The Obama campaign hoped to use the summer to define Mitt Romney. They spent $25 million in May ads. Obama spent $58m in June. What effect did it have? At the end of July, Purple Strategies, a bipartisan polling firm, found (PDF) that Romney has pulled ahead of Obama, even as Obama’s favorability ticked up slightly. Obama’s out of control campaign spending yielded nothing, just like his out of control government spending yielded nothing.  Politico even described that poll as giving the Ryan pick a small bump for the Romney campaign.

But then the bombshell came. After a week of Mediscare attacks on Paul Ryan, they were not able to dislodge seniors in Florida. According to a poll, reported by the Palm Beach Post:

But two Florida polls conducted since Ryan’s selection suggest that voters who are 65 and older support Ryan and his budget plan more than younger voters do. A third Florida poll released this week doesn’t include an age breakdown, but finds the state’s voters agreeing more with Ryan’s description of his budget and Medicare plan than with Democratic criticisms that it would “end Medicare as we know it.”

The challenge for the Obama campaign is that if they can’t scare older voters away from Republicans with dishonest attacks on Paul Ryan’s proposal to save Medicare, then they are trapped. Paul Ryan turns out to be a big win. He is a candidate who is deeply connected to the industrial midwest which will be the swing region of the country this election. The Purple Strategies poll found that he helps most in Ohio. He will also help with young voters disenchanted and under-employed by the failure of the Obama economy.

So the Obama campaign has failed in the two main tests. They hugely overspent Romney to disqualify him. They failed. And they have tried for three years to attack Republicans with the Ryan budget. And the polls in Florida, the place that should be most vulnerable to attacks, show that that failed.

Chicago, you have an emergency.

Let me give you one example in the most unlikely of places, Massachusetts, where Republican Tom Keyes has a good shot to take out Senate President Therese Murray. This won’t happen the same way that the previous three Massachusetts Speakers lost their jobs, through indictment, but through the ballot box. But don’t be surprised if a little corruption is in the mix here too.

So the first question is, why do we think it is possible? The answer is simple. In 2010, Keyes got 48% of the vote while being outspent 10-1, and that is before we count the independent expenditures from the Democratic party at the last minute to bail out one of their leaders. Normally, I would analyze that a Republican would under-perform 2010, but Massachusetts in 2012 could be different. Why? Because Mitt Romney and Scott Brown are on the top of the ticket.  Furthermore, this district has historically been a Republican district. It is represented by three Republican State Representatives, a Republican County Sheriff and a Republican District Attorney. So the math makes it possible.

Then there are core bread and butter issues. Simply put, a 20-year incumbent has gotten a little arrogant in driving the liberal agenda. During the debate on the budget, she ruled that tax cuts amendments were not in order because a $32 billion budget bill wasn’t a “money bill,” breaking long-standing precedent. In her world, $32 billion is not money, and Republican ideas don’t even deserve to get debated. She even said it was “her duty” to not allow Republican tax amendments. This combines a broader tax record of raising sales taxes, alcohol taxes, etc.

That sort of arrogance matches the way that she has run the Senate, turning a blind eye to corruption and violence in her caucus. The most astonishing was the case of a committee Chairman who had been indicted of sexual assault and sexual accosting. He eventually plead guilty and left the Senate. She refused to strip him of his committee chairmanship — and the bonus he gets with it — , even though he didn’t enter the state house  after his indictment. she said, “….” And he is only one of three Democratic state Senators to go to prison under her leadership, along with Dianne Wilkerson (bribery) and Anthony Galluccio (hit and run accident under the influence).

Did I mention a straight-forward corruption scandal? She’s got that too: the Probation Department scandal.  Right after the 2010 elections, a report was released about how legislators were getting their friends hired by the Probation Department.  Two months ago the U.S. Attorney indicted three Probation Department officials.  Murray was repeatedly mentioned within the indictments. Here’s how Commonwealth Magazine described it:

Murray, who took over as Senate president in mid-2007, is referred to in four instances in the indictment, with references to supporting candidates for probation jobs. The indictment says Murray had her hand in the hiring of Patrick Lawton, a politically connected member of a prominent South Shore family whose father and grandfather were judges, as a probation officer in Plymouth Family and Probate Court; the hiring and later promotion of Antonio Mataragas, a probation officer in Peabody District Court who made campaign donations to Sen. Fred Berry; and two probation officers in Plymouth District Court, including Melissa Melia, whom the indictment describes as “an acquaintance” of Barnstable District Attorney Michael O’Keefe.

