Posts Tagged ‘Election’
Voters approve a new cabinet in Tunisia.
How will young voters be heard in 2012?
Voter ID Laws: Justice Department – 1, South Carolina – 0.
Michigan takes a step back in gay rights.
While the US election is still over a year away, campaigning is in full swing in many parts of the country.
In the state of Massachusetts, one election promises to get plenty of national media attention.
Last week, noted consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren announced she would seek the office of United States Senator for the Democrats.
Warren, who is a professor at Harvard Law School, writes and speaks extensively on issues relating to consumer finance protection
She’s a strong advocate for protecting consumers against credit card companies, mortgage companies and student loan outfits who
“want to do business… through tricks and traps and fine print and fooling people.”
President Obama sought Warren’s advice in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this year. However, she was not nominated to head the new agency. Is the protection of consumers exclusively a liberal goal?
A video of Warren on her “Talking Tour” has gotten a lot of traction online. Her knowledge of serious issues and her ability to explain them to non-experts (in a simple, unpatronizing way) have appealed to some voters.
If she wins the Democratic primary, Warren will face incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown, the total dreamboat who won the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in January of 2010. Brown’s success in that election was in part due to the lackluster campaign of his opponent, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who the Democratic party figured was a shoo-in.
According to Public Policy Polling, Warren leads Sen. Scott Brown by two points–but, of course, it’s still very early.
Is Elizabeth Warren the candidate Massachusetts has been waiting for? Will her advocacy on behalf of the middle class win her their support? We’ve got a long campaign season ahead of us. The race between Warren and Brown is definitely one to watch.
New Year Eve is a time for reflection… and Parties!
When reflecting back on 2011 there was one party that got every one’s attention:
The Tea Party.
Despite their sometimes silly costumes and signs, the ultraconservative Tea Party proved they were serious in 2010.
From Florida to Alaska, Tea Partiers bucked the GOP establishment by making sure their candidates were on the ballots of many of the year’s most watched electoral races. Their new-found political clout garnered media attention all over the country.
The attention wasn’t always positive. In Delaware, Tea-Party-favorite Christine O’Donnell was repeatedly mocked after being forced to announce she wasn’t a witch.
Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul received bad press of his own when he made provocative comments about civil rights. Eyebrows were raised when some of his supporters physically attacked a liberal activist.
In the end, the group had highs and lows like any political movement. While they might be credited with putting Republicans into the leadership of the US House of Representatives, they failed to help them take control of the Senate.
So, the question is: Who will be invited to the Party next year?
As purveyors of terrible jokes, we at US Democrazy thought we’d provide you another:
What’s the opposite of Progress? (HINT: it rhymes with kongress)
Okay… you may not be smiling, but the Democratic party is smiling less than you right now.
Due to a number of factors, the Democrats have a slim chance of holding onto the House of Representatives in next Tuesday’s Midterm elections. How slim you ask?
Chris Bowers of the Daily Kos provides:
common things that are less likely than Democrats winning the House in 2010:
First, it’s less likely that your birthday is in either August or September (18%) than it is for Democrats to keep control of the House. However, we all know lots of people born in either August or September.
Not everyone is worried by who wins the elections. After all does a new Congress actually mean noticeable change? Democracy in America depressingly remarks
that policy doesn’t swing very wildly when government changes hands. Parties do what they can to reward supporters, but they can’t do too much…Military suppliers, big Wall Street interests, and the economic middle-class may do better or worse, but they always do pretty well.
If that’s the case then why should we care who wins?
Well, if nothing else campaigning is good for the economy. For Yahoo Finance, Daniel Gross crunches some numbers and finds
sound macroeconomic reasons to get behind quantitative electioneering. Campaign cash is spent quickly, and with a sense of urgency. And it pretty much all has to be spent domestically. The goods and services you buy when you’re running for offices — real estate, yard signs, mailers, consultants, advertisements — are all produced locally.
Of course maybe there is a purpose to our elections beyond providing a campaign cash stimulus program. Anyone care to offer some good suggestions of the benefit of this upcoming election?
