Tag: voting

Almost three years ago the UK voted in favour of leaving the EU. Trouble is, voters themselves - including not least those who voted Leave - have become deeply critical of how the UK government has handled Brexit negotiations. However, as many as 80% of Leave voters now say that it has handled Brexit negotiations badly. Remarkably, Leave voters are now just as critical of the UK government's role as they are of the EU's: 79% of Leave supporters say the EU has handled Brexit badly. Will the UK get a good deal? As many as 66% of Leave supporters now believe that the UK is faced with a bad deal - even more than the 64% of Remain voters who express that view. Do UK voters still want to leave the EU? In part, this is because Leave voters are a little less likely to say they would vote the same way again (82%), than Remain voters are (86%). How young and old would vote on Brexit now Do people support another referendum? Some polls introduce the idea of another ballot as a "people's vote", or a "public vote" and do not make it clear that remaining in the EU would be an option.

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court returns to the subject of partisan gerrymandering on Tuesday, considering for a second time in two years whether drawing election maps to help the party in power can ever violate the Constitution. Last year’s cases, from Wisconsin and Maryland, raised the possibility that the court might decide, for the first time, that some election maps were so warped by politics that they crossed a constitutional line. On Tuesday, almost exactly a year after they last considered the Maryland case, the court will again hear arguments from Republican voters there who said their rights had been violated by a congressional district they said had been drawn to diminish their voting power. The court will also hear arguments in a second challenge, this one from North Carolina Democrats who said the state’s congressional map yielded a 10-to-3 Republican majority despite very close statewide vote counts. But Justice Kennedy’s replacement by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh makes such an outcome less likely, election law experts said. But it has never struck down a voting map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. Last year, after the Supreme Court returned the case to the United States District Court in Maryland, a three-judge panel of that court ruled for the challengers, barred state officials from conducting further congressional elections using the 2011 maps and ordered them to draw new ones. “Partisan gerrymandering is noxious, a cancer on our democracy,” he wrote. The ruling found that Republican legislators there had violated the Constitution by drawing the districts to hurt the electoral chances of Democratic candidates. In 2016, the court said, Republican congressional candidates won 53 percent of the statewide vote.

Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP, asks if May is ruling out negotiating the UK joining a customs union with the EU. He asks if May will respect the will of parliament and reject no deal. May says Blackford should accept that the people of Scotland voted to remain in the UK. But so do the votes of the 17.4m people who voted to leave the EU. Referring to the fact that “a number of people” marched on Saturday, May says Corbyn’s deputy, Tom Watson, went on the march. He says it is no surprise that people marched against the government. Will May accept any decision by MPs? He says Labour would support a public vote to block no deal or a chaotic Tory deal. She says the government remains committed to trying to see if a Commons consensus can be reached if her deal is not passed. May says she is “sceptical” about whether allowing MPs indicative votes will produce a decision.

Liam Fox has indicated the government could ignore MPs’ views from indicative Brexit votes this week if parliament’s stated choice goes against the Conservative manifesto, insisting the real choice is still between Theresa May’s deal and no deal. The international trade secretary dismissed calls for May to be ousted, or for the prime minister to offer to resign in return for her Brexit plan being passed, as suggested to her by Tory Brexiters on Sunday. The real debate is about our future relationship with the European Union once we’ve left.” Later on Monday, after May has updated the Commons on last week’s Brussels summit, MPs will have a chance to vote for an amendment seeking to reserve Wednesday’s Commons business for a series of non-binding indicative votes on various Brexit options. I was also elected on a manifesto that specifically said no single market and no customs union. The number one constraint is that we contracted out parliament’s sovereignty on the issue of the European Union to the people.” MPs should instead, Fox said, focus on passing May’s deal at the third time of asking or else risk no deal or a further Brexit delay necessitating the UK taking part in European elections. Read more The chances of May’s deal being passed appeared to grow even more distant after a summit on Sunday at her Chequers country retreat, with Boris Johnson and other leading hard-Brexiters leaving without agreement. Tory rebels present said the prime minister repeated “all the same lines” about her deal and that nothing new emerged during the three-hour meeting, at which Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab were also present. “Clearly a number of people do not want the prime minister anywhere near the next phase of negotiations, which is the future trading relationship between ourselves and the EU,” he told Today. Oliver Letwin, the Conservative former minister who is among those who have led the amendment on the indicative votes, now signed by more than 120 MPs, told Today it could take several rounds of voting to find a consensus. The prime minister, the only woman present, also invited her effective deputy, Lidington, and the environment secretary, Gove, plus Julian Smith, the chief whip, and Brandon Lewis, the Conservative party chairman.

Another week, another neutral government motion on Brexit, and yet another set of amendments. Here are the amendments tabled, some of which will be voted on later on Monday. It will be the Speaker, John Bercow, who will decide which of these are selected. The backbench indicative vote plan Led by the Tory former ministers Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, and signed by more than 120 cross-party MPs, this calls for Commons business on Wednesday to be set aside for a series of indicative votes. It does not specify what options will be voted on, or how the votes will take place. Read more B. The pro-Brexit amendment Tabled by a cross-party group of Brexiters, and signed by more than 80 MPs – the great majority Conservative – this notes that the Tories and Labour both stood in the 2017 election on manifestos promising to deliver Brexit, and says parliament “reaffirms its commitment to honour the result of the referendum that the UK should leave the European Union”. D. The Labour indicative vote plan Less prescriptive than the Letwin/Grieve amendment, this notes support for various Brexit plans, and calls on the government “to provide sufficient parliamentary time this week for this house to find a majority for a different approach”. E. Independent Group calls for second referendum The first amendment tabled by the former Tory/Labour breakaway MPs, and also signed by Lib Dem MPs, it calls for a second referendum to choose between a final deal and staying in the EU. It seeks a two-year extension to Brexit to hold a new referendum.

