The only way to get that many absentee ballots is by hiring brokers who charge candidates thousands of dollars to deliver bundles to the county elections department. The brokers are the ones responsible for dead people voting in the ’80s and ’90s. Now they go around strong-arming the elderly residents at assisted living facilities or fooling them with free breakfast at the local IHOP. The brokers also pay off preachers so they can set up shop inside houses of worship to sign up absentee voters.

I saw it firsthand when I ran in the recent county mayoral race. One guy, who I won’t name, guaranteed he could deliver thousands of absentee ballots in North Miami and North Miami Beach for $3,000. I took a pass. It showed on Election Day. I had more early and Election Day ballots than absentee votes.

Sure would be neat if he said more about this. We know that this problem isn’t necessarily unique to south Florida, as there were a bunch of arrests in more rural north Florida earlier this month. One wonders if these are the sorts of “manufacturing ballots” stories that former Rep. Artur Davis was talking about in neighboring Alabama.

Of course the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities. They insist that laws requiring government identification cards to vote are only to protect the sanctity of the ballot from unscrupulous voters.

When I read this piece, I thought I might have missed a discussion of Rhode Island, which might be called an inconvenient truth for the Democratic conspiracy theorists. Let me remind you what happened in Rhode Island. As the Providence Journal noted when the bill passed:

This year, voter-ID legislation was backed by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, including two prominent black lawmakers: House Speaker Gordon D. Fox and Sen. Harold M. Metts. Sen. Juan M. Pichardo, the first Latino elected to a Rhode Island Senate seat and the first Dominican-American elected to a state senate seat in the country, also supported it. Fox, Metts and Pichardo are Providence Democrats.

So the Democrat, African-American Speaker of the Rhode Island House, the leading African-American state Senator, and the first Dominican elected state Senator in the country all supported the bill. They are all Democrats.

I wonder what the New York Times explanation of why these Democrats and minority leaders supported a voter ID bill. And I wonder why the Grey Lady didn’t mention this dreaded provision passing in a deep, deep blue state like Rhode Island… Maybe it is just an inconvenient truth?

There are several lessons for American conservatives.

The first is something that I have been banging away at for a while. The left has lost the political debate throughout the industrial world. Austerity has won in Europe. Economic stability has won in Canada. In this election, the NDP called for raising the corporate tax rate to 19% from 15%, while the “centrist” Liberals only wanted to raise it to 18%. (recall that it is 35% in the US) The gains on the left in this election were about consolidating the vote of the left into more radical positions. The gains on the right were about winning an ideological and polarizing argument in the eyes of mainstream voters. Once again, in another industrial country, in a political battle of ideas, the right won decisively.

Second, polarization and ideological clarity can be a good thing, and we should welcome it. As it became clear that the NDP was going to be the Opposition party in Canada, things became simpler for the Conservatives, and their numbers started to grow. Prime Minister Stephen Harper could argue that there was a clear ideological choice. The NDP wanted to raise taxes and increase spending. And the Conservatives wanted smaller government and restraint. The voters of Canada went with smaller government and restraint. People on the right of the Liberal party fled to Conservatives fled to stop the possibility of a left-wing government.

Third, and this will be harder for many American conservatives: immigrants. The conservatives made an unprecedented effort to reach out to “ethnic” voters. Go watch the ads. Each one ends with “finally vote your values.” And they worked. The Conservatives won 60% of the Chinese vote. They won 7 of the 10 targeted “ethnic” ridings. This message of “finally vote your values” was a critical message in getting Indo-Canadian voters, Chinese voters, Italian voters, etc. It was also an important message for driving turnout among more religious voters in places like rural Ontario, where my family is from. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is getting a tremendous amount of credit for this success as a critical component to the overall victory.

At this point, the key question will be how and when the Bloc and the Liberals disappear and how the Conservatives will benefit from that. One of the things that Harper campaigned on was ending public funding for elections. It is likely that both the Liberal Party and the Bloc disappear into bankruptcy: political, ideological, and, indeed, financial. In this election, the Conservatives got approximately 40% of the vote, the NDP got approximately 30%, the Liberals 20%, with minor parties getting the rest. Strategically, Conservatives have four years to turn that 40% to 50% by a variety of mechanisms.

