some dork

commentary on topical minutiae

5 Reasons Why Obama’s Lead Is Not Safe

Obama supporters can certainly take heart from the way polls are trending this past week.  States that have long been thought safe GOP are suddenly back into consideration (see Missouri, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio).  This is an amazing series of events, and could lead to a wild ride in October.  McCain and the 527s supporting him may launch an all-in negative campaign against Obama.  Do not be surprised to hear the a lot about Reverend Wright, Tony Rezco, and Bill Ayers.  The GOP should be panicking a little bit, but Obama supporters can’t afford to relax.  There are plenty of ways McCain can still win this thing.

1. Youth Vote vs. The Elderly Vote

It is no secret that compared to the rest of the country, the younger voters (ages 18-24) do not turn out to vote like the other age brackets.  In 2004 only 46% of this age group exercised their right to vote (the reset of the electorate saw a 69% turnout).  Yes, this was an increase in youth vote from 2000, roughly 9%.  If this increases linearly then the youth vote may break the 50% barrier.

Compare this to the voting rates of the elderly.  Those over 55 vote at roughly twice the rate the youth did in 2004.  These fogies are reliable.  

Conventional wisdom says that Obama will get most of the youth vote, and McCain will get most of the elderly vote.  Back in May, the polling gurus at FiveThirtyEight did a snapshot projection of a surge in youth voting would mean for Obama.  With full credit to FiveThirtyEight, here is their graphic:

 

The turnout of +25% and +50% may seem optimistic at first, especially when you consider there was a much more modest increase of 9% from 2000 to 2004.  However the projections are based on a +52% bump in 18-29 year old voter participation in the Democratic primaries ( full article ).

Again, this is a projection from May.  However, having watched the polls quite religiously for the past few months, I see this as a very realistic scenario for the final election tally.  As the graphic shows, even with this massive increase in youth turnout you see the net effect is only that Obama maybe picks up Ohio.

As I’ve written here, I highly doubt a close election in Ohio will break Obama’s way.  The GOP is too entrenched in the voting system, and the Dems do not seem to be doing much about it.

 

To all you younger Dorkders out there, I get it.  I’m in my 30s now, and sometimes I struggle with exercising my franchise.  I am still proud of the fact that I did not vote in 1996.  As Noam Chomsky stated in a lecture of his I attended, “… it’s okay to go ahead and vote if you have a choice.”  I saw little discernible difference between Clinton and Dole in ‘96.  I was proud to fall into the statistics of the non-voters, to me it was a statement that the American political system did not address my needs.

I also saw little difference between Bush and Gore in 2000, but I voted in that one at the last minute, when it looked like the thing was going to be extremely close.  Am I ever glad I did vote in that one, because as it turns out, there was a huge difference between the two candidates (sort of drives home what a crappy campaign Gore ran, him not being able to separate himself from Bush).  

The point being I fully sympathize with voter apathy.  Despite being an Obama supporter, I do not see him being particularly strong on my issues, especially civil rights.  Yet McCain is even weaker.  However, I will be voting, as I have a strong desire to repudiate the Republican war mongering mentality that brought about the Iraq war.  

Even if the youth happen to turn out in droves, they have an uphill battle that the older demographics do not face.

2. Voter Suppression

In the 2006 elections, I drove to the place I cast my ballot in the 2004 election.  I was eager to vote for John Tester and boot the corrupt Conrad Burns out of office.  When I arrived at the polling station I discovered I was no longer on the registration roll for that precinct.  I couldn’t believe it.  Although I had moved, I had done nothing to change my registration information.  

I had, however, changed my address.  I’m sure I moved out of that particular precinct, even though I was still in the same county.  I did not file a change of address form with the post office, but I have a sneaky suspicion the wifey did.  She’s responsible about that kind of stuff.  What that did was flag me as a potential expired voter.  I’m sure a letter was mailed to me to confirm if I still lived at my old address.  One was probably sent to my new address too.  

I don’t really read my mail.  All my bills are auto-payed online.  Pretty much anything I get is junk mail.  If I ever got a notice about my voter registration, I’m sure it got tossed away with the other junk.  That caused me to get purged from the voter rolls in Gallatin county.

