by Laura Olson

With five weeks to go, he's betting on somewhere between 125 and 130 million. And he reserves the right to change his mind.

That's where Curtis Gans, director of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate (CSAE), puts his estimate for the November election turnout, according to a report released Wednesday from the center.

Gans, an expert on voter turnout, analyzed this year's primary figures, and found that participation rose to its second-highest level ever, or a half percentage point less than turnout in 1972.

However, in states that held congressional and gubernatorial primaries on a day other than that of their presidential primary, participation dropped to a record low.

Overall turnout for this year's primaries was 57,348,121 voters, or 30.3 percent of the electorate, according to the report.

by Laura Olson

The problem isn't whether college students want to vote -- it's whether they can maneuver through a complicated system, activists told the Committee on House Administration at a hearing this afternoon.

Lawmakers listened to testimony from activists and students on the barriers preventing students from voting, including voter identification laws, the absence of same-day registration and intimidating voter misinformation campaigns.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) spoke on the Student Voter Act of 2008, legislation she introduced in July, which she said would "take one step forward" in making registration available to college students.

The Student Voter Act of 2008 would require all universities that receive federal funds to offer voter registration to students at the same time they register for classes. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has sponsored similar legislation in the Senate.

by Laura Olson

The millennial generation's revolutionaries don't steal books -- they download films, forward them to their friends and head to the nearest polling place.

Or at least that's what Michael Moore is hoping.

Moore, the controversial filmmaker behind Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, released his latest flick for download Tuesday. The film, titled Slacker Uprising, documents Moore's travels through 62 cities during the 2004 presidential campaign.

During the tour, Moore spoke to thousands of young people -- "slackers" -- in an effort to encourage youth voters. By releasing his latest documentary at no charge, he's aiming to inspire a similar movement in November.

The filmmaker chatted online with fans Tuesday, and hundreds more posted on the film's Web site by the end of the day -- thanking Moore for making the film and one devotee calling him "a patriot."

The free download is being organized and distributed by Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films. The film's budget was more than $2 million, though neither Brave New Films or Moore will receive any money, according to a release.

Fans are encouraged to share the movie with friends and to host campus viewings after downloading. Moore also will be doing a tour of screenings, including one in Grayslake, Ill., on Saturday.

Slacker Uprising can be downloaded for free by U.S. or Canadian citizens, and will be on iTunes as well. A DVD is also available for $9.95.

by Laura Olson

Are states ready for the long lines and vote counting that will come along with an energized electorate this November?

Researchers at Common Cause, a non-partisan group advocating election reform and accountability, released a report today with mixed results.

The 108-page report looks at a variety of issues - such as voter registration, identification, voting machines, poll worker training and student voting rights - in 10 states: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia.

Wisconsin received the most positive assessment, with strong poll worker training standards and voting machine allocations. Florida, Georgia and Virginia received more worrisome evaluations, with weaknesses in several areas.

"While some states have taken steps to improve their election procedures, several still have a number of structural and statutory weaknesses that put voting rights at risk once again this year," said Tova Wang, an author of the report and vice president of research at Common Cause.

Several findings:

• * Voter registration issues from 2006, such as vague eligibility standards and problems with statewide registration databases, "have gone unaddressed, or have worsened," according to researchers. Some states make it difficult for third-party groups, which tend to reach out to marginalized communities, to register voters.


• * Voting machine and ballot allocation could also be an issue. Researchers criticized states for having "vague and sometimes nonexistent standards for ensuring that there are enough voting materials and voting devices to keep polling places open and running smoothly," which they said could be problematic in November.


• * The mortgage crisis is also impacting voter rolls, with many voters still registered at their former addresses. According to the report, officials have reported "a 25 percent leap in new registration activity in 2008 over the number of new registrations by this point in the 2004 presidential race, and attribute this increase in part to the foreclosure crisis."


