election

Very little is clear in the Iranian election, aside from the fact that the opposition does not credit for a moment the legitimacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning more than 60 percent of the vote to Mir Hossein Moussavi’s 30 percent. Juan Cole has a sober and detailed post giving reasons to disbelieve the official results. [...]

Most reporters I know are on tenterhooks today to see what happens in the first round of presidential elections in Iran. The Guardian is reporting a large turnout already, which favors Mir Hussein Moussavi, the candidate of the reformists who’ve been wild in the streets like they were on the cover of old L.A. punk [...]

Terry McAuliffe, former Democratic National Committee chairman and current Democratic contender for governor of Virginia, tried to pay off Ralph Nader, to keep the consumer activist from running in swing states during the 2004 presidential election, The Washington Post reports.
“Terry McAuliffe is slipperier than an eel in olive oil,” Nader said in an interview.
He said [...]

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will traipse through the California heartland today to lend his support to former eBay President and CEO Meg Whitman, a candidate in California’s Republican gubernatorial primary next year.
Whitman is hosting a townhall meeting in Fresno today — and you know McCain can’t resist a good townhall.

Jonathan Martin plugged this speech from A.B. Culvahouse, the head of Sen. John McCain’s 2008 vice presidential vetting project, and it was a fascinating look into how such decisions are made. Point one: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) was seriously enough considered by McCain for the vetters to look into state “sore loser” laws that would [...]

With Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) kicking out the crazy on a nearly daily basis, Paul Demko of TWI’s sister site, The Minnesota Independent, reports that the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is preparing to mount an all-out campaign to defeat Bachmann in 2010. However, it might not be so easy, given that Bachmann represents the conservative 6th [...]

An independent commission in Afghanistan decides when elections are to be held. In January, it ruled that security concerns made August the optimal time for voting. But the term of President Hamid Karzai expires in May, meaning there would probably have to be a caretaker government in between May and August. So now Karzai has [...]

Here’s what I wrote in The Guardian last week, about what President-elect Barack Obama’s sweeping (outside of the deep South) victory meant for Republicans.
In 2006, liberal newspaper publisher John Yarmuth scored an upset victory in Kentucky’s 2nd district, which contains the city of Louisville and had voted only 51-49 for Kerry. This year Yarmuth won [...]

DFLer Al Franken, concerned that no one will be sitting in Minnesota’s Senate seat as long as Republican Norm Coleman’s fingernails are hanging off of it, asks for a certificate of election. The request is denied. Embattled Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan sends me an e-mail:
Al Franken’s outrageous attempt to seat himself in the [...]

Our siblings at The Minnesota Independent have the breakdown of the first statewide Minnesota poll taken since the recount ended and former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman’s kicking and screaming began in earnest. The results are inconclusive, colored by heavy partisanship on the part of both candidates’ supporters.
The big picture: the percentage of Minnesotans who favor [...]