{"id":7899,"date":"2012-06-01T10:14:58","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T17:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7899"},"modified":"2012-06-01T10:14:59","modified_gmt":"2012-06-01T17:14:59","slug":"romney-cant-win-without-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/01\/romney-cant-win-without-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney Can’t Win Without Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presidential elections always come down to the outcome in a small group of \u201cswing states\u201d, but this year one additional feature is becoming apparent.  Even if he wins every other swing state, Romney can\u2019t win without Florida.  You\u2019ll never guess what Republicans are trying to do to prevent Obama from winning the state.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"1RealClearPolitics-Electoral-Map\"<\/p>\n

…in order to predict the next election, we should ignore the polls of popular opinion on a national scale and instead focus on how the electoral map looks. The two tell a very different story. <\/p>\n

There are certain states that we can be nearly sure will go one way or another. California’s electors will vote for the Democrat, and Texas’s electors will vote for the Republican. There are other states that we can safely assume which way they will go. Georgia will likely go Republican, and Pennsylvania will likely go Democrat. That leaves a few states that could go either way. This year, those states are generally agreed to be (from least electoral votes to most): New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, Missouri, Wisconsin, Arizona, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida. <\/p>\n

Those are the battleground states. Those are the states that matter. In most election years, those votes would be fought over fiercely and non-stop for the next five months. Not this year though — this year, Barack Obama need not campaign as hard as one would assume. <\/p>\n

It takes 270 electoral votes to win a presidential election. With the ‘safe’ and ‘likely’ votes all counted, Obama has 243<\/a>, only 26 short of the magic number. Romney is at 170, exactly 100 short. Looking at the map, Obama could essentially spend every cent he has in Florida (worth 29 electoral votes) and call it good. Romney could win every toss-up state but Florida and still lose<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Inserted from <Huffington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

To correct this the Republican Party is trying to stack the deck in Florida by purging legitimate voters from the rolls, the way they did in 2000, with help from people who threw away their votes. Fortunately DOJ is stepping in.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"1Holder\"The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease <\/strong>purging its voting rolls<\/strong><\/a> because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act<\/strong>, TPM has learned.<\/p>\n

DOJ also said that Florida\u2019s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act<\/strong>, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida\u2019s August 14 primary, meant May 16.<\/p>\n

Five of Florida\u2019s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <TPM<\/a>><\/p>\n

Ed Schultz and his panel explore the history and reality of the Republican Party disenfranchising legal voters.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

There can be no doubt that this is a blatant attempt at election theft. They must be stopped and sent the way of the Whig Party.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presidential elections always come down to the outcome in a small group of \u201cswing states\u201d, but this year one additional feature is becoming apparent.  Even if he wins every other swing state, Romney can\u2019t win without Florida.  You\u2019ll never guess what Republicans are trying to do to prevent Obama from winning the state. …in order […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}