#go to a local primary or caucus and vote for someone other than biden!
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With us running rapidly towards an election, remember. Primaries are where you vote for who you want. Presidential election is where you vote for who you can. Perfect politicians don't exist because perfect people don't exist. Life is complicated so vote please please vote for the person who will make life slightly less shit for everyone. Or even, potentially better!
#vote for Biden#I'm saying vote for Biden#by all means#go to a local primary or caucus and vote for someone other than biden!#it won't pan out but at least it'll make a statement#but then vote for Biden
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So, based on Bernie’s performance in 2016, his performances so far, and what the upcoming primaries are like, chances are Biden will be the nominee for the Democratic Party in 2020.
Now, I’ve admittedly been kind of snarky and frustrated at times about some of the support for candidates like Bernie, but I’m going to put it aside and recognize that, yeah, that’s gotta suck. I was a Warren supporter myself, and Biden was not exactly my first pick of an alternative either (I’m also in NY and don’t vote till April anyway). So I’m willing to grant time for disappointment and all that.
Then, however, I would highly recommend taking some time to pick up Eitan Hersh’s book Politics is for Power. I’ve talked about on my blog before, but it is a good book of qualitative political science on how one can build political power through engagement with your local community. Like it or not, a big part of Biden’s ability to win was because of the networking he built up working in the Democratic Party for decades (and actually within the infrastructure, not like Bernie who was always on the outside) meant that he could get those endorsements and support from people in these communities (ex: Clyburn in South Carolina, the much of the Congressional Black Caucus now that Bloomberg is out, etc.). If you want leftist or more progressive candidates to win, you need those people, and if those people don’t exist, become one of them.
The thing is, it’s going to suck. In politics you’re going to lose, and you’re going to lose a lot. But building up real political power takes time and engagement even outside of an election. There’s local party organizations you can be a part of, or state level, or even working outside of but in conjunction with a party. Heck, doesn’t even have to be an inherently political organization! I think one of Bernie’s issues was that his anti-establishment message resonated well with people outside of the Democratic Party infrastructure, but in a lot of these places the “Establishment” and party leaders were, like, church leaders or involve in other organizations. So for those kind of people attacking the party was an attack on them. This is particularly important in regards to how African-American voters associate with the Democratic Party on a regular basis - see the book Steadfast Democrats if you want more work on the social aspects of party support in African-American communities.
To put it simple, there is more to politics than a presidential campaign. If you’re entire political identity so far has been wrapped up in just the presidential campaign for Bernie, I get it, but long-term commitment means having to be on board for more than just the one person. You have to either build the foundations for or become that next generation of progressives who can both criticize and push the party while also working inside it (note: I think AOC is a great example of someone who is doing this and expect great things from her).
So take some time to process things, and get yourself ready to keep fighting.
...
Also, if there are any Joe Biden supporters reading this, don’t be asses towards Bernie people either. As a political scientist myself, I’d argue that Biden is a transitory candidate as the party figures out how to realign itself in a new party era. Those age gaps in support are too big to ignore, so while Bernie supporters need to realize they aren’t going to dominate or take over anytime soon Biden supporters need to recognize that there is a need to find a way to integrate them and make sure they feel listened to and respected as well.
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What do you think about the possibility of a contested democratic convention? As a Democrat and fellow political science major, it’s something that I feel like hasn’t been discussed as much as it should be, as there are 4 people who have varying chances of running away with the nomination.
ooh this is an awesome question.
For those who might not know: a contested convention essentially means that there is not a clear nominee going into the convention, and so the delegate voting process which is usually just an overly formal show of support to the nominee, actually matters.
I think in general it’s too early to look at the field and say anything specific is going to happen. I mean, Trump was polling abysmally low at this point in 2015. We really can’t know anything for sure until after Super Tuesday. So as far as the likelihood of that happening, I really can’t say. But the last time it was a possibility was with Mondale in the 80s, so it’s been a minute.
Let me take a step back first and explain what delegates and superdelegates are before I go any further. I’m sure you already know this, but just in case someone is reading this far and isn’t clear on it. When you vote in a primary (or a caucus) you are not actually voting for a candidate. You are voting for a delegate who will vote for that candidate. In fact there have been times in history where the candidates name does not even show up on the paper, it’s just the delegates names and you would have to know which candidate they support. So you vote for the delegate, and the delegate votes for the candidate. Each state has a certain number of delegates and I think we still require 2/3 majority to declare a nominee (I might be wrong on that though).
Does this system sound familiar? Because it should. It’s very similar to the electoral college. But that’s a different conversation.
So that’s what a delegate is. Superdelegates on the other hand are not chosen by the voters. I’m a little bit unclear on how they actually are chosen, but I think it has to do with like involvement in local and state parties? Like if you ever see “Santa Clara County Democratic Party”. Someone super duper involved in that might be a delegate or a superdelegate. In 2016 there was a lot of talk about superdelegates. They got to vote on the first ballot and because they are “establishment” people, it was expected that they would overwhelmingly vote for Hilary. So the question was, if Bernie won the most regular delegates, would the super delegates step in and vote for Hilary and make her the nominee. That ended up not being an issue.
Since 2016, the role of superdelegates has changed. They still exist, but they are not allowed to vote on the first ballot. That means they will only have an actual role if there is a contested convention - they are the tie breakers.
So that’s why I’m explaining all this nonsense. The way the system currently stands, even a “contested convention” really would not be contested for long. The entire point of the superdelegates now is to make sure that does not happen.
So let’s just say that Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden have nearly tied with delegates from the primary, or whoever has more still doesn’t have enough. The first roll call vote would be just the regular delegates and they would vote exactly how they are supposed to and would just formalize the numbers that we already know. It would be on the second vote, with the superdelegates, that would have a nominee.
I think it would be really interesting to see. Do I think it will happen? Not really. Perhaps the fact that Super Tuesday includes more states than ever gives it a greater chance of happening - more states vote earlier meaning more people vote before more candidates drop out. And maybe it’s just because I wasn’t born yet the last time this was an issue, but I just don’t see it as a likely thing. And if it does happen, there won’t be a hung jury for long because superdelegates will be there to make decisions for us *eye roll emoji*.
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Do Republicans Vote In The Democratic Primary
New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/do-republicans-vote-in-the-democratic-primary/
Do Republicans Vote In The Democratic Primary
What Is A Voter
The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, which took effect January 1, 2011, created “voter-nominated” offices. The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committees, or local offices.
Most of the offices that were previously known as “partisan” are now known as “voter-nominated” offices. Voter-nominated offices are state constitutional offices, state legislative offices, and U.S. congressional offices. The only “partisan offices” now are the offices of U.S. President and county central committee.
Who Can Vote In A Primary
Only Democrats can vote in the Democratic Primary.
Only Republicans can vote in the Republican Primary.
The last day to register to vote before the Primary is the 4th Saturday before the Primary.
The deadline to change party affiliation before the Primary is the last Friday in May.
You can register to vote and change your party affiliation after the Primary.
Step Four: Super Tuesday
A few other states voted in between New Hampshire and the end of February, but things really started to warm up by Super Tuesday, on 3 March.
What is Super Tuesday?
THE big date in the primary calendar, when 16 states, territories or groups voted for their preferred candidate in primaries or caucuses. A third of all the delegates available in the entire primary season were up for grabs on Super Tuesday. By the end of the day it became much clearer that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were the front-runners for the Democratic nomination.
The two states with the most delegates voted on Super Tuesday – California and Texas . California voted three months earlier than in 2016, making Super Tuesday even more super than normal.
States With Open Primaries For Other Elections
A similar system known as a nonpartisan blanket primary has been used in Louisiana for state and local elections since 1976, and began to be used in Washington, after numerous court challenges, in 2008.
In California, under Proposition 14, a measure that easily passed, traditional party primaries were replaced in 2011 with wide-open elections. Proposition 14, known as the open primary measure, gave every voter the same ballot in primary elections for most state and federal races, except the presidential contest.
Most primaries in New York are closed, but state law contains a provision allowing parties to use a different method if they want. Currently, only the Independence Party chooses to allow unaffiliated voters to participate.
Who Gets A Say
Some say the stricter primary systems restrict whose voice can be part of the democratic process and are therefore undemocratic. Parties can block who participates in primaries, or systems force voters to publicly identify with a party.
But Laurel Harbridge-Yong, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University, says the argument for limiting voting to party members makes sense those who align with a party should get to choose the issues and candidates who represent them.
To people who study political parties Its actually quite shocking to think that you would even have something like open primaries, Harbridge-Yong says. Taken in a different context, the question would be, Why should someone whos not a Methodist be able to help pick the priest at a Methodist congregation? Of course, it would be the people that are part of that denomination or that group who are the ones that are selecting their leader.
In June, the BGA Policy team had John Opdycke, president of Open Primaries, as a guest on the BGA podcast . Opdycke advocates for primary reform across the country, and said efforts are underway in 15 or 20 states to attempt to change primary systems.
There’s a lot of momentum, there’s a lot of activity, Opdycke said. And yet this movement is still very underdeveloped, very young and the opposition comes from both political parties.
And in Illinois?
How Do You Choose
When you show up to your polling location, youll decide whether you want a Democratic or Republican primary ballot.
But after choosing a side in the primary, you have to stay in that lane through the runoff. You cant vote Republican in the primary election and then participate in a runoff election between top Democratic candidates.
That said, voting in a primary does not commit you to vote for a particular candidate in the general election. You can vote for either partys candidate in the November election.
I Dont See That Happening
Martin told me she and other South Carolina Republicans had chosen to support Sanders because Biden still held a significant lead in the state. Im not sure if we could move him with enough crossover votes to overcome Biden, she said, but thats the math were looking at is who can we cross over and vote for that mathematically will cause the most consternation.
Ultimately, she hopes that the crossover vote push will cause South Carolina Democrats the same kind of angst that weve had for years and push them toward closing their primary.
I do not think it was a result of our efforts, even if we were as successful mathematically as we could be, that everyones going to agree to close the primaries tomorrow, she told me, but said coverage of their efforts was already getting traction with Democrats in the fight for closed primaries.
I asked whether Martin was concerned that a Sanders primary victory in South Carolina pushed by Republican crossover voters could ultimately result in a Sanders presidency. She took my point, but said, I dont see that happening.
The Iowa caucuses, she said, showed that the people that make the rules in the Democrat party are not going to allow Bernie to be the nominee. Citing debate rule changes and recent remarks by Democratic Party stalwarts like James Carville, she said that there was no way the party would permit Sanders to win the nomination.
Will you support Voxs explanatory journalism?
Counties Are Doing Things A Little Differently This Time
If you live in one of the counties highlighted below, voting might look a little different this year.
In 2016, California passed the Voter Choice Act, a law aimed at modernizing the states election system, such that:
Every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail
Voters are no longer required to go to a specific polling place, but can vote at any number of voting centers or drop-off points
Voters can cast their ballots in person beginning 11 days before, and up to and including, Election Day
In 2018, five counties rolled out the new system. This year, 10 more will join their ranks. Thats fifteen counties in all containing 49% of the state population.
This is key for no party preference voters living in these counties who may not get the ballot they want in the mail. See the previous section for details.
Argument That Delegates Are Unbound
Former RNC committee member Curly Haugland and public policy consultant Sean Parnell argued in their 2016 book, Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate, that delegates are free to vote their conscience and are not bound by state or party laws to vote according to the results of party primaries or caucuses. Click on the following links to learn more about arguments for and against this interpretation of delegate binding:
See also: Democratic delegate rules, 2020
Delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention selected Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee on August 18, 2020. The national nominating convention is the formal ceremony during which the party officially selects its nominee. The delegates are individuals chosen to represent their state, territory, or Democrats Abroad at the convention.
In 2020, there were 4,750 delegates: 3,979 pledged delegates and 771 automatic delegatesmore commonly known as superdelegates.
To win the Democratic nomination, a presidential candidate needed to receive support from a majority of the pledged delegates on the first ballot: 1,991 pledged delegates.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, several states postponed their primaries. Under Rule 12 of the Delegate Selection Rules for the 2020 Democratic National Convention, no primary or caucus was permitted to take place after June 9, 2020. Any state violating that rule could have been subject to delegate reduction penalties.
Step One: The Start Line
A whole year before the primaries, the first candidates emerged from hibernation. Over the year, others woke up and eventually 28 people announced they were running to become the Democratic nominee for president.
But dwindling funds, luke-warm or public reaction and campaign infighting have, to varying degrees, led to most of them pulling out of the race.
At the start of primary season, 11 people remained in the running, a number that has now reduced to three. In theory, any one of them could become the nominee. In reality, only two now have a chance.
Each Primary Has Its Flaws
When it comes down to it, both the Republican and Democratic parties have their own unique, subtle system by which they can override the nations popular primary vote.
The days when politicians gathered in dark rooms where cigarette smoke flowed out from underneath the door are over, but that doesnt mean the existing system is completely democratic.
For both Republicans and Democrats, theres more to winning a nomination than scoring Americas majority vote.
What Is A Closed Primary Election
What is a Closed Primary Election and How Your Choice of Party Affiliation Affects You in an Election?
Federal/State Primary Elections – Even-Numbered Years
What Is a Primary Election?
A Primary Election is a preliminary election to select, when necessary, Democratic, Republican and nonpartisan candidates who will run in the General Election contests . The direct vote of the people selects the candidates, rather than votes of convention delegates.
Nevada Is a CLOSED Primary Election State
Major Political Parties:
° Democratic: If you are a registered with the Democratic Party, you may vote in your precinct’s contests which select Democratic candidates AND in all of your precinct’s nonpartisan contests.
° Republican: If you are a registered Republican, you may vote in your precinct’s contests which select Republican candidates AND in all of your precinct’s nonpartisan contests.
Other Political Parties and Affiliations:
If you are not registered as a Democratic or Republican, you may vote for ONLY Nonpartisan CONTESTS for your precinct. Minor party, other party and independent candidates only appear in the General Election, NOT the Primary Election.
° Minor Political Parties: If your Voter Registration Application indicates that your party is one that is classified as “minor party,” you may vote for ONLY Nonpartisan CONTESTS for your precinct. to view the list of officially recognized minor parties in the State of Nevada :
TO VOLUNTEER TO BE A POLL WORKER, .
Why Some Conservatives Are Voting In Michigan’s Democratic Primary
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Katey Morse is on a journey of political atonement.
“I’ve gone on Facebook and apologized to family and friends and said hey, I made a mistake,” the 39-year-old Michigan resident said last year of her 2016 vote for Donald Trump.
Morse said that she got caught up in Trump’s celebrity and was impressed by his business record. And she assumed that the bravado she saw and heard on TV was just a character put on for the campaign trail that would subside once he got into office.
But she said she had learned since then that it wasn’t an act. A turning point for her came in March 2019, when she took her son to a Trump rally. She was horrified. Afterward, Morse had to have a conversation with the boy, then 7, about how not to talk about other people.
And as the Democratic primary season began to take shape last year, Morse started to consider voting blue.
It’s a choice some moderate Republicans across the state are also grappling with ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary contest. NBC News spent time with voters in Kent County, where Morse lives, just outside Grand Rapids. The hometown of Gerald Ford, the area is a traditionally Republican stronghold. Some Republicans here said they feel lost because they no longer recognize the party they grew up with. They’re wary enough about another four years of Trump’s presidency to consider the Democratic candidates.
No Party Preference Voters: Pay Attention
Registered Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and other party members, rest assured. You are guaranteed a primary ballot with all of your partys presidential contenders on it.
But voters who dont belong to a political party the fastest growing voting block in the state will have to navigate a more daunting set of obstacles to cast a presidential primary vote.
Some parties have members only policies:
The Republican Party
The Green Party
The Peace and Freedom Party
If you want to vote in one of these three primaries, youll have to join that party. You cant do it as a member of any other party, or even as a no party preference independent. No exceptions.
The following three parties do allow political independents to cast ballots in their presidential primaries :
The Democratic Party
The Libertarian Party
The American Independent Party
But and this is an important caveat these voters do have to specifically request the ballot they want.
For those who vote in person, this is a cinch. Just go into your polling place when its time to vote and ask. But independents who vote by mail need to let your county know which ballot they want ahead of time.
Maybe you received a postcard that looks like this:
And if youve already received a ballot in the mail and were disappointed by the lack of presidential candidates, do notfill it out. You can always request a new ballot, but trying to vote twice is frowned upon .
Cancellation Of State Caucuses Or Primaries
The Washington Examiner reported on December 19, 2018, that the South Carolina Republican Party had not ruled out forgoing a primary contest to protect Trump from any primary challengers. Party chairman Drew McKissick stated, “Considering the fact that the entire party supports the president, we’ll end up doing what’s in the president’s best interest.” On January 24, another Washington Examiner report indicated that the Kansas Republican Party was “likely” to scrap its presidential caucus to “save resources”.
In August 2019, the Associated Press reported that the Nevada Republican Party was also contemplating canceling their caucuses, with the state party spokesman, Keith Schipper, saying it “isn’t about any kind of conspiracy theory about protecting the president … He’s going to be the nominee … This is about protecting resources to make sure that the president wins in Nevada and that Republicans up and down the ballot win in 2020.”
Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina’s state committees officially voted on September 7, 2019, to cancel their caucus and primary. The Arizona state Republican Party indicated two days later that it will not hold a primary. These four were joined by the Alaska state Republican party on September 21, when its central committee announced they would not hold a presidential primary.
Virginia Republicans decided to allocate delegates at the state convention.
Why You Need To Vote In The Primary Elections
True or false. You only need to vote in the November presidential election and not the primary elections.
FALSE!
For most American voters, the presidential primary elections matter more than the general election. Like Ive said before, if you live in a red state or a blue state, your vote in the presidential election wont make a difference. The rest of your state will overwhelming vote for a Democrat or a Republican. Your vote wont change your states outcome. .
But the primary elections are an entirely different story.
The presidential primaries determine who will represent the Republicans and the Democrats during the November election. Instead of voting between just 2 candidates, you have the choice of 3 Democrats or 12 Republicans. Unlike the general election, you actually have a chance of voting for your preferred candidate, not just the lesser of two evils.
Government 101: United States Presidential Primary
How Does the Presidential Primary Process Work?
The Convention
Prior to a general election, there is a selection process to determine which candidate will appear on the ballot for a given political party in the nationwide general election. Political parties generally hold national conventions at which a group of delegates collectively decide upon which candidate they will run for the presidency. The process of choosing delegates to the national convention is undertaken at the state level, which means that there are significant differences from state to state and sometimes year to year. The two methods for choosing delegates to the national convention are the caucus and the primary.
The Caucus
Caucuses were the original method for selecting candidates but have decreased in number since the primary was introduced in the early 1900’s. In states that hold caucuses a political party announces the date, time, and location of the meeting. Generally any voter registered with the party may attend. At the caucus, delegates are chosen to represent the state’s interests at the national party convention. Prospective delegates are identified as favorable to a specific candidate or uncommitted. After discussion and debate an informal vote is taken to determine which delegates should be chosen.
The Primary
Awarding the Delegates
Step Two: The Iowa Caucuses
The first event of the primary season isn’t a primary at all – it’s a series of caucuses, in Iowa. These took place on Monday 3 February, in somewhat chaotic fashion.
What are caucuses?
A caucus involves people attending a meeting – maybe for a few hours – before they vote on their preferred candidate, perhaps via a head count or a show of hands. Those meetings might be in just a few select locations – you can’t just turn up at a polling station.
As a result, caucuses tend to really suit candidates who are good at rousing their supporters to get out of bed. People like Bernie Sanders, for example, who performed well in Iowa this time, as did Pete Buttigieg.
Democrats’ key issues explained
Caucuses used to be far more popular back in the day, but this year, Democrats are holding only four in US states – in Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming and Iowa.
If any candidate gets under 15% of the vote in any caucus, their supporters then get to pick a second choice from among the candidates who did get more than 15%, or they can just choose to sit out the second vote.
Why does Iowa matter?
A win there for any candidate can help give them momentum and propel them to victory in the primaries.
Why does Iowa not matter?
Iowa doesn’t represent the entire US – it’s largely white, so the way people vote there is very, very different than in other states.
How Are Primary Elections Conducted In California
All candidates for voter-nominated offices are listed on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters in the primary election regardless of party preference – move on to the general election. Write-in candidates for voter-nominated offices can only run in the primary election. A write-in candidate will only move on to the general election if the candidate is one of the top two vote-getters in the primary election.
