Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO -- The state Supreme Court allowed California on Wednesday to go ahead with a voter-approved overhaul of primary elections, putting all candidates on the same ballot in the first round and matching the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, in the runoff. The justices unanimously denied a request to block the measure, Proposition 14, which takes effect in January.Prop. 14, which passed with a 54 percent majority in June, eliminates party primaries and instead requires all state and federal candidates, except those for president, to run in a single primary for each office. The top two finishers, who...

Anyone doubting that every vote counts should have spent a few hours this week with election officials in Auburn. Or Placerville. Or Nevada City. There wasn't a hanging chad in sight. But both sides of the too-close-to-call race for the 4th Congressional District scrutinized virtually every uncounted ballot in the contest between Republican Tom McClintock and Democrat Charlie Brown. "It can be a mind-numbing process," said Brown volunteer Steve Barber of Granite Bay. Barber was among a handful of volunteers watching election workers in Auburn as they duplicated ballots that were damaged or cast in the wrong precinct. The duplication...

NASHVILLE - The Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee has voted to declare state Sen. Rosalind Kurita's thin primary victory invalid. The panel voted 33-11 on Saturday to declare Kurita's 19-vote August victory "incurably uncertain" after her opponent, Clarksville attorney Tim Barnes, alleged heavy Republican interference in the Democratic nominating contest. A joint convention of the Democratic executive committees in Cheatham, Houston and Montgomery counties will now determine who the nominee will be. There is no Republican running in the general election. Barnes' candidacy was boosted by Democrats who were upset that Kurita helped unseat John Wilder, a Mason Democrat, from...

On the night of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, I was asked by a British radio station whether, for all intents and purposes, the Democratic race was over. I said I thought it was -- there was no way neither around the math nor the cast-iron direction in which the superdelegates were trending. "The only question," I told my interviewer,"is how Sen. Clinton will go down -- graciously or ugly." Like most everyone else, I thought it would be the former. That at the end of the day (June 3), the two quarrelsome sides would sit around the camp...

Hillary Clinton should stay in the race and fight as hard as she can to win. She owes that much to Americans who voted for her, as well as staffers who cast their fortunes behind her. There also is no point in holding back her attacks on Barack Obama - lest she tarnish her rival for the Democratic nomination. As former Clinton White House Special Counsel Lanny Davis wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary that took on Obama's support for his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, "If Mr. Obama doesn't show a willingness to try to answer all...

The outcome of the Democratic Party's presidential nomination could hinge on what happens in Florida and Michigan. Late last year, leaders of both states decided to hold their primaries in January, in defiance of party rules. That led Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean to strip both states of their combined 366 delegates, as he had pledged to do. The impasse could mean that the millions of ballots cast in Florida and Michigan won't count, and those voters will be denied an opportunity to influence the most competitive primary race in 40 years. The apparent Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain,...