Independent voters can be decisive in elections

They’re pretty unpredictable, not ‘shadow partisans’

Thom Reilly, Arizona State University

Pennsylvania’s independent voters helped elect
Democrat John Fetterman, seen here, over the GOP
contender for the U.S. Senate seat, Mehmet Oz.
 Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

In the end there was no red wave. And there was no blue wave.

There was an independent wave.

Pollsters and pundits were counting on independent voters in the 2022 midterm elections to swing to the Republicans as they did in 2014 when Barack Obama was president. That’s when independent turnout in the midterms added up to 29% of all voters, and the GOP won an additional 13 seats in Congress.

Expectations for the 2022 midterm elections also were based on a similar pattern in the 2018 midterms, when Donald Trump was president. Independents then represented 30% of the voters, and they broke for Democrats 54% to 42%.

Almost the mirror image. But mirrors don’t always reflect reality.

Ongoing surveys by the Gallup organization show that self-identified independents have averaged 42% of the U.S. public over the past year. Their influence was felt in the 2022 midterms.

Nationally, these nonaligned voters were 31% of voters in the 2022 midterm. Despite the fact that the sitting president was a Democrat, they broke for Democrats by 2 percentage points, according to Edison Research Survey. 

They voted for Democrats by far bigger margins in key states with competitive Senate races – by 20 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 11 percentage points in Georgia and 16 percentage points in Arizona, where independents were fully 40% of those who voted.

Independent voters in the 2022 midterms made a decisive difference in close elections.

This came as a surprise to many pollsters and pundits who had predicted that independents would break for the GOP. They chalked up the pro-Democratic leanings of these unaligned voters to independents’ distrust of Republicans’ eclipsing their anxiety and distrust about inflation and the economy.

Maybe so. But as someone who studies independent voters in the U.S., I believe pollsters got it wrong because so little is known about the voting patterns of independent voters.

The continuing flight of millions of voters from the Republican and Democratic parties is reshaping the nation’s political landscape in ways no one can control or even predict. It threatens the very basis on which campaigns and elections have been analyzed.

This is a challenge to how America has for generations thought about politics: that it’s a two-party game and people vote for the party they’re loyal to. With growing numbers of independent voters, that’s changing.

Looking into the future

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

 

US could learn how to improve election protection from other nations

Trump acquittal is an open invitation to foreign hacking of the 2020 election
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call Scott Shackelford, Indiana University

Even though Trump has called Russiagate a hoax, 16
Russian nationals have been indicted for hacking the
2016 election in Trump's favor. They are likely to do it
again in this year's polling.

Hacking into voting machines remains far too easy.

It is too soon to say for sure what role cybersecurity played in the 2020 Iowa caucuses, but the problems, which are still unfolding and being investigated, show how easily systemic failures can lead to delays and undermine trust in democratic processes. 

That’s particularly true when new technology – in this case, a reporting app – is introduced, even if there’s no targeted attack on the system.

The vulnerabilities are not just theoretical. They have been exploited around the world, such as in South Africa, Ukraine, Bulgaria and the Philippines. Successful attacks don’t need the resources and expertise of national governments – even kids have managed it.

Congress and election officials around the U.S. are struggling to figure out what to do to protect the integrity of Americans’ votes in 2020 and beyond. The Iowa caucuses are run by political parties, not state officials, but many of the concepts and processes are comparable. 

A look at similar problems – and some attempts at solutions – around the world offers some ideas that U.S. officials could use to ensure everyone’s vote is recorded and counted accurately, and that any necessary audits and recounts will confirm that election results are correct.

As a scholar researching cybersecurity and internet governance for more than 10 years, I have come to the conclusion that only by working together across sectors, industries and nations can the people of the world make their democracies harder to hack and achieve some measure of what I and others call cyber peace.

Colin’s killer goes back to jail

Killer of popular Charlestown man violates probation

By Will Collette

The redlight camera installed at the installation where Laura Reale
committed her crime.

If you’ve watched local TV news in the past few daysyou may have caught the story about Laura Reale, the convicted killer of Colin Foote, a popular local man who was riding his motorcycle through the intersection at Route One and West Beach Road on May 16, 2010. 

She blew her probation and has been sent back to jail (click here for the ProJo’s coverage).

On that day in 2010, Reale was loaded and blew the red light, hitting and killing Colin in full view of his mother and sister who were trailing behind in their car. According to his mother, it took Colin a long and painful hour to die.