A pair of politicians seeking a Metro Council seat in southeastern Baton Rouge have turned to the humblest of campaign materials to push their message across, though they’re using different styles of postcards as Election Day approaches. Hitting each of the 21,744 registered voters in District 8 would cost less than $8,000. Each bears a Baton Rouge postmark. Csaposs is benefiting from the work of postcardstovoters.org, a Georgia-based group of volunteers that backs Democrats by mailing postcards to like-minded voters in the days leading to an election. It has done similar work for candidates in other states. Nathan Kalmoe, a political science professor at LSU, says obtaining help from nonlocals is an established tradition in politics. Kalmoe said that, when out-of-towners go beyond data and start telling people how to vote in their own elections, they risk backfire. Of 98 people who have contributed to his campaign, only 21 were from Louisiana. Her campaign material notes that she was married to Buddy Amoroso for 37 years. Her postcards do not mention that she is a Republican, though they call her “conservative, pro-business and pro-family.” Amoroso is pursuing a more traditional campaign strategy, with billboards and yard signs.

The 2020 presidential election will tell us much about the future political direction of Texas. The nation’s political future runs through our state and the other booming southwestern states that are changing just as speedily. Last month, President Donald Trump visited El Paso to build support for the proposed border wall in an effort to shore up his support among the more conservative voters of our state. Other 2020 presidential candidates such as U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former Massachusetts Gov. These rapid changes also portend serious challenges that need to be met with consensus leadership. Millions of Texans are income insecure, without health care insurance, or denied access to quality medical care. A plurality of Texans embrace the state’s growing diversity with optimism, according to a recent poll by the University of Texas and Texas Tribune. Texans of both parties have come to expect economic progress as a significant feature of government, combined with responsible growth. Political fights about moderation inside our polarized parties sapped significant energy in the 2018 cycle. Candidates also need to balance what voters want with the needs of the state and nation.

The government has conceded it is likely to hold the third meaningful vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal next week, following intense pressure from MPs for more clarity on the next steps after the extension of the departure date. In an often difficult appearance in the House of Commons, the Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng initially rebuffed questions on when the vote might take place, saying the timetable would be outlined soon. Kwarteng responded: “The government fully intends to have a meaningful vote next week.” The secondary legislation needed to change the departure date would also be tabled next week, he said, but declined to give any further details on timings, adding: “On this Friday I’m not going to say the exact hour and time of when the meaningful vote will take place.” Separately, No 10 said the EU’s agreement to extend article 50 was contingent on holding the vote next week. “The consideration is to hold it when we believe we have a realistic prospect of success,” May’s spokesman said. “My understanding of last night is that the extension to 22 May was contingent on winning the vote next week.” May will meet cabinet ministers in Downing Street and spend the weekend working at Chequers, her country retreat. “But we have made a decision – voting down her deal twice, by historic margins,” he told MPs. “It’s just that it’s a decision the prime minister is clearly incapable of accepting. It is her intransigence, her pandering to the hardliners in her party, and her refusal to compromise that has brought us to this point.” He asked Kwarteng to say when the third meaningful vote would happen, as well as how the government would comply with the ruling by the Speaker, John Bercow, that a new vote will only be allowed under Commons procedures if it is a notably different proposal. He added: “Ministers have constantly told us that responsible governments prepare for all eventualities. Asked by Labour’s Karen Buck if the government still planned to seek a consensus way forward if May’s plan fell again, he replied: “I think that if the meaningful vote is voted down then it would be reasonable to have a wide debate in the house to find what the house would tolerate and how it sees things going forward.”

PM Modi urged people to vote wisely ahead of Lok Sabha 2019 polls He listed out the contributions of the NDA government since 2014 In his blog, Narendra Modi slammed the dynasty politics in Congress party "Development over decay, security over stagnation, opportunities over obstacles, vikas over vote-bank politics, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote in his latest blog on Wednesday. Hinting that governance improved in India after his government came to power, PM Modi wrote: "Indians were tired of our beloved nation being in the Fragile Five, where corruption, cronyism, and nepotism made headlines instead of anything positive." 'India first' instead of 'family first' Targeting the Congress party, PM Modi said the government has been working for "India first" instead of "family first". He also urged people to ask why the Rajya Sabha was not working as productively as the Lok Sabha, hinting at opposition ruckus. Freedom of speech, courts Expressing his views on freedom of speech, PM Modi said dynastic parties have "never been comfortable" with a free and vibrant press. The recent UPA years saw the bringing of a law that could land you in prison for posting anything offensive, he said. "Every middleman is linked to one family," Modi added. When our air warriors strike at terrorists, Congress questions that too." Last but not least, the prime minister urged people to "think wisely" and asked them to compare the past with the present. "Think wisely: As you go to vote- remember the past and how one family's desire for power cost the nation so greatly.

Tagg, 69, sold his San Jose home and moved his family to Arizona in 2014. “I’m a good old Republican,” Tagg said. “I just saw the writing on the wall.” The Bay Area has become one of the most popular places in the country to leave in recent years. One-party domination in Sacramento and constant chafing with neighbors has driven conservative Bay Area refugees to communities in Texas, Idaho, Colorado and Florida. Former residents say their views on immigration and taxes put them on the margins of a region they once embraced. San Jose State political scientist Larry Gerston said the region’s rising taxes have pinched many high-income residents, while low-income residents are burdened by the high cost of living. DeStefano, 72, and his wife bought a home and moved into a gated retirement community in Fort Meyers, Florida, in late 2017. “California will become the next Venezuela in five years,” DeStefano said. Politics was “99 percent” of the reason for a move, he said. But the Bay Area, he said, “is really not worth it.”