Former FL Gov. Charlie Christ, the maverick Republican (now independent) who extended voting hours, increased the number of days people could vote and restored registration rights for felons, says it plain: “There are lines that should not be crossed; meddling with voting rights is one of them. It is un-American and it is beneath us.”
Nate Silver addresses a worrisome question for Dems in his FiveThirtyEight blog, “Is Minnesota a Battleground Again?”
Silver also believes Obama is doing well in Florida, and sees FL “in an essential three-way tie with Pennsylvania and Virginia for second place on the list of the most important states. (All of these states rank below Ohio.)”
There seems to be growing buzz about the Obama campaign spending its dough too fast, while not bringing in adequate additional revenues to remain competitive in the home stretch, as Peter Nicholas and Danny Yadron note in their Wall St. Journal post, “Obama’s Burn Rate Worries Some Democrats.”
Robert F. Bauer, general counsel to Obama for America and the D.N.C., has a post on a topic of potentially decisive consequence in bellwether Ohio up at the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s web page, “The fight for early voting in Ohio.” As Bauer explains, “…In 2010, almost one-third of the early votes were cast within a week of Election Day, well over 90,000 of which were cast within the last three days before Election Day. And these early voters are more likely to be women and seniors, and to have lower incomes, than those who vote on Election Day.” Despite a referendum showing overwhelming support for early voting, “the Ohio General Assembly…took away in-person early voting for most voters over this critical three-day period…the legislature is now providing different deadlines for different early voters. Some voters may vote from the Friday through the Monday before the election; most may not. The United States.” The issue is headed fort he courts.
Here’s a link to send to your friends who have gone all chicken little about Europe’s economic woes — Esther Zuckerman’s ‘Stat of the Day’ post at The Atlantic, “Boston Has a Bigger Economy Than Greece.”
Those who have had some experience with recurring nightmares will find James Warren’s Daily Beast post, “Bill Daley Asks: Is Obama Campaign Ready for Recounts?” troubling. Warren quotes Daley, a former white house chief of staff, Dept. of Commerce secretary and Gore’s 2000 campaign chairman: “It’s not the same as preparing, as Democratic lawyers do, for Election Day voter harassment,” Warren adds that Daley believes “that the possibility of a Florida replay wasn’t on the campaign strategists’ radar screen…Looking back, Daley concedes a few organizational missteps by the Gore camp in Florida, most notably not having a legal and media team on board more quickly…In fact, after the Florida ambiguity arose, the Gore camp reached out to a Florida law firm, only to later learn that its partners had second thoughts and would not help Gore, Daley said…The bottom line was that not having a firm locked in further in advance delayed by a crucial day or two the needed preparations by Gore during an inherently frenzied period.”

At ‘The Fix,’ Aaron Blake reports on “The incredible shrinking — and increasingly valuable — undecided voter,” noting that “Just 6 percent of Americans say there is a good chance they will change their mind about their pick in the 2012 presidential race — a reflection of the divided nature of American politics and the few voters who are actually persuadable…Another 13 percent say that it’s possible but unlikely that they will change their minds…That’s a more polarized electorate than we saw in either 2004 or 2008.”
For a revealing take on the scope and consequences of offshore tax havens, don’t miss John Nichols post at The Nation, “Broke? Not if Governments Tax the $21 TRILLION Rich Have Offshored.”
Dem ad-makers should take a gander at satirist Will Durst’s post up at the Torrington (CT) The Register-Citizen for one way to have some fun with Romney’s record and his denials. Says Durst: “The presumptive GOP nominee finds himself in the uncomfortable position of having to convince skeptical voters someone can serve as a firm’s president, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, sole stockholder, junior janitor and cafeteria server in a plastic hairnet and still have absolutely nothing to do with the direction of the company or anything that’s going on. You might say he’s invoking a modified Wall Street bankers’ defense…Also, during the period in question, Romney sat on the board of a corporation called LifeLike, which co-incidentally seems to be his campaign slogan. But we’re pretty sure they had nothing to do with his construction. They make dolls, not puppets.”