2012 election.

Their answers are not just eye-opening, they are downright jaw-dropping.

Just for the record and my international reading public, Obama is not Mormon, Romney is not Muslim, Paul Ryan is not Obama’s running mate, Paul Ryan is not black, John McCain is not a candidate, Sarah Palin is not a candidate, and Osama bin Laden is no longer with us.

You’d never know it from these interviews. though. Watch and listen and pick yourself up off the floor (7:29).

As Stern’s co-host Robin Quivers said, “Well, we’re obviously dealing with a whole population that doesn’t listen to the newscasts or read a newspaper.”

Obviously.

Well, at least Roseanne Barr is still funny (7:32).

Oops, wrong again.

Well, at least the people interviewed in Harlem got their fifteen minutes seconds of fame.

The most important 18 minutes since the gap in President Nixon’s Watergate tapes

...just might be a talk given in Orlando last September by lawyer Anita Moncrief, a former liberal and the whistleblower in the ACORN scandal. She shared some very interesting information:

Anita Moncrief’s very interesting information -- Part One (9:14)

Anita Moncrief’s very interesting information -- Part Two (9:53)

If you have been asleep, people, it is time to wake up.

P.S. -- For those who are wondering, I do know how to add, and I realize that Ms. Moncrief’s very interesting talk is actually a little over 19 minutes long when you include the seconds. I chose to ignore the seconds so that this post -- did I mention that it contains some very interesting information? -- could have a very interesting title.

As the election draws near

...every American voter and certain residents of Sheffield, Yorkshire, England in the U.K. ought to read this article by Niall Ferguson in this week’s Newsweek magazine.

Since you’re here, why don’t you read it too? (It’s a little on the long side -- five pages -- but worth the look.)

You might learn something.

Lies, damned lies, and presidential campaigns

In July, a blog called Human Events ran the following headline:

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: SURE, ROMNEY COULD BE A ‘FELON’

Here’s the article that followed the headline.

For those who never click on links, Debbie Wasserman Schultz represents Florida's 20th Congressional District (Fort Lauderdale and environs) in Washington and she is also the Chair[person] of the Democratic National Committee. A few days later, Ms. Schults went on MSNBC and repeated the charge on nationwide television.

To be fair, she was being asked to comment about a statement made in a conference call the previous week by Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.. Ms. Cutter had said, “Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, [or he wasn't].” Wasserman Schultz basically attempted to validate what Cutter had said, repeating the accusation for a national television audience.

These two women are not a couple of nobodies out in the hinterland; they are high priestesses in the campaign to get President Obama re-elected.

Fast forward to the present (today, August 20, 2012) and watch this exchange between reporter Nancy Cordes of CBS and President Obama at a news conference.

Again, for the link-challenged, here is a transcript:

Nancy Cordes, CBS: As you know, your opponent recently accused you of waging a campaign filled with anger and hate. You told Entertainment Tonight that anyone who attends your rallies can see that they are not angry or hate-filled affairs. But in recent weeks, your campaign has suggested repeatedly -- without proof -- that Mr. Romney might be hiding something in his tax returns. They have suggested that Mr. Romney might be a felon for the way that he handed over power of Bain Capital. And your campaign and the White House have declined to condemn an ad by one of your top supporters that links Mr. Romney to a woman’s death from cancer. Are you comfortable with the tone being set with your campaign? Have you asked them to change their tone when it comes to defining Mr. Romney?

President Obama: Well, first of all, I am not sure that all of those characterizations that you laid out there were accurate. For example, nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon. And, I think that what is absolutely true is if you watch me on the campaign trail, here’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how to put Americans back to work.

(End of transcript)

As the Psalmist said, Selah (Hebrew: pause and consider).

The point being, I suppose, that when you tell (or imply) a lie, sometimes you have to tell another lie to cover up the first lie.

To my mind, this is akin to saying, on the one hand, “Mother Teresa could be a common whore” or, on the other, “Princess Diana never referred to Camilla Parker-Bowles as The Rottweiler.” [Editor’s note. As far as I know, no one has ever said such things. --RWP]

It also demonstrates that as long as enough people (a) aren’t really paying attention and (b) believe anything they hear, anything is possible.

Stay tuned.

Why the U.S. election on November 6, 2012 is very, very important

Enough said.

You there in the back, I see your hand.

***in response to Shooting Parrots waving wildly***

In the comments section of my last post (which I hope was not my last post, if you know what I mean), Ian what’s-his-name from Lancashire who calls himself Shooting Parrots for reasons
I won’t go into had two excellent questions, and I said I would answer them in my next post.

So I will.

His questions were:

1. Exactly who covers the cost of these pre-election elections? Is it the state (the government, I mean) or is it the party?

2. And what would happen if there were three, four, five or six other political parties? Would they have to hold primaries too?

