petitions

There are two stories currently appearing on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government talking about the Virginia GOP Primary fiasco. One of the stories, by Charles C. Johnson, gives this explanation to the cause of the problem that lead to the rule change:

Worse yet, Virginia’s House of Delegates complicated matters further when voters may not know which congressional district they live in thanks to an ongoing state-wide fight over redistricting. Virginia Republicans submitted a map in April 2011, but Virginia Democrats seemed insistent on pushing the matter to January 2012 and then to federal court if they don’t enough black–and therefore Democratic–congressional districts. They would sue the state under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and toss the matter of redistricting over to the federal courts.

So it's those damn Democrats fault? Well not if you read what Publius writes:

Wisconsin State Journal reports:

State election officials have cleared the way for three more GOP state senators to face recall elections, meaning six senators will almost certainly have to defend their seats.

Republicans had challenged recall petitions against Sens. Robert Cowles, Alberta Darling and Sheila Harsdorf. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board tossed out most of the challenges.

This brings the total number of Republicans facing recall in the cheese state to six. I bet they are glad they stuck by Scott Walker and his radical, right-wing agenda.

I just got back from voting and we suffered from a "glitch". As I was voting, my ballot started off with governor and then worked down through the list. After voting for all the politicians, up next were the issues. My first issue was State issue 1, an issue dealing with Ohio's Worker Compensation. I was expecting to see this, but knew my vote didn't count on it:

In most elections, ''State Issue 1'' is something highly significant and its outcome closely watched. However, in Ohio today, Issue 1 doesn't count, literally.

That's because the issue, a referendum on changes in Ohio's Workers Compensation law, died in a legal challenge that determined the measure lacked sufficient valid signatures on petitions to put it before the voters. But that ruling didn't come until it was too late to remove Issue 1 from the ballot, both absentee and electronic.

So today, when you go into the voting booth, you will see Issue 1 on your ballot, even though it isn't a valid ballot issue anymore.

So after my voting experience went smoothly, the person I went down with had her turn to cast her ballot. She had the same ballot, the same ballot (iso) card, and the same machine, but her ballot did not appear the same. Instead her ballot started out with a blank blue screen and then went onto the candidates and the state issues, but issue 1 was not on her ballot. She called the poll worker over who said that "this has been happening on some machines". Well our polling place only has three machines and she was on the same machine as I just got done voting on, and this problem did not happen for me.

After we got done we did immediately call the Democrat hotline (1-888-DEM-VOTE) to report the problem. They connected us with a local person, who was very interested in the problem.