Being true to form and as arrogant as possible, she defended the patronage scandal by saying  “that’s part of what we do.”

One of the lessons of the last couple of years is that the American people want to show these kind of arrogant, self-dealing political leaders the door. Help Tom Keyes show this one the door.

The Russian government has not lived up to its obligations to support the world community in reining in the rogue nations of Iran, Syria, and North Korea.  On the contrary, Russia has at times offered support for these dangerous regimes.  And it is increasingly evident that Russia is intent on expanding its boundaries and power through hostile acts – including invading a neighboring American ally.

But there’s a broader point here. When Obama told Medvedev to be patient until after the election, he was abandoning our Ambassador and Obama’s friend, our national security and that of our allies, human rights in Syria, and our respect for democratic values. Indeed, he was abandoning his own dignity and that of our country.

What do I mean?

A month ago, two things happened with respect to Russia that should force us to fundamentally reevaluate our relationship with the country. Just a month ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Russia “despicable” for defending the butcher of civilians in Syria at the UN Security Council. And the state run media compared our ambassador, Obama’s long-time ally, to a pedophile.

This ambassador isn’t just some diplomat. McFaul was an Obama advisor during his campaign and a member of the National Security Council. This was a personal insult to our Ambassador, the President of the United States, and the United States itself. Instead of defending his own friend and Ambassador, Obama goes supine and offers Russia concessions.

In fact Putin’s whole election campaign was a nationalist attack on the United States. The attack on McFaul was part of a strategy. So after months of attacking the United States and our ambassador, to win an election, Obama offers concessions.

These weren’t just any elections. These are to a government whose end is in sight after astounding levels of fraud. In the December elections, Putin’s party, United Russia engaged in “ frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulation, including several serious indications of ballot-box stuffing,” according to the OSCE. Hundreds of thousands of protesters entered the streets to object to the debasement of democracy. About Putin’s own election, the OSCE said, “There was no real competition and abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt.”

Obama’s offer of “flexibility” was made in spite of personal insults,  insults to our country, and insults to our values. Hopefully Americans will realize the consequences of this foreign policy that takes neither ourselves nor our allies seriously.

The real disaster of this cycle has been the presidential preference caucus. In Iowa, Nevada, and Maine, we have had disastrous voting procedures, with results unknown or in flux for days. In Iowa, this led to the resignation of the state party chair Matt Strawn. In Nevada, the state party’s failed efforts to run a caucus have been widely panned, although the state party chair had already announced that she was stepping down, so there hasn’t been the same kind of accountability. In Maine, I am hearing that state party Chairman Charlie Webster, who I quite like personally, is coming under tremendous pressure from county party chairs, elected officials and the party executive committee to step down.

But the problem with caucuses is not that they are hard to run, although some party leaders have called for improving those processes. After all, they are run by political parties which are notoriously incompetent and corrupt. I suspect that they could be run well.

The reason that we shouldn’t have a caucus is that it gives voters the illusion of participation while transferring power to party insiders or hyper-activists. What a binding presidential primary does is it subordinates the party insiders to the will of the voters. Do you want an illusion or accountability?

This is a process which makes Ron Paul a serious contender in states like Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada and Maine, where he is not even relevant in any state with a primary. Only in a process that deliberately restricts the number of participants could someone like Ron Paul stand a chance or use the silly process as a basis to build a strategy on.

How bad is this restriction? My friend Matt Gagnon reviewed the turnout in the last primary in Maine and compared it to the caucus, and this is what he found:

In 1996, more than 67,000 Republicans voted in their primary. In 2000, more than 64,000 Democrats and 96,000 Republicans voted.

This year, a little over 5,000 Mainers participated in the much ballyhooed and now very much disputed Romney vs. Paul death match.

I would note that the 2010 gubernatorial primary attracted over 120,000 Republican voters and 110,000 Democratic voters. And this primary resulted in the election of Paul Le Page, the most conservative serious candidate, who went on to win the general election in a blue-to-purple state. How can over a 95% drop in participation that results in “a death match” between Ron Paul activists and party insiders be good for our party?