Thanks to Mother Jones
The standard process for being elected is to woo voters into liking you. However, the Republican Party seems to be trying a BOLD new strategy: win votes by being hated!
What is this nonsense we speak of?
Last Monday, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, highlighted the interesting poll results shown above.
As you can see Americans trust and feel more connected to Democrats, yet they plan to vote Republican. This didn’t make a lick of sense to us.
Luckily a man much smarter than us (not that is saying much) has this nugget of wisdom on why some may like Democrats and yet vote Republican:
The Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress, and so it’s a completely reasonable stance to prefer them to the Republicans yet still think they’ve gone too far and need a check on their power. …read more.
Big news from Iraq this week (and US Democrazy is not talking about The Hurt Locker winning best picture).
Iraq, last weekend, held its national election for parliament.
How did the election go? Despite threats of violence, car bombings, and other risks estimates show that voter turnout was around 62% (a respectable amount about equal to America’s turnout for the 2008 Presidential election). …read more.
Thanks to Wikicommons.
As you read in Part 1…you did read Part 1 right?… US Democrazy took a look at what so-called experts (not us) think of Iraq’s future.
Well, we’ve got another issue where the experts are at odds. In fact, opinions are so divided on this issue that generals and diplomats have gotten themselves into some big time trouble.
So what is this issue? Well, we’ll spell it out for you:
A-F-G-H-A-N-I-S-T-A-N
Thanks to Wikicommons.
We at US Democrazy often cover stories that emphasize the CRAZY in our name.
But as we turn our curious gaze toward the normally chaotic Afghanistan…. the news is: things are NOT AS CRAZY AS WE THOUGHT!
It seems, despite fears for the worst, the recent Afghan presidential elections have been a success.
This is a surprise because the violent radical Taliban threatened to kill any and all involved with the elections. Some citizens, fearing reprisals did stay at home. But many people voted, and generally the polling places were safe.
Now, your probably wondering who has won this election.
Have a guess…
Was it the current President Hamid Karzai? The former Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah? Maybe even the egg head technocrat Ashraf Ghani.
Well… it will be a couple of weeks before the official numbers come out… but we hate to wait so here is what the experts think the results will be.
It appears Karzai might get the most votes, but that won’t cut it. To be the next president one must get 50% of the votes. If one of the three candidates doesn’t reach that mark (and that is very possible), there will be a run off election between the two highest vote-getters. So it’s not over yet…
Of course… its not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game, right?
Shuja Nawaz, writing for Foreign Policy, says which ever man becomes president the real winners are
the people of Afghanistan. Rather than hurl rockets or grenades at each other, they have debated and traded arguments. Rather than picking up arms, they clicked on to their computers and glued themselves to their TV screens to watch what the candidates were saying.
Or maybe it really is just about winning.
Kim Barker, over at the Daily Beast, reported that
If Karzai wins outright Thursday, his closest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, a former leader of the Northern Alliance, has already raised the specter of fraud. Considering that Afghanistan has no history of peaceful protests, that could mean violent riots when the results are announced. And already, Abdullah has said he cannot control his supporters, a message that many interpret as an encouragement to rampage.
Talk about a sore loser.
So hold on tight folks. There is still plenty of time to put the “crazy” in Afghan democracy.
Hey, you. Vote for me!
We at USDemocrazy will be the first to admit that keeping up with the news on the home front can be difficult. But, what can get even more overwhelming is keeping up with the news in the international realm!
Since the U.S. entered Afghanistan in October of 2001,we have heard a lot about how things are progressing there — or, more recently, regressing.
There has been a recent surge in violence related to impending elections to be held on August 20. (And it would appear that their electoral system is just as crazy as ours in the U.S.!)
Current president Hamid Karzai (pictured above) is up for re-election, along with a field of 30-plus other contenders.
While President Karzai is in the lead in the polls, he is still keen on campaigning around his country, and notably to the rural Baghlan province.
This is not like campaigning in the USA. There are many parts of the country that are dangerous for the Afghan President to venture.
Karzai went Baglan to garner the approval (some might say endorsement) of the religious leader of an important Shiite sect in the region, the Ismailis,. This leader, Mansoor Naderi, threw the rally in Karsai’s honor. Now, to get everyone to actually vote for him is a different question.