It turns out Reale was a habitual traffic offender who cleverly learned how to stay on the road by gaming the system to avoid losing her license, driving either drunk or high, endangering us all…and killing Colin.

As a result of that tragedy, then state Rep. Donna Walsh spearheaded the passage of “Colin’s Law” to close off some of the loopholes Reale and other habitual offenders had used to evade losing their licenses despite terrible driving records.

Reale received a 10-year sentence with 8 to serve plus two years’ probation and a 5-year license suspension. She ended up only serving 5 years. 

At some point after her release from prison, Reale once again started using drugs – opioids, benzodiazepines and marijuana. According to her lawyer, she is currently on methadone.

Reale has also been charged with buying “urine screens” – clean, dope-free urine samples so she could pass drug tests required as part of her probation.

Kando saves his butt

Why Can’t We Fire This Guy?
By Beth Comery, in the Providence Daily Dose

EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert Kando refused to consider Rep. Donna Walsh’s complaint that her opponent, now Rep. Blake “Flip” doesn’t actually live in the 36th House District. Kando told her that the way he interpreted the law, challenges to a candidate’s legal status must be filed within 24 hours of that candidate’s filing for public office. Kando admitted that this condition was virtually impossible to meet. – W Collette

Robert Kando, the $143,131 executive director of the Board of Elections, must have compromising photographs of everybody — how else to explain this man’s continued survival. Due to be terminated today, the executive director was instead given a reprieve and ordered to take . . . management classes! Kando has been the executive director for ten years, if he hasn’t got management figured out by now, it’s not going to happen. 

Kando’s illustrious employment history with the state goes as far back as 1987 when he was fired as deputy clerk of the District Court, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court who cited him for “flagrant insubordination and other alleged failings.”

But somehow, by 2005 he was the executive director at the Board of Elections where his unique skill set has been creating chaos and strife ever since. The January 11th ProJo article describes the non-stop turmoil of the last year; Nothing constructive could possibly be happening over there.

Why people vote against their own interests

Who Turned My Blue State Red?
by Alec MacGillis for ProPublica
This story was co-published with The New York Times' Sunday Review.

It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.

In his successful bid for the Senate in 2010, the libertarian Rand Paul railed against "intergenerational welfare" and said that "the culture of dependency on government destroys people's spirits," yet racked up winning margins in eastern Kentucky, a former Democratic stronghold that is heavily dependent on public benefits. 

Last year, Paul R. LePage, the fiercely anti-welfare Republican governor of Maine, was re-elected despite a highly erratic first term — with strong support in struggling towns where many rely on public assistance. And earlier this month, Kentucky elected as governor a conservative Republican who had vowed to largely undo the Medicaid expansion that had given the state the country's largest decrease in the uninsured under Obamacare, with roughly one in 10 residents gaining coverage.

It's enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them to ever narrower redoubts of blue. The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.

But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that's taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party's growing conundrum with working-class white voters. 

And it also keeps us from fully grasping what's going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.

Rep. Justin Price: Is he the dumbest member of the RI House or the most radical? Or both?

Good thing he’s also ineffective

By Will Collette

In November 2014, voters in our area turned out three smart, effective state legislators and elected in their place the Three Stooges of RI’s Radical Right. Out went Rep. Donna Walsh, Sen. Cathie Cool Rumsey and Rep. Larry Valencia. In came Blake “Flip” Filippi, Elaine Morgan and Justin Price.

Today we’ll look at what voters in Richmond, Hopkinton and Exeter have gotten by swapping out Rep. Larry Valencia (D) for Tea Party/militia Republican Justin Price. We’ll look at what legislation he brought to the RI House of Representatives and co-sponsored as the scheduled June 30 close of the session looms near.

Prior to his election, Price’s only experience in politics was to run as a GOP Convention delegate for Ron Paul in the 2014 Republican primary.

He came in dead last in a field of six, not that it mattered since Ron Paul did not win any Rhode Island convention delegates anyway.

Price’s lack of experience and Ron Paulish view of the world shows in the “work” he has done in his first year in the RI House of Representatives. While his name appears on 41 bills, only six of them are his.

As the General Assembly closing draws near, how is Flip Filippi doing?

He made a lot of promises….can he keep them?

By Will Collette

Our media-hound[1] state Representative Blake “Flip” Filippi (Independent-Republican[2]-Block Island-Lincoln-Providence[3]) is great at getting himself on camera (usually in group shots when he caucuses with the House Republicans) and great at getting quoted in GoLocalProv. He’s also great at sponsoring and co-sponsoring bills – 78 so far.