Prior to the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, the top vote-getter from each qualified political party, as well as any write-in candidate who received a certain percentage of votes, moved on to the general election.
The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committee, or local office.
Primary Election Snafus Show Challenges For November Vote
Republicans’ and Democrats’ vastly different starting points help explain why the politics over voting and elections have been and likely will remain so fraught, through and beyond Election Day this year.
Sometimes it seems as if the politicians involved barely live in the same country. It has become common for one side to discount the legitimacy of a victory by the other.
And the coronavirus pandemic, which has scrambled nearly everything about life in the United States, makes understanding it all even more complicated. Here’s what you need to know to decode this year’s voting controversies.
The Rosetta stone
The key that unlocks so much of the partisan debate about voting is one word: turnout.
An old truism holds that, all other things held equal, a smaller pool of voters tends to be better for Republicans and the larger the pool gets, the better for Democrats.
This isn’t mathematically ironclad, as politicians learn and relearn regularly. But this assumption is the foundation upon which much else is built.
What The Gov: If I Voted Republican In A Primary Can I Vote Democrat In The General
Illinois primary elections force voters to ask for a partisan ballot. From primaries to the general in November, heres what you should know about party identification and voting.
This article is part of a series called “What the Gov,” where BGA Engagement Editor Mia Sato takes reader questions related to Illinois government and upcoming elections and tracks down the answers. Ask your own question here.
Voters hear a lot about party politics at all levels of government, from Congress all the way down to local municipal elections. Some voters align closely with a party and others cast their vote on a case-by-case basis. But how does party identification impact how you can vote? Several readers were stumped.
Cynthia Mosley, a retired Chicago Public Schools teacher living on Chicagos Southside, is one of them. She remembers her mother didn’t vote in the primaries because it meant saying aloud to a poll worker which partys ballot she wanted. Cynthia wondered why voters have to declare a party to vote in the primary.
Another reader was thinking forward: could she could vote for any partys candidates in the general, or did she have to be registered with that party?
Were just a few weeks out from the November election and voters have a lot of questions both about the systems Illinois has and how it plays out in the voting process. Heres what you should know.
The Presidential Primary Will Not Use The Familiar Top Two Ballot
California voters can be forgiven for assuming that political party registration doesnt really matter.
In 2010 voters backed a measure to create the states nonpartisan top two election system, in which all primary voters fill out a ballot with every candidate on it regardless of either the voters or the candidates political party. The top two winners then move on to the general election ballot even if theyre both from the same party.
In races for state legislative and congressional seats, the top two method will still reign on the 2020 ballot.
But when you vote in the presidential primary, its back to the old partisan system: Democrats on the Democratic ballot, Republicans on the Republican ballot, and so on.
So while voting in California usually goes like this under the top two:
In the presidential primary, it looks a little more like this:
The 2020 Democratic Primary Is Giving Some Republicans Dj Vu
A large, diffuse and unyielding field of candidates is helping Bernie Sanders dominate. Republicans who tried to beat Donald J. Trump in 2016 see parallels.
FARGO, N.D. After a disappointing sixth-place finish in Nevada, which followed a less disappointing third-place finish in New Hampshire but a humbling fifth-place finish in Iowa, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota looked out at the crowd of more than 1,000 and predicted victory in the North Dakota primary at the time, more than two weeks away.
Somehow, I have a feeling this primary is still going to be going on, she said.
That much seems certain.
The no-end-in-sight nature of the contest for the Democratic nomination is alarming those in the party who are hoping to blunt the momentum of the front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The most likely way they believe that could happen a critical mass of the senators rivals drop out so voters can coalesce around a single alternative seems like the least likely outcome.
The irony is thick. Mr. Sanders, the candidate many establishment Democrats fear would have the most trouble beating President Trump in November, is benefiting from some of the same dynamics that helped Mr. Trump stampede to the Republican nomination four years ago.
As Republicans who weathered 2016 observe 2020, they are feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. The parallels are not perfect, but there are many right down to the candidates themselves.
201620202016202020162020
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Do Republicans Vote In The Democratic Primary
What Is A Voter
youtube
The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, which took effect January 1, 2011, created “voter-nominated” offices. The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committees, or local offices.
Most of the offices that were previously known as “partisan” are now known as “voter-nominated” offices. Voter-nominated offices are state constitutional offices, state legislative offices, and U.S. congressional offices. The only “partisan offices” now are the offices of U.S. President and county central committee.
Who Can Vote In A Primary
Only Democrats can vote in the Democratic Primary.
Only Republicans can vote in the Republican Primary.
The last day to register to vote before the Primary is the 4th Saturday before the Primary.
The deadline to change party affiliation before the Primary is the last Friday in May.
You can register to vote and change your party affiliation after the Primary.
Step Four: Super Tuesday
A few other states voted in between New Hampshire and the end of February, but things really started to warm up by Super Tuesday, on 3 March.
What is Super Tuesday?
THE big date in the primary calendar, when 16 states, territories or groups voted for their preferred candidate in primaries or caucuses. A third of all the delegates available in the entire primary season were up for grabs on Super Tuesday. By the end of the day it became much clearer that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were the front-runners for the Democratic nomination.
The two states with the most delegates voted on Super Tuesday – California and Texas . California voted three months earlier than in 2016, making Super Tuesday even more super than normal.
States With Open Primaries For Other Elections
A similar system known as a nonpartisan blanket primary has been used in Louisiana for state and local elections since 1976, and began to be used in Washington, after numerous court challenges, in 2008.
In California, under Proposition 14, a measure that easily passed, traditional party primaries were replaced in 2011 with wide-open elections. Proposition 14, known as the open primary measure, gave every voter the same ballot in primary elections for most state and federal races, except the presidential contest.
Most primaries in New York are closed, but state law contains a provision allowing parties to use a different method if they want. Currently, only the Independence Party chooses to allow unaffiliated voters to participate.
Who Gets A Say
Some say the stricter primary systems restrict whose voice can be part of the democratic process and are therefore undemocratic. Parties can block who participates in primaries, or systems force voters to publicly identify with a party.
But Laurel Harbridge-Yong, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University, says the argument for limiting voting to party members makes sense those who align with a party should get to choose the issues and candidates who represent them.
To people who study political parties Its actually quite shocking to think that you would even have something like open primaries, Harbridge-Yong says. Taken in a different context, the question would be, Why should someone whos not a Methodist be able to help pick the priest at a Methodist congregation? Of course, it would be the people that are part of that denomination or that group who are the ones that are selecting their leader.
In June, the BGA Policy team had John Opdycke, president of Open Primaries, as a guest on the BGA podcast . Opdycke advocates for primary reform across the country, and said efforts are underway in 15 or 20 states to attempt to change primary systems.
There’s a lot of momentum, there’s a lot of activity, Opdycke said. And yet this movement is still very underdeveloped, very young and the opposition comes from both political parties.
And in Illinois?
How Do You Choose
When you show up to your polling location, youll decide whether you want a Democratic or Republican primary ballot.
But after choosing a side in the primary, you have to stay in that lane through the runoff. You cant vote Republican in the primary election and then participate in a runoff election between top Democratic candidates.
That said, voting in a primary does not commit you to vote for a particular candidate in the general election. You can vote for either partys candidate in the November election.
I Dont See That Happening
Martin told me she and other South Carolina Republicans had chosen to support Sanders because Biden still held a significant lead in the state. Im not sure if we could move him with enough crossover votes to overcome Biden, she said, but thats the math were looking at is who can we cross over and vote for that mathematically will cause the most consternation.
Ultimately, she hopes that the crossover vote push will cause South Carolina Democrats the same kind of angst that weve had for years and push them toward closing their primary.
I do not think it was a result of our efforts, even if we were as successful mathematically as we could be, that everyones going to agree to close the primaries tomorrow, she told me, but said coverage of their efforts was already getting traction with Democrats in the fight for closed primaries.
I asked whether Martin was concerned that a Sanders primary victory in South Carolina pushed by Republican crossover voters could ultimately result in a Sanders presidency. She took my point, but said, I dont see that happening.
The Iowa caucuses, she said, showed that the people that make the rules in the Democrat party are not going to allow Bernie to be the nominee. Citing debate rule changes and recent remarks by Democratic Party stalwarts like James Carville, she said that there was no way the party would permit Sanders to win the nomination.
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Counties Are Doing Things A Little Differently This Time
If you live in one of the counties highlighted below, voting might look a little different this year.
In 2016, California passed the Voter Choice Act, a law aimed at modernizing the states election system, such that:
Every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail
Voters are no longer required to go to a specific polling place, but can vote at any number of voting centers or drop-off points
Voters can cast their ballots in person beginning 11 days before, and up to and including, Election Day
In 2018, five counties rolled out the new system. This year, 10 more will join their ranks. Thats fifteen counties in all containing 49% of the state population.
This is key for no party preference voters living in these counties who may not get the ballot they want in the mail. See the previous section for details.
Argument That Delegates Are Unbound
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Former RNC committee member Curly Haugland and public policy consultant Sean Parnell argued in their 2016 book, Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate, that delegates are free to vote their conscience and are not bound by state or party laws to vote according to the results of party primaries or caucuses. Click on the following links to learn more about arguments for and against this interpretation of delegate binding:
See also: Democratic delegate rules, 2020
Delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention selected Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee on August 18, 2020. The national nominating convention is the formal ceremony during which the party officially selects its nominee. The delegates are individuals chosen to represent their state, territory, or Democrats Abroad at the convention.
In 2020, there were 4,750 delegates: 3,979 pledged delegates and 771 automatic delegatesmore commonly known as superdelegates.
To win the Democratic nomination, a presidential candidate needed to receive support from a majority of the pledged delegates on the first ballot: 1,991 pledged delegates.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, several states postponed their primaries. Under Rule 12 of the Delegate Selection Rules for the 2020 Democratic National Convention, no primary or caucus was permitted to take place after June 9, 2020. Any state violating that rule could have been subject to delegate reduction penalties.
Step One: The Start Line
A whole year before the primaries, the first candidates emerged from hibernation. Over the year, others woke up and eventually 28 people announced they were running to become the Democratic nominee for president.
But dwindling funds, luke-warm or public reaction and campaign infighting have, to varying degrees, led to most of them pulling out of the race.
At the start of primary season, 11 people remained in the running, a number that has now reduced to three. In theory, any one of them could become the nominee. In reality, only two now have a chance.
Each Primary Has Its Flaws
When it comes down to it, both the Republican and Democratic parties have their own unique, subtle system by which they can override the nations popular primary vote.
The days when politicians gathered in dark rooms where cigarette smoke flowed out from underneath the door are over, but that doesnt mean the existing system is completely democratic.
For both Republicans and Democrats, theres more to winning a nomination than scoring Americas majority vote.
What Is A Closed Primary Election
What is a Closed Primary Election and How Your Choice of Party Affiliation Affects You in an Election?
Federal/State Primary Elections – Even-Numbered Years
What Is a Primary Election?
A Primary Election is a preliminary election to select, when necessary, Democratic, Republican and nonpartisan candidates who will run in the General Election contests . The direct vote of the people selects the candidates, rather than votes of convention delegates.
Nevada Is a CLOSED Primary Election State
Major Political Parties:
° Democratic: If you are a registered with the Democratic Party, you may vote in your precinct’s contests which select Democratic candidates AND in all of your precinct’s nonpartisan contests.
° Republican: If you are a registered Republican, you may vote in your precinct’s contests which select Republican candidates AND in all of your precinct’s nonpartisan contests.
Other Political Parties and Affiliations:
If you are not registered as a Democratic or Republican, you may vote for ONLY Nonpartisan CONTESTS for your precinct. Minor party, other party and independent candidates only appear in the General Election, NOT the Primary Election.
° Minor Political Parties: If your Voter Registration Application indicates that your party is one that is classified as “minor party,” you may vote for ONLY Nonpartisan CONTESTS for your precinct. to view the list of officially recognized minor parties in the State of Nevada :
TO VOLUNTEER TO BE A POLL WORKER, .
Why Some Conservatives Are Voting In Michigan’s Democratic Primary
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Katey Morse is on a journey of political atonement.
“I’ve gone on Facebook and apologized to family and friends and said hey, I made a mistake,” the 39-year-old Michigan resident said last year of her 2016 vote for Donald Trump.
Morse said that she got caught up in Trump’s celebrity and was impressed by his business record. And she assumed that the bravado she saw and heard on TV was just a character put on for the campaign trail that would subside once he got into office.
But she said she had learned since then that it wasn’t an act. A turning point for her came in March 2019, when she took her son to a Trump rally. She was horrified. Afterward, Morse had to have a conversation with the boy, then 7, about how not to talk about other people.
And as the Democratic primary season began to take shape last year, Morse started to consider voting blue.
It’s a choice some moderate Republicans across the state are also grappling with ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary contest. NBC News spent time with voters in Kent County, where Morse lives, just outside Grand Rapids. The hometown of Gerald Ford, the area is a traditionally Republican stronghold. Some Republicans here said they feel lost because they no longer recognize the party they grew up with. They’re wary enough about another four years of Trump’s presidency to consider the Democratic candidates.
No Party Preference Voters: Pay Attention
Registered Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and other party members, rest assured. You are guaranteed a primary ballot with all of your partys presidential contenders on it.
But voters who dont belong to a political party the fastest growing voting block in the state will have to navigate a more daunting set of obstacles to cast a presidential primary vote.
Some parties have members only policies:
The Republican Party
The Green Party
The Peace and Freedom Party
If you want to vote in one of these three primaries, youll have to join that party. You cant do it as a member of any other party, or even as a no party preference independent. No exceptions.
The following three parties do allow political independents to cast ballots in their presidential primaries :
The Democratic Party
The Libertarian Party
The American Independent Party
But and this is an important caveat these voters do have to specifically request the ballot they want.
For those who vote in person, this is a cinch. Just go into your polling place when its time to vote and ask. But independents who vote by mail need to let your county know which ballot they want ahead of time.
Maybe you received a postcard that looks like this:
And if youve already received a ballot in the mail and were disappointed by the lack of presidential candidates, do notfill it out. You can always request a new ballot, but trying to vote twice is frowned upon .
Cancellation Of State Caucuses Or Primaries
The Washington Examiner reported on December 19, 2018, that the South Carolina Republican Party had not ruled out forgoing a primary contest to protect Trump from any primary challengers. Party chairman Drew McKissick stated, “Considering the fact that the entire party supports the president, we’ll end up doing what’s in the president’s best interest.” On January 24, another Washington Examiner report indicated that the Kansas Republican Party was “likely” to scrap its presidential caucus to “save resources”.
In August 2019, the Associated Press reported that the Nevada Republican Party was also contemplating canceling their caucuses, with the state party spokesman, Keith Schipper, saying it “isn’t about any kind of conspiracy theory about protecting the president … He’s going to be the nominee … This is about protecting resources to make sure that the president wins in Nevada and that Republicans up and down the ballot win in 2020.”
Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina’s state committees officially voted on September 7, 2019, to cancel their caucus and primary. The Arizona state Republican Party indicated two days later that it will not hold a primary. These four were joined by the Alaska state Republican party on September 21, when its central committee announced they would not hold a presidential primary.
Virginia Republicans decided to allocate delegates at the state convention.
Why You Need To Vote In The Primary Elections
True or false. You only need to vote in the November presidential election and not the primary elections.
FALSE!
For most American voters, the presidential primary elections matter more than the general election. Like Ive said before, if you live in a red state or a blue state, your vote in the presidential election wont make a difference. The rest of your state will overwhelming vote for a Democrat or a Republican. Your vote wont change your states outcome. .
But the primary elections are an entirely different story.
The presidential primaries determine who will represent the Republicans and the Democrats during the November election. Instead of voting between just 2 candidates, you have the choice of 3 Democrats or 12 Republicans. Unlike the general election, you actually have a chance of voting for your preferred candidate, not just the lesser of two evils.
Government 101: United States Presidential Primary
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How Does the Presidential Primary Process Work?
The Convention
Prior to a general election, there is a selection process to determine which candidate will appear on the ballot for a given political party in the nationwide general election. Political parties generally hold national conventions at which a group of delegates collectively decide upon which candidate they will run for the presidency. The process of choosing delegates to the national convention is undertaken at the state level, which means that there are significant differences from state to state and sometimes year to year. The two methods for choosing delegates to the national convention are the caucus and the primary.
The Caucus
Caucuses were the original method for selecting candidates but have decreased in number since the primary was introduced in the early 1900’s. In states that hold caucuses a political party announces the date, time, and location of the meeting. Generally any voter registered with the party may attend. At the caucus, delegates are chosen to represent the state’s interests at the national party convention. Prospective delegates are identified as favorable to a specific candidate or uncommitted. After discussion and debate an informal vote is taken to determine which delegates should be chosen.
The Primary
Awarding the Delegates
Step Two: The Iowa Caucuses
The first event of the primary season isn’t a primary at all – it’s a series of caucuses, in Iowa. These took place on Monday 3 February, in somewhat chaotic fashion.
What are caucuses?
A caucus involves people attending a meeting – maybe for a few hours – before they vote on their preferred candidate, perhaps via a head count or a show of hands. Those meetings might be in just a few select locations – you can’t just turn up at a polling station.
As a result, caucuses tend to really suit candidates who are good at rousing their supporters to get out of bed. People like Bernie Sanders, for example, who performed well in Iowa this time, as did Pete Buttigieg.
Democrats’ key issues explained
Caucuses used to be far more popular back in the day, but this year, Democrats are holding only four in US states – in Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming and Iowa.
If any candidate gets under 15% of the vote in any caucus, their supporters then get to pick a second choice from among the candidates who did get more than 15%, or they can just choose to sit out the second vote.
Why does Iowa matter?
A win there for any candidate can help give them momentum and propel them to victory in the primaries.
Why does Iowa not matter?
Iowa doesn’t represent the entire US – it’s largely white, so the way people vote there is very, very different than in other states.
How Are Primary Elections Conducted In California
All candidates for voter-nominated offices are listed on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters in the primary election regardless of party preference – move on to the general election. Write-in candidates for voter-nominated offices can only run in the primary election. A write-in candidate will only move on to the general election if the candidate is one of the top two vote-getters in the primary election.
Prior to the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, the top vote-getter from each qualified political party, as well as any write-in candidate who received a certain percentage of votes, moved on to the general election.
The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committee, or local office.
Primary Election Snafus Show Challenges For November Vote
Republicans’ and Democrats’ vastly different starting points help explain why the politics over voting and elections have been and likely will remain so fraught, through and beyond Election Day this year.
Sometimes it seems as if the politicians involved barely live in the same country. It has become common for one side to discount the legitimacy of a victory by the other.
And the coronavirus pandemic, which has scrambled nearly everything about life in the United States, makes understanding it all even more complicated. Here’s what you need to know to decode this year’s voting controversies.
The Rosetta stone
The key that unlocks so much of the partisan debate about voting is one word: turnout.
An old truism holds that, all other things held equal, a smaller pool of voters tends to be better for Republicans and the larger the pool gets, the better for Democrats.
This isn’t mathematically ironclad, as politicians learn and relearn regularly. But this assumption is the foundation upon which much else is built.
What The Gov: If I Voted Republican In A Primary Can I Vote Democrat In The General
Illinois primary elections force voters to ask for a partisan ballot. From primaries to the general in November, heres what you should know about party identification and voting.
This article is part of a series called “What the Gov,” where BGA Engagement Editor Mia Sato takes reader questions related to Illinois government and upcoming elections and tracks down the answers. Ask your own question here.
Voters hear a lot about party politics at all levels of government, from Congress all the way down to local municipal elections. Some voters align closely with a party and others cast their vote on a case-by-case basis. But how does party identification impact how you can vote? Several readers were stumped.
Cynthia Mosley, a retired Chicago Public Schools teacher living on Chicagos Southside, is one of them. She remembers her mother didn’t vote in the primaries because it meant saying aloud to a poll worker which partys ballot she wanted. Cynthia wondered why voters have to declare a party to vote in the primary.
Another reader was thinking forward: could she could vote for any partys candidates in the general, or did she have to be registered with that party?
Were just a few weeks out from the November election and voters have a lot of questions both about the systems Illinois has and how it plays out in the voting process. Heres what you should know.
