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McClatchy News
WASHINGTON — As Americans prepare to vote Tuesday in dozens of tight elections, the two major political parties and interest groups across the ideological spectrum already have lawyered up for potential problems at the polls or with election results.On Election Day, armies of partisan attorneys and poll watchers will be at the ready at voting sites and in war rooms in almost every state, scrutinizing nearly every aspect of the voting process and prepared to spring into action if they see something that could adversely impact their candidate or cause.
“The parties are well lawyered up,” said Richard Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, law and political science professor and the author of “The Voting Wars: From 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown.”“It’s a tactic and a tool. It’s like an arms race.”
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Al Jazeera America
BALTIMORE — Kimberly Haynes recalled the two Guatemalan teens for whom her agency helped secure asylum after their harrowing trip through Mexico a few years ago.Gang members in Guatemala kidnapped the brother and sister, then 13 and 14, forcing the boy to be a drug mule and the girl a prostitute, said Haynes, director of children’s services with the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS).
The two later escaped north through Mexico. When the boy lost his leg in a train accident, his sister prostituted herself to pay their way across the U.S. border and reunite with their mother stateside.
“It took them almost three years to get kidnapped, [become] indentured servants and ride the death train to get asylum in the United States,” Haynes said.
Asked how she feels about Tuesday’s national midterm elections that will likely see voters re-elect incumbents who called for the deportation of the tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children during the summer, the Maryland-based social worker replied: “Outrage.”
“Disappointment. Real sadness, too,” she added.
The Guardian
Joni Ernst became famous by gazing into a camera and boasting of castrating hogs on the Iowa farm where she grew up.“So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork,” she said. The campaign ad Squeal showed images of pigs, then came her punchline. “Washington is full of big spenders. Let’s make ‘em squeal.”
Even Democrats laughed. Late-night comedians spoofed it. Few, initially, took it seriously. This was back in March. Ernst was an obscure, one-term state senator scrambling in a primary against rival Republicans for the right to run for the US senate against a favoured Democrat.
Now, on the eve of Tuesday’s midterm election, Democrats don’t see the joke. Ernst, 44, appears poised to win Iowa’s senate race – and possibly to deliver a senate majority to the GOP.
New York Times
WASHINGTON — The most expensive midterm elections in American history moved toward what could be an inconclusive finish on Monday, the last full day of campaigning before Election Day. Polls show control of the Senate trending Republican but still up for grabs and an angry electorate unclear on what it wants from Washington in Barack Obama’s final two years as president.Unlike in previous midterms when the party out of power made strong gains, Republican candidates did not carry a defined platform into the elections of 2014, nor did they campaign on policy specifics. Instead, they have been supported by a bitter electorate that is far less sure of its views than the voters who propelled Republican majorities in both chambers in 1994, gave Congress back to the Democrats in 2006 and swept Republicans to control of the House in 2010.
A new poll conducted by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal on Monday found that likely voters favor Republican control of Congress by a single percentage point, 46 percent to 45 percent. The same poll showed voters favoring Republicans 49 percent to 43 percent in 2010 just before Republicans seized control of the House and made large gains in the Senate.
Spiegel Online
Washington has been stricken by political deadlock and partisan rancor in recent years. With the Republicans tipped to win a majority in the Senate in this week's midterm elections, will the situation get even worse?Divided government is nothing new - in fact, it has long been the rule in Washington rather than the exception. What is new is the political polarization that has deepened since the last short spell of unity between the White House and Capitol Hill. That was broken when the Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives four years ago.
President Barack Obama famously described that result as a "shellacking" at the time, and it had a major impact on his presidency. For Thomas E. Mann, a constitutional scholar at Washington's Brookings Institution, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives "effectively stopped any real opportunities to deal with problems through legislation."
Reuters
With many races still tight but polls showing a general trend in favor of Republicans, the White House on Monday blamed voter dissatisfaction with Washington for what could be an Election Day rout for President Barack Obama's Democrats.Both parties pushed to get voters to the polls in a final effort to sway the electorate ahead of Tuesday's election, which could shift control of the U.S. Senate and upend policy priorities for the last two years of Obama's final term.
The president, who spent the weekend campaigning in Michigan, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, stayed in Washington on Monday and met with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen about the U.S. and global economy.