He got off to a slow start, breaking his promise to hit the ground running and introduce a bunch of bills related to his campaign promises in his first week. That didn’t happen. However, since then, Flipper has sponsored or co-sponsored more bills than nearly any member of the House. Not that it matters much, as you’ll see as you read on.

Of those 78 bills, he was the prime sponsor for 27 and a co-sponsor to the other 51. However, only three have passed, and all of them are “non-substantive.” For example, one of the three bills passed was H-5913 memorializing Henry Walsh upon his death, something Henry would have hated since he couldn’t stand Filippi. This resolution only needed to be read before the House approved it; the Senate did not need to act. Read below for the other two that have passed.

During his successful campaign against Rep. Donna Walsh, whose effectiveness won wide praise, Filippi promised to resolve the woes of the victims of Copar Quarry, cut taxes for Social Security recipients, ensure that Rhode Island will never repeat the 38 Studio fiasco, protect Charlestown from evil developers and the even more evil federal and state governments, and put a chicken in every pot.

The first bill with his name on it (as fourth co-sponsor) was actually a RI Builders Association bill (House Bill No. 5044), one that the CCA Party-controlled Charlestown Town Council officially opposed with a resolution at its April meeting.

His first original bill was at the request of the CCA Party, House Bill No. 5321, which grants Charlestown and only Charlestown a moratorium from having to deal with comprehensive permits while it is working on a new comprehensive plan. As far as I know, no other town has asked for this, even though they all are in the process of writing new comprehensive plans.

I have cut-and-pasted the entire directory of Filippi's bills from the General Assembly bill tracker database so you can see for yourself exactly how Flip is doing. Which is to say, not so well.

13 Ways Republicans Have Declared War On Average Americans

So Why Do People Vote For Them?

By Nancy Feldman

If nine and out ten polls keep telling Congressional Republicans what their constituents want regarding the economy, it’s amazing that they not only do the complete opposite, but continue getting reelected.

One day someone is going to have to explain to me why certain people continue to vote the party line while the Republicans continue to raises taxes on already struggling lower wage earners, while they also propose in their nonsensical ridiculous budget, that is doomed to fail should it ever get passed, one that cuts taxes for the top 1.5 percent.

If gutting taxes for the super wealthy, screwing around with entitlement programs, forgetting about our ailing infrastructure, all but demanding a war, while doing nothing to help our economy is the aim of Republicans – then congratulations. The Republican proposed budget does all that and much more, all damaging to 99 percent of American Citizens.

Not saying anything would be a good start

The Republican Strategy to Win the Racist Vote without Appearing Racist

By Samuel Warde

In 1981, the legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater, after a decade as South Carolina’s most effective Republican operative, was working in Ronald Reagan’s White House when he was interviewed by Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University.

In this audio, made public for the first time ever in 2012, Atwater lays out how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves.

James Carter IV, the same researcher responsible for revealing Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks dug up the entire forty-two minute interview detailing the Republican strategy for winning the vote of racists without appearing to be racist themselves.

Addresses of convenience

There’s a persistent belief that you can pick and choose where you vote or run for office

By Will Collette

Flip isn't the only one who is
flexible about where he lives

A similar version of this article appeared in Rhode Island’s Future (click here)

One of the nice things about owning several properties is that when it comes to politics, you have lots of choices about where you can say you live. I’m not talking about the formal definition of legal residence, but “addresses of convenience.”

Having an address of convenience gives you the choice of where to vote or where to run for office. You can shop around to find the most advantageous choice. Not necessarily a legal choice, but one that is rarely ever challenged.

Indeed, all along the Rhode Island coast, we see towns where the total number of registered voters exceeds the total number of adults over the age of 18. As of last election day, Charlestown had 6,401 registered voters even though the 2010 Census listed only 6,278 adults over 18[1] – and in the years following the Census, Charlestown lost population.

We have lots of examples among candidates too, such as Republican Kernan “Kerry” King who ran against Gina Raimondo for General Treasurer in 2010 even though King[2] was actually a legal resident of Florida and was even collecting a $50,000 a year homestead property tax exemption on his Sarasota County home. He was claiming his Saunderstown house as his legal residence on his campaign declaration.

In my state Representative District (36), we now have a carpetbagger state Representative, a Tea Party Libertarian named Blake Filippi. 

Filippi claims he lives in his mother’s house on Block Island even though he has listed his mother’s house in Lincoln as his legal address on dozens of legal documents including his Massachusetts lawyer’s license. 