The answer is that it is not. But let’s get in the weeds to see why. If you voted in a caucus, did you realize that to have your vote actually matter, you have to stay to become a delegate to a county, district, or state convention? If not, your vote doesn’t count at all. You just wasted your evening. Really.

Just ask the Ron Paul campaign, which explained how they got all the delegates from three counties they lost:

In one precinct in Larimer County, the straw poll vote was 23 for Santorum, 13 for Paul, 5 for Romney, 2 for Gingrich.  There were 13 delegate slots, and Ron Paul got ALL 13.

In a precinct in Delta County the vote was 22 for Santorum, 12 for Romney, 8 for Paul, 7 for Gingrich. There were 5 delegate slots, and ALL 5 went to Ron Paul.

In a Pueblo County precinct, the vote was 16 for Santorum, 11 for Romney, 3 for Gingrich and 2 for Paul. There were 2 delegate slots filled, and both were filled by Ron Paul supporters.

In these counties, Ron Paul came in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th (last), but they got ALL of the delegates from these counties. In the county that Paul came in last, both of his voters became the only delegates, in spite of the fact that all the other candidates got 15-times more votes. When there aren’t well organized activists like the Ron Paul campaign, what happens? The actual Republican voters leave, and process is left to party insiders who give us people like Dede Scozzafava.

None of these states actually pick nominees for Governor or Senate or anything like that via caucuses. They only use the caucus to magnify their power when it comes to picking President. is that right?

One of the reasons that Redstate has urged readers to participate in local party organizations is to give an escape from these options. We can fix the party by beating the establishment and stopping it from being captured by people like Ron Paul supporters. And we can force it to be accountability to the will of voters by using a primary.

I should also add that there is another very serious problem with caucuses. It is very hard in a caucus system to create a method for allowing active duty, deployed soldiers from participating. Captain Sam Wright of the Service Members Law Center discusses said:

Those who serve our nation in uniform, and those who accompany spouses or parents who serve, should be given the opportunity to participate in the nomination as well as the election of candidates for president and other offices.  After all, were it not for their sacrifices, none of us would have the opportunity to vote in free elections.

So why do we have a process that excludes soldiers and transfers power to party insiders when we could have one that includes everyone and forces the party insiders to be accountable?

Because people don’t fight for it.

Mentioning former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s quip that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose, Obama said he’s written more of the latter than the former in his first three years in office. ”We’ve been slogging through prose for the last three years,” he said. “People, they like the poetry.”

Monday night, I did a radio show opposite a Democrat. The Democrat made very clear that he viewed the budget that the President released on Monday as an entirely political document. It made no claim to solving any long-term problems faced by the country. According to this consultant, the primary purpose of the budget was to make an argument about “fairness” and “who should pay.”

We are in the midst of poetry, I fear. And, as President Obama once said, it is all “just words.”

Now Bernanke can’t answer these sorts of things straight away. But he basically got there. Here’s what he said:

Well Senator, I’m not going to comment on parliamentary maneuverings, but Senator Wyden made exactly the same question. You know, is uncertainty about the future of the tax code, government programs, and so on a negative for growth? I think it is because firms like to have certainty, like to be able to plan. And again I would take on the same responsibility as a regulator, that we need to make regulations as clear and as effective as possible.

So he’s saying that firms like to have certainty and that as a regulator, Bernanke wants things to be clear and effective. Today Jake Tapper asked Jay Carney about this. Should Senate pass a budget? Does the President have an opinion on this? Turns out that the answer is no

TAPPER: The White House has no opinion about whether or not the Senate should pass a budget? The president’s going to introduce one. The Fed chair says not having one is bad for growth. But the White House has no opinion about whether –

CARNEY: I have no opinion — the White House has no opinion on Chairman Bernanke’s assessment of how the Senate ought to do its business.

I think it is worth recalling why the Senate stopped passing budgets. Because they are politically difficult, and being accountable is hard in an election year. The Senate last passed a budget on April 29, 2009. They didn’t work on a budget in 2010. Why? Because a budget requires taking responsibility for the fiscal state of our country. And it was clear that the 2010 election was going to be rough for Democrats. So what did they do? They ducked. They dodged all responsibility. Republicans were willing to do it in the House, but the Senate was not. They didn’t even bring a serious budget to the floor and haven’t since.