Harper himself is acutely aware of that. Among his election night statements, was one that jumped out at me, “”And we accept that we have a lot more work to do to gain the true confidence of Quebecers. And we’re dedicated to doing that.” This is a plodding but ultimately effective strategy to building a national coalition on ideological terms.

Here, Canadians may be learning a lesson from the United States. On April 18th, the Sun News Network launched. Sun News Network claims to be a populist, small-c conservative media outlet, owned by the Quebec-based media company Quebecor which has a populist separatist/nationalist stance in Quebec. It has been compared to Fox, the New York Post, etc. Sun News can give some cultural coherence to Canadian little-c conservatism, helping to overcome significant regional and ethnic differences. This can help bring Conservatives, so-called Blue Liberals (Liberals on the right end of their party), and Quebec nationalists into a more coherent cultural and narrative alignment. We should never forget that culture, narratives, and ideology are strongly related.

I urge American conservatives to watch Canada over the next four years. Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada have much to teach us about building conservative majorities and consensus in a country that seems and sees itself as much more progressive than it really is.

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Instead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee files a complaint with the Federal Election Commission that promoting the book violates election law. Really. By their interpretation, a book publisher cannot promote a book if it is political.

What is the mechanism? The publisher posts a  video by the authors about their book that contains a link to a website that takes political contributions. It is after all, a political manifesto.

Restating, Democrats use the power of the federal government to attempt to prohibit the political speech and promotion of speech by their political enemies. That’s the kind of thing that lead to the American Revolution. Tea Parties make perfect sense in this context.

Ultimately, this election is going to be fought over questions about who can address the problem faced by our national economy (hint: taxes and debt bad) and who can address the real problems faced by Americans. That’s why it is important to get Fiorina’s point right on both national security and the economy.

Fiorina’s first point is that our country and California face very significant proximate challenges, like the economy, what does Barbara Boxer focus on? Climate change. But she has got nothing to say about the economy, other than more taxes and money for the public sector unions that are bankrupting her state. Right now, California’s unemployment rate stands in excess of 12 percent and has shown no signs of falling.  According to the US Department of Labor, 11 of the 14 metropolitan areas currently suffering from unemployment rates of at least 15% are located in California. 

Fiorina’s second point is that on actual national security issues, she is an embarassment. Her record:

• In 2007, Boxer was one of just 25 senators to vote against supplemental funding for US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• In 2003, Boxer voted against $87 billion in supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction.  87 senators voted for it.
• Back in 1999, she also voted against funding for efforts in Kosovo.

Even if you grant that there are national security implications to climate change, and that’s not a point I really dispute, even Matt Yglesias called climate-change-as-security-threat a form of “threat inflation” that leads to “bad foreign policy decisions.” See above, for examples of “bad foreign policy decisions.”

On Friday, House Republican Leader John Boehner issued a statement on transparency. The key passage:

It’s just common sense: Americans should be allowed to read the text of major bills before Congress votes on them.  Previous Congresses, including Republican ones, failed to live up to this standard.  But never before has the failure been as blatant as it has been in the past nine months under Speaker Pelosi.   Things have to change.

There are two key parts to this. First, he grabbed the policy issue and framed it in the adult and serious way "Americans" (not "Members of Congress", which seems like only a populist argument, although some in the media have grabbed the straw man to give the Democrats aircover) should know what Congress is doing so that we can hold them accountable.

The second part is, perhaps, more important. John Boehner has now explicitly rejected the way that he ran the House, said "we have learned", and established a new line in the sand. Furthermore, one of the reforms that he advocates, in this case, a waiting period before legislation can be acted on, actually may impact many of the wasteful spending concerns that actually helped drive him out of office. 

