Princeton Residents Assigned to the Wrong Voting District Will Need to Vote by Provisional Ballot

Mercer County: Princeton Residents Assigned to the Wrong Voting District Will Need to Vote by Provisional Ballot


MAY 22, 2012 Planet Princeton

Princeton residents mistakenly placed in the wrong voting district will have to vote by provisional ballot in the June 5 primary, officials said.

It is too late to make changes in time for the primary, according to the Mercer County Board of Elections.

At least six addresses on Harris Road were improperly placed in District 21, across town. The polling location for that district is the Riverside Elementary School. Harris Road residents belong in District 11. The polling location for district 11 is the Community Park School.

“This afternoon we will be updating the computer system to correct this,” wrote County Elections employee Janet Crum in an e-mail regarding the issue. “However it is past the deadline for pollbook inclusion, so any voter residing Harris Road 1-6 who comes to District 11 on June 5th will need to vote by provisional ballot. We will be informing our Board workers for District 11 of this need.”

Residents who find other issues or mistakes regarding their assigned voting districts and polling locations should e-mail the Board of Elections at BoardofElections@Mercercounty.org .

Check your new voting district and polling location in the state’s searchable database to make sure it is accurate. New voting districts for the consolidated Princeton were created in December. As a result, your polling place may have changed.

Congressman Chris Smith: I fear for Chen's safety

Rep. Smith: I fear for Chen's safety
By: MJ Lee POLITICO
May 21, 2012 08:35 AM EDT

Rep. Chris Smith warned Monday that blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who arrived in the United States on Saturday, will need extra security while in New York because the Chinese government could continue to track his moves – and even attempt to harm him in a staged accident.

“We’ve learned from … many other dissidents who finally got here and got asylum or protection that they are tracked, they are followed, they are harassed. So he will have to be watched — there will have to be an extra layer of protection here in New York,” the New Jersey Republican said on CNN’s “Starting Point.” “It has to be watched very carefully because they do things like car crashes or something happens that is made to look like an accident. So we have to keep a very, very sharp focus on his safety.”

Smith, who chairs the Congressional Executive Commission on China, greeted Chen at Newark Airport, and had arranged for the dissident to call into an emergency hearing on Capitol Hill earlier this month. During the phone call, Chen had expressed concerns about the safety of his family and pleaded to come to the U.S.

In his interview with CNN Monday, Smith repeatedly warned that Chen’s family members in China were still at “grave risk” (Chen came to the U.S. with his wife and their two young children).

“They’re being retaliated against,” Smith cautioned. “They shifted – they being the Chinese government – from going after him and beating him routinely to beating his family, especially his nephew and brother.”

The Republican congressman also warned that the chances of Chen going back to China in the near future were “very slim” due to safety concerns.

“If he goes back he and his family will be put in the crosshairs of retaliation,” he said. “Right now it is his family, the other Chens that aren’t free, that every one of us has to continue our focus [on] as never before.”

Chen is set to begin studying at New York University’s law school.

Jerry Brown vs. Chris Christie

McGurn: Jerry Brown vs. Chris Christie

More states are realizing that the road to fiscal hell is paved 

with progressive intention

Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2012

William McGurn

In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a "time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices." Plainly the choices weren't tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion—nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January. In Sacramento Monday, he coupled a new round of spending cuts with a call for some hefty new tax hikes.

In his own inaugural address back in January 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also spoke of making tough choices for the people of his state. For his first full budget, Mr. Christie faced a deficit of $10.7 billion—one-third of projected revenues. Not only did Mr. Christie close that deficit without raising taxes, he is now plumping for a 10% across-the-board tax cut.

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Editorial page editor Paul Gigot on why soaking the rich isn't solving California's chronic deficit problems. Photo: Associated Press

It's not just looks that make Mr. Brown Laurel to Mr. Christie's Hardy. It's also their political choices.