And since the Republicans have been able to put their ideas up for inspection by the American people. See the Ryan Budget. Republicans are willing to fight an election on ideas and tell the American people what sacrifices will need to be made to address our fiscal crisis.

But now, not only is the Senate failing the American people, but President Obama is helping the Senate in dodging this responsibility. The fact is that he has no opinion on running the country like an adult. He has “no opinion” about giving business certainty.

Thank you Ron Johnson for asking the question and getting the clarity on this from Chairman Bernanke. And thank you to Jake Tapper for asking the White House if they are interested in leading.

They aren’t.

The issue became salient after reports on KRQE-TV about APS paying House Majority Whip Sheryl Williams Stapleton, D-Albuquerque, her salary while she was in Santa Fe on legislative business. According to a Journal analysis, she was paid more than $63,000 in salary during the past three years while she was away from her administrative job as coordinator of vocational education.

Stapleton’s paid leave was approved by supervisors even though it wasn’t allowed under district policy. That policy said all nonteachers who served in the Legislature should take unpaid leave while in Santa Fe.

So recently, in discussions with her fellow member of the state House’s education committee, Nora Espinoza (R), Whip Stapleton decided to share her perspective on attempts to resolve and understand this complicated legal and constitutional issue. You see, she said that Espinoza was “carrying the Mexican’s water on the fourth floor.” This was a reference to Governor Susanna Martinez, whose office is on the fourth floor of the Capital building.  So the Democratic Whip in the most Latino state in the country is referring to the first Latina Governor in the country as “the Mexican.” I wonder if the Democrats will try to hold her accountable for this kind of speech? Probably not. After all, Harry Reid said that doesn’t know how any Hispanic could be a Republican.

Now, cleaning up the state is something that the teachers unions have long been opposed to. They funded a nasty attack ad against Martinez that backfired when it turned out that Martinez had convicted the husband of the woman the teachers union put in the ad to attack Martinez:

But maybe they are just trying to stop the person trying to take away their gravy train?

The only way to get that many absentee ballots is by hiring brokers who charge candidates thousands of dollars to deliver bundles to the county elections department. The brokers are the ones responsible for dead people voting in the ’80s and ’90s. Now they go around strong-arming the elderly residents at assisted living facilities or fooling them with free breakfast at the local IHOP. The brokers also pay off preachers so they can set up shop inside houses of worship to sign up absentee voters.

I saw it firsthand when I ran in the recent county mayoral race. One guy, who I won’t name, guaranteed he could deliver thousands of absentee ballots in North Miami and North Miami Beach for $3,000. I took a pass. It showed on Election Day. I had more early and Election Day ballots than absentee votes.

Sure would be neat if he said more about this. We know that this problem isn’t necessarily unique to south Florida, as there were a bunch of arrests in more rural north Florida earlier this month. One wonders if these are the sorts of “manufacturing ballots” stories that former Rep. Artur Davis was talking about in neighboring Alabama.

Now, like Mr. Rosenthal, I do get frustrated with discussions of election fraud that don’t detail specific convictions. And while I believe that ACORN-style registration fraud is a real problem, I try to avoid discussing it. After all, we should lead with our strongest argument.

So let’s review some recent convictions, just to remind ourselves that election fraud happens, it is well documented, and it sways elections:

• My favorite example is the 2003 East Chicago (Indiana) Democratic mayoral primary. There were 32 convictions. The election results were also thrown out by the Indiana Supreme Court. Note that that last link is to a story in the Chicago Tribune, my home-town paper, that discusses the conviction of the “reform” candidate in that election, with the splendid sentence, “On Thursday, a federal judge sentenced former Mayor George Pabey to five years in prison, the third consecutive East Chicago mayor to come to grief in a federal courtroom.” This case galvanized support for a voter ID law in Indiana that was eventually argued in the US Supreme Court, where the opinion upholding the law was written by former Justice Stevens. Some noted at the time that Justice Stevens, who was normally a reliable liberal vote, grew up in Chicago.
• Then there’s another favorite case, that of Ophelia Ford. Mrs. Ford is the sister of former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford, Sr., sister of former State Rep. John Form, now serving time in federal prison for bribery, and the aunt of former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford, Jr., now a New York resident, and, undoubtedly, a subscriber to the New York Times. In this case, Mrs. Ford, a Democrat, defeated an incumbent Republican by 13 votes. The local newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, smelled something and dug. In the end, the State Senate vacated the election on a vote of 26-6, and three people plead guilty to felonies. In that case, the judge noted that the guilty plea actually prevented a full record of the fraud from being documented. But the guilty pleas did involve both dead and moved people voting.
• Closer in both time and space to the New York Times, there is the ongoing investigation of the Troy City Council race from 2009, which I have written about in the past. The city clerk has plead guilty.
• I also noted a series of convictions in Alabama that may have triggered the recent op-ed by former Alabama Representative Artur Davis backing voter ID laws.