Filippi told Bob Plain, the editor of Rhode Island’s Future, that he is currently living in a Providence apartment.

However, Filippi fits right into the Block Island electoral landscape. The island has almost twice as many people registered to vote as the number of adults over 18 listed by the census. When the island took its annual resident head-count on February 2, the tally was 930. The Providence Journal reported on November 3 that Block Island has the highest percentage of voters who list an out-of-state mailing address. If they included people like Flip who live in another part of the state, that percentage would be a lot higher.

Addresses of convenience. It’s nice to be able to pick and choose. It’s not just Republicans and Libertarians that do it; Democrats also do it.

Don’t need no more

New Congress Anti-Environment Attack Starts With ‘No More National Parks’ Bill

By Mindy Fischer

The new Republican Congress is off to a quick start this year and already working hard to push their neo-Con agenda. And one of their first orders of business is to go on offense with their anti-environment attack. 

As they work like puppets to protect their fossil-fuel backers, they have made it their mission to halt investments in renewable energy, destroy protections for clean air and water, and push for things like fracking and the Keystone Pipeline. But the real root of their agenda, of course, is to stop and humiliate President Obama.

They have wasted no time in pushing their anti-environment agenda, while at the same time continuing to work for their ultimate goal of usurping power from President Obama.

Republican Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) introduced a new bill intended to strip Obama (and any future President) of all authority to designate things like national parks and monuments. Apparently they really don’t care that American Presidents have been protecting land and monuments for nearly 100 years. They just know that they must end this practice now because….Obama.

The coming challenges to choice

7 Reproductive Rights Issues to Watch in 2015

by Nina Martin, ProPublica

To say abortion opponents are feeling fired up in 2015 would be a massive understatement.

In their first week back at work, congressional Republicans introduced a sweeping prohibition on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy (H.R. 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act), as well as bills that would ban sex-selective abortions, target funding for groups like Planned Parenthood, require abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges, and let doctors and nurses opt out of providing abortion care, even in emergencies.

In the states, where the 2014 elections gave Republicans control of two-thirds of state legislative chambers, incoming lawmakers also have supersized their abortion agendas.

But abortion is just one issue on the minds of activists focused on reproductive rights. There's also birth control, conscience clauses and personhood. Here are seven key trends and themes to watch for this year.

Town of Hopkinton tries to tries to justify cover-up

Did Morgan abuse impersonate a police officer? Is the town covering up?

By Will Collette

Don't mess with Morgan!

On January 15, I reported on my efforts to get to the bottom of complaints that now state Senator Elaine Morgan (R), who represents District 34 that includes the northern half of Charlestown, abused her office while she was Hopkinton’s elected Town Sergeant.

Morgan was accused in a Facebook posting on the WJAR page of using her uniform as Town Sergeant to act as if she was a police officer, which she is not, and interfere in a complicated personal matter. I heard about this Facebook posting too late before the election to chase it down, but after Morgan won an upset victory over Sen. Cathie Cool Rumsey, I went after the records since they now reflect on our new state Senator.

I filed a request under the state open records law with Hopkinton and was quickly turned down by the Town Clerk and then was again quickly turned down on appeal to the Town Manager. So I took the next step by filing a formal complaint with Attorney General Peter Kilmartin’s Office. I describe my appeal argument in my January 15 article and closed by saying I was waiting for the town to file a response.

I received that response from Town Solicitor Patricia Buckley on January 17. Read the full response by clicking here. In a nutshell, Buckley argues that Senator Morgan has privacy rights that outweigh the public’s right to know about her conduct as an elected official and whether she broke the law (or whether the town did nothing about those complaints).

Wow.

Record Number Of Americans Identify As Independent

But More Lean Democrat

By Ryan Denson

It appears Americans really have had it with the two-party system in Washington. 

While the media might have you think America is more two-sided polarized than ever, they gloss over the fact that independent voters are growing, and they are growing fast. Can anyone blame them?

According to Gallup Polling, a record 43% of Americans consider themselves political independents, with the reluctance of the two party system growing fast:

Obama Tips His Hat to FDR

He has nothing to fear.

By Emily Schwartz Greco

Whatever happens over the next two years, you can bet that 22^ndcentury school children will know more about President Barack Obama than kids learn today about, say, Calvin Coolidge. He made history just by being the first non-white man to occupy the White House.

What else will tomorrow’s kids learn about Obama?