When the Obama administration's Transportation Department called on California to cough up billions for a high-speed bullet train or lose federal dollars, Mr. Brown went along. In sharp contrast, when the feds delivered a similar ultimatum to Mr. Christie over a proposed commuter rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, he nixed the project, saying his state just couldn't afford it.

On the "millionaire's" tax, Mr. Brown says that California desperately needs to approve one if the state is to recover. The one on California's November ballot kicks in at income of $250,000 and would raise the top rate to 13.3% from 10.3% on incomes above $1 million. Again in sharp contrast, when New Jersey Democrats attempted to embarrass Mr. Christie by sending a millionaire's tax to his desk, he called their bluff and promptly vetoed it.

On public-employee unions, Mr. Brown can talk a good game—at Monday's press conference, he announced a 5% pay cut for state workers, and he has proposed pension reform. Yet for all his pull with unions (the last time he was governor, he gave California's public-sector unions collective-bargaining rights), Gov. Brown, a Democrat, has not been able to accomplish what Republican Gov. Christie has: persuade a Democratic legislature to require government workers to kick in more for their health care and pensions.

Now, no one will confuse New Jersey with free-market Hong Kong. Still, because the challenges facing the Golden and Garden States are so similar, the different paths taken by their respective governors are all the more striking. And these two men are by no means alone.

Our states today are conducting a profound and contentious rethink about the right level of taxes, spending and government. Most obvious is the battle for Wisconsin. There Republican Gov. Scott Walker finds himself pitted against public-sector unions that successfully forced a recall election for June 5 after the legislature adopted the governor's package of labor reforms last spring.

Amid the turmoil—Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent a vote, while union-backed protesters occupied the Capitol—Mr. Walker looked weakened. Now he has taken the lead in polls. More than that, voters have taken the lesson: A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed only 12% of Wisconsin voters listing "restoring collective bargaining rights for public employees" as their priority.

Indeed, the American Midwest today is home to some of the biggest experiments in government. Republicans now hold both the governorships and the legislatures in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, and in Wisconsin they control all but the Senate. In each they are pushing for smaller, more accountable government. The outlier is Illinois, where Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and his Democratic legislature pushed through a tax increase on their heavily indebted state.

Getty Images

California Gov. Jerry Brown

Now ask yourself this. Can anyone look at Illinois and say to himself: I have seen the future and it works?

Indiana's Mitch Daniels, a Republican, is probably the only governor who can truly claim to have turned around a failing state. That may change if we get eight years of Mr. Christie in New Jersey. Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, also a Republican, may be another challenger for the title, having just succeeded in pushing through arguably the most far-reaching reform of any state public-school system in America.

Hard economic times bring their own lessons. Though few have been spared the ravages of the last recession and the sluggish recovery, those in states where taxes are light, government lives within its means, and the climate is friendly to investment have learned the value of the arrangement they have. They are not likely to give it up.

Meanwhile, leaders in some struggling states have taken notice. They know the road to fiscal hell is paved with progressive intentions. The question regarding the sensible ones is whether they have the will and wherewithal to impose the reforms they know their states need on the interest groups whose political and economic clout is so closely tied with the public purse.

Mr. Brown's remarks Monday suggest the answer to this question is no.

Write to MainStreet@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 15, 2012, on page A15 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Jerry Brown vs. Chris Christie.

Job Creation for Women is Focus of NJ Assembly Republicans

Job Creation for Women is Focus of NJ Assembly Republicans

Assembly Republican Press Conference (Stacy Proebstle, Townsquare Media)

 Stacy Proebstle - NJ101.5

Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande (R-Monmouth) will launch a statewide tour in May and June to meet with top women leaders, such as Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, to find solutions to obstacles that have held women back in the work place.

“New Jersey is a good place for women to work and we can make it the best by putting our heads together and coming up with creative solutions for women who want the opportunity to have a career and family,” Casagrande, R-Monmouth, said. “A truly equal workforce will benefit the bottom lines of families and the state economy by tapping into an under-utilized segment of the population. This is sound fiscal policy because when women work, New Jersey works.”