Read the story:

The investigation revealed that Johnson and her husband, Ernest Sinclair Johnson, Jr., approached voters and obtained their agreement to vote, after which the voters were asked to sign an “Absentee Ballot Request Form.” Without the voters’ knowledge or consent, an alternate address was handwritten on the form, causing the ballots to be mailed to a third party rather than directly to the registered voters. In 2010, Florida law required ballots to be sent to a voter’s registered address unless the voter was absent from the county, hospitalized, or temporarily unable to occupy their residence. The Johnsons retrieved the ballots from the third party locations, brought the ballots to the voter, waited for the person to vote, and then returned the ballots to the Supervisor of Elections. In some instances, the voters were only presented with the absentee ballot signature envelope to sign and never received the actual ballot to cast their vote.

Among the people arrested was the Madison County Supervisor of Elections, who appears to have known about all of this. The list of arrests is actually pretty striking:

• Abra “Tina” Hill Johnson, 43, was charged with 10 counts of fraud in connection with casting a vote, and two counts of absentee ballots and voting violations.
• Her husband Ernest Sinclair Johnson, Jr., 45, was charged with 11 counts of fraud in connection with casting votes, one count of corruptly influencing voting, and one count of perjury by false written declaration.
• Jada Woods Williams, 34, Madison County Supervisor of Elections, was charged with 17 counts of neglect of duty and corrupt practices for allowing the distribution of these absentee ballots, contrary to Florida state statute.
• Judy Ann Crumitie, 51, charged with four counts of fraud in connection with casting a vote, and one count of providing a false report to law enforcement authorities.
• Laverne V. Haynes, 57, charged with two counts of fraud in connection with casting a vote, two counts of perjury by false written declaration, and one count of providing a false report to law enforcement authorities.
• Ora Bell Rivers, 41, charged with seven counts of fraud in connection with casting a vote, three counts of perjury by false written declaration, and one count of providing a false report to law enforcement authorities.
• Raven Simona Williams, 20, charged with two counts of fraud in connection with casting a vote, two counts of perjury by false written declaration, and one count of providing a false report to law enforcement authorities
• Shalonda Michaelle Brinson, 36, charged with nine counts of fraud in connection with casting a vote, and one count of provided a false report to law enforcement authorities.

Mike Marshall, who is running GOTV for the re-election of the Democratic mayor of Jeffersonville, right across the river from Louisville, just got indicted on 65 counts of absentee ballot fraud, along with his son and another guy. Now it wasn’t on behalf of the Democratic mayor. Mr. Marshall was responsible for a huge chunk of campaign expenditures:

Marshall was one of several people that Galligan personally thanked during his victory speech on primary night in May. According to the latest campaign finance reports, filed Friday, Galligan’s campaign paid Marshall’s business, North Vernon-based At Your Service Co., more than $52,710.23 through the year  — almost a third of the campaign’s total expenditures.

“He was in charge of getting out the vote,” Galligan said. When asked to elaborate on what those duties entailed, he referred questions to campaign manager Phil McCauley.

Get out the vote, eh? Well, it turned out that they knew about one allegation of the vote being gotten out improperly.

Republicans in Jennings County challenged several absentee ballots that were submitted in 2010, according to Negangard. Democrats subsequently ran an advertisement in the North Vernon Plain Dealer accusing the Republicans of trying to deny those absentee voters their constitutional rights. One of those voters identified in the ad was a Marine named Ben Cook, who later signed a sworn affidavit stating he’d never cast a ballot. That initiated the larger investigation.

It looked like the Dems improperly voted a Marine, depriving him of his rights. And once they investigated, they found enough material to indict on another 64 charges. Sounds more like a modus operandi than an isolated incident.