The Presidential Primary Will Not Use The Familiar Top Two Ballot
California voters can be forgiven for assuming that political party registration doesnt really matter.
In 2010 voters backed a measure to create the states nonpartisan top two election system, in which all primary voters fill out a ballot with every candidate on it regardless of either the voters or the candidates political party. The top two winners then move on to the general election ballot even if theyre both from the same party.
In races for state legislative and congressional seats, the top two method will still reign on the 2020 ballot.
But when you vote in the presidential primary, its back to the old partisan system: Democrats on the Democratic ballot, Republicans on the Republican ballot, and so on.
So while voting in California usually goes like this under the top two:
In the presidential primary, it looks a little more like this:
The 2020 Democratic Primary Is Giving Some Republicans Dj Vu
A large, diffuse and unyielding field of candidates is helping Bernie Sanders dominate. Republicans who tried to beat Donald J. Trump in 2016 see parallels.
FARGO, N.D. After a disappointing sixth-place finish in Nevada, which followed a less disappointing third-place finish in New Hampshire but a humbling fifth-place finish in Iowa, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota looked out at the crowd of more than 1,000 and predicted victory in the North Dakota primary at the time, more than two weeks away.
Somehow, I have a feeling this primary is still going to be going on, she said.
That much seems certain.
The no-end-in-sight nature of the contest for the Democratic nomination is alarming those in the party who are hoping to blunt the momentum of the front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The most likely way they believe that could happen a critical mass of the senators rivals drop out so voters can coalesce around a single alternative seems like the least likely outcome.
The irony is thick. Mr. Sanders, the candidate many establishment Democrats fear would have the most trouble beating President Trump in November, is benefiting from some of the same dynamics that helped Mr. Trump stampede to the Republican nomination four years ago.
As Republicans who weathered 2016 observe 2020, they are feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. The parallels are not perfect, but there are many right down to the candidates themselves.
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source https://www.patriotsnet.com/do-republicans-vote-in-the-democratic-primary/
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Joe Biden campaigns in Sumter, South Carolina, on February 28, 2020. | Scott Olson/Getty Images
A good night for Biden, a bad one for Bloomberg
South Carolina is the end of the beginning — and it turned out to be a big enough blowout to transform our understanding of the race to come into what really looks like a two-person race between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
First came the traditional two — Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire’s “first-in-the-nation” primary. Then came Nevada, moved close to the front of the calendar to give Latino voters more voice in the process, and now, South Carolina, which serves a similar role but for the African-American electorate. None of these states are particularly large or rich in delegates (though South Carolina is the biggest of the four) but they matter because each one stands along on its own day — a beautiful unique snowflake that drives narratives and builds momentum.
Collectively the opening four don’t determine the winner of a nominating contest, but they do drive the shape of the race of the race to come.
But before we head on to Super Tuesday, here’s who won and who lost.
Winner: Joe Biden
Biden won by winning, a pleasingly straightforward and old-fashioned way of winning. His campaign was on the verge of being left for dead after fourth- and fifth-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively, but started a comeback with a second-place finish in Nevada and now delivered in the demographically friendly state of South Carolina.
Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Supporters cheer for Joe Biden in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on February 28, 2020.
The former vice president is still in much worse shape than he was at the beginning of February when he enjoyed a large national polling lead and was only very slightly behind Bernie Sanders in Iowa. At that time it still seemed plausible that Biden might edge out a win in the caucuses and then just roll to a dominant victory. Those days are gone and despite the South Carolina win, Biden is still playing catchup to Sanders in national polls and will likely fall behind in delegates on Super Tuesday.
But he’s stopped the bleeding, his national poll numbers seem to be on the upswing, he retains a deep reservoir of support with black Democrats, and he can make an excellent case that he is far and away the most viable alternative to Sanders. Joe’s back.
Loser: Michael Bloomberg
When Michael Bloomberg started talking about a late entry into the race in early November, I said he was only going to split the moderate vote and help elect Elizabeth Warren.
Since that time, Sanders has clearly displaced Warren as the leading progressive champion, but the basic analysis applies. Right now, Sanders enjoys a roughly 12-point lead over Biden in national polls, but ranked-choice polling shows he’d have a much narrower lead in a two-person race. Bloomberg’s presence in the race, in other words, is meaningfully increasing the odds of the outcome he says he doesn’t want. Dropping out and giving a modest amount of money to a pro-Biden Super PAC would be a reasonably effective “stop Bernie” move, while spending lavishly on his own campaign is helping Bernie.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Mike Bloomberg campaigns in Wilmington, North Carolina, on February 29, 2020.
But there was a brief period after Biden’s Iowa swoon when this analysis didn’t seem to apply. Amidst a big panic about the VP’s viability as a candidate, a decent crop of frontline house members and big city mayors (many of whom had benefitted in one way or another from Bloomberg’s largess) endorsed the former New York mayor and he received enough free media coverage to largely stomp on coverage of Pete Buttigieg’s bounce.
The reality that Biden is still here — and still the obvious choice for Democrats who want continuity with the Obama Era rather than a political revolution — deals a fatal blow to the logic of the Bloomberg boomlet. Blessed as he is with a $60 billion fortune, Bloomberg can easily blow $100 million a month on a presidential campaign without breaking a sweat, so nobody can force him out of the race. But he presumably wants to actually be president not just run for president, and it’s increasingly hard to see how that happens.
Loser: Tom Steyer
He’s rich, but not nearly as rich as Michael Bloomberg. He spent big on the 2020 primary, but not Bloomberg big. And unlike Bloomberg, he has no record in office or qualifications to be president.
Nonetheless, Steyer decided to run with his spending concentrated in the early states — South Carolina particularly.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Tom Steyer campaigns in in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on February 26, 2020.
South Carolina was the only one of those early four where there was any evidence of him getting traction, but it all it earned him was a distant third-place finish. There’s no path forward here for Steyer and it’s not clear what he’s doing.
The good news is that unlike Bloomberg, Steyer never really attracted any oppo or criticism from his rivals. Steyer’s pre-campaign political giving was extremely well-regarded and broadly appreciated in progressive circles, and it seems like if he wants to drop out he can go back to being a well-liked benefactor with no real harm done or hard feelings. Still, it’s difficult to understand exactly what was going on here.
Winner: James Clyburn
After the failure of the “party decides” thesis in the 2016 cycle, there’s been considerable skepticism about whether old-fashioned things like endorsements from local elected officials still matter.
The endorsement of Biden by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), one of the top figures in the House Democratic caucus, absolutely counted as a big deal by those traditional standards. But did traditional standards count anymore? In South Carolina, at least, it seems that they did — with 47 percent telling exit pollsters his endorsement was a factor in their decision.
Nearly half (!!!) of South Carolina voters said congressman Jim Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) final-week endorsement was an important factor in their vote, according to preliminary exit poll results from Edison Research.
Clyburn announced his support for Biden on Wednesday
— Matt Viser (@mviser) February 29, 2020
That’s a win for old-school politics. But specifically because old-school politics seems to be on the way out, it’s also a considerable personal win for Clyburn who has proven himself to be the rare modern-day elected official who is actually someone who voters care about. The mere fact that people say Clyburn swung their vote doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true, of course, but the mere fact that they want to say it is a sign of the esteem for him locally.
Winner: The news cycle
I didn’t love needing to work on the weekend, but the fact is the open primary on a Saturday gave plenty of people the opportunity to vote and once they voted the votes were counted quickly and without a lot of drama.
“State holds election and it’s fine” is not exactly the biggest news in the world, but after the fiasco in Iowa and with the future of caucuses as a whole in question, it’s a nice reminder that there are simple, straightforward ways to hold an election.
And it’s a lucky thing too because this was a Saturday absolutely jam-packed with news. In the morning, the Trump administration signed a deal with the Taliban that should remove US forces from Afghanistan and very likely set the stage for an eventual Taliban victory in their ongoing war with the Afghan government. Concurrently, the United States suffered the first Covid-19 death on American soil and Trump held an afternoon coronavirus press conference in which he began to back off his earlier efforts to downplay the seriousness of the epidemic.
South Carolina is a big story, but it’s not clear how long we’ll be talking about this with so much else going on.
Winner: The contested convention
It would be over the top to call Sanders a “loser” in this outcome — he’s still the frontrunner in delegates and national polls, the most likely nominee, and generally in good shape.
And while obviously having a big loss to Biden by wasn’t Sanders’s first choice of outcome, everyone knows this is not the demographically friendliest state for him. But despite years of hard work and organizing aimed at bolstering his standing in black-heavy southern states, he still came up far short.
Consequently, while Sanders remains in the lead the odds of him scoring a clean victory over Biden have diminished. That means a scenario in which nobody secures a majority of pledged delegates before the convention is now looking more likely.
Loser: Assuming normal voters think like professional activists
Clinton won the 2016 nomination in large part thanks to scoring huge margins with African-American voters in places like South Carolina.
And once it became clear how central black voters were to her support, she started talking about politics in a very particular kind of way — talking about intersectionality, asking “if we broke up the big banks tomorrow ... would that end racism?”, and invoking the phrase “systematic racism.” These are ideas familiar to younger college graduates, often developed by black intellectuals and popular in racist justice activism circles. And since Clinton did, in fact, obtain overwhelming majorities among African-American voters many 2020 contenders essentially tried to imitate this approach.
Suzanna Danuta Walters in The Nation hailed Warren for running “an unapologetically intersectional campaign,” which she certainly did. So did Kirsten Gillibrand and Julian Castro, both of whom ended up dropping out early, with Castro endorsing Warren and becoming a frequently used campaign surrogate.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigns in North Charleston, South Carolina, on February 26, 2020.
In South Carolina we saw that this approach delivered very meager results with the electorate. Both in the Palmetto State and in national polls, black voters seem split between Biden’s back-to-basics kitchen table economics pitch and Bernie’s democratic socialist pitch with the divisions mostly falling along age lines. The two candidates’ pitches on economic issues are very different, but Biden and Sanders are similar in having some of the weakest claims to wokeness and least explicitly intersectional rhetoric in the field. It’s not that racial issues aren’t important or that the candidates doing well in South Carolina don’t have strong policies on them.
But most voters are working class, not necessarily super-familiar with cutting edge intellectual concepts, and not as siloed in their concerns as activists. There’s a strong market in South Carolina for “similar to Obama” and a smaller, but also pretty strong, market for Sanders’ youth-fueled revolution with very few voters looking to attend a critical race theory seminar.
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An anxious nation finally votes. Some hope that will ease divisions. Others see a permanent state of ‘trench warfare.’
By Marc Fisher | Published February 02 at 2:57 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 2, 2020 |
Finally, after three years of a presidency like none other, after street protests and raucous rallies, after awkward Thanksgiving dinners and broken friendships, after predictions of fractured democracy and celebrations of disrupted government, Americans will begin voting Monday.
They will vote on whether to turn away from smash-mouth politics or double down on a presidency that serves as a national blowoff valve. They will vote on whether they prefer a restoration of quieter governing or a wholesale change of the economic system. Above all, they will vote on whether they have had enough of President Trump — and what to do about the direction of a country that all sides seem to agree faces significant trouble.
When Iowa voters assemble in caucuses Monday evening to begin selecting presidential nominees, they will lead off a tightly packed parade of opportunities for Americans to state their verdict, including potentially bitter Democratic primaries culminating with the ultimate decision day on Nov. 3.
This vote feels momentous, said Chris Buskirk, publisher of American Greatness, a conservative website, because Trump supporters “hope that his reelection would finally legitimize him as president” and because the president’s opponents see one last opportunity to get rid of the man they blame for exacerbating the country’s divisions.
“But actually, I’m not optimistic that this election will solve anything,” Buskirk said. “The divisions and stresses in the country may be worse than they were three years ago. It’s almost a World War I mind-set now — it’s trench warfare and you fight and scramble and you get nowhere.”
In Iowa, for almost half a century the place where Americans begin the selection of presidents, the vote follows more than a year of intense campaigning. Ben Mowat, a 19-year-old from Colorado, chose to attend Drake University in Des Moines because he wanted to participate in the first-in-the-nation caucuses.
“It feels weird,” the freshman said. “2020 was this idea, and now it’s here.”
Mowat, a volunteer for Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., said he has been driven by the prospect of ejecting Trump from the White House, but his excitement is tempered by a sense of responsibility and even, sometimes, the dread of a possible loss.
“I feel guilty when I’m not knocking doors,” he said.
Katie Cameron and Susan Tille, sisters who drove more than two hours from Livermore, Iowa, to attend Trump’s rally in Des Moines on Thursday night, can’t wait to vote to assure a second term for a president they say has given the economy a healthy boost.
“He’s made a lot of positive changes,” said Tille, citing the growth in her 401(k) retirement account. “He’s done a lot of good for the economy.”
The sisters, who own a swimming pool store, want to send a message to Trump’s opponents, telling them to stop fighting his every move. Cameron, whose 2016 vote for Trump was her first after a lifetime of steering clear of politics, said she has become more politically engaged in the past three years and considers herself a member of his base. She’s no fan of some of Trump’s tweets, but she said Americans have gotten used to “how he communicates.”
By now, Frank Luntz figured that emotionally exhausted Americans would be hungry for unity, eager to embrace moderate messages and candidates who promised to find and claim common ground.
But Luntz, a longtime Republican consultant who conducts focus groups for news organizations, has been taking the temperatures of voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and other states, and he has found that “people are desperate to vote, but the center has collapsed.”
“They want the pitchfork message, not the unity message — on both sides,” he said.
“I wish I was wrong, but that fear of losing the country is deep and very emotional, on both sides,” Luntz added. “The Trump side believes the left is trying to overturn democracy, and they will fight like hell to prevent it. And the Democrats have a disdain for Donald Trump that I’ve never seen. This isn’t as bad as 1968, but it’s pretty damn bad.”
In the ’68 election, amid the Vietnam War, riots in American cities, political assassinations and a widespread sense that the country was spinning out of control, Richard Nixon won the presidency with chilling TV ads reflecting the fear of crime on dark city streets and a slogan that spoke to existential angst in the electorate: “This time, vote like your whole world depended on it.”
A similar root anxiety about the future of the country and the planet pervades many voters’ attitudes now.
Psychologists hear it from clients whether they are pro- or anti-Trump. “It is a collective anxiety and it is bipartisan,” said Washington therapist Elisabeth LaMotte. “This is not a trusting time.”
On the anti-Trump side, LaMotte sees people for whom politics is a significant driver of stress, “but it’s more complicated than that.”
“I hear much more concern about the environment and the future of the planet than I did two years ago.” she said.
In the pro-Trump camp, she said: “I hear people say they can’t talk to certain people anymore. They’re feeling isolated and frustrated, like there isn’t permission to say what you think and feel, even to close friends.”
Many people have found it necessary to step away from the political fray: They limit their news diet, avoid talking to certain friends and get involved in community activities. Others have become more politically active.
“I tell people with political anxiety to do something productive or proactive, like volunteering for a campaign,” said Jennifer Contarino Panning, a clinical psychologist in Evanston, Ill. “Voting is a crucial part of that; in 2018, I saw people find some relief in voting. It gave a sense of hope, and people are desperate for that.”
At a Buttigieg campaign event in Ankeny, Iowa, flight attendant Tamara Galeazzi, 52, could hardly wait for Monday’s caucuses.
“It’s almost like, ‘Thank God it’s almost over,’ ” she said. “Being in Iowa, we hear it from day one until the caucus. When the commercials start slowing down the day after, it’s like, ‘Thank goodness, normalcy.’ I’m nervous. Very nervous. This cannot go on for another four years. Just pick someone on our side and stick with it. It’s very nerve-racking.”
But for many people, the vote is neither a sufficient salve to the stress of the Trump era nor a big enough cudgel to break through to people on the other side of the divide.
“I work primarily with progressives and they looked to the Mueller report and the impeachment trial for some relief and then nothing changed,” Panning said. “They felt hopeless and fatigued. Now they’re really hesitant to believe in anything.”
LaMotte said her patients in Virginia, Maryland and the District have edged away from politics over the past few years, choosing instead to engage in their local communities, finding relief from the stress of national news in getting involved with a Girl Scouts group or volunteering at a neighborhood school. She sees hope in a growing resilience, even if it’s not necessarily associated with voting.
Luntz has heard little such hope. The voters he has been surveying “have weaponized grievances and are seeking revenge against the other side,” he said. “Whatever the result of the election, half the country will believe America has been saved and half will say it’s been destroyed. These two Americas do not eat together, do not play together. They say it’s too late for unity. They have simply lost trust."
Some voters who crave a unifying message fear that their fellow Americans are too frustrated or exhausted to bring about change. Austin Bayliss, 32, sees worrying signs that antipathy to Trump may not be enough to carry Democrats to victory. That recipe failed four years ago, he said, “and sometimes I feel like I’m right back there.
“What are the Democrats going to do to close the enthusiasm gap?” said Bayliss, who runs a professional wrestling company near Iowa City. “You’d think the chance to hit back at Trump would be enough, but I went to Joe Biden’s event yesterday in Muscatine, and there were 60 people there and 45 media. I was the youngest person there.”
The enthusiasm gap Bayliss worried about was palpable at Trump’s rally Thursday. Martha Ahrens, a retired court system worker who traveled to the event from Boone, Iowa, said the Democrats’ persistent attacks on Trump have bolstered her support of the president, who she said can be “arrogant” but has done well with the economy.
Like a number of others at the Trump rally, she said she’s more excited to vote this year than she was in 2016. “Everybody is so tired of everything. They’re tired of the Democrats constantly since he was elected going after him,” she said. “It’s just one thing after another, you know, instead of focusing on what they’re going to do as president.”
Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who represents suburbs outside Richmond, unseated a conservative Republican in 2018 and spends many weekends meeting with constituents, making a particular effort to sit down with pro-Trump voters. She sees a divide so deep that one election cannot heal it.
“We used to debate ideas,” she said. “Now it’s just, ‘You think this, therefore you’re bad,’ a zero-sum game, us versus them. We’ve been moving to this place where our entertainment is disagreement.”
Nonetheless, the congresswoman believes many voters this year “want a restoration of, just, decency, just respecting people.” To get there, however, will take many one-on-one encounters, not just a political platform and a bunch of ads.
“I walked into a place and a woman started wagging her finger at me, saying, ‘I love Donald Trump,’ ” Spanberger recalled. “I said, ‘Ma’am, a lot of people do.’ She saw me and expected a fight. I don’t know that she wanted a fight, and that’s an important distinction. But I changed the tone and acknowledged what she said and she softened, and we had a really good conversation.”
The yearning for a return to a less combative politics is palpable among many Iowans who plan to attend the Democratic caucuses. Mary Amborn, 78, from Ottumwa contemplated traveling to Des Moines on Thursday to protest at the Trump rally there, but decided instead to stay closer to home and hear Biden speak at the local American Legion Hall.
Amborn, who is leaning toward voting for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) but was still considering Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), said she’s doing well but feels compelled to vote against Trump on behalf of her 26 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, including three who served in the military and one who is a homeless veteran “who can teach college calculus but he can’t keep a home.”
“I am very, very happy,” she said. “I have a great retirement. I have wonderful medical. I worked the factory for years and years at John Deere. Now, the folks who have my job, when they retire, they will not have medical. And so I am worried about those that follow me. If I get it wrong, my 26 grandkids — they will suffer.” She wiped away tears. “I can hardly talk about it. I’m voting for them.”
After a 2016 election in which the long-standing leadership in both parties seemed out of sync with voters’ frustrations and concerns, Luntz sees a similar disconnect developing this time: “The Trump campaign seems overconfident,” he said. “Trump energizes people at his rallies but not beyond that hardcore group. They don’t understand the fatigue that some Trump voters feel. People are tired of having to defend Trump’s language.”
Luntz doesn’t see Democratic candidates clicking with voters either. “The Democratic message is so over-caffeinated against Trump that it’s overwhelming people who are already suffering from insomnia,” he said. “I have no idea what’s going to happen.”
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Toluse Olorunnipa and Isaac Stanley-Becker in Des Moines, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. in Ottumwa, Iowa, and Chelsea Janes in Ankeny, Iowa, contributed to this report.
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The Trailer: 'Beat Trump': The Democrats' closing arguments in Iowa
By David Weigel | Published February 02 at 5:42 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 2, 2020 |
In this edition: The closing messages in Iowa, the anti-Trump Republicans on the trail, and how 2004 made the modern caucuses.
