The Blue Highway

By Curtis Hewston

The Democrats might have received some very good news this week. President Obama’s approval ratings going into the final week of campaigning have risen sharply. According to the latest Newsweek poll, they have jumped to 54 percent, up from 48 percent just a month ago. And respondents who disapprove of the president dropped to 40 percent, their lowest disapproval rating in eight months. This helps the Democratic candidates who have been co-balloted with the president in their opponents’ campaign ads. The poll also finds that 48 percent of registered voters would be more likely to vote for Democrats, compared with 42 percent who lean Republican.

While these numbers might be only slightly more effective than tea leaves in reading the outcome of the elections, they, and some very encouraging race polls, are cause for optimism. And I think the GOP is running scared. Rather than hearing them crow in self-congratulation, they are glaring, typically, like the neighbor who suspects you’re showing a bit too much interest in his new snow blower.

Here’s wingnut par excellence Michelle Malkin declaring amid her other six minutes of utter nonsense, “We are all voter fraud police now.”

And in this video catalogued by TPM, sociopolitical saint Dick Armey tells Neil Cavuto the high early turnout by Democratic voters can only mean one thing — we’re cheating:

I’m not surprised. This is an aberration born out of the fact that in early voting, there’s less ballot security. The Democrats are always much more active in the areas where the ballot security is reduced.

But, wow. Here’s the kicker.

Sharron Angle’s campaign is accusing Harry Reid of plotting to steal Nevada’s Senate election. Jon Ralston at the Las Vegas Sun reported yesterday that Cleta Mitchell, attorney for Angle’s political operation, made the claim in an e-mail to Angle supporters.

As Sharron Angle’s campaign attorney, I am sorry to report that the Democrats and their cronies are up to their same old tricks, of trying to manipulate the election in hopes of skewing the results in their favor.

Two days ago, the Democratic Secretary of State announced that voters can be provided “free food” at “voter turnout events.” Harry Reid has been offering free food and, according to other reports, some Democratic allies such as teachers’ unions are offering gift cards in return for a vote for Reid.

Before we were even able to document the reported infractions to report to the authorities, the Democrat Secretary of State slammed the door shut on preventing this behavior and issued a public statement permitting these ACORN-style tactics. THESE are the kinds of shenanigans that can turn this race.

Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, by the way, calls Mitchell’s mass e-mail a “campaign solicitation” — (She does communicate the urgent need to raise $80,000 to “deploy literally dozens of election law attorneys and poll watchers.”) — and says she “fails to cite any evidence of ‘vote buying.’” He then schools the lawyer in state law:

With respect to Nevada law, NRS 293.700 forbids a person “who bribes, offers to bribe, or uses any other corrupt means … to influence an elector in giving his or her vote or to deter the elector from giving it.” The plain meaning of this statute forbids a person from using corrupt means to cause an elector to cast a ballot or refrain from doing so. Accordingly, so long as the activity is not corrupt in nature, meaning it is not connected to any specific candidate and does not compromise the will of the elector, state law is not violated. Examples of such activity, which occurred in the 2008 election as well, include: throwing a post-election party which offers free food to anyone who has voted, irrespective of how and for whom they voted; giving an employee time away from work to vote; and offering voters, such as elderly and voters with disabilities, rides to a polling location. Active participation in elections is the cornerstone of a participatory democracy, and activities that promote the act of voting, made without any connection to the candidates or political parties, support the democratic process.

What’s a Democrat to do? I guess it does give the wingnuts a nice fallback position. When their own election fraud is no longer as reliable as it was in the last decade, at least they can plant the seeds of voter fraud to explain their losses.

We vote in six days.