Sure, the Affordable Care Act has delivered health coverage to millions of Americans who needed it, shrinking the uninsured rate to less than 13 percent. Yet that law didn’t heal enough of what ails the nation’s health care system. Compared with Social Security, one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s greatest achievements, it’s no big deal.

The ACA’s shortcomings are symptomatic of the first six years of Obama’s presidency. He doled out one concession after another to ungrateful Republican lawmakers.

Then the drubbing Democrats took in November’s midterm elections knocked some sense into him. Or he realized that he had nothing to lose. Or maybe he traveled in a time machine.

Did state Senator Elaine Morgan abuse her public office?

Hopkinton refuses to release documents on charges that Morgan impersonated a police officer

By Will Collette

Morgan at her dry-cleaning store.

On October 30, just days before the November 4 general election, I received an e-mail with a copy of a posting that had been made to WJAR Channel 10’s Facebook page. 

The posting included a screenshot of a redacted Hopkinton Police report on a complaint against then Hopkinton Town Sergeant and candidate for state Senate, District 34 Elaine Morgan (R) that she had used her position to impersonate a police officer.

Senate District 34 includes most of Charlestown north of Route One, as well as Hopkinton, Richmond, Exeter and a piece of West Greenwich.

The person who posted this, “Boscoe Roads” (a name that appears to be fake), also claimed that “numerous” other complaints had been filed against Morgan with the Hopkinton Town Manager and the Hopkinton Police.

Here is that Facebook posting:

Attention: Faux News viewers

It’s True, Cable News Basically Brainwashes You, And It’s Totally Legal

By S. Longfellow

It has long been debated whether or not the news you are watching is informing us or brainwashing us. Are we watching it because we agree with the opinion bias, or is the opinion bias of specific cable news shaping our own thought process?

Well, Gregory J. Martin of Emory University and Ali Yurukoglu of Stanford University through the National Bureau of Economic Research have just issued a Working Paper which looks at that very topic.

Congressional Republicans begin their effort to roll back Social Security

Republicans Declare War Against Social Security On First Day Of New Congress

By Stephen D Foster Jr

Republicans started working immediately against the best interests of the American people by declaring war on Social Security on the very first day of the 114th Congress.

Soon after the GOP officially took full control of the legislative branch on Tuesday, Republicans approved a new rule that experts say will allow conservatives to use Social Security as a hostage in future budget battles.

According to Talking Points Memo:

“The largely overlooked change puts a new restriction on the routine transfer of tax revenues between the traditional Social Security retirement trust fund and the Social Security disability program. The transfers, known as reallocation, had historically been routine…”

In short, Republicans are hoping to strangle the Social Security Disability Insurance program to death as part of a concerted effort to hurt Social Security while forcing Democrats to agree to cut benefits.

Blake Filippi’s first week at the State House

See how well he kept his campaign pledges

By Will Collette

When Blake Filippi ran against Rep. Donna Walsh, he made a lot of promises to inveigle folks like the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party), the victims of the Copar Quarry, the elderly and others to support him.

He promised to introduce bills* to stop state interference with local land use, repeal state income tax on Social Security, regulate quarries and mines and exempt consumers from having to pay state sales tax on National Grid’s new rate hike as soon as his feet hit the State House marble floors.

He was sworn in last Monday and his report card for his first week in office bears little resemblance to his campaign pledges.

According to the General Assembly database as of Saturday, January 10, he sponsored no new legislation, even though he told the Block Island Times just last week that he entered the legislature ready to do just that.

He was, however, listed as a co-sponsor on five bills introduced by other legislators. 

The first bill he co-sponsored, HB 5044, is a developers’ bill. According to the official caption for this bill, HB 5044 “Creates an exemption from taxation for certain residential property developments which have not been completed or, not been sold and occupied.”

During the campaign, Flipper won the CCA Party’s covert but substantial support by promising to protect local government from efforts by the state to infringe on local land use policies. This very first bill does the opposite - it directs towns to change their taxing policy to benefit builders and developers who perhaps have over-built and can’t sell the units they have built.

This will provide additional incentives for developers to come into places like Charlestown and throw up buildings before the market need is there because it will reduce the holding cost for unsold buildings.

Whether this is fair or not, I’ll leave to the CCA Party to explain…after they finish throwing up after realizing what a huge mistake they made in backing this guy against Donna (who in a million years would never sponsor or co-sponsor a bill like this). 

Let me offer these words of condolence to the CCA Party – Suckers! You just got Flipped!