In the 1964 presidential elections, a young political operative named Bill guarded a largely African-American polling place in South Phoenix, Arizona like a bull mastiff. Bill was a legal whiz who knew the ins and outs of voting law and insisted that every obscure provision be applied, no matter what. He even made those who spoke accented English interpret parts of the constitution to prove that they understood it. The lines were long, people fought, got tired or had to go to work, and many of them left without voting. It was a notorious episode long remembered in Phoenix political circles.

As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008.

In a poll con ducted by Pew His panic Research Cen ter, stud ies found that minor ity vot ers are on the rise while white vot ers are declin ing. The Poll com pared the 2008 elec tion to 2004 and found the following

There are some real alarm numbers for the GOP in these numbers, even if they now appear to point to a decidedly narrow re-election for Prosser. Start with the obvious points of alarm, which nonetheless deserve to be repeated. Prosser had a thirty-point lead over Kloppenburg after the primary, which was less than two months ago. Even if you make the presumption that Kloppenburg should get the lion's share of the other votes in the primary, Prosser still had a ten-point lead that dissipated in about seven weeks. This despite the fact it is a virtual certainty that Prosser and his advocates had the money edge over Kloppenburg and her allies.

Here s the full story on when Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a Republican, previously worked in the Wisconsin Legislature. Nickolaus upended the tight state Supreme Court race Thursday when she announced she had failed to correctly tally thousands of votes in an unofficial report to the press. That swung the unofficial totals in the race from challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg to Justice David Prosser, who previously served as a top GOP lawmaker.

Terrified by bogus Republican claims of draconian Democratic cuts to Medicare, elderly voters propelled the GOP to an overwhelming victory last November. Voters 65 and over, the only age group to support John McCain in 2008, boosted their share of the turnout to 21% from 16% two years earlier.

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

So far this season, the Republicans have offered two new models of their future. One is the Tea Party vision, in which outsiders full of spirit and excitement overthrow the old order. In North Carolina, there was so much spirit and excitement that voters gave the top spot in a Congressional primary to a former drug addict who, according to court documents, once referred to the United States government as the Antichrist and claimed to have personally located the Ark of the Covenant.