“Assemblywoman Casagrande is extremely talented and dedicated to this important issue,” said Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick, (R-Union, Morris and Somerset). “She will work very hard with other women leaders to build a better work environment for New Jersey women.”

Casagrande has scheduled three panel discussions that will be held in May and June:

The panels will focus on issues facing women entrepreneurs and small business owners; ways businesses can keep women in the workforce after having children, such as flex hours and day care assistance; and why it’s important for companies to embrace women leaders.

“We want salary determined by ability and experience, not gender and parental characteristics” said Casagrande.

Women can rely on Romney

Women can rely on Romney

By Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison

When it comes to dividing Americans on the basis of their gender, I know a little something about the subject. I grew up in a time when many people believed that men and women should not always be treated equally. 

It wasn't easy to break through the barriers of discrimination, and I'm glad I didn't have to do it alone. When I became the first woman to represent the state of Texas in the United States Senate, it was with the help of a lot of women - and a large number of men, too.Over the course of my life, I've learned that something we take as an article of faith in our country is profoundly true: United, we can accomplish anything. 
I've also learned to question those who would seek to divide us. As we enter this election season, I'm afraid we are witnessing just such an attempt.
The Democrats and White House are talking a great deal about a Republican "war on women." Color me highly skeptical. All such talk makes me wonder: Do the major problems plaguing our nation these last few years have all that much to do with gender? Are women somehow less concerned about unemployment than men? Do our nation's exploding deficits worry some of us less than others, merely because of our sex? When we see a government growing beyond its means, or regulations that shackle small businesses and drive down job creation, or laws that will redefine our health care industry and strip us of our individual freedoms, do women somehow care less than men?
As a woman who has spent her life fighting to banish forever the ignorance that women are incapable of engaging the pressing issues of the day, I can tell you that the answer to all of those questions is no.All Americans are suffering. Unemployment is too high, economic growth is too low, and the Obama administration seems incapable of doing anything about it. We all need a change for the better, and those politicians who prefer to divide us rather than seek solutions deserve our scorn.
I support Gov. Mitt Romney for president because he has a well-thought-out plan to get our economy back on track. He recognizes that it is not government but the American people who have made our country great. Men and women pursuing their hopes, seeking the fulfillment of the American dream. The success of our efforts to grow the economy will depend entirely on whether we make it easier or harder for them to accomplish that goal. Good jobs. A government that doesn't rack up trillions of dollars of debt. Families that are able to pay for their children's college. These are the goals that unite us. 
Ultimately, the American people will elect as president the person who has the best plan for realizing those goals.President Barack Obama has had four years to take his best shot. What has that given us? Graduating seniors without job offers in unprecedented numbers. The largest government debt burden in the history of America. 
Retirees unable to keep their standards of living, and small-business owners facing stifling regulations.Now he pledges four more years of the same policies. Do we really want the same result? Rhetoric, no matter how divisive, will not change that fact.We believe in America, and we are all in this together.
Hutchison, a Republican, is the senior U.S. senator from Texas.

Will women determine 2012 race?

Will women determine 2012 race?
By: Paul Goldman and Mark J. Rozell
POLITICO May 14, 2012 09:19 PM EDT

Will the women’s vote finally determine the outcome of the presidential election? Since women first got the vote, with the 19th Amendment in 1920, presidential politics has awaited this climactic moment.

Until now, election statistics have never proved that the 19th Amendment altered the outcome of any presidential race. In 2008, Barack Obama handily won the female vote. But given margins of statistical error in exit polls, the men’s choice is not determinable. In both 1992 and 1996, a similar pattern emerged in Bill Clinton’s victories.

This could be one reason for this fierce fight over women’s issues — far more than the typical Republican vs. Democratic battle of the sexes. It has an unusually angry edge.