The real Des Moines Register poll was the friends we made along the way, and this is The Trailer.
DES MOINES — Bernie Sanders has been selling “Bernie Beats Trump” swag for months. Joe Biden's final ads close with four words: “Vote Biden, Beat Trump.” Amy Klobuchar's caucus night T-shirts take a little longer to say it: “Amy Klobuchar will defeat Donald Trump.”
And Andrew Yang makes his closing pitch with math.
“I am the heaviest betting favorite to defeat Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup of anyone in the field,” Yang said at a Saturday night rally that packed more than a thousand voters and canvassers into the Des Moines Marriott. “I am at 3 to 2 as a head-to-head favorite against Donald Trump. The next-best candidate is even money. I'm not much of a gambler myself, despite the Asian-ness.”
In the final hours before caucus doors open, the seven Democrats actively campaigning in Iowa here have started to converge on one theme — electability — while putting together very different closing arguments.
Their advertising, which ignored the president for most of last year, now puts him or his voters front and center. Their rallies, where voters jostle for space with tourists and journalists, sketch out the reasons they could put together a coalition that unseats the president. Here's what it looks like inside the final campaign events before the caucuses, with the candidates listed by the irresistible (and sometimes deceiving) metric of crowd size.
Bernie Sanders. Visibly frustrated at how the impeachment trial grounded him in Washington, Sanders has filled his schedule with rallies before a few hundred people and with hours-long concert/teach-in events that have pulled out at least 5,000 people in total, easily the biggest crowds of the caucuses.
At a Friday night concert in Des Moines with Bon Iver, Sanders called in with a version of his stump speech; at a Saturday night concert in Cedar Rapids, he delivered it live. “The reason we are going to win the Democratic nomination is because we are a campaign of us, not me,” he said, starting in on the agenda he'd run on since 2015: “single-payer Medicare-for-all,” tuition-free public college, criminal justice reform, an end to the drug war, and the rest.
Sanders hardly mentions Trump at all, referring briefly to the president as a “pathological liar” who can be defeated with “high voter turnout.” The only reference to the issues around the impeachment is a quick condemnation of a president who “does not believe in the separation of powers.” Trump returns to the stump only when Sanders needs to make a point about how affordable a democratic socialist agenda would be.
“If Donald Trump and his friends can give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to large corporations and the top 1 percent, we can cancel all student debt in America,” he said in Cedar Rapids. The message: He can win the election in a walk so long as he gets the nomination.
Pete Buttigieg. The phenom from South Bend, Ind., has consistently portrayed the president as a “symptom” of America's problems; as a result, Trump gets only some cameo roles at Buttigieg events. Buttigieg still asks crowds to imagine the day when Trump is finally gone (an instant applause line) but spends more time arguing against the Democrats polling closest to him, with Joe Biden “trying to meet fundamentally new challenges with a familiar playbook” and Sanders promising “revolution” without a Plan B.
Buttigieg describes a country that is moving inexorably toward liberalism and progress and gets some of his loudest applause when he thanks Iowa for making it possible for him to wear a wedding ring, evoking the state Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage. Democrats win, he says, when they roll the dice and go for what they actually want.
“Every single time my party has won the White House in the last half-century, it's been with a candidate who was looking to the future, who was not associated with Washington, either didn't have an office there or hadn't had one for very long, and was opening a door to a new generation,” Buttigieg said on CBS on Sunday morning.
Elizabeth Warren. In November, Warren changed her stump speech, slicing it down and leaving more time for questions. In January, she changed her ad campaign, emphasizing her support from former Republicans and from Democrats who backed either Sanders or Hillary Clinton in 2016. Over the weekend, signs that read “Unite the Party” materialized at Warren's events, turning her subtext into … well, text.
But Warren speaks even less about Trump than Buttigieg or Sanders, spending most of her time using questions to accentuate the agenda she'd bring to the executive branch. There's an increased emphasis on how electing her could make history, the first female president, finishing the business Democrats thought they were finishing in November 2016.
“I will do everything a president can do — I love saying this! — all by herself on her very first day,” Warren said on Sunday in Cedar Rapids.
Warren does not mention specific polling unless pressed, when she will point out that the wealth tax, the idea that powered her rise, is popular with Republicans.
Andrew Yang. The candidate with the least political experience in this race has become one of its most consistent political speakers, with jokes that falter only if the crowd is too familiar with him. Yang used to be able to ask the crowd if they've ever “heard a politician talk about the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” but at this point, they have. (The punchline was: “Just now, and I'm barely a politician.”)
Yang is exuberant, describing a coming Iowa victory that no pollster sees as possible and reciting poll numbers about his crossover appeal to say that he can win more Trump voters than any Democratic rival. Yang is also perhaps the grimmest candidate, describing the economic problems that enabled a Trump win in the first place.
“We're being told how great things are all of the time,” Yang said in Des Moines on Saturday. “Record high GDP, record high stock market prices, record low unemployment. But we're looking around and thinking, I'm not sure things are actually that great. And we are right. We have record high corporate profits in this country, yes, but what else are at record highs in the United States of America right now? Suicides. Depression. Overdoses. Income inequality. Homelessness. Debt, student loan debt, medical debt. Anxiety.
Joe Biden. There are two types of Biden speeches: the ones that rely on a script, and the ones where he largely wings it. The closing days have relied on a more spontaneous Biden, who talks more and more about Trump's outrages and implies that if voters select another Democratic candidate, it would risk reelecting him.
“I don't think you've ever had a greater responsibility than you have this time, not because I'm on the ballot,” Biden said on Saturday in Cedar Rapids. “You owe it to the country to make sure that Donald Trump is not the next president of the United States.”
No Democrat spends more time on the stump warning about Trump as the only impediment to a Democratic Party agenda. There are mournful Trump references, as when Biden recalls the scenes from the 2017 “Unite the Right” march of white supremacists on Charlottesville. “Close your eyes and remember what you saw on television,” Biden says. There are fiery Trump references, such as when Biden refers to a card he carries, detailing the total of military casualties in Afghanistan (“Not roughly 6,000, but 6,095!"), a way of calling the president callow.
Amy Klobuchar. The senator from Minnesota is getting the biggest crowds of her year-long campaign, and she will say so, taking her time on the way to her microphone to work the audience, before being introduced as the Republican-slayer from up north.
“All she does is win,” said Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, one of the surrogates who had campaigned for Klobuchar during the bulk of the Senate trial, then rejoined her on the trail.
The Klobuchar stump is long, usually running to 35 minutes, and starts with a rundown of her many legislative endorsements and often ends by detailing just how she won her races.
“I am someone that has won every race, every place, every time,” she said Saturday in Cedar Falls. “I have won in the most rural districts, including the one bordering Iowa, by big margins. I have won the one bordering North and South Dakota in big margins. I have won in the north part of Minnesota, where there's currently a Republican congressman, and I have won in Michele Bachmann's district.”
Klobuchar makes no references to her rivals and only gently refers to how some of them have plans that might not ever get passed. Trump appears intermittently, and Klobuchar finishes talking about him by warning that the Democrats of 2016 “had a great message but chased him down every rabbit hole.” One year after declaring her candidacy during a snowstorm, she still recalls her Twitter comeback to Trump: “I'd like to see how your hair fares in a blizzard.”
Tom Steyer. An underappreciated irony of the caucuses is that Steyer, who spent years campaigning for Trump's impeachment, saw it unfold just in time to bury presidential campaigns — his included. He, too, has “Beat Trump” signs, leading the field in conciseness. He, too, has a campaign bus, which has crisscrossed the state even as polls show him doing much better in Nevada and South Carolina.
Steyer draws the smallest crowds of the candidates still in Iowa, but voters do show up and settle in for town halls that stretch to an hour long. On Sunday night, in Waterloo, he took questions about climate change (his “number one priority”), the electoral college, infrastructure and student loan debt. That last question led him into a story about lobbying in California for a bill to crack down on companies that exploit students with debt and finding that legislators viewed it cynically.
“I walked in for a meeting, and I said, I'm here for a Bill of Rights for students,” Steyer says. “And this senator goes: 'Do you care about this?'" Steyer recreated his dumbfounded look. “Do I care about giving my students far more money so that they can get an education and be more productive people and better citizens? Come on! Who doesn't care about that?”
Steyer's electability pitch is unique, an argument that only a candidate who has succeeded in business and never been tied to Washington can effectively compete with him. Iowa might not be the state where he proves that.
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Democratic presidential candidates make final push to rally a skittish, and largely undecided, Iowa electorate
By Matt Viser and Dan Balz | Published
Feb 01 at 11:02 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 2, 2020 |
DES MOINES — The Democratic presidential candidates returned to Iowa in full force Saturday, using a brief break from impeachment proceedings to rally supporters ahead of Monday's caucuses with renewed pitches to an electorate that remains highly skittish and deeply undecided.
Joe Biden used his closing argument to present himself as the safest choice for voters worried most about finding a nominee who can defeat President Trump. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who like other senators in the race had been stuck in Washington until this weekend for the impeachment trial, made an explicit appeal to women — and pitched herself as the one who can, as signs behind her read, “Unite the Party.”
Pete Buttigieg’s campaign tried to rally the party behind his call for generational change, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), using weekend concerts and rallies, sought to mobilize what many strategists here consider to be an army of dedicated supporters.
Several of the candidates played to overflow crowds, a contrast to earlier in the week when the absence of the senators damped the energy normally associated with the final days.
Virtually every campaign has come to predict privately that Sanders could turn out more people on Monday night than any other candidate. Due to the arcane rules of the Iowa caucus system, his rivals hope they can overcome that advantage when the final delegate counts are tallied.
“I think it’s going to be a cluster,” Biden said in an interview after an event late in the week. “It’ll be relatively close, you know, probably three of us that are fairly close.”
Biden and Sanders have been at the top of most polls in Iowa this month. But Democrats hoping for more clarity got a unwelcome surprise Saturday night when the Des Moines Register, CNN and Selzer & Co. pulled back from the much-anticipated release of the results from the final Iowa poll, long considered the most reliable pre-caucus snapshot.
The decision, which added to the chaos and uncertainty in the final days, came after the Buttigieg campaign alerted those overseeing the poll that his name was left off of the list of candidates read by one of the interviewers, according to a person familiar with the problem who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
With Sanders appearing to surge in recent weeks, all of his rivals were eagerly working to manage expectations. Some close to Warren said privately that the fight was now for a second-place finish. Those in Buttigieg’s camp say they believe finishing ahead of Biden would provide the springboard they need for future contests, both to build support and to reload their campaign war chest.
“It’s so tight that we just got to keep our heads down and maintain a kind of an underdog mentality all the way through,” the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., said in an interview. When pressed about what expectations he needed to exceed, he demurred, but did say, “We’re in it to win it.”
The hunger to defeat Trump — and the likelihood the Senate will vote to acquit him this week — has had the effect of leaving many voters immobilized, creating an unusually large undecided pool and injecting more than the usual uncertainty over how the coming days will play out.
Among the overriding questions still hovering at the start of what could be a long fight for the nomination is whether the continued indecision will dampen participation Monday. Earlier predictions for record turnout have been scaled back in the past weeks.
The caucuses Monday night will be the culmination of more than a year of campaigning and a steady churn of candidates entering and exiting. Collectively, the campaigns have spent $70 million on TV ads here. When they are done, Iowans will have played their traditional role of stress-testing — and winnowing — what had been a historically large and diverse field.
While the party over the past three years has struggled to answer a basic question — How do you beat Trump? — the results here will offer the first moment of clarity. It is a test of whether the party wants to move toward candidates preaching bold and unsettled change that would bring a Democratic revolution to counter Trump’s Republican one, or whether the party wants a more traditional, return-to-normalcy nominee who would run on more kitchen-table, uncontroversial issues.
In what is the starting gun for a sprint toward contests that will grow more and more costly — and with Mike Bloomberg pouring hundreds of millions of his own money into the race — several campaigns are in dire need of a win that could fuel donations into campaign accounts that have dwindled.
The contest has been largely free of the kind of negative campaigning that has marked other years, but that hasn’t eliminated sniping. Top advisers to Buttigieg on Saturday morning went after Biden, suggesting that his long career in Washington would be a detriment to the party’s ability to defeat Trump if the former vice president is the nominee.
“The idea that we are going to take on someone like Donald Trump with the old playbook by saying I understand the ways of Washington, I hung out with Strom Thurmond, you know, 20 years ago — that’s not going to happen,” Lis Smith, a senior Buttigieg adviser, told reporters during a breakfast hosted by Bloomberg News.
Mike Schmuhl, the campaign manager, later jumped in with another data point.
“Since World War II, our party has nominated three vice presidents. They’ve all lost,” he said. “Our party goes for youthful, visionary, next-generation leaders.”
Warren has had a prized organization in the state — along with several late, sought-after endorsements — but has also fallen in recent polls as others have cut into different parts of her base. She is competing with Buttigieg for college-educated voters, with Sanders for liberal voters and with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for voters eager to see a woman as the nominee.
Ahead of Warren’s event Saturday in Iowa City, a group of elected officials tried to lead the crowd in a chant: “It’s time! It’s time! It’s time for a woman in the White House!”
Warren has generally avoided questions about how she might do in Iowa. But her campaign manager Roger Lau recently sent out a memo warning of the “breathless media narratives” likely to emerge from the early states and focusing on their 1,000-strong staff fanned out in 31 states.
Klobuchar has cast herself as a not-too-hot, not-too-cold candidate who can appeal to a wide swath of the party. But what is unknown is whether the fact that she, along with Warren and Sanders, had to be in Washington during the final week of campaigning had hindered her ability to capitalize on the fresh look many were giving her.
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang and businessman Tom Steyer have each averaged around 4 percent in the polls, which would put them below the 15 percent viability threshold. But their supporters could play a significant role in determining the night’s final outcome if they switched to another candidate on the second tally.
With concern bubbling among establishment Democrats over whether Iowa could launch Sanders forward with momentum, the party was caught up Saturday in a replay of 2016 tensions between Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
After Clinton again criticized Sanders, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a top Sanders surrogate, playfully urged a crowd to boo Clinton during a rally on Friday night. But in yet another sign of the skittishness of most campaigns to get into a bitter brawl, Tlaib apologized Saturday and Sanders emphasized that he would support whoever the nominee is.
Sanders’s campaign advisers say they have identified as many supporters who are coming to caucus Monday, in a crowded field with at least five competitive candidates, as came to caucus for him in 2016, when it was essentially a two-person race. They are banking on a large turnout among young voters, and those who typically don’t participate in local politics.
“They have not engaged with the party structure,” said Kurt Meyer, chairman of the Democratic Party in three rural counties. “Maybe that is a great leap forward. Maybe they know something the rest of us don’t and they’ll get an additional 10 or 20 or 30 percent who have never caucused before to magically show up. But I honestly don’t know who my Sanders organizer is.”
Warren grew a bit nostalgic as she returned to Iowa, reminiscing about all of her previous trips. “You’ve whispered dreams into my ears, you’ve told me about your lives, about issues, about ideas, about how we could make things better,” she said in Cedar Rapids. “In this year you have made me a better candidate, and you will make me a better president. Thank you.”
Unlike past campaign stops, Warren did not stay around for a photo line, instead leaving her dog Bailey behind to appear in pictures with supporters.
The caucuses are the first major test of whether Biden’s claims of electability will draw voters to his candidacy. While his events can feel lethargic and with crowds smaller than for other candidates, his campaign advisers have been banking on the goodwill he has built up over nearly five decades in public life.
Asked in an interview about the seeming lack of enthusiasm at his events and whether that worries him, Biden said: “I don’t get a sense of that at all. . . . We spent a lot of time in a lot of small venues, deliberately going to make sure we cover rural Iowa.”
Former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack said Biden is a known commodity and that Iowans who support him don’t feel the need to come to Biden’s rallies but will be there on caucus night. It is a mistake, he said, to assume that “there’s a direct parallel between enthusiastic rallies and turnout and results.”
His campaign organization has also been a frequent topic among Iowa operatives and county chairs, who say it has lacked the kind of vigor needed in a caucus system that rewards passion and organization more than it does widespread but thinner support.
The coalition Biden is trying to assemble includes voters over age 50, blue-collar households, veterans, African Americans, Latinos and Catholics. His campaign is running specific programs focusing each group, based on lists developed from voter files, property tax rolls and other sources.
Because many people no longer answer their telephones unless they recognize the caller’s number, the campaign has put extra emphasis on sending volunteers and paid canvassers to people’s homes.
The decision to hire paid canvassers — offering $20 per hour for the last two weeks — raised eyebrows among some of Biden’s rivals, who took it as a sign of weakness in the organization. But campaign officials say they believe the additional help has allowed them to get into as many neighborhoods as possible and during days of inclement weather.
Although Monday night’s weather is expected to be brisk with no snow in the forecast, it remains to be seen if turnout will be historically high.
While some still predict it could match or exceed the 240,000 who turned out in 2008, others say it is likely to fall between that number and the 171,000 who attended in 2016.
Just who would benefit from a low turnout is a matter of some debate.
Biden’s candidacy tends to attract traditional caucus-goers who might have the added incentive to participate this year because of their desire to defeat Trump in November.
But a lower turnout could give the advantage to candidates who have attracted newcomers, such as Sanders, or who are generating real enthusiasm at rallies.
The campaigns have been preparing for what could be a confusing night of potentially conflicting results, and multiple candidates seeking to shape a public impression that they scored a symbolic victory if not a numerical one.
The state party will report three numbers on caucus night. The first will be the number of people who show up for each candidate. The next two will reflect results after supporters of candidates who do not meet the 15 percent threshold in a precinct realign to support another candidate.
There will be two measures of that realignment, first the raw number of people in support of the remaining viable candidates and then how that translates into delegates — or, as they will be called Monday, state delegate equivalents. Those two numbers should track relatively closely but there could be a notable difference between the entrance percentages and the delegate percentages.
For several candidates — particularly Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Warren — a bad finish could be devastating. It could also begin to clarify the question of whether the campaign is headed toward a long, divisive primary or whether it could conclude more swiftly. The candidates will quickly head to New Hampshire, where there will be an eight-day sprint that includes a Friday debate.
Biden, amid growing concerns that he is having more difficulty raising money, has bought or reserved only $215,000 in New Hampshire, according to Advertising Analytics, which puts him at a fraction of his rivals. His allies are hoping a strong showing in Iowa could trigger a rush of donations, but even then there is some debate over how heavily he will focus on a state that Sanders carried handily four years ago and that neighbors Warren’s home state of Massachusetts.
There have been private deliberations among those leading Biden’s super PAC over how heavily to concentrate on New Hampshire and whether to instead pour resources into Nevada, the next state on the calendar.
But any decision is dependent on what happens in Iowa on Monday night.
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Annie Linskey contributed to this report.
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Top-Tier Democrats Challenge Biden for Black Support After Atlanta Debate
Top Democratic White House contenders will court black voters in Atlanta on Thursday in hopes of challenging former Vice President Joe Biden’s dominance with a voting bloc that is crucial to their 2020 election chances.
The Democratic presidential debate in the majority-black Southern city on Wednesday night put a focus on African-Americans, who make up about a quarter of Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers in presidential nominating contests.
Biden, who served as No. 2 to Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, touted his long-standing relationship with the African-American community. Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor who has been rising in opinion polls, acknowledged the hurdles he still faced with winning over black voters.
In an effort to build support, Buttigieg will speak on Thursday at a conference of civil rights activist Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who also trail Biden in black support, will both speak at historically black colleges and universities in Atlanta.
For many African-American voters, like other Democratic voters, getting Republican President Donald Trump out of office in November 2020 overshadows other considerations.
A Sept. 16-20 Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll found that 27% of blacks — a plurality — said they preferred a candidate who “can beat President Trump,” while 16% wanted someone who could create jobs and 10% wanted someone who is “strong on healthcare.”
During the debate, Trump’s campaign sent an email citing economic gains for black Americans during his presidency.
But retired nurse Martha HardyHoward, 65, grew up during the segregation era in the South and fears Trump’s presidency has uncorked racist sentiments once again.
She is leaning toward voting for Biden in Georgia’s March primary but is also looking closely at Warren and Buttigieg.
“We really need someone with experience in the White House right now,” said HardyHoward, who is black.
