Hankster News of the Day for Independents - July 18

OBAMA AND THE INDEPENDENTS
Is Obama's Problem With Independents Actually a Problem with the General Electorate? (Nate Cohn, The New Republic) So is it useful to say that Obama has an independent problem? A little—it helps clarify the importance of Democratic turnout to Obama’s chances. It also might help explain the behavior of one critical swing state, which I’ll explain in the next post. But Obama’s independent problem isn’t much different than his problem with the electorate as a whole.

THIRD PARTIES

• On Greens and Libertarians (Peter Ubertaccio, Director, Joseph Martin Institute for Law & Society, Stonehill College, Huffington Post) Attempts to offer real third party choices reached their zenith with the independent candidacy of Ross Perot in 1992. Since then they've largely fallen flat, most spectacularly with the collapse of Americans Elect earlier this year. Yet choices remain in the form of the Green Party and Libertarian Party, two hearty entities that continue to go nowhere electorally. Neither has the organization, fundraising, or name recognition for its nominees to do much more than a few percentage points this fall, if that.
• Guest Column: Presidential alternative fizzles: What went wrong with Americans Elect? (By Jacqueline Salit, Rock River Times) In this, Ackerman and company misread independent voters, the self-declared engine for a new direction in American politics. Independents want to root out systemic partisanship. They don’t want to ameliorate it with appeals to centrism, bipartisanship or a better brand of candidate.

ARIZONA
Attention registered independents: independent voter candidate Mike Stauffer for Sheriff signs available August 4 (by Dee Dee Garcia Blase on Jul. 17, 2012, Tucson Citizen) As many of you may already know, the reason why Stauffer doesn’t have his signs out now is because election law does not allow him to put signs out until 90 days before the general election date. I know some of you are seeing other candidate signs out and that is because they still have to vie for their spot on the general election ballot. Mike is already going to be on the general election ballot…even though Penzone people attempted a petty lawsuit against him.