A recent Washington Post poll hints at a possible answer. On the surface, the poll seems a replay of 2008 — giving Obama roughly the same percentage margin over Mitt Romney as candidate Obama won against Sen. John McCain. But there’s a big difference: Romney has a 4-point lead among men. Indeed, POLITICO’s battleground poll of key swing states gives Romney a statistically significant 7-point lead among men.

Meanwhile, the nation’s female leaders are due at the White House in August, when the president is hosting a celebration for the 19th Amendment’s 92nd anniversary. Studies show that late summer pre-election surveys often track the final outcome.

Given Romney’s current weakness with women, he will likely be working from now until the GOP convention at the end of August to improve his public standing.

Experts are predicting a closer election than in 2008. But with the developing gender dynamic, it should not surprise anyone if, come Labor Day, the polls show men solidly favoring Romney with women lined up strongly behind Obama.

So this “battle of the sexes” could then set up a potentially historic climax if the president wins reelection. It would be a significant milestone, symbolic of one of the vast changes occurring in national politics.

The “gender gap” became a staple of presidential campaign commentary starting with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Exit polls from previous elections had shown no significant gender gap. The former Hollywood leading man garnered a landslide margin from men while only running at a statistical dead heat among women. He was regarded as too risky by women voters, political analysts explained.

This pattern repeated in 1988, when George H.W. Bush also won on his big margin among men and statistical tie among women.

It wasn’t until 2000 that the first statistically definitive split between the sexes emerged: Al Gore won women handily, but he lost men to George W. Bush by an estimated equal amount.

The 2004 exit poll data produced controversial results. The adjusted data suggest Sen. John Kerry likely carried the women’s vote narrowly. But he lost in the Electoral College because of Bush’s far stronger support among men.

So these current polls reveal a potentially historic wrinkle: The women’s vote could now be definitively decisive in electing the president.

For 220 years, picking the president has remained, at least in terms of statistically provable results despite the 19th Amendment, a man’s prerogative. But this may finally change in 2012.

Meanwhile, the latest polls suggest another important shift: Younger women may be the kingmakers — offsetting Romney’s gain among older white men angry at their fate in this struggling economy.

Whatever you thought you knew about women and the gender gap — think again. The battle of the sexes, with an intergenerational female undercard, may finally redefine presidential politics 92 years after the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Paul Goldman is a former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia. Mark J. Rozell is a professor of public policy at George Mason University.

© 2012 POLITICO LLC

Chris Christie defies gravity

Chris Christie defies gravity
By JOE SCARBOROUGH | 

5/14/12 3:21 PM EDT

Once upon a time, the Northeast was ruled by Republicans.

Yankee politicians like New York's Teddy Roosevelt, Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge, Connecticut's Prescott Bush, New Hampshire's Warren Rudman, Rhode Island's John Chafee, Maine's William Cohen and Vermont's James Jeffords represented more than a century of GOP dominance in the North that began with the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and ended with George W. Bush's election.

So overwhelming was GOP dominance in New England that the Democratic Party failed to win a single presidential contest in Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine throughout the 1970s and 1980s. That reality shifted dramatically in 1992. In fact, Republicans in presidential contests have lost all states north of Virginia since 1988, other than Bush's single victory in New Hampshire in 2000.

These bitter realities that face all Northeast Republicans makes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's latest poll numbers all the more remarkable.

As noted by Chris Cillizza's "The Fix", Christie’s 56 percent approval rating in a recent Fairleigh Dickinson University poll tops President Obama's standing in that state as well as the approval ratings of New Jersey's two Democratic U.S. senators. In fact, neither Bob Menendez nor Frank Lautenberg have ever registered an approval rating as high the one Christie currently enjoys.

How terrifying it must be to Democratic activists in the Garden State that Republican Chris Christie is one of the most popular politicians in the recent history of their very blue state. The New Jersey governor just brokered a tough collective bargaining deal with his state's largest unions so you can expect those high approval ratings to continue for a while.