PRAGMATISM VS PROGRESSIVE PLANS
Biden is targeting diverse early voting states South Carolina and Nevada to build a lead in the Democratic nominating contest.
On Thursday, he will meet with Southern mayors in Atlanta before traveling to campaign in South Carolina, where six in 10 Democratic voters are black.
People close to Biden say he is not taking the state for granted and he has made his case by visiting himself and also through surrogates including local pastors, politicians and his wife, Jill.
“Voters know who Joe Biden is and what he stands for,” an aide said. “The onus is on the rest of the field to show that they can appeal to a broader segment of the Democratic electorate than they have so far.”
Biden’s support is especially strong among older African-Americans, leading his progressive rivals to target younger black voters.
“Older black voters tend to be more pragmatic, wanting to protect gains that have been realized to date,” said Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. “Younger voters tend to be more ideological and open to disruption and are less risk-averse.”
Buttigieg is rising in the polls in the less diverse early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire but has been plagued by questions about his relationship with the black community in South Bend.
Buttigieg’s struggle with black voters “shows how getting white support isn’t enough in and of itself to start winning over black voters,” Johnson said.
Warren has made a more sustained effort at building ties with the black community, he said, visiting historically black schools and working with black women activists.
A Morning Consult poll in September found that while Biden had the support of 40% of black voters, a growing number of African-American voters were naming Warren as their second choice.
Atlanta resident Kendall Boone, 28, said he liked Warren’s plans, such as her proposal to cancel student debt, but might still vote for Biden, whom he sees as the strongest opponent to Trump.
“Maybe it’s not the time for that right now,” Boone said of Warren’s progressive platform. “This election is about who’s going to beat Trump.”
(Reporting by Simon Lewis; Additional reporting by James Oliphant, Trevor Hunnicutt and Chris Kahn; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)
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Can Registered Republicans Vote In The Democratic Primary
New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/can-registered-republicans-vote-in-the-democratic-primary/
Can Registered Republicans Vote In The Democratic Primary
Open Primaries In The United States
Independent Voters Can Cast Ballot For Democratic Primary, But Not Republican In March
An open primary is a primary election that does not require voters to be affiliated with a political party in order to vote for partisan candidates. In a traditional open primary, voters may select one party’s ballot and vote for that party’s nomination. As in a closed primary, the highest voted candidate in each party then proceeds to the general election. In a nonpartisan blanket primary, all candidates appear on the same ballot and the two highest voted candidates proceed to the runoff election, regardless of party affiliation. The constitutionality of this system was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2008, whereas a partisan blanket primary was previously ruled to be unconstitutional in 2000.The arguments for open primaries are that voters can make independent choices, building consensus that the electoral process is not splintered or undermined by the presence of multiple political parties.
How Are Primary Elections Conducted In California
All candidates for voter-nominated offices are listed on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters in the primary election regardless of party preference – move on to the general election. Write-in candidates for voter-nominated offices can only run in the primary election. A write-in candidate will only move on to the general election if the candidate is one of the top two vote-getters in the primary election.
Prior to the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, the top vote-getter from each qualified political party, as well as any write-in candidate who received a certain percentage of votes, moved on to the general election.
The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committee, or local office.
When Is The Deadline To Register
The deadline for voting in Pennsylvania is today.
Some states allow same-day registration and others require you to register months in advance of the primary. In Pennsylvania, the deadline to register to vote is today, Monday, March 28.
You can register to vote online here, in person at your county voter registration office, or by mail to your county voter registration office You can download a blank voter registration form to mail or drop off in person here.
For some reason, the site for registering to vote online currently reads: The last day to register before the 2016 GENERAL PRIMARY was 03/28/2016. Any application submitted now until 04/26/2016 will be held and processed the day after the 2016 GENERAL PRIMARY. If you are registering for the first time and are not already registered to vote, you will not be able to vote in the 2016 GENERAL PRIMARY. However, today;is;March 28 and is supposed to be the final day for registration. Were not certain why the deadline is over banner is on the website at the time of publication.
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Dont Wear Candidate Gear When You Go To Vote
Lilyan Maitan stands in a voting booth during the Republican primary election in 2012. The deadline for changing your party affiliation in Pennsylvania for the primary is March 28.
New York has a little known rule that bars voters from wearing anything advertising their political candidate when theyre voting. Its a provision about passive electioneering. In 2008, BOE spokesman Bob Brehm said that anyone wearing a campaign button or shirt would be asked to remove the item before being able to vote. The law isnt strictly enforced at all polling locations. However, you may be asked to remove a clothing item related to your candidate or to turn your shirt inside out before youre allowed to vote.
South Carolina’s Open Democratic Primary Means Republicans Can Vote Too
When South Carolina voters cast their votes in the state’s Democratic primary Saturday, registered Republicans will also be able to show up and vote. Here, the state’s primaries are open, which means all registered South Carolina voters can participate in either party’s primary regardless of political affiliation.;
The South Carolina Republican Party;announced;in September that it would join a list of other states that would not hold a presidential primary this year. Historically, the South Carolina GOP also didn’t hold primaries when Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were incumbents in 1984 and 2004, respectively.
Now, some South Carolina Republicans and Tea Party activists are encouraging Republican voters to participate in Saturday’s contest. Karen Martin, organizer of the Spartanburg Tea Party, is leading Trump 229 , an effort that’s using social media and word-of-mouth to encourage Republicans to vote for Bernie Sanders on Saturday.;
Joe Biden has been leading the race in South Carolina. Martin said that her small group was hoping to win enough support for Sanders to bump him into first place, above Joe Biden, who has been holding onto a shrinking lead in the state.;
The initial impetus for the group, according to Martin, was “who can we pick to coalesce our votes around that would make the most impact on South Carolina Democrats understanding why they should join us closing their primary?”
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How Can I Follow The Results
For most of the states in play, the results will roll in hours after polls close.
The one exception is California, which is notoriously slow to count its ballots.
The state accepts mail-in ballots up to three days after election day and gives county election officials 30 days to count them.
In 2016, it took over a month to count them all its ballots.
The Republicans Planning To Vote In South Carolinas Democratic Primary
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Twelve years ago, Rush Limbaugh, who had not yet received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, urged the listeners of his enormously popular and very conservative talk-radio show to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. In the patchwork process that is employed to nominate Presidential candidates, more than a dozen states have open primaries, which allow registered voters to participate in either contest. Limbaugh wanted Clintons close but seemingly losing fight with Barack Obama to go on for as long as possible, on the theory that a protracted battle would weaken the eventual nominee. He called the plan Operation Chaos. Limbaugh didnt think that Clinton was necessarily the weaker of the two candidatesin fact, he ultimately concluded that Obama was; by May, 2008, he was pushing his fans to vote for the senator from Illinois. Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes Democrats need to winblue-collar, working-class people, Limbaugh said. He can get effete snobs, he can get wealthy academics, he can get the young, and he can get the black vote, but Democrats do not win with that.
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What If I Signed A Petition For A Candidate For A Place On The Primary Ballot
If a voter signed a candidates petition for a place on the primary ballot, that voter is only able to vote in the primary, or participate in the convention, of that candidates party during the; voting year in which the primary election is held . For example, if a voter signed a Democratic candidates petition, that voter is ineligible to vote in the Republican primary or participate in a minor party convention.
Do You Have To Vote For The Party You’re Registered With
California Primary 2020: Why independents can vote for Democrats, but not for Republicans
Your state may give you the opportunity to declare your political party affiliation on your voter registration card.
You do not have to vote for the party youre registered with, in a federal, state, or local general election.
But in a presidential primary or caucus, depending on your states rules, you may have to vote for the political party youve registered with.
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How Do I Register To Vote
You have a few options:
If you have a New York drivers license or state ID from the Department of Motor Vehicles, you can register online using this tool from NYC Votes and TurboVote.
If you dont have a New York drivers license or state ID, the law requires that you sign a form and mail it to the Board of Elections office.
You can use this site to have the forms mailed to you, or you can and print the forms yourself to fill out and mail in. If you request to have the forms sent to you, they come with a pre-addressed envelope to return them.
You will be asked to plug in your name as it appears on your state ID. If you dont have one, thats OK. Just put how your name appears on official documents.
If you need language access or you want to help someone register to vote in another language, you can download the registration forms and FAQs in a bunch of languages here.
You can also request voter registration forms in various languages by calling 1-866-VOTENYC.
Lastly, you can pick up voter registration forms at any library branch, any post office or any city agency office.
After you fill them out, mail them to the BOEs main office:
Board of Elections
New York, NY 10004-1609
And make sure its postmarked by May 28.
Other materials needed: If you dont have a state ID, you will need to provide the last four digits of your Social Security number.
What Do Party Preferences Mean When Listed With Candidates’ Names On The Ballot What Are The Qualified Political Parties And Abbreviations Of Those Party Names
The term “party preference” is now used in place of the term “party affiliation.” A candidate must indicate his or her preference or lack of preference for a qualified political party. If the candidate has a qualified political party preference that qualified political party will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot. If a candidate does not have a qualified political party preference, “Party Preference: None” will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot.
Similarly, voters who were previously known as “decline-to-state” voters are now known as having “no party preference” or known as “NPP” voters.
Abbreviations for the qualified political parties are:
DEM = Democratic Party
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States With Open Primaries For Other Elections
A similar system known as a nonpartisan blanket primary has been used in Louisiana for state and local elections since 1976, and began to be used in Washington, after numerous court challenges, in 2008.
In California, under Proposition 14, a measure that easily passed, traditional party primaries were replaced in 2011 with wide-open elections. Proposition 14, known as the open primary measure, gave every voter the same ballot in primary elections for most state and federal races, except the presidential contest.
Most primaries in New York are closed, but state law contains a provision allowing parties to use a different method if they want. Currently, only the Independence Party chooses to allow unaffiliated voters to participate.
So How Does That Compare
Voters who live in states with closed primaries are required to register with a political party in order to vote in that partys primary. If you wanted to vote in the Republican primary in New York, you have to register as a Republican. Oftentimes, third-party voters are locked out of the Republican and Democratic primaries. But some states, like Oklahoma, are a bit of a hybrid and let independent voters choose which primaries they want to participate in.
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A Look At The Democratic Party And The Republican Party
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are the major political parties in America. They are based on different philosophies and thus hold different views on public policies. To understand their operations, we need to understand the standpoints of each of these parties.
The ideology of the Democratic Party centers on modern liberalism. It believes in the promotion of economic as well as social equality. Thus, it tilts toward increasing the rate of the involvement of the government in economic affairs.
The Republican Party, on the other hand, is a political party that centers on the principles of conservatism. It believes in securing individual rights, giving the people more power to determine their affairs. Thus, it considers that the efforts of the government should protect the welfare of individuals.
How Do You Choose
When you show up to your polling location, youll decide whether you want a Democratic or Republican primary ballot.
But after choosing a side in the primary, you have to stay in that lane through the runoff. You cant vote Republican in the primary election and then participate in a runoff election between top Democratic candidates.
That said, voting in a primary does not commit you to vote for a particular candidate in the general election. You can vote for either partys candidate in the November election.
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How Can An Individual Participate In The Political Process
The citizens of a country participate in the political process in various ways. From the discussion on the roles that political parties play, it becomes clear that these units of participation cannot be operative without human factors driving it. Getting citizens to participate in the political process help to enhance the quality of the process.
One primary way that the citizens of a country participate in the political process is through the election of their leaders. Using the power of voting, citizens can determine the outcome of political activities in the country. Not only can they vote for their preferred candidate, but they can also participate in soliciting votes for their preferred candidate and join political campaigns.
The political parties are essential in developing policies that govern the affairs of the country. Thus, individuals can participate in the process of policy formulation by joining political parties and actively participating in its activities in a bid to shape and strengthen the quality of policies that the government formulates.
When the citizens want to upturn specific policies of the government, they have the power to sign petitions as a way of expressing their disapproval and advocate for a change in the status quo. It is their power to influence the decisions and actions of the government.
Heres How You Can Vote In Nj Primary If Youre Not Registered With Either Party
CA independents can vote in Democrats’ 2020 primary, but not Republicans’ | ABC7
Primary elections
While primary elections are meant to give registered Democrats and Republicans a chance to say who will appear on the ballot in November, New Jerseys more than 2.4 million unaffiliated voters can have a say in the process.
The deadline to change from Republican to Democrat or from Democrat to Republican ahead of the primary elections has already passed. But unaffiliated voters are exempt from it and can cast a ballot in either the Democratic or Republican primaries on Tuesday.
Heres how it works:
An unaffiliated voter can walk into their polling station Tuesday and request a Republican or Democratic ballot and then cast their vote.
But theres a caveat.
That person is then registered under that party affiliation.
That means if you vote in the Democratic primary, youre now a registered Democrat. If you vote in the Republican primary, youre now a registered Republican.
But an unaffiliated voter who declares a party by voting in the primary can return to their unaffiliated status after the primary by re-registering as an unaffiliated voter, according to the states Division of Elections.
New Jerseyans can check whether theyre registered to vote at the Department of States Division of Elections website. If voters want to look up their party affiliation, they can create a free online account with the Division of Elections that allows them to access their detailed voting information.
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No Party Preference Additional Questions
The Secretary of States Office has advised the Registrar of Voters that three qualified parties are allowing voters not affiliated with a political party to vote for their parties candidates in the 2020;Presidential Primary Election. ;The parties allowing non-affiliated voters to do so are the;Democratic Party,;American Independent Party, and the;Libertarian Party.
The following are frequently asked questions concerning No Party Preference Voters:
As a No Party Preference Voter, why did I receive a postcard?Since you are;registered as No Party Preference, you received a postcard explaining that you have the option to vote for candidates of qualified parties if they notified the Secretary of State that they are allowing non-affiliated voters to do so. You can request a vote-by-mail ballot from the Democratic Party, American Independent Party or the Libertarian party by returning the postcard, or. You can also call our office to make this request at 714-567-7600.
Why are only three parties listed on the postcard and not all the other qualified parties, including the Republican, Green, and Peace and Freedom Parties?Only the Democratic, American Independent, and Libertarian Parties notified the Secretary of State that they are allowing non-affiliated voters to vote for candidates of their parties.;
If I am a No Party Preference voter, how;can I request a ballot for the Republican Party, Green Party, or Peace and Freedom Party?You need to re-register with that party.;Click
Is It Common For Democrats To Participate In The Republican Primary And Vice Versa
In short, no. According to Elizabeth Simas, a political science professor at the University of Houston who spoke about this with Texas Standard, cases of strategic voting dont happen much in primary elections. Certainly, there are people who do it but we just dont see it happening as much as theres potentially this fear for it to happen, Simas said.
In areas dominated by one party, especially rural areas, voters might cross party lines in the primary to have more of a say in their local races.
In my county, all the local races are Republican. Judges, sheriff, district attorney, Martha Mims, a Democratic voter who lives Williamson County, wrote in The Texas Tribunes Facebook group, This is Your Texas. If I want to have a say in local government, I have to vote in the Republican primary.
Voters like Mims can do that, thanks to Texas open primary. Do you have more questions about voting in Texas? Submit them to our Texplainer series.
Disclosure: The University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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Lasting Impact from [email protected]
Blue State Digital Mailing Template : Wanted you to make sure you saw a couple of stories that showed some of the positive impacts of Governor Martin O'Malley's campaign for president last year. Since then, he has remain focused on raising his voice in opposition to Trump's hateful policies and rhetoric and followed it with action by traveling across the country to help elect Democrats to state, local, and municipal offices including 3 critical special election victories in Delaware and Iowa. Help us keep the Governor out there electing Democrats and speaking out against Trump. He remains one of our Party's leading voices on the key issues of our campaign including climate change, criminal justice reform, and immigration. Click here to support his continued efforts to promote his positive, optimistic vision for our future. I was pleased to see that the conversation Governor O'Malley has been having with Iowa Democrats has made a lasting impact. Thanks for your ongoing friendship and support. Yours truly, Dave Hamrick Martin O’Malley Leads (Very) Early Poll For 2020 Iowa Caucus Iowa Starting Line by Pat Rynard Posted 3/15/17 Martin O’Malley’s frequent trips back to Iowa since the 2016 Iowa Caucus seem to be keeping him in the minds of Iowa activists and likely caucus-goers. A new PPP Poll today showed that O’Malley garners the largest share of a host of potential 2020 presidential candidates. The poll was conducted for O’Malley’s O’Say Can You See PAC, and while it shows good news for the former Maryland governor, it also didn’t include two big possible names: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Still, who runs in 2020 is a very open question, and Sanders and Warren’s support might not naturally flow to any of the polled candidates anyway. Here’s how likely Iowa caucus-goers’ early support broke out in the poll: 18% – Martin O’Malley 17% – Cory Booker 11% – Amy Klobuchar 8% – Andrew Cuomo 4% – Julian Castro 4% – Sheryl Sandberg 3% – Kirstin Gillibrand 3% – Kamala Harris 1% – Howard Shultz 32 % – Not Sure That’s not a bad place for O’Malley to start out for a potential future run. He’s been particularly open about his desire to run for president a second time, and his ten return trips to the lead-off state since the last caucus reflect that. If the 2020 field looks something like the one in the poll, he’d benefit all the more from a group of lesser-known contenders. O’Malley’s previous run never really had a chance to get off the ground with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the race. Some of these potential candidates – like Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz – would certainly start out with sizable fundraising advantages. But others, like Senators Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, would need to prove themselves as strong campaigners to put together the resources to fund a full Iowa and national campaign. And if well-known senators like Sanders and Warren pass on a run, and Joe Biden doesn’t give it another go, there’s really no other major name in the Democratic Party that could start as an overwhelming front-runner. That could make the 2020 Iowa Caucus all the more important – an opportunity for someone to break out of a muddled crowd. O’Malley received less than 1% of the delegates on caucus night in 2016, but that never meant that he went into the evening that low. With Democrats’ 15% viability threshold, candidates who don’t start off with 15% to 20% statewide support often see their final numbers disproportionately low. I would personally guess that O’Malley started out caucus night with about 7% to 10% of caucus-goers’ support across Iowa, which then obviously got reduced significantly from viability rules. So he would start off another run in 2020 with a much larger base than >1%. Both O’Malley and Booker had decent favorability ratings with the likely caucus-goers. O’Malley stood at 47% favorable, 12% unfavorable and 41% not sure. Booker had 40% favorable, 11% unfavorable and 49% not sure. Most others weren’t well-known, with 73% having no opinion of Harris and 65% with no feelings toward Gillibrand yet. O'Malley tests 2020 waters with Iowa poll Politico By Gabriel Debenedetti 03/15/17 06:00 AM EDT Donald Trump is only in his second month in the White House, but already one Democrat is polling his party's Iowa caucus-goers ahead of a possible 2020 run for the presidency. The leadership PAC of former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley commissioned a Public Policy Polling survey of the first-in-the-nation caucus state earlier this month, according to a copy of the results obtained by POLITICO. The poll, which shows O’Malley at 18 percent of Democratic caucus-goers in a field of nine potential candidates if the contest were held today, also asked the Iowans about New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro; New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. “Not sure” got 32 percent of the vote. O’Malley — who ran against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for the 2016 nomination before dropping out on caucus night after earning less than 1 percent of the vote — was joined at the top of the poll by Booker, who was at 17 percent. Klobuchar, who represents a neighboring state and who's been a frequent visitor to Iowa over the years, got 11 percent. All other candidates were under 10 percent. A number of high-profile potential 2020 candidates were left out of the poll, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Sanders. “Gov. O’Malley spent a lot of time in Iowa during the campaign and made a very favorable impression on Iowa Democrats. We wanted to see if the conversations he started with Iowans resonated and are glad to learn that they did,” said O’Malley’s 2016 campaign manager Dave Hamrick. The automated phone and online poll, sponsored by O'Malley's O’Say Can You See leadership PAC, showed the former Baltimore mayor with 47 percent favorable and 12 percent unfavorable ratings. Forty-one percent of Iowa Democrats polled said they weren’t sure how they felt about him. The next Iowa caucuses are expected to be in early 2020. O’Malley has been unusually open about his interest in running again, visiting Iowa three times since the November election to campaign and raise money for other Democrats, and telling NBC News in January that he “just might” run. Other possible contenders have followed a more traditional path of keeping their plans quiet — rather than polling or visiting the early states — wary of being seen as too calculating or overly ambitious. O’Malley’s move to poll so early in Iowa reflects a sense among some political professionals that the old political rules about the usefulness of being coy in pursuit of the presidency are outdated. Up to two dozen Democrats draw mention as possible contenders ahead of a 2020 contest that’s widely expected to feature a sprawling primary. The survey gauged the favorability ratings of each of the nine potential contenders. While O’Malley — who spent much of 2015 in Iowa campaigning — had the highest favorable ratings, Booker came in at 40 percent (to 11 percent unfavorable), Cuomo at 35 percent (to 19 percent unfavorable), and Klobuchar at 30 percent (9 percent). Each of the candidates, however, had “not sure” as their most popular descriptor, painting the picture of a wide-open field — unlike 2016. PPP’s survey reached 1,062 Iowa Democrats from March 3 to March 6. Donate PAID FOR BY O'SAY CAN YOU SEE PAC NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE'S COMMITTEE 421 M St NW Washington, DC 20001Unsubscribe
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Do Republicans Vote In The Democratic Primary
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Do Republicans Vote In The Democratic Primary
What Is A Voter
The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, which took effect January 1, 2011, created “voter-nominated” offices. The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committees, or local offices.
