Free Republic

It’s now almost three weeks since election day. Thanksgiving is right around the corner. All of the ballots in the NY25 congressional race have been counted and Ann Marie Buerkle has won the election. Republican Ann Marie Buerkle leads in the 25th District by about 567 votes. The tally among Wayne County absentee ballots was 790 for Buerkle, 521 for Maffei. Maffei has so far not conceded the race. More than 160 ballots were challenged by either campaign for a judge to examine, but that doesn’t appear to be enough for Maffei to bridge the gap, even if they all...

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Republican Party of Minnesota took the governor's race to the state Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking to shrink the ballot pool in the undecided contest between Democrat Mark Dayton and RepublicanTom Emmer before a recount begins after Thanksgiving. A person with direct knowledge of the filing told The Associated Press that the GOP was asking the high court to force election officials to remove ballots in all precincts statewide where more votes were cast than the number of voters recorded.

In what has become one of the stranger twists in an already bizarre Governor's race, a bag of uncounted ballots was found in Bridgeport Thursday night. Republican officials were approached by Democratic operatives and told about the surprise ballot bag, according to Bridgeport GOP Chairman Marc Delmonico. “It adds to the inconsistencies from the Democratic Party in Bridgeport. It just keeps adding to it,” said Delmonico. “There’s nothing odd about it; there’s certainly nothing missing about it,” said Ed Maley, a representative for the Democratic Party. Delmonico said Democrats asked to have several people deputized to count the uncounted ballots,...

GOP claims bag of uncounted ballots found in Conn.By Susan Haigh, Associated Press – 2 hrs 39 mins ago HARTFORD, Conn. – The Republican candidate for governor in Connecticut says a bag of uncounted photocopied ballots has been found, further throwing into question the outcome of the race. Tom Foley says the bag was found during the counting of ballots in Bridgeport, where a shortage Tuesday night forced officials to photocopy ballots. Foley says it's unclear where the ballots originated and whether they are valid. He wants them impounded. Foley and Democrat Dan Malloy have claimed victory in Tuesday's election....

The Minnesota governor's race is so close it has come to this: another recount appears almost certain. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, DFLer Mark Dayton leads Republican Tom Emmer by less than one half of 1 percent -- 43.67% to 43.24%. For any race where the margin is less than one half of 1 percent, there is an automatic recount, as happened two years ago in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race. "It looks like it's recount part II: And this time it's personal," said state Republican Party Chair Tony Sutton.

A record number of voters have cast early ballots for a midterm election. The total number of early votes has topped 16 million, according to one preliminary analysis, and is on track to be slightly shy of the historic number of early ballots cast in the 2008 presidential election. "It's going to easily beat any midterm we've had," said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University government professor who has tracked early voting for several election cycles and estimates that 29 percent of midterm votes have been cast in the days and weeks before Election Day. All 50 states have sent...

Millions Of Calif Vote-By-Mail Ballots UnreturnedNov 1, 2010 2:00 pm US/Pacific SACRAMENTO (AP) - Millions of Californians have not yet returned their vote-by-mail ballots, and county election officials say the flood of returns expected on Tuesday could delay results in tight races. As of Monday morning, many counties had received only about half of the absentee ballots they had mailed out. More than 7.6 million absentee ballots were requested statewide for the general election. In some counties, vote-by-mail is expected to exceed in-person voting. That means a huge number of last-minute returns will not be counted on election night, and...

I am an American citizen living in Israel. I sent my and my wife's absentee ballots in to the St. Louis County Board of Elections this past Tuesday. I sent them using international express mail because I needed the ballots to be at the Board of Elections by this coming Tuesday. On the 25 or so previous occasions that I have used express mail to mail to the US, the mail would never take more than four business days to arrive at the destination. I could track it on the internet. It would leave Israel within 24 hours of sending...

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan has thrown out nearly a quarter of ballots cast in last month's parliamentary elections because of fraud, but it is still far from clear whether the public will accept the results as fair. The full preliminary results from the Sept. 18 poll were released Wednesday after multiple delays as election officials struggled to weed out results from polling stations that never opened, along with bunches of ballots all cast for one candidate, or suspiciously split 50-50 between two people. After last year's fraud-marred presidential election, the government wanted to prove to the Afghan people and international...

