independentsforkerry.org

INDEPENDENTVOTING.ORG NETWORKS

• Ruy the Day! A Review of Ruy Teixeira’s Review of The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents by Linda Killian (by Jacqueline Salit, Huffington Post) Wow! For a man (actually, make that a MAN) who has devoted his political career to resuscitating a Democratic Party governing majority (he co-wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority in 2002), you would think he’d be a little more cautious about denouncing independents. Otherwise, his hoped for majority may get another slam, as it did in 2010 when independents expressed their disappointment and frustration with President Obama’s inability to conquer the partisanship in Washington, including the partisanship of his own party. Ruy might rue the day he tried to tear down Killian and the volatile movement-in-the-making she writes about.
• LINDA KILLIAN OUTBREAK: The Uses of Polarization (By THOMAS B. EDSALL, NY Times/ The Opinion Pages/ Campaign Stops) At the same time, the percentage of the electorate that can accurately be described as independent — without partisan allegiance — has shrunk to about 7 percent, according to Ruy Teixeira of the Brookings Institution. While the importance of such voters has diminished, in a closely balanced contest these relatively uninvolved men and women have the power to determine the outcome: in the 12 presidential elections from 1964 to 2008, four – 1968, 1976, 2000 and 2004 – have been decided by 2.5 percentage points or less.
• Historic Bond Ties African-Americans and Independents Together (LETTER The Hankster, by Bob Friedman, PHOTOS online) Last week I joined Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network on the march from Selma to Montgomery. I am one of the 40% of Americans who are independent of both of the major parties. Back in the days of Ross Perot, the media called guys like me “angry white men.” Along the route, I spoke with many people and brought greetings from Dr. Lenora Fulani, the country’s leading African American independent with whom I’ve worked closely and from IndependentVoting.org, the country’s largest organization of independent voters of which I’m a part.
• YOUR VIEW: Independent voters disfranchised in many states because of parties (Bob Friedman, Letters from our readers By Letters from our readers, Alabama.com) I want to respond to and applaud the Your Views letter “Alabama’s closed primary infringes on voters’ rights” in the March 10 Birmingham News by sharing the following. I couldn’t agree more that since we pay for the primaries, they should be nonpartisan, more like “top two” as they have in California.
• The black vote: 5 states where Obama needs a big African-American turnout (By Perry Bacon Jr.,The Grio) President Obama’s campaign will likely need the kind of strong black turnout he received in 2008 to win re-election, particularly if some of the white independent voters who backed him four years ago opt for the Republican candidate because of frustration over the president’s tenure.

The Hankster

Since the record turnout of minority and young voters in 2008, there has been a wave of new laws that block access to the ballot box. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that more than five million voters may be disenfranchised by the voting law changes. The most onerous restriction requires voters to present government-issued photo ID in order to vote.

On Tuesday, the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) hosted a panel discussion on how civil rights organizations, advocacy groups and ordinary citizens are using social media to protect the right to vote and fight strict photo ID requirements. Alan Rosenblatt, Associate Director of Online Advocacy for CAPAF, delivered welcoming remarks. Nicole Austin-Hillery, Director and Counsel in the Brennan Center’s DC Office, provided an overview of state photo ID laws.

The panel discussion was moderated by Vanessa Cárdenas, Director of Progress 2050, a project of the Center for American Progress. I was a panelist, along with Eric Rodriguez, Vice President, Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation for the National Council of La Raza, Erika Maye, Communications Specialist with the Advancement Project, and Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of ColorOfChange.

The panelists addressed a wide range of issues, including:

• How are Latinos being impacted by proof of citizenship and strict photo ID requirements?
• How is social media being used to mobilize young voters?
• How will restricting third party voter registration drives impact the youth vote?
• What voter ID legislation is currently pending in the states? Which states are being challenged?
• Who are the funders and supporters of voter suppression laws? Who’s behind ALEC?

Faye Anderson gave a demo of the Cost of Freedom App, a location-based web app that will provide voters with information on how to get a voter ID. The prototype for the app was developed by Kin Lane, API Evangelist for CityGrid.

Users of the web app will be able to quickly access information about their state’s voter ID requirements, how to obtain a certified copy of their birth certificate (the document that’s typically produced to establish one’s identity), and the location, hours and directions to the Office of Vital Records using public transit.

Anderson also gave a live demo of the Cost of Freedom text-based app developed by Jack Aboutboul, Twilio’s API Evangelist. Twilio is making an in-contribution of text message services to promote voter education.