Most of the offices that were previously known as “partisan” are now known as “voter-nominated” offices. Voter-nominated offices are state constitutional offices, state legislative offices, and U.S. congressional offices. The only “partisan offices” now are the offices of U.S. President and county central committee.
Who Can Vote In A Primary
Only Democrats can vote in the Democratic Primary.
Only Republicans can vote in the Republican Primary.
The last day to register to vote before the Primary is the 4th Saturday before the Primary.
The deadline to change party affiliation before the Primary is the last Friday in May.
You can register to vote and change your party affiliation after the Primary.
Step Four: Super Tuesday
A few other states voted in between New Hampshire and the end of February, but things really started to warm up by Super Tuesday, on 3 March.
What is Super Tuesday?
THE big date in the primary calendar, when 16 states, territories or groups voted for their preferred candidate in primaries or caucuses. A third of all the delegates available in the entire primary season were up for grabs on Super Tuesday. By the end of the day it became much clearer that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were the front-runners for the Democratic nomination.
The two states with the most delegates voted on Super Tuesday – California and Texas . California voted three months earlier than in 2016, making Super Tuesday even more super than normal.
States With Open Primaries For Other Elections
A similar system known as a nonpartisan blanket primary has been used in Louisiana for state and local elections since 1976, and began to be used in Washington, after numerous court challenges, in 2008.
In California, under Proposition 14, a measure that easily passed, traditional party primaries were replaced in 2011 with wide-open elections. Proposition 14, known as the open primary measure, gave every voter the same ballot in primary elections for most state and federal races, except the presidential contest.
Most primaries in New York are closed, but state law contains a provision allowing parties to use a different method if they want. Currently, only the Independence Party chooses to allow unaffiliated voters to participate.
Who Gets A Say
Some say the stricter primary systems restrict whose voice can be part of the democratic process and are therefore undemocratic. Parties can block who participates in primaries, or systems force voters to publicly identify with a party.
But Laurel Harbridge-Yong, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University, says the argument for limiting voting to party members makes sense those who align with a party should get to choose the issues and candidates who represent them.
To people who study political parties Its actually quite shocking to think that you would even have something like open primaries, Harbridge-Yong says. Taken in a different context, the question would be, Why should someone whos not a Methodist be able to help pick the priest at a Methodist congregation? Of course, it would be the people that are part of that denomination or that group who are the ones that are selecting their leader.
In June, the BGA Policy team had John Opdycke, president of Open Primaries, as a guest on the BGA podcast . Opdycke advocates for primary reform across the country, and said efforts are underway in 15 or 20 states to attempt to change primary systems.
There’s a lot of momentum, there’s a lot of activity, Opdycke said. And yet this movement is still very underdeveloped, very young and the opposition comes from both political parties.
And in Illinois?
How Do You Choose
When you show up to your polling location, youll decide whether you want a Democratic or Republican primary ballot.
But after choosing a side in the primary, you have to stay in that lane through the runoff. You cant vote Republican in the primary election and then participate in a runoff election between top Democratic candidates.
That said, voting in a primary does not commit you to vote for a particular candidate in the general election. You can vote for either partys candidate in the November election.
I Dont See That Happening
Martin told me she and other South Carolina Republicans had chosen to support Sanders because Biden still held a significant lead in the state. Im not sure if we could move him with enough crossover votes to overcome Biden, she said, but thats the math were looking at is who can we cross over and vote for that mathematically will cause the most consternation.
Ultimately, she hopes that the crossover vote push will cause South Carolina Democrats the same kind of angst that weve had for years and push them toward closing their primary.
I do not think it was a result of our efforts, even if we were as successful mathematically as we could be, that everyones going to agree to close the primaries tomorrow, she told me, but said coverage of their efforts was already getting traction with Democrats in the fight for closed primaries.
I asked whether Martin was concerned that a Sanders primary victory in South Carolina pushed by Republican crossover voters could ultimately result in a Sanders presidency. She took my point, but said, I dont see that happening.
The Iowa caucuses, she said, showed that the people that make the rules in the Democrat party are not going to allow Bernie to be the nominee. Citing debate rule changes and recent remarks by Democratic Party stalwarts like James Carville, she said that there was no way the party would permit Sanders to win the nomination.
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Counties Are Doing Things A Little Differently This Time
If you live in one of the counties highlighted below, voting might look a little different this year.
In 2016, California passed the Voter Choice Act, a law aimed at modernizing the states election system, such that:
Every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail
Voters are no longer required to go to a specific polling place, but can vote at any number of voting centers or drop-off points
Voters can cast their ballots in person beginning 11 days before, and up to and including, Election Day
In 2018, five counties rolled out the new system. This year, 10 more will join their ranks. Thats fifteen counties in all containing 49% of the state population.
This is key for no party preference voters living in these counties who may not get the ballot they want in the mail. See the previous section for details.
Argument That Delegates Are Unbound
Former RNC committee member Curly Haugland and public policy consultant Sean Parnell argued in their 2016 book, Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate, that delegates are free to vote their conscience and are not bound by state or party laws to vote according to the results of party primaries or caucuses. Click on the following links to learn more about arguments for and against this interpretation of delegate binding:
See also: Democratic delegate rules, 2020
Delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention selected Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee on August 18, 2020. The national nominating convention is the formal ceremony during which the party officially selects its nominee. The delegates are individuals chosen to represent their state, territory, or Democrats Abroad at the convention.
In 2020, there were 4,750 delegates: 3,979 pledged delegates and 771 automatic delegatesmore commonly known as superdelegates.
To win the Democratic nomination, a presidential candidate needed to receive support from a majority of the pledged delegates on the first ballot: 1,991 pledged delegates.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, several states postponed their primaries. Under Rule 12 of the Delegate Selection Rules for the 2020 Democratic National Convention, no primary or caucus was permitted to take place after June 9, 2020. Any state violating that rule could have been subject to delegate reduction penalties.
Step One: The Start Line
A whole year before the primaries, the first candidates emerged from hibernation. Over the year, others woke up and eventually 28 people announced they were running to become the Democratic nominee for president.
But dwindling funds, luke-warm or public reaction and campaign infighting have, to varying degrees, led to most of them pulling out of the race.
At the start of primary season, 11 people remained in the running, a number that has now reduced to three. In theory, any one of them could become the nominee. In reality, only two now have a chance.
Each Primary Has Its Flaws
When it comes down to it, both the Republican and Democratic parties have their own unique, subtle system by which they can override the nations popular primary vote.
The days when politicians gathered in dark rooms where cigarette smoke flowed out from underneath the door are over, but that doesnt mean the existing system is completely democratic.
For both Republicans and Democrats, theres more to winning a nomination than scoring Americas majority vote.
What Is A Closed Primary Election
What is a Closed Primary Election and How Your Choice of Party Affiliation Affects You in an Election?
Federal/State Primary Elections – Even-Numbered Years
What Is a Primary Election?
A Primary Election is a preliminary election to select, when necessary, Democratic, Republican and nonpartisan candidates who will run in the General Election contests . The direct vote of the people selects the candidates, rather than votes of convention delegates.
Nevada Is a CLOSED Primary Election State
Major Political Parties:
° Democratic: If you are a registered with the Democratic Party, you may vote in your precinct’s contests which select Democratic candidates AND in all of your precinct’s nonpartisan contests.
° Republican: If you are a registered Republican, you may vote in your precinct’s contests which select Republican candidates AND in all of your precinct’s nonpartisan contests.
Other Political Parties and Affiliations:
If you are not registered as a Democratic or Republican, you may vote for ONLY Nonpartisan CONTESTS for your precinct. Minor party, other party and independent candidates only appear in the General Election, NOT the Primary Election.
° Minor Political Parties: If your Voter Registration Application indicates that your party is one that is classified as “minor party,” you may vote for ONLY Nonpartisan CONTESTS for your precinct. to view the list of officially recognized minor parties in the State of Nevada :
TO VOLUNTEER TO BE A POLL WORKER, .
Why Some Conservatives Are Voting In Michigan’s Democratic Primary
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Katey Morse is on a journey of political atonement.
“I’ve gone on Facebook and apologized to family and friends and said hey, I made a mistake,” the 39-year-old Michigan resident said last year of her 2016 vote for Donald Trump.
Morse said that she got caught up in Trump’s celebrity and was impressed by his business record. And she assumed that the bravado she saw and heard on TV was just a character put on for the campaign trail that would subside once he got into office.
But she said she had learned since then that it wasn’t an act. A turning point for her came in March 2019, when she took her son to a Trump rally. She was horrified. Afterward, Morse had to have a conversation with the boy, then 7, about how not to talk about other people.
And as the Democratic primary season began to take shape last year, Morse started to consider voting blue.
It’s a choice some moderate Republicans across the state are also grappling with ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary contest. NBC News spent time with voters in Kent County, where Morse lives, just outside Grand Rapids. The hometown of Gerald Ford, the area is a traditionally Republican stronghold. Some Republicans here said they feel lost because they no longer recognize the party they grew up with. They’re wary enough about another four years of Trump’s presidency to consider the Democratic candidates.
No Party Preference Voters: Pay Attention
Registered Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and other party members, rest assured. You are guaranteed a primary ballot with all of your partys presidential contenders on it.
But voters who dont belong to a political party the fastest growing voting block in the state will have to navigate a more daunting set of obstacles to cast a presidential primary vote.
Some parties have members only policies:
The Republican Party
The Green Party
The Peace and Freedom Party
If you want to vote in one of these three primaries, youll have to join that party. You cant do it as a member of any other party, or even as a no party preference independent. No exceptions.
The following three parties do allow political independents to cast ballots in their presidential primaries :
The Democratic Party
The Libertarian Party
The American Independent Party
But and this is an important caveat these voters do have to specifically request the ballot they want.
For those who vote in person, this is a cinch. Just go into your polling place when its time to vote and ask. But independents who vote by mail need to let your county know which ballot they want ahead of time.
Maybe you received a postcard that looks like this:
And if youve already received a ballot in the mail and were disappointed by the lack of presidential candidates, do notfill it out. You can always request a new ballot, but trying to vote twice is frowned upon .
Cancellation Of State Caucuses Or Primaries
The Washington Examiner reported on December 19, 2018, that the South Carolina Republican Party had not ruled out forgoing a primary contest to protect Trump from any primary challengers. Party chairman Drew McKissick stated, “Considering the fact that the entire party supports the president, we’ll end up doing what’s in the president’s best interest.” On January 24, another Washington Examiner report indicated that the Kansas Republican Party was “likely” to scrap its presidential caucus to “save resources”.
In August 2019, the Associated Press reported that the Nevada Republican Party was also contemplating canceling their caucuses, with the state party spokesman, Keith Schipper, saying it “isn’t about any kind of conspiracy theory about protecting the president … He’s going to be the nominee … This is about protecting resources to make sure that the president wins in Nevada and that Republicans up and down the ballot win in 2020.”
Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina’s state committees officially voted on September 7, 2019, to cancel their caucus and primary. The Arizona state Republican Party indicated two days later that it will not hold a primary. These four were joined by the Alaska state Republican party on September 21, when its central committee announced they would not hold a presidential primary.
Virginia Republicans decided to allocate delegates at the state convention.
Why You Need To Vote In The Primary Elections
True or false. You only need to vote in the November presidential election and not the primary elections.
FALSE!
For most American voters, the presidential primary elections matter more than the general election. Like Ive said before, if you live in a red state or a blue state, your vote in the presidential election wont make a difference. The rest of your state will overwhelming vote for a Democrat or a Republican. Your vote wont change your states outcome. .
But the primary elections are an entirely different story.
The presidential primaries determine who will represent the Republicans and the Democrats during the November election. Instead of voting between just 2 candidates, you have the choice of 3 Democrats or 12 Republicans. Unlike the general election, you actually have a chance of voting for your preferred candidate, not just the lesser of two evils.
Government 101: United States Presidential Primary
How Does the Presidential Primary Process Work?
The Convention
Prior to a general election, there is a selection process to determine which candidate will appear on the ballot for a given political party in the nationwide general election. Political parties generally hold national conventions at which a group of delegates collectively decide upon which candidate they will run for the presidency. The process of choosing delegates to the national convention is undertaken at the state level, which means that there are significant differences from state to state and sometimes year to year. The two methods for choosing delegates to the national convention are the caucus and the primary.
The Caucus
Caucuses were the original method for selecting candidates but have decreased in number since the primary was introduced in the early 1900’s. In states that hold caucuses a political party announces the date, time, and location of the meeting. Generally any voter registered with the party may attend. At the caucus, delegates are chosen to represent the state’s interests at the national party convention. Prospective delegates are identified as favorable to a specific candidate or uncommitted. After discussion and debate an informal vote is taken to determine which delegates should be chosen.
The Primary
Awarding the Delegates
Step Two: The Iowa Caucuses
The first event of the primary season isn’t a primary at all – it’s a series of caucuses, in Iowa. These took place on Monday 3 February, in somewhat chaotic fashion.
What are caucuses?
A caucus involves people attending a meeting – maybe for a few hours – before they vote on their preferred candidate, perhaps via a head count or a show of hands. Those meetings might be in just a few select locations – you can’t just turn up at a polling station.
As a result, caucuses tend to really suit candidates who are good at rousing their supporters to get out of bed. People like Bernie Sanders, for example, who performed well in Iowa this time, as did Pete Buttigieg.
Democrats’ key issues explained
Caucuses used to be far more popular back in the day, but this year, Democrats are holding only four in US states – in Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming and Iowa.
If any candidate gets under 15% of the vote in any caucus, their supporters then get to pick a second choice from among the candidates who did get more than 15%, or they can just choose to sit out the second vote.
Why does Iowa matter?
A win there for any candidate can help give them momentum and propel them to victory in the primaries.
Why does Iowa not matter?
Iowa doesn’t represent the entire US – it’s largely white, so the way people vote there is very, very different than in other states.
How Are Primary Elections Conducted In California
All candidates for voter-nominated offices are listed on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters in the primary election regardless of party preference – move on to the general election. Write-in candidates for voter-nominated offices can only run in the primary election. A write-in candidate will only move on to the general election if the candidate is one of the top two vote-getters in the primary election.
Prior to the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, the top vote-getter from each qualified political party, as well as any write-in candidate who received a certain percentage of votes, moved on to the general election.
The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committee, or local office.
Primary Election Snafus Show Challenges For November Vote
Republicans’ and Democrats’ vastly different starting points help explain why the politics over voting and elections have been and likely will remain so fraught, through and beyond Election Day this year.
Sometimes it seems as if the politicians involved barely live in the same country. It has become common for one side to discount the legitimacy of a victory by the other.
And the coronavirus pandemic, which has scrambled nearly everything about life in the United States, makes understanding it all even more complicated. Here’s what you need to know to decode this year’s voting controversies.
The Rosetta stone
The key that unlocks so much of the partisan debate about voting is one word: turnout.
An old truism holds that, all other things held equal, a smaller pool of voters tends to be better for Republicans and the larger the pool gets, the better for Democrats.
This isn’t mathematically ironclad, as politicians learn and relearn regularly. But this assumption is the foundation upon which much else is built.
What The Gov: If I Voted Republican In A Primary Can I Vote Democrat In The General
Illinois primary elections force voters to ask for a partisan ballot. From primaries to the general in November, heres what you should know about party identification and voting.
This article is part of a series called “What the Gov,” where BGA Engagement Editor Mia Sato takes reader questions related to Illinois government and upcoming elections and tracks down the answers. Ask your own question here.
Voters hear a lot about party politics at all levels of government, from Congress all the way down to local municipal elections. Some voters align closely with a party and others cast their vote on a case-by-case basis. But how does party identification impact how you can vote? Several readers were stumped.
Cynthia Mosley, a retired Chicago Public Schools teacher living on Chicagos Southside, is one of them. She remembers her mother didn’t vote in the primaries because it meant saying aloud to a poll worker which partys ballot she wanted. Cynthia wondered why voters have to declare a party to vote in the primary.
Another reader was thinking forward: could she could vote for any partys candidates in the general, or did she have to be registered with that party?
Were just a few weeks out from the November election and voters have a lot of questions both about the systems Illinois has and how it plays out in the voting process. Heres what you should know.
The Presidential Primary Will Not Use The Familiar Top Two Ballot
California voters can be forgiven for assuming that political party registration doesnt really matter.
In 2010 voters backed a measure to create the states nonpartisan top two election system, in which all primary voters fill out a ballot with every candidate on it regardless of either the voters or the candidates political party. The top two winners then move on to the general election ballot even if theyre both from the same party.
In races for state legislative and congressional seats, the top two method will still reign on the 2020 ballot.
But when you vote in the presidential primary, its back to the old partisan system: Democrats on the Democratic ballot, Republicans on the Republican ballot, and so on.
So while voting in California usually goes like this under the top two:
In the presidential primary, it looks a little more like this:
The 2020 Democratic Primary Is Giving Some Republicans Dj Vu
A large, diffuse and unyielding field of candidates is helping Bernie Sanders dominate. Republicans who tried to beat Donald J. Trump in 2016 see parallels.
FARGO, N.D. After a disappointing sixth-place finish in Nevada, which followed a less disappointing third-place finish in New Hampshire but a humbling fifth-place finish in Iowa, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota looked out at the crowd of more than 1,000 and predicted victory in the North Dakota primary at the time, more than two weeks away.
Somehow, I have a feeling this primary is still going to be going on, she said.
That much seems certain.
The no-end-in-sight nature of the contest for the Democratic nomination is alarming those in the party who are hoping to blunt the momentum of the front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The most likely way they believe that could happen a critical mass of the senators rivals drop out so voters can coalesce around a single alternative seems like the least likely outcome.
The irony is thick. Mr. Sanders, the candidate many establishment Democrats fear would have the most trouble beating President Trump in November, is benefiting from some of the same dynamics that helped Mr. Trump stampede to the Republican nomination four years ago.
As Republicans who weathered 2016 observe 2020, they are feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. The parallels are not perfect, but there are many right down to the candidates themselves.
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Can Republicans Vote On Super Tuesday
New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/can-republicans-vote-on-super-tuesday/
Can Republicans Vote On Super Tuesday
Voters Can Still Register At Their Polling Location On March 3 In California Colorado Maine Minnesota North Carolina And Vermont
It’s Super Tuesday eve! Californians, please don’t forget that same-day voter registration is a thing. #vote2020#GetOutTheVotehttps://t.co/88eMCEjaDi
— Bonnibelle Chukwuneta March 2, 2020
Voters in California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina and Vermont can register to vote on the same day as the Super Tuesday primary election.
California offers what’s called Conditional Voter Registration to Californians who “miss the deadline to register to vote or update their voter registration information for an election,”according to California state law. Minnesota allows voters to register on the same day as the primary with a valid ID that shows proof of residency. But it also allows what’s called “vouching.”
“A registered voter from your precinct can go with you to the polling place to sign an oath confirming your address,”according to Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. “A registered voter can vouch for up to eight voters. You cannot vouch for others if someone vouched for you.”
Colorado allows same-day voter registration. In Maine, “there is no cut-off date for registering to vote in person at your town office or city hall,”according to the state’s government website. North Carolina also offers same-day registration “by completing a Voter Registration Application and affixing her signature under penalty of a Class I felony.”