H/T Rick Hasen

Here’s what happened. Senators Bob Menendez and Chuck Schumer, who represent rich Democrats in New Jersey and New York respectively, offered an amendment to raise the amount of a mortgage that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will backstop. The level that was backstopped by Fannie and Freddie was lowered to $620k, but they raised it again to $729k. So the government will offer a loan guarantee so that people can buy a $720k house. From Bloomberg:

The U.S. Senate adopted a measure that would raise the maximum size of a home loan backed by mortgage companies Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration to $729,750.

Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, offered the increase as an amendment to a spending bill today. The measure was approved less than a month after the limit on so-called conforming loans was automatically reduced to $625,500.

Now in the lefty narrative is that Republicans vote themselves more power and more money, but that’s not what happened here. There were 31 votes against this upper-middle class subsidy. All Republicans. Every Democrat voted for more federal money for rich people.

Image via Wikipedia

So the left would have you believe that the voter fraud debate is really about racist Republicans trying to prevent African-Americans and other minorities from voting. The New York Times ran this argument earlier this month, conveniently ignoring that the right-wing bastion Rhode Island passed a voter ID sponsored by leading African-Americans and Latinos, all Democrats.

Well, today we are greeted by an op-ed by former Congressman Artur Davis, who was one of the shining lights of African-American Southern Democrats. Davis says that he made a mistake in opposing voter ID and that the real thing that needs immediate action is “manufactured” ballots in Alabama’s Black Belt, which refers to the color of the dirt.

Let’s check out Davis’s own words, which are pretty striking:

I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws — I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one — and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office.

When I was a congressman, I took the path of least resistance on this subject for an African American politician. Without any evidence to back it up, I lapsed into the rhetoric of various partisans and activists who contend that requiring photo identification to vote is a suppression tactic aimed at thwarting black voter participation.

The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.

Now, it is worth pointing out the record that we are talking about here. He is addressing a real problem. After all, Alabama has an extraordinary record of convictions for election fraud. Let’s give some examples:

• Heritage noted in 2008 a long record of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference working hard to stop investigations of election fraud that resulted in the convictions of 11 people involved in long-term vote “manufacturing.”
• In 2010, a Pike County Commissioner plead guilty to absentee voter fraud. She knowingly submitted improperly witnessed and/or fabricated ballots in an election she won by 6 votes. The election was eventually overturned by a judge.
• In 2009, two women plead guilty to absentee ballot fraud. In grand jury testimony related to an event in 2004, they testified that they witnessed a bunch of absentee ballots in room, misspelling the names of the people that they were voting for.
• In 2010, the former Hale County Court Clerk plead guilty to a number of charges relating to the 2004 and 2005 elections. The indictment found that she was committing fraud for a number of candidates including her brother and her husband.
• In 2008, even NPR had a report about the problems in Alabama.

It turns out that someone appears to have forged the signature of former Democratic Governor Joe Kernan on the petition to get Barack Obama on the ballot:

Former Gov. Joe Kernan says a signature on a petition to place Barack Obama‘s name on Indiana’s 2008 primary ballot isn’t his, putting him among dozens of dubious signatures found in a newspaper’s investigation.

While that is the appealing headline that gets lots of attention, the more nefarious story is that it happened on a more systematic basis:

The Tribune first reported Sunday that it and the Howey Politics Indiana newsletter had found pages from Clinton and Obama petitions with names and signatures that appear to have been copied by hand from a petition for 2008 Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jim Schellinger. The petitions were filed with the Indiana Election Division after the St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office verified individuals’ information on the documents.

Copying pages and pages of names demonstrates a certain level of disregard that is a little hard to imagine. Every time I have seen a campaign doing ballot access, there is relatively continuous oversight as campaigns try to figure out whether they need to spend more money for paid collectors, where they need to engage more volunteers, etc. It is hard for me to imagine how a campaign could be so disengaged from the details that something like this would happen. Especially to two campaigns (and the only ones on the ballot, as I recall). This is important stuff. You don’t just let the local guys do it without oversight.

Especially when the local guys are Chicago and northern Indiana, where there appears to be a pattern of  systemic fraud.  I noted some precinct results from Chicago that got over 100% turnout in previous elections. Both the Alderman and his dad went to prison for misusing their office for personal gain. Chicago is notorious for ongoing problems. And Indiana had one of the most remarkable cases of election fraud in the 2003 East Chicago Democratic mayoral primary in which 32 people plead guilty to varieties of election fraud.