Development of the web and text apps is crowd-sourced. As chief evangelist for the Cost of Freedom Project, Anderson is recruiting researchers and designers on Facebook, Twitter and Idealist. Indeed, the project is powered by We the People and social media.

For information on how you can get involved in this citizen-led initiative, please visit us at Facebook.com/CostofFreedom.

Cross post from article in Social Media Week by Faye Anderson.

Democratic Blog News

Independents will be key to upcoming California elections (Jason Olson LETTER Sac Bee) In 2012 — for the first time in living memory — independent voters will play a major role in all of California’s elections.

Re “Democrats go at GOP, each other” (Capitol & California, Feb. 13): In 2012 — for the first time in living memory — independent voters will play a major role in all of California’s elections.

Thanks to open primaries and redistricting reform passed by voters in previous elections, all candidates now must run against each other in an open field, where all voters can participate. To get elected, candidates now need to win the support of independent voters. Independent voters have no intention of giving that support away for free.

Independents are deeply concerned about a political dialogue dominated by what’s best for the parties rather than what’s best for the American people. Independents want critical reforms to our political process to shift that balance of power away from the parties and towards the voters. Candidates looking to win their elections should take note of the independent movement for nonpartisan reform.

– Jason Olson, San Francisco

The Hankster

Roseanne Barr’s presidential bid has penetrated the veil of media silence so deeply that North Carolina based national polling firm Public Policy Polling has included her in a head to head to head comparison with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.
Obama wins with 47%, while Romney draws 42% and Barr stands at 6%, with [...]
Green Party Watch

Latino voters support the Affordable Health Care Act, but do not support the mandate to purchase coverage, according to a poll released Thursday.

Conducted by ImpreMedia/Latino Decisions (IM-LD) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico, the poll reveals “that 50% of Latino voters support the Affordable Health Care Act and only 29% support its repeal,” adding that “59% of these voters are not well disposed toward one of the law’s regulations, which makes it mandatory for them to purchase insurance if they do not have coverage. They are against it.”

Poll results also indicate that:

• 85 percent of Latino voters “support having the government provide tax credits to small businesses offering their employees coverage.”
• 63 percent “support prohibiting insurance companies from denying potential insured patients coverage because of their medical history.”
• 75 percent “support the Medicare prescription drug ‘doughnut hole’ or coverage gap clause.”
• 80 percent “favor providing financial help to those who are not able to purchase coverage.”

The Latino Decisions poll adds that 17 percent of “Latino voters do not have insurance coverage,” while over 30 percent of “Latinos in general” do not have health insurance.

Latino workers and families in the U.S. are among the largest beneficiaries of federally funded health insurance.

A report released by the National Council of La Raza and Families USA released in August indicates that “Medicaid and its sister program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), buffer millions of Latinos and other vulnerable Americans from uninsurance.” The report shows that between 2007 and 2009 almost 3.8 million Hispanics living in Florida received medical insurance under federally funded Medicaid and/or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said that Latinos are two times more likely to be uninsured than non-Hispanic whites, adding that Medicaid covers at least half of Hispanic children across the country, providing the preventative care they need. The report explains that without Medicaid the uninsured rate for Latinos would climb to 32 percent.

A report issued by the Kaiser Family Foundation (.pdf) in June 2010 states that “no major health program or issue can be considered today outside the context of the nation’s new health care reform law.”

The Kaiser report adds that under the Affordable Care Act, “access to affordable health coverage will be improved through a significant expansion of the Medicaid program, the creation of new health insurance exchanges, and reforms of the private health insurance market. The major expansion of Medicaid and health reform’s reliance on the program as the foundation for coverage of low- income people give Medicaid both a much larger and a distinctively national coverage role going forward.”

The Families USA/La Raza report adds that Latinos would be major beneficiaries of this Medicaid expansion.

The Colorado Independent

OPEN PRIMARIES

• Voter group disapproves of Utah’s closed primary elections (By Jennie Christensen, Cache Valley Daily) When it comes to politics, 54 percent of Utahns call themselves Independents. But Nancy Ross, national director for IndependentVoting.org, says the state of Utah is anything but Independent. She says four years ago 93 percent of the people voted for Mitt Romney.
• If you are a voter you’ll want to read this (By KMVT News) Before July 1st, the state of Idaho never required party registration. But because of the federal court decision in Idaho republican party versus Ysursa, the law’s changed. Only registered voters of a political party may vote to select their party’s nominee.
• Political Booths At County Fair Offer Friendly Alternative to Heated Debates (By Ben Botkin, Magic Valley Times News) There’s also voting information at the fair that doesn’t seek to sway your political views. The Twin Falls County Clerk’s office has a booth that explains the state’s switch to a closed primary system. It will require voters to declare a party affiliation before voting in the 2012 primaries, unless party leaders opt to allow unaffiliated voters to cast ballots.