In 2017, Vermont began allowing residents to vote on election day, according to the Vermont Secretary of State website.
Texas Is An Open Primary State Heres What That Means For How Republicans Democrats And Others Can Vote On Super Tuesday
Texas is one of 17 states with open primaries, which means regardless of which party voters identify with, they can choose from year to year which party’s nominees they’d like to select in a primary election.
Texas is one of 17 states with open primaries. Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
“Texas is an open primary state. Here’s what that means for how Republicans, Democrats and others can vote on Super Tuesday.” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Unlike voters in most other states, Texans don’t sign up with a political party when they register to vote.
That’s because Texas is one of 17 states with open primaries, which means regardless of which party voters identify with, they can choose from year to year which party’s nominees they’d like to select in the primary election.
Why Are There Separate Lines For Democrat And Republican Voters On Super Tuesday In Texas
DALLAS — Is it normal for poll workers to split up Democrats and Republicans into separate lines to vote?
That’s a question many voters had Tuesday morning.
The simple answer is yes.
It’s not uncommon for that to be the case during primaries in Texas, because voters must select which party primary they want to vote in and then get a ballot for that race.
They then often have to use a machine that has already been dedicated to one party or the other, as the ballots are inside the machines some counties use.
There might be longer lines for Democrats this year than Republicans due to the fact that there are bigger races in contention for that party, like the presidential nomination and the race for U.S. Senate in Texas.
RELATED: Know before you go: 2020 voter guide for Super Tuesday in Texas
Some voters were reporting a higher number of machines being dedicated to Republican voters than Democrats.
That could be due to poor management by the county or because a county has a higher number of Republican voters overall.
Joe Williams, the presiding judge of the Mansfield Subcourthouse polling place, told WFAA the number of machines they have is based on population data from the 2010 U.S. Census.
He said they have seven booths for Republican voters and five booths for Democratic voters.
The U.S. Census does not, however, ask respondents for their political affiliation.
It’s important to remember that in Texas, the parties put on the primaries using county-owned voting equipment.
Mainers To Cast Ballots In Super Tuesday Presidential Primaries Vaccinations Referendum
Maine is one of 14 states participating in the Super Tuesday primaries but has received relatively little attention from candidates aside from campaign advertising.
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Maine voters will participate in the largest, most consequential primary day of the 2020 presidential elections on Tuesday and also decide whether to keep or reject a law on mandatory childhood vaccinations.
This will be the first presidential primary election since Maine dropped the more complicated and time-consuming caucus system. And while the state hasn’t received much in-person attention from the candidates, Maine’s participation in the Super Tuesday primaries means registered Democrats will be casting their ballots at at time when their party’s nomination contest is still wide open.
States And The Us Territory Of American Samoa Are Holding Primaries On Super Tuesday
Super Tuesday is this week, and delegates from 14 states and one US territory are at stake:
Alabama
— CNN March 2, 2020
The term Super Tuesday dates as far back as 1976, according to TIME magazine. It became widely used in the 1980 presidential election when Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy focused his efforts on eight states that voted in primaries on the same day in his unsuccessful campaign to unseat then-President Jimmy Carter.
Fourteen states and the U.S. territory of American Samoa are holding primaries for the 2020 presidential election on March 3. They include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Vermont.
Three of the states that are voting on Super Tuesday are represented by presidential hopefuls who serve in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Amy Klobuchar represents Minnesota, but dropped out of the race the day before Super Tuesday and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. Sen. Elizabeth Warren represents Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders represents Vermont.
Presidential Primary Voting Starts In Minnesota Today Here’s How You Can Vote Early
As of Friday morning you can now cast your votes in the Minnesota 2020 Presidential Primaries.
While Minnesota’s polling day isn’t until Super Tuesday on Mar. 3, absentee voting is open now, and is available to all eligible voters across Minnesota.
There are several political events happening on Friday to coincide with the launch of early voting, including presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar holding a rally at First Avenue at 7 p.m.
So how do you vote? Well there are two choices, with the option most convenient for most Minnesotans being via the mail.
Is It Common For Democrats To Participate In The Republican Primary And Vice Versa
In short, no. According to Elizabeth Simas, a political science professor at the University of Houston who spoke about this with Texas Standard, cases of strategic voting don’t happen much in primary elections. “Certainly, there are people who do it … but we just don’t see it happening as much as there’s potentially this fear for it to happen,” Simas said.
In areas dominated by one party, especially rural areas, voters might cross party lines in the primary to have more of a say in their local races.
“In my county, all the local races are Republican. Judges, sheriff, district attorney,” Martha Mims, a Democratic voter who lives Williamson County, wrote in The Texas Tribune’s Facebook group, This is Your Texas. “If I want to have a say in local government, I have to vote in the Republican primary.”
Voters like Mims can do that, thanks to Texas’ open primary. Do you have more questions about voting in Texas? Submit them to our Texplainer series.
Disclosure: The University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
A Record Number Of Texans Are Registered To Vote But Will They And Why Should You
Lise Olsen
Ahead of the March primaries, the number of registered voters in Texas hit a record 16 million—a million more than 2018 and almost 2 million more than the 2016 presidential race. This week, we’ll find out if they will actually make it to the polls.
Austin attorney Chad Dunn has participated in major legal battles over voting rights in Texas, including successful court challenges of the state voter ID law and attempted purges of tens of thousands of voters in several Texas counties. Dunn, who once worked as a policy intern for Republican U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and later became general counsel for the Texas Democratic Party, sat down with the Observer to discuss issues on voters’ minds as Super Tuesday approaches.
Texas Observer: We’ve seen a boom in voter registration statewide in Texas. Why has registration increased so much this year, especially in counties like Travis, Brazos, and Harris?
I think there are several factors that play into this. The biggest factor is that Texas is the biggest swing state now. So, all these resources are being invested to solve its under-registration problem. are well-coordinated and they’re nonpartisan in many cases.
Beto ’s success in nearly winning the Texas U.S. Senate seat is part of what spurred investment in addressing Texas gaps: The young are not registered at a high rate here, people of color are not registered at a high rate.
What should you do if you experience any problem voting on Super Tuesday?
Of The 14 States Voting On Super Tuesday Six Have No Voter Id Requirement
Of the March 3 #SuperTuesday primary states, CA, MA, ME, MD, MN, NJ, and NC have NO voter id requirements. https://t.co/ro5YRmgjNF
— Tom Fitton March 2, 2020
Six of the 14 states that vote in primaries on Super Tuesday do not require an identification card to vote. The six states are California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina and Vermont, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Proponents see increasing requirements for identification as a way to prevent in-person voter impersonation and increase public confidence in the election process,” the National Conference of State Legislatures website says. “Opponents say there is little fraud of this kind, and the burden on voters unduly restricts the right to vote and imposes unnecessary costs and administrative burdens on elections administrators.”
Which States Voted On Super Tuesday And How Many Delegates Are At Stake
SuperTuesday
THE WASHINGTON POST
Fourteen states and one U.S. territory held nominating contests on Super Tuesday, to award a total of 1,357 delegates. To put that in perspective, you need 1,991 delegates to win the nomination.
The states are across the country — literally from California to Maine — and include heavily Democratic Massachusetts, traditionally Republican Texas and Oklahoma, and more in-between states like Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. Democrats who live in American Samoa will also caucus on Super Tuesday, and Democrats who live abroad will begin casting ballots.
It’s the delegate total, not the sheer number of votes, that counts when figuring out who wins a party’s presidential nomination. Each state is allotted a certain number of delegates based on a formula of population and weight in the Democratic Party. The state parties then award delegates to the candidates based on the votes they receive. The first candidate to get a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates wins the nomination.
No one can win the nomination on Super Tuesday alone, but doing well can get you a long way. Thirty-four percent of delegates are offered on Tuesday. That’s more than any other single day in the nominating contest.
3,979 total delegates
0
THE WASHINGTON POST
Before Super Tuesday, less than 5 percent of delegates will have been allotted. After, when California’s are finally all counted: 38 percent.
Sanders Trump Lead Pack In Mainers Donations To Presidential Candidates
Registered Democrats will have their choice of six candidates on Tuesday’s ballot who are still actively campaigning for the party’s nomination: Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Tom Steyer and Pete Buttigieg dropped out over the weekend following the primary in South Carolina. Biden’s campaign appeared to be re-energized after his landslide win there, giving his supporters more hope headed into Super Tuesday.
Republicans will also technically hold a presidential primary but with only one contender in Maine: President Trump.
Fourteen states along with American Samoa and Democrats living abroad will participate in Super Tuesday. Those states account for roughly one-third of the Democratic delegates up for grabs in the nominating process thanks, in large part, to the involvement of such populous states as California, Texas and North Carolina.
Maine is running “closed primaries” this year, meaning that only individuals registered as a Democrat or Republican can cast ballots in those respective party contests. Unenrolled voters can join a party at the polls, as can individuals registering to vote for the first time on Election Day. But registered Democrats, Republicans or Green Independent voters cannot change their party affiliation at the polls in order to participate in another primary.
QUESTION 1
But there is another issue on the statewide ballot in which all registered voters can participate.
Related
Who Is Eligible To Vote On Super Tuesday The States Have Varying Rules
Mara Flanagan
It’s almost time for Super Tuesday: a day of primaries and caucuses that has the potential to significantly alter the prospects of every presidential candidate. As candidates scramble to do last-minute interviews and debates, voters across the country preparep to vote in one of the country’s most complicated and entertaining primaries. Who is eligible to vote on Super Tuesday? The rules depend on the state.
Twelve states vote on Super Tuesday in both the Democratic and Republican races, according to the BBC. Though the Republican party plans to host events in American Samoa, Colorado, Guam, North Dakota, and Wyoming, no votes will be associated with those events; instead, delegates will be assigned by the party later in those areas.
Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia hold open primaries, according to Ballotpedia. This means that voters in these states can decide which primary to vote in regardless of party affiliation. Arkansas and Oklahoma both have closed primaries. Arkansas voters choose to participate in a party primary or to vote in nonpartisan races, but the secretary of state’s website indicates that each individual can only choose one if those two.
How Many Delegates Do The 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates Have
Sanders is the heavy favorite here, despite losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016. He has spent about $7 million on ads , according to data as of Feb. 27 from Advertising Analytics provided to NPR.
Biden has spent zero on California TV ads, and just $4,000 on digital. A ray of hope for Biden is also that even though early voting started a month ago, fewer ballots have been returned than in past elections.
Bloomberg, in contrast, has spent more than $71 million and is currently polling below the 15% threshold required to get any delegates in all of these contests.
With Joe Biden Surging Bernie Sanders Searches For Support And Cash
Following months of nationally televised debates and a handful of early caucuses and primaries, Super Tuesday is where the rubber meets the road for the remaining Democratic candidates.
A total of 1,357 delegates will be up for grabs, with 1,338 of them in 14 states holding their primaries on March 3.
Another six delegates will be in play in American Samoa, as well as 13 among Democrats living abroad, who vote beginning Tuesday through March 10.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders jumped out to an early lead in the pre-Super Tuesday contests, nearly besting former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the Iowa caucuses, then in the New Hampshire primary and winning the Nevada caucuses in a blowout.
But just when his campaign appeared sunk, former Vice President Joe Biden captured the South Carolina primary to catapult back into relevance.
Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race on Sunday and Monday, respectively, with each indicating they would throw their support behind Biden, setting the stage for a fierce fight on Super Tuesday.
Here’s what you need to know:
What states vote on Super Tuesday?
California , Texas , North Carolina , Virginia , Massachusetts , Minnesota , Colorado , Tennessee , Alabama , Oklahoma , Arkansas , Utah , Maine and Vermont .
Who’s on the Super Tuesday ballot for the Democrats?
Do Republicans vote on Super Tuesday?
Super Tuesday Was Created To Nominate Someone Moderate It Backfired
There’s a lot on the line, especially for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders is the front-runner. He’s built a strong organization in these states that’s been buoyed by a multimillion-dollar ad campaign. Biden is lagging but hopes to ride a wave of momentum from his big win in South Carolina on Saturday.
And then there’s Mike Bloomberg. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars, Bloomberg will be on the ballot for the first time. Does he surprise and emerge as an alternative to Sanders, or will he siphon votes from Biden? And what impact might remaining candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have?
Here’s what to watch for and what you should know about each of the Super Tuesday states, in order of most pledged delegates.
Trump Says ‘markets Will Take Care Of Themselves’ After Stock Sell
Clinton won almost two-thirds of white women, who were 36% of the electorate, in addition to blowing out the margins with black voters. She won 84% of African Americans, and they were about a quarter of the electorate.
There haven’t been many good polls in Virginia. The last best one was a Monmouth poll from Feb. 18, which is a lifetime in a presidential primary race. It showed essentially a three-way tie for Sanders , Bloomberg and Biden — and it was conducted before Bloomberg’s first debate in Las Vegas, which was a spotty performance.
Vaccine Vote Exposes A Collision Of Individual Community Rights
Last year after a contentious legislative battle, Gov. Janet Mills signed into law a bill that eliminates those religious and philosophical exemptions to mandatory vaccinations. Supporters said closing the exemptions was a necessary step to reverse an alarming drop in the number of children who enter schools without receiving vaccinations against pertussis, measles and other preventable diseases. Maintaining the “herd immunity” created by high vaccination rates also helps to protect children with weakened immune systems.
But opponents of the law collected enough signatures to send the issue to voters, arguing the mandate violates parental rights.
As with other “people’s veto” campaigns, groups on both sides having been battling voter confusion about the question’s wording headed into Tuesday.
A “yes” vote on Question 1 would overturn the law and allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their children for religious or philosophical reasons. A “no” vote would keep the law on the books, thereby requiring vaccinations before children can attend school except when a doctor grants a medical exemption.
PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS
With just 24 Democratic delegates up for grabs, Maine is the third-smallest prize for presidential hopefuls on Super Tuesday after Vermont and American Samoa. California, by comparison, has 415 delegates at play while Massachusetts has 91 delegates.
On Saturday, Klobuchar addressed a crowd of several hundred people in Portland.
The Role Of Unenrolled Voters In Massachusetts On Super Tuesday
SOUTHWICK, Mass. – Voters in a Massachusetts primary who are registered as a Democrat or Republican can only vote for a candidate in their party. Unenrolled voters who have not chosen either side can pick up whichever ballot they want on Super Tuesday.
In Southwick there are more than 1,500 registered Republicans, and more than 1,300 registered Democrats, making it one of only seven towns in western Massachusetts with more registered Republicans. There are nearly 4,000 unenrolled voters in Southwick as well, and political experts say those voters could have a big affect on the election this year.
Historically when Massachusetts voters head to the polls on Super Tuesday it’s a Democratic candidate that walks away with the win. There are 19 towns here in Massachusetts that have more registered Republicans than registered democrats. Again, seven being in western Massachusetts : Tolland, Granville, Southwick, Blandford, Hampden, Russell and Montgomery.
“While Massachusetts does tend to be a blue state there are more voters registered as unenrolled than there are registered as Republican or Democrat,” former Agawam Town Clerk Richard Theroux said. “Political experts say those unenrolled voters could vote republican this election cycle.”
American International College Political Professor Julie Walsh said she also believes unenrolled voters could sway toward the Republican side this year.
What Happens To Delegates Allocated To Candidates Who Withdraw
The Delegate Selection Rules for the 2020 Democratic National Convention included two provisions regarding the binding of delegates to the candidates they supported at the time of their selection.
“ No delegate at any level of the delegate selection process shall be mandated by law or Party rule to vote contrary to that person’s presidential choice as expressed at the time the delegate is elected. ” —Rule 13.I
“ Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them. ” —Rule 13.J
What happens to delegates allocated to candidates who withdraw? State
‘we Sent A Message’: Buttigieg Ends Historic Presidential Bid
Warren is teetering around the delegate threshold percentage, too, with most polls conducted before South Carolina. Does she get above 15%? Does she pull from Sanders? Does Biden gain momentum from South Carolina?
A wild card is black voters. There were no exit polls in 2016; 2008 exit polls showed black voters were only 7% of the electorate. But the California Democratic Party estimates that African Americans are about 16% of the party. Do they turn out? Depending on which estimate winds up being correct could determine if Biden makes a dent in the state.
This will also be the first significant measure of Asian Americans in this election. They were 8% of the electorate in 2008, and the California Democratic Party estimates they are 10% now.
My State Is Voting On Super Tuesday Where Is My Polling Place
Voters can confirm polling station locations and times on their state’s election website by clicking on their state below. Registered voters can also verify on the election sites their voter status, whether their state allows same-day registration, election deadlines and if their primary is open — doesn’t require voters to be affiliated with a political party — closed or semi-closed.
Minnesotas Presidential Primary: Everything You Need To Know
Minnesota is joining Super Tuesday this year — joining 13 other states, including Texas and California, in perhaps the most consequential day of the presidential primary season.
Election 2020Everything you need to know to be prepared
It can be a confusing political ritual for some, and it’s new in Minnesota. It’s our first presidential primary since 1992 and only the fourth in state history. Here are some of the basic rules.
You can vote in the primary no matter your party affiliation. However, you will have to select one major party in whose primary you’ll vote. Minnesota has four major parties: the Democratic-Farmer-Labor, Republican, Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis and Legal Marijuana Now parties. Only the DFL and GOP will host presidential primaries in 2020; the weed parties are sitting out this year.
How you vote will be secret, sort of … But not really. Only the candidate you vote for will be secret — the chair of all four major parties will get a list of who voted in the primary and the party with which they voted.
Same-day registration is still OK for primaries. While early registration has closed for the primaries, voters may register on March 3.
You must be 18 years old on primary day to vote. That differs from the rules of Minnesota’s old presidential caucuses, which allowed 17 year olds to vote if they’d be 18 by Election Day.
Only presidential candidates will be on the ballot. Primaries for other races are in August.
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Can Republicans Vote On Super Tuesday
New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/can-republicans-vote-on-super-tuesday/
Can Republicans Vote On Super Tuesday
Voters Can Still Register At Their Polling Location On March 3 In California Colorado Maine Minnesota North Carolina And Vermont
It’s Super Tuesday eve! Californians, please don’t forget that same-day voter registration is a thing. #vote2020#GetOutTheVotehttps://t.co/88eMCEjaDi
— Bonnibelle Chukwuneta March 2, 2020
Voters in California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina and Vermont can register to vote on the same day as the Super Tuesday primary election.
California offers what’s called Conditional Voter Registration to Californians who “miss the deadline to register to vote or update their voter registration information for an election,”according to California state law. Minnesota allows voters to register on the same day as the primary with a valid ID that shows proof of residency. But it also allows what’s called “vouching.”
“A registered voter from your precinct can go with you to the polling place to sign an oath confirming your address,”according to Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. “A registered voter can vouch for up to eight voters. You cannot vouch for others if someone vouched for you.”
Colorado allows same-day voter registration. In Maine, “there is no cut-off date for registering to vote in person at your town office or city hall,”according to the state’s government website. North Carolina also offers same-day registration “by completing a Voter Registration Application and affixing her signature under penalty of a Class I felony.”
In 2017, Vermont began allowing residents to vote on election day, according to the Vermont Secretary of State website.
Texas Is An Open Primary State Heres What That Means For How Republicans Democrats And Others Can Vote On Super Tuesday
Texas is one of 17 states with open primaries, which means regardless of which party voters identify with, they can choose from year to year which party’s nominees they’d like to select in a primary election.
Texas is one of 17 states with open primaries. Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
“Texas is an open primary state. Here’s what that means for how Republicans, Democrats and others can vote on Super Tuesday.” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Unlike voters in most other states, Texans don’t sign up with a political party when they register to vote.
That’s because Texas is one of 17 states with open primaries, which means regardless of which party voters identify with, they can choose from year to year which party’s nominees they’d like to select in the primary election.
Why Are There Separate Lines For Democrat And Republican Voters On Super Tuesday In Texas
DALLAS — Is it normal for poll workers to split up Democrats and Republicans into separate lines to vote?
That’s a question many voters had Tuesday morning.
The simple answer is yes.
It’s not uncommon for that to be the case during primaries in Texas, because voters must select which party primary they want to vote in and then get a ballot for that race.
They then often have to use a machine that has already been dedicated to one party or the other, as the ballots are inside the machines some counties use.