You think we have political scare tactics being used in the health care debate? That’s NOTHING compared to politics in Afghanistan.
The radicals in the insurgent group, The Taliban want to stop the upcoming election… by force. The are employing their violent ways to keep some polls closed. (And it’s working.)
Says ABC News:
Zakaria Barakzai, an official with the Afghan Election Commission, is warning that in some areas voting may be too dangerous.
“There’s a strong possibility that 93 polling stations will not be opened in 10 districts where the government doesn’t have control,” he said.
Yet despite these odds many Afghans are still excited about their opportunity to exercise their democratic rights in this war-torn country.
Women, strongly oppressed by the Taliban regime, have been braving the elements of hatred and violence to campaign for the seats in provincial chambers.
To boot, there’s even two women among the large field of presidential candidates. They are not only opposing Karzai, but also the likes of military men and vicious war lords.
Will these elections be free and fair? Remember what happened in Iran recently? According to the Wall Street Journal, the Electoral Complaints Commission has been founded to oversee truly democratic elections:
The commission, established in 2005, grew out of the experience of the 2004 Afghan presidential elections, when politicians complained that there was no independent body to deal with accusations of vote stealing and ballot stuffing.
And though the Telegraph is predicting a close election come August 20, the biggest question remains: How many of Afghanistan’s voting population will get out to vote? In hopes of gathering interest and courage for voting next week, Afghan pop star Farhad Darya is “rocking the vote” in order to influence mostly those in the younger set to flex their political muscle.
The results remain to be seen, and promise to be interesting and crucial, any way it comes out.
OK, so, Iran is pretty much taking over the news, and we at USDemocrazy are pretty much captivated.
That said, we’re bringing you more on Iran because, frankly folks, the situation just keeps getting more interesting.
If you somehow missed what’s going on (we get it, you were on vacation in Siberia), let us fill you in.
Vote fraud, religious leaders in conflict, civil unrest, protest violence… Iran has it all. What’s more, these historic times are being witnessed in the most revolutionary way. This Iranian revolution, with all its exciting, electrifying, and terrifying action, is being live-blogged, vlogged, photographed, Facebooked, and, yes, Twittered.
Both Facebook and Google have responded to the crisis in there own way. After complaints, both introduced Persian (the language of Iran) as a translating option on their sites. This revolution forced both web giants to step up their international and multilingual game, and fast.
The Atlantic put together a list of important “tweets” on Iran, for those who can’t spend all day by their Twitter. (Though maybe that is recommended, lest we all miss something!) These include eye-witness accounts and other interesting tidbits, including:
one protester: ‘it’s really sad, ppl getting killed, we don’t have proper leadership’
Police reports they arrested 475 people yesterday
Hearing reports that Basij stormed Tehran University dorms at 2 am last night, students had barricaded themselves in. UNCONF
Twitter, and the rest of the Internet, has been crucial in this election due to the aforementioned protests, arrests (of protestors and journalists alike), and banning of foreign journalists from witnessing some of the action on the ground. With regular people being able to tweet and tell what has been going down, and what the next step for the country is.
President Obama stated that Iran is under intense scrutiny from the rest of the world, and that the violence needs to stop.
The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.
An op-ed by Robin Wright in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times indicated that this so-called revolution in Iran won’t be terribly revolutionary after all:
The largely silent street demonstrations by day and haunting chants echoing across rooftops by night are not — so far — a counterrevolution. That’s not even their intention. What they are doing, however, is forcing Iran’s Islamic regime to face the same ideals that have swept across five continents over the last quarter of a century — the supremacy of popular will, justice, accountability and the transparency of power.
Before we start rambling on too long about what is going in Iran, we’ll stop and direct you to the best places on the web with the most important information so you can inform yourselves. We’ve all got a feeling this is something we’re going to want to remember, so we’re learning all we can…
The Daily Beast at its best, wrangling all the great info on the crisis.
How does the opposition, Mousavi, feel amongst the turmoil?
Is this the end for the supreme leader?!
The riot police make themselves known.