Of course the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities. They insist that laws requiring government identification cards to vote are only to protect the sanctity of the ballot from unscrupulous voters.

When I read this piece, I thought I might have missed a discussion of Rhode Island, which might be called an inconvenient truth for the Democratic conspiracy theorists. Let me remind you what happened in Rhode Island. As the Providence Journal noted when the bill passed:

This year, voter-ID legislation was backed by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, including two prominent black lawmakers: House Speaker Gordon D. Fox and Sen. Harold M. Metts. Sen. Juan M. Pichardo, the first Latino elected to a Rhode Island Senate seat and the first Dominican-American elected to a state senate seat in the country, also supported it. Fox, Metts and Pichardo are Providence Democrats.

So the Democrat, African-American Speaker of the Rhode Island House, the leading African-American state Senator, and the first Dominican elected state Senator in the country all supported the bill. They are all Democrats.

I wonder what the New York Times explanation of why these Democrats and minority leaders supported a voter ID bill. And I wonder why the Grey Lady didn’t mention this dreaded provision passing in a deep, deep blue state like Rhode Island… Maybe it is just an inconvenient truth?

Senate Democrats decided to go home after the debt ceiling bill was passed. They ignored the FAA situation completely. A Reid staffer told the Washington Post:

But the administration’s effort faltered by late afternoon, with Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson saying that the Senate would not allow House Republicans “to jam through a policy” in a stop-gap funding extension bill.

Just a couple of hours ago, that’s precisely what happened. The Senate passed the House bill, and after a couple of weeks, construction restarts and the FAA goes back to work. So the record is clear: Harry Reid made a decision to leave 75k+ workers stranded.

But once attention shifted from the debt ceiling to the alleged “pivot” to jobs, people realized what Harry Reid’s decision meant. It meant that 75k people would be effectively unemployed. That might show up in the early September job number (recall that Congress was coming back September 7th). That’s a pretty lousy way to start a jobs pivot, eh?

So the White House freaked out. The Department of Transportation blamed Congress. The DNC claimed that Republicans weren’t compromising. But the blood was on their hands. Harry Reid left them hanging.

And this morning he ate crow and decided to let people work over his vanity. Thanks Harry. The American people know what you mean when you care about jobs… You mean fake attacks on Republicans.

Now the (Democratic) City Clerk has resigned and plead guilty to a felony as part of the investigation. He is also singing. The Clerk, William McInerney is a Democratic Committeeman, and the police seem to have the goods on him going back to at least 2007, suggesting that this may be a way of life in Troy, NY.

The plea offer made to McInerney, a Democrat, is based, in part, on information compiled by State Police showing McInerney may have helped forge absentee ballots in previous campaigns dating to at least 2007.

McInerney, 47, is a former state Assembly worker who has been a Democratic committeeman in Troy for years. He was appointed to the clerk’s position by the City Council when Democrats took control of the Troy council in January 2008.

Just to emphasize the point: this guy was appointed by the Democrats to run elections in 2008. The cops have him for election fraud back to 2007. So the Democrats appointed someone who knew how to steal elections to run elections.

In January, I noted that there may be something systematic about this, as one of the indicted Democratic officials is also the son of a Democratic official who was convicted of voter fraud. From the Times Union:

For the McDonoughs, this is the second time in 20 years that a family member has been indicted. McDonough’s father, the late Rensselaer County Democratic Party Chairman Edward F. McDonough Jr., was indicted by a federal grand jury, convicted and sentenced to federal prison in 1994 for a municipal insurance kickback scheme that brought him $637,000.

It looks like this McDonough fellow will be a prime target of McInerney’s cooperation:

State Police, in court documents, have said they have evidence that McDonough delivered a bundle of forged WFP absentee ballots to McInerney on the eve of the 2009 primary election.

I would note that absentee voter fraud seems to be the easiest and most common form of voter fraud in our country these days. Today, Taegen Goddard, a Democratic operative, quoted from a book by former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Tom Glaze entitled Waiting for the Cemetary Vote:

“If you want to steal an election, the absentee box is the place to begin, and if you want to calculate the likelihood of fraud in a county, first figure the percentage of its total vote that is cast in absentia.”