There might be longer lines for Democrats this year than Republicans due to the fact that there are bigger races in contention for that party, like the presidential nomination and the race for U.S. Senate in Texas.
RELATED: Know before you go: 2020 voter guide for Super Tuesday in Texas
Some voters were reporting a higher number of machines being dedicated to Republican voters than Democrats.
That could be due to poor management by the county or because a county has a higher number of Republican voters overall.
Joe Williams, the presiding judge of the Mansfield Subcourthouse polling place, told WFAA the number of machines they have is based on population data from the 2010 U.S. Census.
He said they have seven booths for Republican voters and five booths for Democratic voters.
The U.S. Census does not, however, ask respondents for their political affiliation.
It’s important to remember that in Texas, the parties put on the primaries using county-owned voting equipment.
Mainers To Cast Ballots In Super Tuesday Presidential Primaries Vaccinations Referendum
Maine is one of 14 states participating in the Super Tuesday primaries but has received relatively little attention from candidates aside from campaign advertising.
207-791-6312
Maine voters will participate in the largest, most consequential primary day of the 2020 presidential elections on Tuesday and also decide whether to keep or reject a law on mandatory childhood vaccinations.
This will be the first presidential primary election since Maine dropped the more complicated and time-consuming caucus system. And while the state hasn’t received much in-person attention from the candidates, Maine’s participation in the Super Tuesday primaries means registered Democrats will be casting their ballots at at time when their party’s nomination contest is still wide open.
States And The Us Territory Of American Samoa Are Holding Primaries On Super Tuesday
Super Tuesday is this week, and delegates from 14 states and one US territory are at stake:
Alabama
— CNN March 2, 2020
The term Super Tuesday dates as far back as 1976, according to TIME magazine. It became widely used in the 1980 presidential election when Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy focused his efforts on eight states that voted in primaries on the same day in his unsuccessful campaign to unseat then-President Jimmy Carter.
Fourteen states and the U.S. territory of American Samoa are holding primaries for the 2020 presidential election on March 3. They include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Vermont.
Three of the states that are voting on Super Tuesday are represented by presidential hopefuls who serve in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Amy Klobuchar represents Minnesota, but dropped out of the race the day before Super Tuesday and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. Sen. Elizabeth Warren represents Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders represents Vermont.
Presidential Primary Voting Starts In Minnesota Today Here’s How You Can Vote Early
As of Friday morning you can now cast your votes in the Minnesota 2020 Presidential Primaries.
While Minnesota’s polling day isn’t until Super Tuesday on Mar. 3, absentee voting is open now, and is available to all eligible voters across Minnesota.
There are several political events happening on Friday to coincide with the launch of early voting, including presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar holding a rally at First Avenue at 7 p.m.
So how do you vote? Well there are two choices, with the option most convenient for most Minnesotans being via the mail.
Is It Common For Democrats To Participate In The Republican Primary And Vice Versa
In short, no. According to Elizabeth Simas, a political science professor at the University of Houston who spoke about this with Texas Standard, cases of strategic voting don’t happen much in primary elections. “Certainly, there are people who do it … but we just don’t see it happening as much as there’s potentially this fear for it to happen,” Simas said.
In areas dominated by one party, especially rural areas, voters might cross party lines in the primary to have more of a say in their local races.
“In my county, all the local races are Republican. Judges, sheriff, district attorney,” Martha Mims, a Democratic voter who lives Williamson County, wrote in The Texas Tribune’s Facebook group, This is Your Texas. “If I want to have a say in local government, I have to vote in the Republican primary.”
Voters like Mims can do that, thanks to Texas’ open primary. Do you have more questions about voting in Texas? Submit them to our Texplainer series.
Disclosure: The University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
A Record Number Of Texans Are Registered To Vote But Will They And Why Should You
Lise Olsen
Ahead of the March primaries, the number of registered voters in Texas hit a record 16 million—a million more than 2018 and almost 2 million more than the 2016 presidential race. This week, we’ll find out if they will actually make it to the polls.
Austin attorney Chad Dunn has participated in major legal battles over voting rights in Texas, including successful court challenges of the state voter ID law and attempted purges of tens of thousands of voters in several Texas counties. Dunn, who once worked as a policy intern for Republican U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and later became general counsel for the Texas Democratic Party, sat down with the Observer to discuss issues on voters’ minds as Super Tuesday approaches.
Texas Observer: We’ve seen a boom in voter registration statewide in Texas. Why has registration increased so much this year, especially in counties like Travis, Brazos, and Harris?
I think there are several factors that play into this. The biggest factor is that Texas is the biggest swing state now. So, all these resources are being invested to solve its under-registration problem. are well-coordinated and they’re nonpartisan in many cases.
Beto ’s success in nearly winning the Texas U.S. Senate seat is part of what spurred investment in addressing Texas gaps: The young are not registered at a high rate here, people of color are not registered at a high rate.
What should you do if you experience any problem voting on Super Tuesday?
Of The 14 States Voting On Super Tuesday Six Have No Voter Id Requirement
Of the March 3 #SuperTuesday primary states, CA, MA, ME, MD, MN, NJ, and NC have NO voter id requirements. https://t.co/ro5YRmgjNF
— Tom Fitton March 2, 2020
Six of the 14 states that vote in primaries on Super Tuesday do not require an identification card to vote. The six states are California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina and Vermont, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Proponents see increasing requirements for identification as a way to prevent in-person voter impersonation and increase public confidence in the election process,” the National Conference of State Legislatures website says. “Opponents say there is little fraud of this kind, and the burden on voters unduly restricts the right to vote and imposes unnecessary costs and administrative burdens on elections administrators.”
Which States Voted On Super Tuesday And How Many Delegates Are At Stake
SuperTuesday
THE WASHINGTON POST
Fourteen states and one U.S. territory held nominating contests on Super Tuesday, to award a total of 1,357 delegates. To put that in perspective, you need 1,991 delegates to win the nomination.
The states are across the country — literally from California to Maine — and include heavily Democratic Massachusetts, traditionally Republican Texas and Oklahoma, and more in-between states like Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. Democrats who live in American Samoa will also caucus on Super Tuesday, and Democrats who live abroad will begin casting ballots.
It’s the delegate total, not the sheer number of votes, that counts when figuring out who wins a party’s presidential nomination. Each state is allotted a certain number of delegates based on a formula of population and weight in the Democratic Party. The state parties then award delegates to the candidates based on the votes they receive. The first candidate to get a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates wins the nomination.
No one can win the nomination on Super Tuesday alone, but doing well can get you a long way. Thirty-four percent of delegates are offered on Tuesday. That’s more than any other single day in the nominating contest.
3,979 total delegates
0
THE WASHINGTON POST
Before Super Tuesday, less than 5 percent of delegates will have been allotted. After, when California’s are finally all counted: 38 percent.
Sanders Trump Lead Pack In Mainers Donations To Presidential Candidates
Registered Democrats will have their choice of six candidates on Tuesday’s ballot who are still actively campaigning for the party’s nomination: Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Tom Steyer and Pete Buttigieg dropped out over the weekend following the primary in South Carolina. Biden’s campaign appeared to be re-energized after his landslide win there, giving his supporters more hope headed into Super Tuesday.
Republicans will also technically hold a presidential primary but with only one contender in Maine: President Trump.
Fourteen states along with American Samoa and Democrats living abroad will participate in Super Tuesday. Those states account for roughly one-third of the Democratic delegates up for grabs in the nominating process thanks, in large part, to the involvement of such populous states as California, Texas and North Carolina.
Maine is running “closed primaries” this year, meaning that only individuals registered as a Democrat or Republican can cast ballots in those respective party contests. Unenrolled voters can join a party at the polls, as can individuals registering to vote for the first time on Election Day. But registered Democrats, Republicans or Green Independent voters cannot change their party affiliation at the polls in order to participate in another primary.
QUESTION 1
But there is another issue on the statewide ballot in which all registered voters can participate.
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Who Is Eligible To Vote On Super Tuesday The States Have Varying Rules
Mara Flanagan
It’s almost time for Super Tuesday: a day of primaries and caucuses that has the potential to significantly alter the prospects of every presidential candidate. As candidates scramble to do last-minute interviews and debates, voters across the country preparep to vote in one of the country’s most complicated and entertaining primaries. Who is eligible to vote on Super Tuesday? The rules depend on the state.
Twelve states vote on Super Tuesday in both the Democratic and Republican races, according to the BBC. Though the Republican party plans to host events in American Samoa, Colorado, Guam, North Dakota, and Wyoming, no votes will be associated with those events; instead, delegates will be assigned by the party later in those areas.
Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia hold open primaries, according to Ballotpedia. This means that voters in these states can decide which primary to vote in regardless of party affiliation. Arkansas and Oklahoma both have closed primaries. Arkansas voters choose to participate in a party primary or to vote in nonpartisan races, but the secretary of state’s website indicates that each individual can only choose one if those two.
How Many Delegates Do The 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates Have
Sanders is the heavy favorite here, despite losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016. He has spent about $7 million on ads , according to data as of Feb. 27 from Advertising Analytics provided to NPR.
Biden has spent zero on California TV ads, and just $4,000 on digital. A ray of hope for Biden is also that even though early voting started a month ago, fewer ballots have been returned than in past elections.
Bloomberg, in contrast, has spent more than $71 million and is currently polling below the 15% threshold required to get any delegates in all of these contests.
With Joe Biden Surging Bernie Sanders Searches For Support And Cash
Following months of nationally televised debates and a handful of early caucuses and primaries, Super Tuesday is where the rubber meets the road for the remaining Democratic candidates.
A total of 1,357 delegates will be up for grabs, with 1,338 of them in 14 states holding their primaries on March 3.
Another six delegates will be in play in American Samoa, as well as 13 among Democrats living abroad, who vote beginning Tuesday through March 10.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders jumped out to an early lead in the pre-Super Tuesday contests, nearly besting former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the Iowa caucuses, then in the New Hampshire primary and winning the Nevada caucuses in a blowout.
But just when his campaign appeared sunk, former Vice President Joe Biden captured the South Carolina primary to catapult back into relevance.
Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race on Sunday and Monday, respectively, with each indicating they would throw their support behind Biden, setting the stage for a fierce fight on Super Tuesday.
Here’s what you need to know:
What states vote on Super Tuesday?
California , Texas , North Carolina , Virginia , Massachusetts , Minnesota , Colorado , Tennessee , Alabama , Oklahoma , Arkansas , Utah , Maine and Vermont .
Who’s on the Super Tuesday ballot for the Democrats?
Do Republicans vote on Super Tuesday?
Super Tuesday Was Created To Nominate Someone Moderate It Backfired
There’s a lot on the line, especially for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders is the front-runner. He’s built a strong organization in these states that’s been buoyed by a multimillion-dollar ad campaign. Biden is lagging but hopes to ride a wave of momentum from his big win in South Carolina on Saturday.
And then there’s Mike Bloomberg. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars, Bloomberg will be on the ballot for the first time. Does he surprise and emerge as an alternative to Sanders, or will he siphon votes from Biden? And what impact might remaining candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have?
Here’s what to watch for and what you should know about each of the Super Tuesday states, in order of most pledged delegates.
Trump Says ‘markets Will Take Care Of Themselves’ After Stock Sell
Clinton won almost two-thirds of white women, who were 36% of the electorate, in addition to blowing out the margins with black voters. She won 84% of African Americans, and they were about a quarter of the electorate.
There haven’t been many good polls in Virginia. The last best one was a Monmouth poll from Feb. 18, which is a lifetime in a presidential primary race. It showed essentially a three-way tie for Sanders , Bloomberg and Biden — and it was conducted before Bloomberg’s first debate in Las Vegas, which was a spotty performance.
Vaccine Vote Exposes A Collision Of Individual Community Rights
Last year after a contentious legislative battle, Gov. Janet Mills signed into law a bill that eliminates those religious and philosophical exemptions to mandatory vaccinations. Supporters said closing the exemptions was a necessary step to reverse an alarming drop in the number of children who enter schools without receiving vaccinations against pertussis, measles and other preventable diseases. Maintaining the “herd immunity” created by high vaccination rates also helps to protect children with weakened immune systems.
But opponents of the law collected enough signatures to send the issue to voters, arguing the mandate violates parental rights.
As with other “people’s veto” campaigns, groups on both sides having been battling voter confusion about the question’s wording headed into Tuesday.
A “yes” vote on Question 1 would overturn the law and allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their children for religious or philosophical reasons. A “no” vote would keep the law on the books, thereby requiring vaccinations before children can attend school except when a doctor grants a medical exemption.
PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS
With just 24 Democratic delegates up for grabs, Maine is the third-smallest prize for presidential hopefuls on Super Tuesday after Vermont and American Samoa. California, by comparison, has 415 delegates at play while Massachusetts has 91 delegates.
On Saturday, Klobuchar addressed a crowd of several hundred people in Portland.
The Role Of Unenrolled Voters In Massachusetts On Super Tuesday
SOUTHWICK, Mass. – Voters in a Massachusetts primary who are registered as a Democrat or Republican can only vote for a candidate in their party. Unenrolled voters who have not chosen either side can pick up whichever ballot they want on Super Tuesday.
In Southwick there are more than 1,500 registered Republicans, and more than 1,300 registered Democrats, making it one of only seven towns in western Massachusetts with more registered Republicans. There are nearly 4,000 unenrolled voters in Southwick as well, and political experts say those voters could have a big affect on the election this year.
Historically when Massachusetts voters head to the polls on Super Tuesday it’s a Democratic candidate that walks away with the win. There are 19 towns here in Massachusetts that have more registered Republicans than registered democrats. Again, seven being in western Massachusetts : Tolland, Granville, Southwick, Blandford, Hampden, Russell and Montgomery.
“While Massachusetts does tend to be a blue state there are more voters registered as unenrolled than there are registered as Republican or Democrat,” former Agawam Town Clerk Richard Theroux said. “Political experts say those unenrolled voters could vote republican this election cycle.”
American International College Political Professor Julie Walsh said she also believes unenrolled voters could sway toward the Republican side this year.
What Happens To Delegates Allocated To Candidates Who Withdraw
The Delegate Selection Rules for the 2020 Democratic National Convention included two provisions regarding the binding of delegates to the candidates they supported at the time of their selection.
“ No delegate at any level of the delegate selection process shall be mandated by law or Party rule to vote contrary to that person’s presidential choice as expressed at the time the delegate is elected. ” —Rule 13.I
“ Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them. ” —Rule 13.J
What happens to delegates allocated to candidates who withdraw? State
‘we Sent A Message’: Buttigieg Ends Historic Presidential Bid
Warren is teetering around the delegate threshold percentage, too, with most polls conducted before South Carolina. Does she get above 15%? Does she pull from Sanders? Does Biden gain momentum from South Carolina?
A wild card is black voters. There were no exit polls in 2016; 2008 exit polls showed black voters were only 7% of the electorate. But the California Democratic Party estimates that African Americans are about 16% of the party. Do they turn out? Depending on which estimate winds up being correct could determine if Biden makes a dent in the state.
This will also be the first significant measure of Asian Americans in this election. They were 8% of the electorate in 2008, and the California Democratic Party estimates they are 10% now.
My State Is Voting On Super Tuesday Where Is My Polling Place
Voters can confirm polling station locations and times on their state’s election website by clicking on their state below. Registered voters can also verify on the election sites their voter status, whether their state allows same-day registration, election deadlines and if their primary is open — doesn’t require voters to be affiliated with a political party — closed or semi-closed.
Minnesotas Presidential Primary: Everything You Need To Know
Minnesota is joining Super Tuesday this year — joining 13 other states, including Texas and California, in perhaps the most consequential day of the presidential primary season.
Election 2020Everything you need to know to be prepared
It can be a confusing political ritual for some, and it’s new in Minnesota. It’s our first presidential primary since 1992 and only the fourth in state history. Here are some of the basic rules.
You can vote in the primary no matter your party affiliation. However, you will have to select one major party in whose primary you’ll vote. Minnesota has four major parties: the Democratic-Farmer-Labor, Republican, Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis and Legal Marijuana Now parties. Only the DFL and GOP will host presidential primaries in 2020; the weed parties are sitting out this year.
How you vote will be secret, sort of … But not really. Only the candidate you vote for will be secret — the chair of all four major parties will get a list of who voted in the primary and the party with which they voted.
Same-day registration is still OK for primaries. While early registration has closed for the primaries, voters may register on March 3.
You must be 18 years old on primary day to vote. That differs from the rules of Minnesota’s old presidential caucuses, which allowed 17 year olds to vote if they’d be 18 by Election Day.
Only presidential candidates will be on the ballot. Primaries for other races are in August.
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Klobuchar busts out
New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/klobuchar-busts-out/
Klobuchar busts out
Klobuchar, who has cast herself as a tell-it-like-it-is Midwesterner, has seen her lane crowded out by two other Democrats: Buttigieg, who also hails from the Midwest and is carving a center-left path through the primary, and Joe Biden, who is pitching himself as a truth-telling moderate who can win over voters who backed President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump.
In Iowa, where Klobuchar has staked her campaign, she continues to trail all four of the top candidates.
“She’s gotten better as these debates have gone on,” said David Axelrod on CNN after the debate. Klobuchar had starring turns on previous debate stages, including in October, when she raised more than $1 million in the 24 hours afterward.
But on Thursday, Klobuchar trained new fire on Buttigieg, particularly over his experience. And the hits are likely to keep coming, with Klobuchar returning to Iowa on Friday to touch off her third bus tour across the first caucus state.
Klobuchar, who has won three statewide elections in Minnesota, tweaked Buttigieg as a “local official.” She attacked him for “mocking the 100 years of experience” on the November debate stage, when Buttigieg contrasted his own time outside of Washington. Buttigieg, she implored, “should respect our experience when you look at how you evaluate someone.”
The Indiana mayor, leaning on his time serving in the military, responded, “That is my experience, and it may not be the same as yours, but it counts, senator. It counts.”
But she struck harder on his political resume, when he made a failed bid for state treasurer in Indiana in 2010 and then ran unsuccessfully for Democratic National Committee chairman in 2017.
“If you had won in Indiana, that would be one thing,” Klobuchar said. “You tried and you lost by 20 points.”
“If you want to talk about the capacity to win, try putting together a coalition to bring you back to office with 80 percent of the vote as a gay dude in Mike Pence’s Indiana,” Buttigieg shot back.
On CNN following the debate, Klobuchar again warned that Democrats should be careful not to nominate a candidate who wasn’t “able to win in a statewide race and then failed in a race for Democratic National Committee,” Klobuchar said.
But she conceded that Buttigieg is leading her in early state and national polls. “That is a problem,” she said. “It’s my case to make, and it’s my race to win.”
For his own part, Buttigieg said on CNN that the attacks are to be expected “when you’re doing well.”
Klobuchar didn’t limit her criticism to Buttigieg on Thursday night. Turning to Sen. Bernie Sanders, she said a Democrat can be “progressive and practical at the same time,” criticizing him for his “Medicare for All” proposal and advocating for the country to build on the Affordable Care Act instead.
“The way I look at it, if you want to cross a river over some troubled waters, you build a bridge,” she said. “You don’t blow one up.”
But Buttigieg was Klobuchar’s prime target, reflecting the urgency of a campaign lagging behind the frontrunners both in Iowa and nationally and in desperate need of a spark.
“She is trying to take skin from Pete, who has the overall vote share lead in Iowa and is the one she needs to leapfrog to take on Biden in the moderate vote lane,” one Democratic strategist said. “She has to perform well in Iowa or bow out.”
Klobuchar had made her first mark earlier in the debate — in a moment that belied the hit on Buttigieg she would later deliver.
Following a back-and-forth between Elizabeth Warren and Buttigieg over campaign finance — and Buttigieg’s hosting of a fundraiser in what Warren called a “wine cave full of crystals” — Klobuchar attempted to claim ground above them both.
“I did not come here to listen to this argument. I came here to make a case for progress,” Klobuchar said. “And I have never even been to a wine cave. I have been to the Wind Cave in South Dakota, which I suggest you go to. So what is making a case for progress about? That is what unites us up here instead of what divides us, which is campaign finance reform.”
The moment was a significant part of Klobuchar’s criticism of Buttigieg, in which she is moving to cast herself not only as a combatant, but as a unifying figure in the party. When she later criticized Buttigieg, it was by going down the line of Democrats on the debate stage, accusing him of belittling them all.
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