Share your thoughts about the elections, 2012.

Some election night winners and losers:

Women had a good night. Voters soundly rejected both Todd Akins and Richard Mourdock, and their assertions about the mythical abilities of women's bodies and God's master plan for rape-induced pregnancies. Women stood up for contraception, abortion rights and equal pay. Republicans heard that women do not want a return to the 1950's.

Big Money had a bad night. Connecticut Senate hopeful Linda McMahon and her $100 million couldn't buy a seat in 2010 or 2012. Sheldon Adelson spent $70 million on eight losing candidates including Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. The Koch brothers and their Super Pac donors spent an estimated (Politico) $850 million. The good news is that they redistributed some of their wealth to advertising agencies, television stations, statisticians and political consulting companies. This is trickle down at its finest.

Latino, Asian and African Americans won big. Turnout for these groups was bigger than in 2008 and will be even bigger in 2016. They not only cast the deciding votes in several swing states, but they proved that voter suppression efforts are not going to stop them from voting. More importantly, the results show that you can't win the presidency without their support.

Some people believe that the election left us right back where we started. Barack Obama is the president. Democrats have a majority in the Senate and Republicans control the house. True, but some things have changed.

Judy Amabile


Absent the Sandy hurricane, Obama would have lost Tuesday's election if you believe those pundits who are trying to explain why they were dismally wrong in forecasting Romney as the eventual winner.

Certain predictors now claim that Sandy "stopped Romney's post-debate momentum." They admit failing to take into "full account" the impact of Obama's tour of the devastated area arm-in-arm with the New Jersey governor. And the kind words with which Christie described Obama's efforts on behalf of those afflicted by the storm.

Checking a list of 75 election predictors, fewer than ten had Obama winning the popular vote. And even among the ten, a few erred by forecasting Romney as winner of the final electoral vote count. Not surprisingly, the erring pundits now "honor" a list of those who were wrong.

Let's look at the names of those few who were right in forecasting the winner and the number of electoral votes he would carry:

John Sides, writing for "The American Prospector;" Robert Reich, a former Labor secretary; and Markos Moulitsas, of the "Daily Kos."

However, some of the better known names in the media must now be eating humble crow while trying to justify their erroneous predictions:

American Enterprise Institute, Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan, Karl Rove, Ari Fleisher, Newt Gingrich, Charles Krauthammer, and William Kristol.

Actually, some of these folks would rather we forget their bad and biased punditry. Not a chance!

Marc Raizman


My faith in the American voter has been restored. Up until last Tuesday I was very concerned that a candidate's confusing beliefs and half truths and millions of dollars spent on media blitzing would influence the majority of voters. They did not. Those in Congress who dedicated the last four years to defeat the president failed and they cheated Americans out of needed legislation.

The suppression of voters by shortening early voting hours and putting up hurdles to potential voters is unconscionable. If the length of lines at voting locations requires seven or eight hours something is broken in this democracy. Time is money. This time lost is a form of poll tax. Enough is enough.

Now it is up to both Republicans and Democrats to reach across the aisle, join hands and work together to reach consensus and pass legislation on fair taxation, immigration, global warming controls, debt reduction, clean non-fossil fuel energy, and national election reform. The next sixty days will tell us who in Congress has the good of all Americans as a priority and if re-energized President Obama can manage the obstructionists.


Spense Havlick


What a slap in the face it must be to the makers of the "unskewed polls" who knew that President Obama would be ousted in a landslide of repudiation, to learn that he won both the popular and electoral votes, and that various states voted for gay marriage and legalized marijuana, and that more Democrats (rather than fewer) were headed to the U.S. Senate, with more women than ever, due to an election where speaking wrongly about rape proved a disqualifier for high office and being a lesbian did not.

The election revealed a majority that is more progressive, racially and socially inclusive, younger and more female than the phalanx of white older men of the GOP who are heartbreakingly tolerant of extremist positions. While more battles lie ahead, this demographic shift will deepen.

The center point of the trend is interesting. The latest analysis by Nate Silver reveals that when states (and DC) are lined up by percentage of support for the president, Colorado is the tipping point in pushing Obama over 270 electoral votes, making us an auspicious signal for the nation. And we just legalized marijuana.

So say what you will, Governor Brewpub, about legal pot being a threat to youngsters; Coloradans know that pot is dramatically safer than alcohol, and gets more so when regulated, and we're not taking hypocritical guff about this. Just like the nation won't take guff anymore about personhood amendments or fake birth certificates or voter suppression. Onward.

Anne Butterfield


What disturbed me on Tuesday was not the election outcome, it was the sight on TV of voters waiting in impossibly long lines. People waited as long as seven hours. I'm a permanent mail voter. I can sit in my rocking chair and contemplate the specific issues and candidates applicable to my small corner of the world. I can mail the ballot back, or walk a mile and drop it into a metal box.

News articles on this issue focus on budget cuts. Election officials had to shrink the number of voting locations, they say. Universal mail ballot voting would reduce both election costs and voting lines. The darker side of this issue is the supervision of elections by partisan elected officials.

In an opinion piece at, David Frum states that in other democracies "Politicians of one party do not set voting schedules to favor their side and harm the other. Politicians do not move around voting places to gain advantages for themselves or to disadvantage their opponents. In fact, in almost no other country do politicians have any say in the administration of elections at all." If half the stories of political manipulation of voter turnout are correct, it is a national disgrace.

The Atlantic Monthly states: "widespread 'in-person' voter fraud or voting by illegal immigrants exists mostly in the minds of conspiracy theorists. Yet proof of voter suppression is visible to all of us with the naked eye."

Steve Fisher