• * Researchers looked at student voting specifically for the first time, which has been challenged in Virginia and Georgia this fall. The report stated that the number of voters under 30 years old nearly doubled since 2000, reaching 6.5 million. But unclear information put out in several states about student registration at a school address impacting their parents' taxes or their financial aid could prevent some of these voters from heading to the polls.

by Mark Silva and updated with transcript

Barack Obama was asked today if he is "the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.''

"Not yet. I will be,'' Obama said, "if Sen. Clinton decides not to go on or if we complete the six contests and we are ahead as we are now. But nothing is certain. I don't want to take it for granted.

"Sen Clinton has been written off before, and came back,'' he said in an interview airing tonight on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. "And she's a formidable candidate,'' the senator told the anchorman. "So obviously we feel good about the results on Tuesday. It strengthens our position. I'm confident that we can finish this, these last few contests, and be in a continuing strong position. It's not yet settled.''

Asked about May 20, the primary election day when it appears certain that Obama will control a majority of the party's pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention, the senator from Illinois said: "That will be an important day. If, at that point, we have the majority of pledged delegates, which is possible, then-- I think we can make a pretty strong claim that, you know, we've got the most runs and it's the ninth inning. And we've won. But do so in a way that brings the party together.''

Have there been any internal discussions about reaching out to Hillary Clinton for a ticket? "You know we have not had those conversations, because I respect what she has said publicly that she is continuing this campaign...

"What I've said is, I want to respect her, and her desire to continue in these coming contests. And as soon as I know I'm the nominee, then I'm going to start making overtures to her, as well as everybody else, to figure out how we can bring this party together.''

Will Clinton meeting his criteria for a running mate?

"Well, there's no doubt that she's qualified to be vice president, there's no doubt she's qualified to be president,' he said. "I've said that before. But I think I can be a better president, otherwise I wouldn't be running. But she's a very capable, very smart person. And anybody who's been in a political contest with her, can tell you that she's no pushover.''

See a transcript of the full interview here, courtesy of NBC:

by Whitney Blair Wyckoff

Tony Zirkle, who spoke at an Adolf Hitler birthday party last month on how prostitution and pornography impact white women, came in third place in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District Republican primary yesterday. Fighting prostitution and porn is a major plank in Zirkle's platform.

He has said that he will speak to any group who invites him, but he dodged questions from an Indiana paper asking whether he was a white supremacist sympathizer.

Washington Post columnist Al Kamen has the story:

Tough news last night in the closely watched Republican primary in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District.

Zirkle, whose top campaign issue is opposition to pornography and prostitution, finished a distant third behind Goshen, Ind., businessman and GOP establishment candidate Luke Puckett and Culver, Ind., newspaper delivery man Joseph Roush. Puckett won with 48 percent of the vote; Zirkle drew 16 percent.

by Mark Silva

Barack Obama has built some of his campaign for the White House on a hope that young voters will respond to his party's call this year.

Not a bad calculation.

"The current generation of young voters, who came of age during the George W. Bush years, is leading the way in giving the Democrats a wide advantage in party identification, just as the previous generation of young people who grew up in the Reagan years -- Generation X -- fueled the Republican surge of the mid-1990's,'' the Pew Research Center reports.''

Increasingly each year, more young voters are leaning Democratic.

"In surveys conducted between October 2007 and March 2008, 58 percent of voters under age 30 identified or leaned toward the Democratic Party, compared with 33 percent who identified or leaned toward the GOP,'' reports Pew's Scott Keeter, director of survey research. "The Democratic Party's current lead in party identification among young voters has more than doubled since the 2004 campaign, from 11 points to 25 points.

"In fact,'' Keeter writes, "the Democrats' advantage among the young is now so broad-based that younger men as well as younger women favor the Democrats over the GOP -- making their age category the only one in the electorate in which men are significantly more inclined to self-identify as Democrats rather than as Republicans.

"While more women voters in every age group affiliate with the Democratic Party rather than the GOP, the gap is particularly striking among young women voters,'' Keeter adds. "More than twice as many women voters under age 30 identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party as favor the Republican Party (63 vs. 28 percent).