Counties Miss Overseas Ballot DeadlineThe Secretary of State's Office announced seven counties will have to take military ballots until Nov. 8. Posted: 9:42 PM Oct 18, 2010 (WIBW) - Three northeast Kansas counties are among seven statewide that failed to send their overseas and military ballots on time. The Secretary of State's Office announced the counties Monday. The delays means clerks in Jackson, Marshall, and Wabaunsee counties, as well as Stevens, Finney, Hamilton and Ellis, will have to accept military ballots until November 8th, the 45th day after they were sent. That is also six days after Election Day, which...

Share a NiteCap and an interview with HonestConservative and Mr. Jed Babbin former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, Jed Babbin is a bestselling author and contributor to RealClearPolitics , The American Spectator, BigPeace and BigGovernment. and is the author of best selling books, "In The Words of our Enemies" and "Showdown, Why China Wants War with the United States". We of course will discuss the impact and results of the upcoming congressional elections on National Security. Our number is 646 478 5613.

This is a national disgrace. The Illinois State Board of Elections has been lying about the status of military absentee ballots and a lazy Department of Justice has allowed itself to be duped. In an e-mail exchange between the Illinois State Board of Elections and the Department of Justice’s Voting Section shows the State has been misleading DOJ for almost a month.

Chicago election officials say crews will work overtime to reprogram thousands of electronic voting machines that mistakenly list a gubernatorial candidate's name as "Rich Whitey" instead of Rich Whitney. Chicago elections board chairman Langdon Neal said 530 machines being used for early voting and an additional 4,200 destined for the Nov. 2 election will be reprogrammed and retested. The mistake in the Green Party candidate's name appears on a review screen that allows voters to double-check their selections and not on the screen where the vote is registered. It also is not on paper ballots, Neal said. He said the...

The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as "Whitey" on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards -- about half in predominantly African-American areas -- and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day. The misspelling turned up on touch-screen machines in 23 wards overall. Whitney's name is spelled correctly on the machines' initial screens showing all of the candidates' names, but it is misspelled on review screens that later show a voter his or her choices, said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections. "This is a difficult...

GOP prods Justice on military vote A group of Republican lawyers and law students called Tuesday for the Obama administration to do more to ensure that members of the military are able to cast ballots in the Nov. 2 elections. David Norcross, chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association, said in a statement: “The MOVE Act was passed last year to ensure that these brave men and women would have a voice in this fall’s elections. It’s unacceptable that any state would fail to meet that obligation. The Obama administration must act swiftly to guarantee that every service member receives...

Sen. Charles Schumer blasted Board of Elections officials Monday for blowing a deadline for sending ballots to troops overseas - putting their chance to vote at risk. "Our troops sacrifice their lives to protect our freedoms. They should never, ever be denied the right to vote," Schumer said. There are approximately 50,000 New York City residents serving overseas - and 320,000 statewide. Elections officials were originally supposed to ship the ballots to troops by Sept. 17. Because New York primaries were held Sept. 14, the federal government granted local officials an extension until Oct. 1.

NY service members don't have ballotsShannon Ross Posted by: Emily Lenihan Updated: Monday, 11 Oct 2010, 8:55 AM EDT BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Only 22 days remain until Election Day, and more than 300,000 New York service members and overseas voters still don't have their absentee ballots. Fox News reports that Albany has failed to send the ballots to military voters more than one week after the deadline, a violation of the "Move" Act.

When ballots of our troops serving overseas were trashed in the 2000 election, it was a disgrace that we hoped would never be repeated. If all the military votes had been counted, the Florida result might not have been so close, and the nation might not have had to wait weeks to discover who our new president would be. Now we are engaged in a war, and our troops are risking death and disability daily. We not only hope that their right to vote will be respected − we demand it. But in a severe case of déjà vu, once...

The failure of military ballots to be mailed out in a timely manner during the 2008 election inspired Congress to enact legislation requiring a minimum of 45 days between the mailing of ballots and election day. It was believed that this would provide enough time for most overseas troops to cast votes that could be counted. The Obama dministration, however, just granted an exemption to the state of Wisconsin—allowing military ballots to be sent only 32 days prior to election day. Attorney General Eric Holder defended the exemption calling the “effort of state election officials to conduct elections as they...

HAWLEY, Mass., March 23 (UPI) -- Officials in a small Massachusetts town said a deadline passed without a single resident filing to run in the May 3 election. Hawley Town Clerk Cyndie Stetson, 62, who also serves as a justice of the peace and a notary in addition to substitute teaching, said the March 15 deadline passed without anyone submitting the required 25 signatures to run for positions including selectmen and a tree warden in the town of 336 residents, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday. Stetson said the town will vote write-in only May 3, with candidates needing at least...