Tagged: election

Voters in the 7th congressional district will have two familiar choices on the ballot in November.  They faced each other before.  This time the result may be different.

 When you are congressman running for re-election you walk in a lot of parades.  Democrat Mark Schauer spent a recent September day walking in Charlotte’s Frontier Days parade.   The crowd lining the parade route was polite,  but several people like Liz Goble were not happy to see Mark Schauer. 

"I definitely wasn’t happy when he was voted in.  I will be happy to see him go," says Goble. 

Social Security sparked a spirited debate between the two major party candidates running for Michigan's 7th Congressional seat.

Incumbent Democrat Mark Schauer and Republican former congressman Tim Walberg are in a close race and social security is seen as a key issue.

Democratic Party leaders in Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties have chosen their candidate to replace Robert Jones - Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell.

Robert Jones was running for the Michigan Senate in the 20th district when he died over the weekend. He was battling esophageal cancer.

In Michigan, votes for a deceased candidate do not count, so party leaders had to put forward a new candidate.

Since Robert Jones  passed away this past weekend, election officials have been working to come up with a plan of action. Jones was a candidate for the Michigan Senate and the election is just fourteen days away.

Here are some numbers for you from the Michigan Secretary of State's office.

• 95.5% - percent of the voting age population in Michigan registered to vote
• 7.28 million people registered - a record for a Michigan gubernatorial election
• 7.40 million people - the highest number of registered voters Michigan has ever seen (2008 presidential election)

But just because people are registered to vote doesn't mean they will.

This November Michigan voters will cast ballots in 15 races for the U.S. House of Representatives. Right now, two of those races are considered "toss-ups", according to NPR  - the race between Mark Schauer (D) and Tim Walberg (R)  in the 7th District, and the race between Dan Benishek (R) and Gary McDowell (D) in the 1st District.

Here's an interesting post from FactCheck.org, "candidates have a legal right to lie to voters." It's protected speech. In fact, TV or radio stations running political ads they know to be false, can't refuse to run the ad.

That's why we need people like John Bebow from the Truth Squad and Lester Graham from Michigan Radio's Michigan Watch.