For more on the survey's findings, see the Pew report.

by William Neikirk

You can be sure that the sexuality of older Americans will become a bigger issue now that Jane Fonda is showing interest in the subject.

Last week, the 69-year-old actress told reporters at an aging seminar in New York that she plans to write a book dealing partly with the sexuality of aging, and also let it be known she is interested in making a movie on the topic.

Her book is actually about another chapter in her life, and the working title is: "The Third Act: Entering Prime Time," she said. Her last book, she reminded us, was a best seller.

A group of reporters attending the week-long seminar, sponsored by the International Longevity Center-USA and the New York Times Foundation, were surprised when Fonda showed up for their sessions to learn more about aging issues in the U.S.

by William E. Gibson

Ever since the tumultuous 2000 presidential election, Democrats in Florida and elsewhere have clamored for election reforms that create a way to verify ballots in case they need to be recounted.

The cause suffered a setback this week when Democratic leaders yanked a paper-trail bill from the U.S. House agenda, apparently because they could not round up enough votes to pass it. Maybe next week, they said.

The bill would require each polling place to register votes on paper to verify balloting. Governor Charlie Crist already has signed a similar law in Florida, but he and other state leaders hope Congress will create the same requirement on the national level because the bill would provide federal money to help pay for it.

Election reform is always popular right after a disputed election, but enthusiasm wanes between elections. The winners, who got elected through the current system, are not as quick to change it. And their attention quickly turns to other pressing matters, such as war and bloated budgets.

Posted by Frank James at 7:30 am CST

Curtis Gans, an expert on voter participation in American elections, predicts that if nothing changes between now and Election Day, Democratic turnout should exceed that of Republicans in a mid-term election for the first time since 1990.

President Bush and the Iraq War get the credit for that, according to Gans.

But the larger picture portrayed by Gans, director of the American University Center for the Study of the American Electorate, in a new report doesn't offer much to cheer about. That's because voters who are turned off by both major parties are leaving them in a significant exodus.

Meanwhile, many other citizens just aren't voting at all, threatening the health of American democracy, Gans says.

Posted by Frank James at 2:27 pm CDT

Congressional Republicans, especially those in the House, wanted a photo op of President Bush signing the “Secure Fence Act of 2006” and today they got it.

With illegal immigration being a major issue for many voters, and not just conservatives, House Republicans badly wanted the fence legislation heading into the mid-term elections.

Posted by Frank James at 4:55 pm CDT

The House passed today by a largely partisan vote of 228 to 196 the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 which would require anyone wanting to vote in a federal election to present polling place officials with a government-issued photo ID.

But according to the legislation, it can’t be any old government-issued photo ID. It must be one that proves its holder is a U.S. citizen.

Posted by Frank James at 11:34 am CDT

Diebold Election Systems Inc. issued a statement last night rebutting the Princeton University computer research team that said it found flaws with an electronic-voting machine made by the company.

The Princeton researchers said their examination of a Diebold AccuVote TS machine suggested that malicious software code could be introduced into a machine and allow someone to manipulate election results.

In its press release, the company explained why, in its view, such manipulation would be impossible.

"The unit has security software that was two generations old, and to our knowledge, is not used anywhere in the country," said Dave Byrd, president of Diebold Election Systems in a written statement.

"Normal security procedures were ignored," said Byrd. "Numbered security tape, 18 enclosure screws and numbered security tags were destroyed or missing so that the researchers could get inside the unit. A virus was introduced to a machine that is never attached to a network.”

Posted by Frank James at 5:45 pm CDT

A team of Princeton Universtity computer researchers say they've found serious vulnerabilities in an electronic-voting machine made by Diebold Co. which, according to the scientists, leaves the machine open to sabotage that could result in significant voting irregularities.

What's frightening is that most people wouldn't even know there were irregularities. A piece of malicious software code inserted into a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine by someone with "criminal" intent, could cause votes for one candidate to be wrongly attributed to another and do it in such a way that election officials would never detect it, the computer experts said.