Voting, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

Early voters could account for up to 40 percent of all voters in the 2012 presidential election, and polls of people who already have cast ballots show President Barack Obama with a comfortable lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Obama’s hoping what happened with Katy Perry in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas, but spreads to the whole state of Nevada to give him an edge. The president and the pop star joined forces into the wee hours on Wednesday night for a campaign rally concert in the battleground state, where they pumped up a crowd of 13,000. The sexy singer adapted her signature style for the event, turning her body into a ballot in a tight white latex dress printed with the names of the candidates.

A store in Georgia is raffling off a rifle if you show that you voted. WXIA has the story.

Why does our 50th state rank 50th in voter turnout? CNN's John Sutter journeyed to the Aloha State to find out. Eight days, seven flights -- and one luau later, he has some surprising answers.

Will you cast your vote this fall on a faulty electronic machine that's partly owned by the Romney Family? Will that machine decide whether Romney will then inherit the White House? Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.

A man originally reported to have been working for the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested by the Rockingham County, Va., Sheriff’s Office on Thursday and charged with attempting to destroy voter registration forms by tossing them into a dumpster behind a shopping center in Harrisonburg, Va.

Some African American, Spanish-speaking and elderly voters in Florida and Virginia are apparently being targeted by anonymous voter-suppression groups trying to trick them or intimidate them into not voting in the November presidential election, according to election officials and voter protection organizations.

The election is still three weeks away, but first lady Michelle Obama voted for the president on Monday. "The president and first lady are making history by voting early in person and by mail in order to promote the ease, convenience, and importance of voting," the Obama campaign said in a press release on Monday.

Online registration systems have dramatically boosted voter sign-ups in the dozen states that allow citizens to register to vote over the Internet. Colorado has logged more than 79,000 voter registrations since Sept. 1 — and more than 300,000 since introducing online sign-ups in 2010. In the two years prior to going online, the state logged roughly 90,000 registrations.

With less than 30 days until the election, the campaigns and their supporters are pulling out all the stops to bring in donations and get out the vote. One way to do that is through automated calls — those dreaded robocalls.