The Hankster

A research study released this month by digital agency SocialVibe found that 94% of voting-age social media users are more likely to watch an entire political message viewed online, and then 39% will share it with an average of 130 friends.

According to the study social media users are more likely to share persuasive political information with friends and colleagues in a matter of seconds from their computer or mobile device as opposed to making phone calls or canvassing. For that reason, social media users are more likely to be influenced by Facebook “friends” than the evening news.

The study also found that an investment of ,000 in a campaign that engages social media users could spread the content online to people of voting age in all 50 states within 24 hours. That’s a lot of bang for the buck.

The SocialVibe study also indicated that political ad campaigns continue to shift more advertising budgets to online and mobile advertising. But it gets a little tricky because the campaigns have the challenge of presenting political messages in such a way that supporters want to share the information.

The key is to facilitate the users or political supporters to share messages or campaigns. Thus, the campaigners will need to become more creative in order to engage and develop loyalty to persuade others such as “friends” to be engaged as well.

The study indicates five key messages for the 2012 political season: Use Facebook and campaign Web sites to engage supporters, supporters carry social media message, go mobile, remember social email, and build loyalty through engaged advertising.

All in all, politicians will have a unique challenge of honestly connecting with people one on one as a personal experience. Approach them online in a conversation with a message that is convenient and beneficial for the social media user.

“Most people like to share personal views and beliefs. Allow people to engage with and personalize messages: This is what drives sharing,” concludes Jay Samit, CEO SocialVibe.

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News

The Hankster

INDEPENDENT VOTERS
GOP leaders likely to drop social issues in budget compromise (BY DAVID LIGHTMAN, Miami Herald) “There’s a Republican economic agenda, and there’s a social agenda. The problem for the party is that independents by and large do not share the social agenda,” said Steven Smith, the director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.

PARTY INSIDERS V. PROP 14
Race for Congress: No Candidate Gains California Democratic Party Endorsement – None of the Democratic candidates in the upcoming election for a vacant seat in Congress are going to be officially endorsed by the California Democratic Party. (By Paul Chavez, Hermosa Beach Patch)

2012
Jon Huntsman, the rock ‘n’ roll years (By: Ben Smith and Kasie Hunt, Politico) Huntsman’s conventional ascent began in 1987, when he graduated from the Wharton School of Business, went to work for the family manufacturing giant, and moved between top industry and government posts. People who know him, however, say his unconventional appeal was crafted in the nine previous years, beginning in 1978, the year he left Highland High School without enough credits to graduate.

NEW YORK
Mike’s maneuvers fail in Albany, NYC (By ERIK ENGQUIST and JEREMY SMERD, Crain’s New York) The state budget that passed last week contained nothing from his wish list: no changes to the teacher seniority rule known as last-in, first-out; no relief from the 0 million “Christmas bonuses” that the city must pay retired police officers and firefighters annually; and not a dime of the city’s former 0 million state revenue-sharing allocation, for the second straight year.

NORTH CAROLINA
GOP must balance agenda with desire to win re-election (By Paul Woolverton, Fayyetteville Observer) Out of North Carolina’s 6 million registered voters, 2.7 million are Democrats – or 45 percent. About 1.9 million voters are Republican. And 1.45 million belong to no party. That means roughly 25 percent of the voters are unaffiliated.

The Hankster

INDEPENDENT VOTERS
NOW TRENDING: THE INTERNET COULD USHER IN AN INDEPENDENT REVOLUTION THAT TOPPLES THE TWO-PARTY ESTABLISHMENT (by Christopher A. Guzman, CAIVN) The difference between internet and television is that the former isn’t limited to those with the most money to buy up all the campaign slots. Furthermore, tools like social media (when used correctly) are not only more cost-effective than buying television ads, they also encourage a productive two-way conversation between candidates and their constituents. With social media, candidates are actually forced to communicate effectively instead of selling their talking points like products needing to be purchased in late-night television informercials.

The Hankster