Therefore, I submit some questions to his campaign and I urge the press to ask them:

1. If you were to run for and be elected Governor of Massachusetts would your first act be a repeal of Romneycare?
2. Which parts of Romneycare do you still like?
3. For which states do you think Romneycare would be a good model? What is different about those states?
4. When did you change your mind and begin opposing federal individual mandates, considering that you like mandates and believe they work?
5. Why did you change your mind on a federal mandate?
6. Why did you sign a bill that covers abortions?
7. Why did you sign a bill that would explode government costs without doing a single thing to offset them?
8. Why did you completely eliminate competition in the health care marketplace by limiting the number of insurance plans?
9. Why did you think that government was best positioned to negotiate rates with insurance companies instead of letting the market work?
10. What would you say to small business owners who now have 6 more pages of rules and regulations on their tax forms thanks to Romneycare?
11. Do you still think that Romneycare is a model for the nation?
12. When did you change your mind about any of the above questions? Was it about the same time that it became politically convenient for you to do so?

There are several lessons for American conservatives.

The first is something that I have been banging away at for a while. The left has lost the political debate throughout the industrial world. Austerity has won in Europe. Economic stability has won in Canada. In this election, the NDP called for raising the corporate tax rate to 19% from 15%, while the “centrist” Liberals only wanted to raise it to 18%. (recall that it is 35% in the US) The gains on the left in this election were about consolidating the vote of the left into more radical positions. The gains on the right were about winning an ideological and polarizing argument in the eyes of mainstream voters. Once again, in another industrial country, in a political battle of ideas, the right won decisively.

Second, polarization and ideological clarity can be a good thing, and we should welcome it. As it became clear that the NDP was going to be the Opposition party in Canada, things became simpler for the Conservatives, and their numbers started to grow. Prime Minister Stephen Harper could argue that there was a clear ideological choice. The NDP wanted to raise taxes and increase spending. And the Conservatives wanted smaller government and restraint. The voters of Canada went with smaller government and restraint. People on the right of the Liberal party fled to Conservatives fled to stop the possibility of a left-wing government.

Third, and this will be harder for many American conservatives: immigrants. The conservatives made an unprecedented effort to reach out to “ethnic” voters. Go watch the ads. Each one ends with “finally vote your values.” And they worked. The Conservatives won 60% of the Chinese vote. They won 7 of the 10 targeted “ethnic” ridings. This message of “finally vote your values” was a critical message in getting Indo-Canadian voters, Chinese voters, Italian voters, etc. It was also an important message for driving turnout among more religious voters in places like rural Ontario, where my family is from. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is getting a tremendous amount of credit for this success as a critical component to the overall victory.

At this point, the key question will be how and when the Bloc and the Liberals disappear and how the Conservatives will benefit from that. One of the things that Harper campaigned on was ending public funding for elections. It is likely that both the Liberal Party and the Bloc disappear into bankruptcy: political, ideological, and, indeed, financial. In this election, the Conservatives got approximately 40% of the vote, the NDP got approximately 30%, the Liberals 20%, with minor parties getting the rest. Strategically, Conservatives have four years to turn that 40% to 50% by a variety of mechanisms.

Harper himself is acutely aware of that. Among his election night statements, was one that jumped out at me, “”And we accept that we have a lot more work to do to gain the true confidence of Quebecers. And we’re dedicated to doing that.” This is a plodding but ultimately effective strategy to building a national coalition on ideological terms.

Here, Canadians may be learning a lesson from the United States. On April 18th, the Sun News Network launched. Sun News Network claims to be a populist, small-c conservative media outlet, owned by the Quebec-based media company Quebecor which has a populist separatist/nationalist stance in Quebec. It has been compared to Fox, the New York Post, etc. Sun News can give some cultural coherence to Canadian little-c conservatism, helping to overcome significant regional and ethnic differences. This can help bring Conservatives, so-called Blue Liberals (Liberals on the right end of their party), and Quebec nationalists into a more coherent cultural and narrative alignment. We should never forget that culture, narratives, and ideology are strongly related.

I urge American conservatives to watch Canada over the next four years. Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada have much to teach us about building conservative majorities and consensus in a country that seems and sees itself as much more progressive than it really is.