Politics
2022 Election: I Was a Ballot Chase Participant; A Part of Get Out the Vote
At our house a few weeks ago, four of us sat at our kitchen table and addressed envelopes to the voters that we wanted to reach with a message from candidates! Here were some instructions: "If you want to do a VBM Chase program and win on Election Day you must get message early. A mail program accompanied with a digital campaign targeting early voters and absentee voters will give you a leg up over your competitors. When you get your mail out early to mail-in voters you can start the hard work of identifying them. But you must get your mail out or there will be nobody to identify – because they won’t know who you are. So get your mail into the early absentee voters as early as possible and target them with your emails, Facebook ads, and text messaging."
How to Win an Election by Chasing Vote by Mail Ballots
by Con… more »
"The 2022 midterm election returns could ... be marred by a rush to judgment by political leaders or news outlets"* Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
"When presenting popular vote results, context will matter more than ever — the percentage of the statewide vote reflected in the count, the rough percentage of outstanding ballots that are mail-in ballots and when they will be tabulated, the locations within the state that have reported returns, the tendency of these locations to vote Republican or Democratic, and so on. Attention to these factors would signal that there are many more votes yet to come and could dissuade viewers from hasty conclusions or from believing a party’s premature claim to have won control of the Senate." more »
Pew Research Center, October, 2022, “Midterm Voting Intentions Are Divided, Economic Gloom Persists"
With less than three weeks to go until the midterm elections, registered voters’ preferences are nearly evenly divided: 41% say they favor the Democratic candidates in their districts, while a nearly identical percentage (40%) support Republican candidates; 18% are not sure how they will vote or favor candidates other than Republicans or Democrats. And those supporting GOP candidates are somewhat more engaged this election than their Democratic counterparts: They are more likely to have thought “a lot” about the election and to say the outcome “really matters.” As has been the case all year, the economy is clearly the top issue for voters; fully 79% say it will be very important to their voting decisions – the highest share among 18 issues included on the survey. The public continues to take a dim view of current economic conditions. Just 17% of U.S. adults say the economy is in excellent or good shape, little changed from the 13% who said this in July. more »
GAO High Risk List, Public Health Preparedness: *HHS Should Address Strategic National Stockpile Requirements and Inventory Risks
"Recent emergencies have highlighted the importance of preparedness. One key component of the nation's medical response infrastructure is the SNS. The SNS inventory may be deployed to state, local, territorial, tribal, and international governments when needed. GAO placed HHS's leadership and coordination of public health emergencies on its High Risk List in January 2022 (GAO-22-105291) in part due to deficiencies in HHS's management of countermeasures. The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2019 included a provision for GAO to review the SNS. This report examines: (1) the process used to make inventory decisions; (2) non COVID-19 obligations for countermeasures and their alignment with recommendations; and (3) obligations for countermeasures using COVID-19 relief funds, and inventory and operations changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic." more »