So there really weren’t two questions at all. There were four. Shooting Parrots is a sly old fox.

Let me answer the questions one at a time, if I can.

But first, a little background is in order. The U.S., as most of you know (even though in Beaverton, Oregon, in May, 2008, a very tired then-Senator Obama didn’t seem to), is made up of 50 states and several territories. Each one makes its own rules concerning the holding of elections (and lots of other things, too, like the minimum age to acquire a driver’s license, whether gay people can get married, and the like), and Georgia is no exception in that regard. Although this may seem unnecessarily messy and frightfully inconsistent to you, we do things that way over here in accordance with the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the idea being that a powerful centralized government was probably not a good thing. [Editor’s note. The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution (out of 27 adopted since 1789) are known collectively as The Bill of Rights. --RWP]

There is an official election code, and it is so complicated that even the scoring scheme in the game of Farkle seems simple in comparison, so I will assume that Ian really doesn’t want me to go into that much depth and just let it go with a passing mention that it exists.

Furthermore, although I'm sure that if I looked long enough I could find the answers to Ian's questions online, I will provide the answers from the vast storehouse of my brain's pre-ingested knowledge without referring to any other authoritative or encyclopedic source of any kind.

So I could be wrong.

***your correspondent takes two aspirin and lies down for half an hour***

Now on with answering Ian’s questions.

First off, a primary is not “a pre-election election,” it is an election in its own right. In some states, only Democrats can vote in the Democrat Primary and only Republicans can vote in the Republican Primary. In the states of Georgia and Wisconsin and perhaps a few others, however, “open” or “crossover” primaries are held in which voters can choose either party’s Primary ballot. Voters in Open Primary states can effectively sabotage their opposing party’s primary by voting for the candidate their own candidate can most easily defeat. Isn’t that special? (Of course, they run the risk that the candidate they prefer in their own party will lose because they chose not to cast their vote in their own primary -- except this year, when there is only one candidate on one of the ballots. Incumbency, like rank, has its privileges. But not always. If you remember, Senator Ted Kennedy ran against then-President Jimmy Carter in Democrat primaries in 1980.)

And, in an odd twist, if a runoff is necessary because no candidate received 50% of the vote in the primary, voters who participated in the primary can choose only the party whose ballot they chose in the original primary, unless they didn't participate in the original primary at all, in which case they are not, as you might think, barred from voting in the runoff but can choose either party’s ballot (if both parties are having runoffs) just like the folks who voted in the original primary. I hope I am making myself clear.

The election just completed was called a Presidential Preference Primary. The Democrat ballot contained one name and the Republican ballot contained nine names, I think, unless it was eleven. I kid you not. Didn't matter whether some have dropped out of the race. Georgia produced its ballot in January and was not going to pay good money to have it done over. [Editor’s note. If county election boards receive official notice from the Secretary of State that a candidate has withdrawn from the race, a written notice to the public to that effect is posted on the walls of each precinct on election day. In this election, no such notice was received from the Secretary of State. --RWP]

In the General Election (the big one in the fall), candidates of all parties appear on a single ballot and no choosing of ballots is necessary.

That being said, I think it is the government (that is, the taxpayers) who shoulder the cost of elections and runoffs. I do not think the parties contribute to the cost of holding an election as that might be interpreted as bribing an election official. If I am wrong, then I think it is intuitively obvious that parties would pay, or help pay, for the cost of elections and you can quote me on that.

Georgia will hold three elections in all this year. In July we will have the regular primaries of both major parties, in which candidates for such offices as sheriffs, mayors, members of school boards, county commissions, representatives to both houses of the State legislature, and representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives will be chosen. Georgia will not have an election for U.S. Senator this year since Senators are chosen every six years and both of our Senators are in the middle of their current terms. Then there will be the General Election in November.

In Georgia -- and again, I think I am correct but I’m not sure -- no party can hold a primary unless in the preceding Presidential election (one is held every four years) that party garnered at least 5% of the popular vote. Other states may have different rules. I believe that the Libertarian Party qualified to have a primary here a few years back. I don’t believe we have ever had a Green Party primary or a Socialist Workers Party primary in the state of Georgia, although their candidates and those of other parties do appear on the Federal election ballot in November.

The Georgia Secretary of State’s office, through each county’s Board of Elections, conducts the elections. Georgia has used touch-screen computerized ballots for about a decade now, but some states still use paper ballots or mechanical devices. Some states allow registration up to and including election day, but in Georgia a voter must have been registered for at least 30 days prior to an election. Registration is easily accomplished in a few minutes at either the public libraries or the offices where drivers’ licenses are issued and renewed.

In conclusion, I think the right way to look at it is not that the parties have to hold primaries but that the parties get to hold primaries.

