Voting, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

A federal appeals court on Thursday dealt the latest blow to Ohio’s voting procedures, saying the state must count ballots that are improperly cast because of a poll worker’s mistake.

Judges suspend new state laws requiring voter ID for the Nov. 6 election but leave the door open for them in the future. Earlier this year, voting rights advocates foresaw a cloud over this year's election because new voting laws in Republican-led states tightened the rules for casting ballots and reduced the time for early voting.

Nationwide, mailed ballots now account for nearly 20 percent of votes, yet such ballots are more likely to be compromised, and contested, than those cast in person, statistics show.

Meet Matt Reisetter, a weary and somewhat teed-off Iowa voter. A stay-at-home dad in his mid-30s, he has long since unplugged his two land lines to stop the nonstop calls from campaigns reminding him to vote. But that hasn’t blocked the three to four daily pieces of political mail.

A month before the closing arguments of a campaign traditionally would be made, a steady stream of voters walked into election offices across Iowa on Thursday to cast their ballots.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court cast doubt Tuesday on whether that state can enforce its new photo ID law for the November election, as it told a trial judge to take a skeptical look at whether registered voters will be denied the right to cast a ballot.

Mitt Romney wrongly suggests the Obama campaign is trying to "undermine" the voting rights of military members through a lawsuit filed in Ohio. The suit seeks to block state legislation that limited early voting times for nonmilitary members; it doesn't seek to impose restrictions on service members.

The battle for presidential votes in the key state of Ohio is heading to court. President Obama's campaign has sued the state of Ohio over new rules for early voting designed to benefit members of the military, saying the extra hours should be available to all voters.

Gone are the days when young voters weren't taken seriously. In 2008, they helped propel Barack Obama into the Oval Office, supporting him by a 2-1 margin... Since the last election, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Wisconsin and Texas and other states have tried to limit or ban the use of student IDs as voter identification. In Florida, lawmakers tried to limit "third party" organizations, including student groups, from registering new voters.

Republican states are trying to make it harder to vote... An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.