There are many lessons for Republicans to take away from Christie's success:

1. FOCUS ON MATH, NOT IDEOLOGY

When you focus on fixing deficits by showing voters raw numbers, independents and editorial boards will follow you. When you follow your base blindly into ideological fights (like abolishing collective bargaining before your state is ready for that), you take unnecessary risks.

2. THINK BIG

Friends of Chris Christie never expected him to be a transformative governor. But candidate Christie knew that New Jersey's finances were so screwed up that if he got elected, his only option would be to throw all he had at knocking down the state's debt. Going to war was a risk, but his greater risk would have been to do nothing at all. As the Templar Knight at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said, "He chose wisely." And as I always said to politicians who came to my office seeking advice, "Nobody ever stops you when you're going 90 miles per hour."

3. BE YOURSELF

Chris Christie is a Jersey guy. He ain't going to be invited to the Newport Debutante Ball anytime soon. And even if he were, he'd probably decline the invitation. That's because Chris Christie is an unapologetic street fighter who doesn't bother playing nice for the cameras.

Sometimes he comes across as a bully. Sometimes he talks when he should be quiet. Sometimes he might even embarrass himself. But know this: Chris Christie is always himself. And for New Jersey voters, that's good enough.

324,000 Women Dropped Out of Labor Force in Last Two Months--As Number of Women Not in Labor Force Hits Historic High

By Terence P. Jeffrey

May 9, 2012

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Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and President Barack Obama (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

(CNSNews.com) - 324,000 women dropped out of the nation’s civilian labor force in March and April as the number of women not in the labor force hit an all-time historical high of 53,321,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The civilian labor force consists of all people in the United States 16 years or older who are not in the military, a prison, or another institution such as a nursing home or mental hospital and who either have a job or are unemployed but have actively sought work in the previous four weeks and are currently available to work.

The civilian labor force is a subset of what BLS calls the civilian noninstitutional population, which includes all people in the country 16 or older who are not in the military, a prison, or another institution such as a nursing home or mental hospital.

This year (in both January and April), only 57.6 percent of the women in the civilian noninstitutional population were in the labor force. That is the lowest rate of labor force participation by American women since April 1993, according to historical data maintained by BLS.

The rate of female participation in the civilian workforce peaked twelve years ago--in April 2000--when hit 60.3 percent.

In February, according to BLS’s seasonally adjusted data, 52,833,000 American women were not in the labor force. In March that climbed to 53,090,000—a one-month increase of 257,000. In April, it climbed again to the historical high of 53,321,000—a one-month increase of 231,000 from March and a two-month increase of 488,000 from February.

In February, there was an historical high of 72,706,000 women in the labor force. But in March, that dropped to 72,529,000—a decline of 177,000. And in April, it dropped to 72,382,000—a decline of another 147,000.

Thus, in March and April, according to the BLS data, a total of 324,000 American women dropped out of the civilian labor force.

The number of women added to those not in the labor force in March and April (488,000) exceeds the number of women who dropped out of the labor force during those two months (324,000) because women who newly turned 16, or left the military, or were released from prison or another institution during those two months and then did not seek a job were added to the ranks of those not in the labor force.

BLS says that for a one-month change in the number of women in the labor force to be statistically significant it has to be greater than about 260,000. For a three-month change to be statistically significant it has to be greater than 400,000. Thus, the two-month increase of 488,000 in the number of women not in the labor force is a statistically significant trend, but the two-month increase of 324,000 women who dropped out of the labor force is not. However, if at least 76,000 additional women drop out of the labor force in May the trend will become statistically significant.

Moreover, BLS says the decline of female participation in the workforce over the past year has been statistically significant—dropping from 58.3 percent in April 2011 to 57.6 percent this April.

For both males and females combined, the rate of participation in the labor force dropped to 63.6 percent in April—the lowest rate since December 1981.

Recently, however, women have been leaving the labor force in larger numbers than men.

From February to March, the number of men in the labor force actually increased by 14,000—rising from 82,165,000 to 82,179,000, according to BLS. From March to April, it dropped back down to 81,983,000—a one-month decline of 196,000.