I drove to the Gallatin county courthouse, steamed about this attempt to disenfranchise me.  At the time I thought what had happened to me is illegal.  However, having done some reading, I’m not so sure anymore.  It sounds as if this is in fact a legal practice:

 

(c) Voter removal programs

(1) A State may meet the requirement of subsection (a)(4) of this section by establishing a program under which -

(A) change-of-address information supplied by the Postal Service through its licensees is used to identify registrants whose addresses may have changed; and

(B) if it appears from information provided by the Postal Service that -

(i) a registrant has moved to a different residence address in the same registrar’s jurisdiction in which the registrant is currently registered, the registrar changes the registration records to show the new address and sends the registrant a notice of the change by forwardable mail and a postage prepaid pre-addressed return form by which the registrant may verify or correct the address information; or

(ii) the registrant has moved to a different residence address not in the same registrar’s jurisdiction, the registrar uses the notice procedure described in subsection (d)(2) of this section to confirm the change of address.

 

Any of you dorkders out there with actual law degrees, I solicit your comments.  

Montana allows voters to register and cast a ballot on the same day.  This is what I intended to do as I drove to the court house.  The line for those seeking to do this stretched around the block.  I asked a guy  near the head of the line how long he had been waiting and he said about 90 minutes.  Keep in mind, this is Montana in November.  It tends to get cold and miserable outdoors this time of year.

Not wanting to wait, I decided to try for a flanking maneuver.  I asked one of the officials that I knew I was registered already, and I needed to find my proper precinct.  I was shuttled into a room with a bank of computers and a lot of helpful old lady volunteers manning them.  They were running some sort of application that tapped into the database of voter rolls.

A nice old lady helped me look up my name in Gallatin county.  No dice.  I was not a registered voter in Gallatin county.  I had been purged.  As I watched the kind lady help me, I noticed there was a way to check other counties in Montana, and lookup voter records for those counties.  I asked the lady if she could look me up in Park county, as I had lived there four years ago.  She had to ask permission to select Park county in a drop down.  While she was asking permission, I grabbed the mouse and looked myself up.  Sure enough, I was still a registered voter over there.  The lady came back and told me she was not allowed to look up records for other counties.  Yet, she broke the rules and confirmed what I had just sneaked a peek at myself.

So I drove to Park county and cast my vote.  Tester won by an extremely narrow margin.  In hindsight, my vote was probably illegal.

So what is the point of this stupid anecdote in the middle of an “Obama is far from safe” blog post?  I highly suspect my no longer being registered in Gallatin county and still being registered in Park county was no accident.

Montana State University resides in Gallatin county.  This represents a large block of youth voters.  It is no secret that college kids tend to vote quite liberally, which translates to Democrat here in Big Sky country.  College age kids tend to move around a lot.  At least once a year, if not every six months.  Not only that, college kids tend to be about as responsible as I am about checking the mail.  It is very easy to wipe college kids off of the voter rolls.  These kids do not have the time nor the inclination to submit change of address forms with the post office to keep their voter registration up to snuff.  The local GOP simply needs to head up a voter validation effort and most of these kids will be forced to resort to same day registration and voting if they want to cast their ballots.  

Remember, this is Montana we are talking about.  It takes an certain amount of determination for a college student to stand in the freezing November cold for 90 minutes in order to cast a ballot.  These kids usually have class or jobs to get to on a Tuesday, most of them do not have such time on their hands.  The GOP has a major advantage here.

Contrast this with Park county.  Most of Park county is predominantly a lower income population.  In Big Sky country that means they vote Republican.  When I moved from Park county, I took down my mailbox.  Meaning the actual mailbox no longer exists.  If there was an equivalent vote purge in Park county, there is no way in hell that I could have remained on the voter rolls.  However, I seriously doubt there was any meticulous scrutiny of the voter rolls in Park county?  Why?  Because Park county votes republican and the GOP wants these voters to have no impediments to casting their ballots.

We saw this situation on a larger scale in Ohio in 2004.  For some strange reason there were long, long lines in poor precincts.  Voters reported having to wait hours in order to cast their ballots.  Did I mention it was raining that day?  Surprisingly, there were mere 15 minute lines in the suburbs, a short drive away.  I sincerely doubt this was a coincidence, although apparently the national media does not share my level of skepticism.  With the evidence right in their face, they instead reported on the fact there were long lines, and had no curiosity as to why that might be.  Only the “fringe” journalists bothered to look.  There is hope, some mainstream media outlets seem to be waking up to these tricks.

Steven Rosenfeld has an interesting article about GOP voter purging over on Alternet.  This is a viable tactic, and can certainly swing close elections.  Close elections like Ohio is projected to be.  Unfortunately for the Obama supporters, I do not see the Obama campaign clueing into these purge efforts as much as they could be.  There are plenty of allegations of this happening for this election, and other than the Michigan case, I do not see the Democrats fighting back as hard as possible.

The best defense voters have against this is to check with their county office to see if they are registered and where they need to go vote.  Do not rely on mailings, sometimes those are straight up dirty tricks to confuse voters.