What is so fascinating is the rejection by Senate Democrats and the silence of lefty advocacy groups other than the Sunlight Foundation. In an effort to get a public copy of the healthcare bill before a vote, John Kerry said:

"This is fundamentally a delay tactic," the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate said. "I mean, let's be honest about it. The legislative language, everybody knows, is relatively arcane, legalistic, and most people don't read the legislative language."

That's right. But people who are interested do. People who are experts or people being impacted do, or they hire people to.

And this gets to the final point. Where is the press? Huffington Post is being sent around by Demcorats, because they are giving cover to Democrats. But they aren't really press. But where is the Fourth Estate demanding that they have the information to tell the American people what the debate is about.

Crickets.

You would think that John Boehner repudiating how Republicans ran the House would be worthy of news.

Crickets.

You would think that John Kerry giving cover to the Senate acting without even having legislation (I'm not talking about reading the bill here ...) would be newsworthy.

Crickets outside of Fox and the Washington Times.

Mitt Romney dropped a negative ad in New Hampshire attacking John McCain. However, it seems that Romney, again, has some truthiness problems. Given the factual errors below, it is clear why McCain goes straight to Romney’s credibility problem.

Factcheck.org, "More Mitt Malarky":

Romney’s latest ad attacks McCain in New Hampshire with false and misleading claims

WaPo’s Howie Kurtz:

Mitt Romney, who targeted Mike Huckabee in an earlier commercial, is now running the most negative campaign of any presidential candidate in either party. … Romney’s description of McCain’s failed immigration bill — which was backed by President Bush — is so selective as to be misleading.

New York Times:

Specifically, Mr. Romney assails Mr. McCain on both tax policies and immigration. On both topics, the commercial presents facts that could be construed either as selective or worse, misleading.

Mark Halperin from Time points out:

First negative ad against Romney by any candidate, first negative ad by McCain, first negative ad by any candidate besides Romney.

Negative campaigning. Lying. Debating what the definition of "saw" is. Who does that sound like?

Two women contacted the Mitt Romney campaign this week, offering their memories of seeing Romney’s father march with Martin Luther King Jr., in Grosse Point Michigan in 1963. Campaign officials were well aware that the women were mistaken. Yet, they directed those women to tell their stories to a Politico reporter. …

Then-governor George Romney did indeed march in Grosse Pointe, on Saturday, June 29, 1963, but Martin Luther King Jr. was not there; he was in New Brunswick, New Jersey, addressing the closing session of the annual New Jersey AFL-CIO labor institute at Rutgers University.

Those facts are indisputable, and quite frankly, the campaign must have known the women’s story would eventually be debunked — few people’s every daily movement has been as closely tracked and documented as King’s. As I write this, I am looking at an article from page E8 of the June 30, 1963 Chicago Tribune, which discusses both events (among other civil-rights actions of the previous day), clearly placing the two men hundreds of miles apart. I also have here the June 30, 1963 San Antonio News, which carries a photo and article about Romney at the Grosse Pointe march; and an AP story about King’s speech in New Jersey.

The Politico story is here. This echoes previous unprofessional and unethical behavior by the Romney campaign:

Deepening the mystery surrounding the anti-Mormon polling calls, the Romney campaign is confirming that it referred reporters to two recipients of the calls without disclosing that the two were also on the Romney campaign payroll, TPM Election Central has learned.

In response to questions from TPM Election Central, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden confirmed that the campaign had failed to disclose this info to reporters. Madden suggested that the campaign had identified them as "supporters," which is a far cry from being directly paid by the campaign, as the two call recipients were.

Of course, this is par for the course for a campaign whose staff and volunteer officials seem to resign regularly under criminal investigations.

In other words, Drudge pushed a bogus story at a time that was quite opportune for the Romney campaign.

Yesterday, Drudge pushed a story on John McCain. Drudge first claimed that an NYT story was in the works. Then he claimed that it would publish tomorrow. McCain was forced to answer a question. What happened?

No story. Nothing happened in the Times. And, in fact, it was clear from the facts Drudge provided that no story would be there. No substance, as was made clear in the Washington Post story today.

That’s the story guys. Matt Drudge is a Romney shill.