Two posts back, Yorkshire Pudding asked me whether I thought Romney was really up to the job of being President of the U.S. but I am too tired to think about that now.

Super Wednesday

Super Tuesday is over and ten more states have had their say in the delegate-selection processes leading to national conventions this summer that will select candidates for our quadrennial presidential election in November. In one party, the incumbent, one B. H. Obama, is running unopposed, so all the drama and media attention at the moment are centered on the other party, where four individuals (out of an original nine) are still hanging tough. Do the names Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul ring a bell? Only 22 of our 50 states have completed their primaries or caucuses to date. If I may quote Yogi Berra, it ain’t over till it’s over.

But my sojourn as a poll worker is finished for another little while. Over the past 10-day period I served as a precinct clerk on four different occasions, three of them in county-wide early-voting locations (Georgia instituted early voting about a decade ago). Very long days they were, too. I thought being away from home so much might affect my posting -- hence the admonition last week to “Watch this space” -- but I still managed to get a couple of posts in there.

Not bad for someone who will turn 71 shortly.

Turnout was rather light in our state. To be specific, only about 800,000 Georgians voted in this election, which was billed as a Presidential Preference Primary. By contrast, nearly four million Georgians voted in the 2008 Presidential Election. In the precinct where I worked, only around 900 stalwart and dedicated voters showed up yesterday out of 3,900 registered. Some may have participated in the early voting last week, but still....

Our next election takes place in July, when we pick sheriffs, mayors, members of school boards, representatives to both houses of the State legislature, and a representative to the U.S. Congress. I don’t believe Georgia has a U.S. Senate race this year (Senators serve 6-year terms). Then it will be on to more fun in November.

In other news, Mrs. RWP and I saw our granddaughter in a middle-school production of Mulan that easily rivaled some college-level productions I’ve seen for costuming, set decoration, and singing and acting talent. Few things can beat the 12- to 14-year-old crowd for sheer enthusiasm and exuberance.

Speaking of college, March Madness is upon us in the collegiate basketball world. Only time will tell who will be in the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, and the Final Four. My non-U.S. readers are probably scratching their heads.

Even more important, the new baseball season is upon us with annual spring training games currently being played in the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues. If spring comes, can opening day be far behind? With such posts as this one and this one and this one, Reamus continues to be our go-to guy on the subject of baseball.

Speaking of sheer enthusiasm and exuberance and Grapefruit Leagues and Cactus Leagues and Opening Days, I leave you with one of the greats:

(Photo of Yogi Berra in March 2007, used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license)

And as always, dear reader, I remain somewhat incoherently yours.

To quote Yogi Berra again, I just want to thank everyone who made this day necessary.

Speaking truth to power

We interrupt your Advent observance to bring you an important message.

Here is Nigel Farage speaking truth to power on November 16, 2011 (2:39).

Here he is again on November 26 (3:11).

Here he is back in February speaking in the European Parliament (1:24).

Nick Farage may not be a polite man, but he says things that need to be said.

Such frankness and forthrightness is heard here in the U.S. too, with one stark difference. The Democrats say terrible things about the Republicans, and the Republicans say terrible things about the Democrats. But they speak only to representatives of the media, and only on occasions when those with whom they differ are not present. Here in the former colonies, our politicians never seem to speak to one another, face to face, except perhaps once every four years after the new candidate of the David party and the new candidate of the Goliath party have been chosen. Then they participate in what we quaintly refer to as a quadrennial presidential debate.

On the floor of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, the unwritten rule all too often is one from our kindergarten days: “If you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.” And so very little of substance gets accomplished. The members of the British House of Commons may start their harangues with the words, “The right honourable gentleman,” but they are not polite. Nigel Farage is lacking in certain social graces, but he speaks truth to power.

Good for them and good for him. If the emperor is not wearing any clothes, someone needs to inform the people who came to watch the parade. In the land of the blind, as you know, the one-eyed man is king.

There is hope here in the former colonies. The message that something is rotten in the state of Denmark (figuratively speaking) is slowly being heard. Even the most politically comatose among our citizenry are beginning to realize that something has gone awry. Even what one radio talk-show host calls “the mooching class,” by whom he means many of the people who were mesmerized by Barack Obama in 2008 and voted for Hope and Change, are beginning to realize that something is off-kilter. The fact that a Marxist is leading the pack does not resonate with them, however.

Here is, in my opinion, America’s equivalent of Nick Farage, only more polite, in a speech from 2009 (9:46).

And here he is again, speaking in 2010 (3:36).

If we pay more attention to him, maybe David will actually bring down Goliath in our 2012 elections.

Because Newt Gingrich is also speaking truth to power. In America, the power resides in the hands of the people who vote in elections.

(Photo by Matthew Gargano, 2011)