UPDATE: As if they were reading my mind, this article just popped up on Reddit: Montana GOP Challenges Thousands of Voters in Blue Counties.

3. Ballot Spoilage

So a Democratic voter manages to get properly registered and cast his ballot.  The vote is cast for Obama?  Well not always.  As Greg Palast continues to report, Republicans have developed an excellent operation in spoiling ballots.  There are many ways to spoil a ballot.  Sometimes legitimate spoilage happens.  Sometimes it is due to the voting equipment, voter ignorance, or random error.  They key thing as this should be random.

However there are circumstances where ballot spoilage tilts heavily enough for one candidate that randomness ceases to become a plausible argument.  Here is a graph of non-votes (i.e. spoiled ballots) in Cuyahoga County (yup, that is in Ohio) in the 2004 election:

 

The blue bars represent the percentage of support Kerry had in the precinct.  So from left to right, the bars rise, tracking precincts with more and more support for Kerry.  The red line is the percentage of votes that were considered spoiled.  What this graph shows is a strong correlation.  The greater amount of Kerry support in a precinct, the higher percentage of ballots get spoiled.  If you are a real nerd, read the entire statistical analysis.

It is my hope that the Democrats have wised up to some of the spoilage issues.  I urge any voter (Republican or Democrat) to not be intimidated at the polls.  If you think that damn voting machine did not register your vote correctly, speak the heck up.  Do not leave the polling place until you are satisfied the machine registered your vote the way you want it.  If that butterfly ballot looks confusing, demand the officials help you understand what it means.  This is your most precious right as a citizen; you must protect it at all cost.

 

4. Obama Not Good On Defense

Sadly the issues of voter purging and ballot spoilage are too easily dismissed as belonging to the conspiracy theory tin foil hat wearing crowd.  Pulling back to the actual course of the campaign, there is still concern that the polls will tighten back up soon.

There are a few circumstances that are shaping up for a McCain resurgence.  First, the issue of the economic meltdown has chewed up quite a bit of news cycles now.  Voters seem to think that Obama is better able to manage the economy.  But the issue may be burning out.  Obama has been able to play offense throughout this story.  McCain knows this, and one thing McCain knows how to do is seize the initiative.  Look for some attacks to come at Obama hard in the next few weeks.

Obama plays poor defense.  Almost every time McCain has gone on the attack, Obama’s poll numbers have suffered.  We saw this as well when Hillary went negative in the primaries.  Here is a poll timeline - translated into projected electoral votes- over the course of the election (courtesy of Electoral-Vote.com) :

 

This illustrates that Obama’s electoral vote projections have fallen when he gets put on the defensive (or at least McCain goes on offense).  The Paris Hilton ad, the poor performance at Saddleback, and the Palin VP selection are all points in time where Obama was either put on the defensive or McCain’s offensive was able to steal the show.

The time is ripe for yet another McCain offensive.  Like Hillary in the primaries, his campaign is getting desperate, and they are probably warming up the negative attacks.

 

5. Palin Negatives To Stop Tonight

If you peek back at the electoral vote graph above, you may notice that this latest Obama surge has happened quite fast.  It is my thinking that this is due to four factors that have coalesced to form the perfect storm for Obama.  

First is the economy.  Second is the economy.  Third is Obama holding his own in the debate and appearing more presidential.  Fourth is the horrendous press that Sarah Palin has received in the past few weeks.

The Palin drag on the ticket will cease to be a factor after tonight’s debate.  I’ve been looking into her past performances these past few days, trying to figure out if she really is as stupid as she sounds in the interviews.

I’ve reached the conclusion that Palin is indeed inexperienced, but is also a shrewd politician.  What her problem has been is she’s not used to the level of scrutiny she is getting.  As a result, she hesitates, making the political calculations of her words as she formulates her answer.  Sometimes she panics and regurgitates nonsensical talking points.  She’ll get better and more refined as she gets practice.  

As far as the debate goes, she’ll prove that she is no lightweight tonight.  She’s had an adequate amount of time to prepare for whatever answers are going to come her way.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she launches some effective attacks on Biden and Obama.  I also expect her to pull a year 2000 George Bush and show remarkable command of the subjects she has prepped for.  The expectations are low, and she’ll clear them easily.

The GOP can breathe a sigh of relief, and hopefully our national dialog will move on to the more substantive issues of the campaign.  But coupled with that will be stoppage of the Palin bleeding.  McCain will probably even gain some ground in the polls as voters are reassured about Palin.

Enjoy the debate.  I doubt I’ll be able to post much of an analysis, as I’ll be driving up to Edmonton to attend a friend’s wedding this weekend.

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