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A voting expert from a nonpartisan think tank on Thursday deflated the hype that new voter restrictions are necessary when he told Fox News that voter fraud was as rare as "winning the lottery."

Brookings Institution nonresident fellow Michael McDonald explained to Fox News host Shepard Smith that the instances of in-person voter fraud were "very low."

"We've had millions and millions of voters over the last years and the likelihood of vote fraud occurring is on the order of winning the lottery," McDonald said.

"Winning the lottery is like 11 billion [to one]," Smith noted.

"Yes," McDonald agreed. "It's a very rare, infrequent sort of thing. But when it does happen, we are concerned. And election officials do take these allegations seriously, they investigate them fully. Usually what happens is, the allegations come out and then afterwards we find out that maybe someone signed on the wrong line on a poll book or something of that nature, and that's the source of the error. It wasn't really that vote fraud occurred."

Fox News has traditionally played a central role in promoting laws that often disenfranchise older and minority voters who tend to vote Democratic. They have set up a voter fraud email hotline and aired a "Stealing Your Vote" special report earlier this year that declared, "Voter fraud is still rampant."

The network recently hosted conservative columnist John Fund to defend Pennsylvania's voter photo ID law.

"To deny that voter fraud isn't going on is to frankly deny reality," Fund insisted.

A study by the Brennan Center for Justice warned last year that voting restrictions passed by Republican lawmakers could suppress as many as 5 million votes in 2012.

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Romney adviser Bay Buchanan on Tuesday declared that the release of leaked campaign videos showing the Republican presidential nominee writing off 47 percent of the country as "dependant" and "entitled" was just a "bump in the road."

In an edited video published by Mother Jones on Monday, Mitt Romney had told wealthy donors that almost half of the country "pay no income tax" and were going to vote for President Barack Obama.

"My job is is not to worry about those people," Romney asserted. "I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

On Tuesday, Buchanan had the unenviable task of trying to do damage control while being grilled by CNN host Soledad O'Brien.

"As a candidate, he can't worry about those he can't get," Buchanan explained, adding that the media should be focusing on "one out of every six Americans are in poverty today and that 47 million are taking food stamps in order to take care of themselves and their families."

"Listen, I fully understand the strategy is to turn to the 'real problem' and talk about something else, but I'm going to keep you on this," O'Brien said. "He says 47 percent of Americans pay no tax. That's not correct. ... Forty-seven percent of those people who pay no income tax -- look at that chart there -- 61 percent of those folks, they're paying payroll tax, money is coming out of their paycheck. It's being described as the myth of sort of the deadbeat nation."

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The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur weighs in on Romney's tax plan -- what would happen if we're unfortunate enough actually find ourselves with him as president after the upcoming election. It isn't pretty: Mitt Romney wants the middle class to pay $500 more in taxes so the rich can get richer:

President Obama has claimed that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would give benefits to the rich at the expense of the middle class. “Is it true?” Cenk asks. “Absolutely.” Under Mitt Romney’s plan, US citizens makes less that $200 thousand a year would pay about $500 more in income tax. Cenk says, “This is redistributing the wealth from the bottom to the top.”

Here's more from Think Progress: New Analysis Shows Romney Tax Plan Would Raise Taxes On Middle Class Families By More Than $2,000:

On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney has been promising that he will cut taxes “across the board,” while also instituting tax reform that will not add to the nation’s deficit. But a new report from the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution shows that this is much easier said than done.

In fact, if Romney were to actually implement his plan to reduce tax rates by 20 percent while eliminating tax deductions in order to pay for it, taxpayers with more than $200,000 would certainly see a tax cut. But everyone else — 95 percent of Americans — will see their taxes increase. And this result occurs even assuming that Romney would eliminate tax deductions so as to make the tax as progressive as possible:

To estimate how average household tax burdens among different income groups would change as a result of this shift, we assume that the available tax expenditures are curtailed “from the top down” in order to make the tax plan as progressive as possible…Even after eliminating all available tax expenditures for households earning more than $200,000, this group still faces a net tax break. Americans making over $1 million would see an increase in after-tax income of 4.1 percent (an $87,000 tax cut), those making between $500,000 and $1 million would see an increase of 3.2 percent (a $17,000 tax cut), and those making between $200,000 and $500,000 would see an increase of 0.8 percent (a $1,800 tax cut).

Because taxpayers above $200,000 as a group have received a net tax cut, revenue neutrality requires that taxpayers below $200,000—about 95 percent of the population—experience a tax increase.

[...] Again, this analysis assumes that deductions are eliminated in a way that would make the tax code as progressive as possible, so its likely that, in practice, Romney’s plan would look even worse. To this point, Romney has refused to specify which deductions he would limit or eliminate.

On several occasions, Romney has denied that his tax plan would provide a big tax break to the wealthy. But as this analysis shows, even giving him all of the benefit of the doubt when it comes to eliminating deductions, the plan is still a massive tax break for the rich.

And here's more from TPM on Romney trying to pretend that the study was biased and just ignoring how wonderfully those trickle-down economics he's advocating for are going to work if recent history is any guide: Romney Aide: ‘Biased’ Tax Study Ignores The Coming Romney Boom.

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Mitt Romney decided to double down on his opposition to gay marriage during his commencement address at Liberty University this Saturday. After having the unfortunate circumstance of watching the entire twenty minute speech which aired on C-SPAN, if you thought some of his speeches on the campaign trail were bad, this one was worse. The response from the crowd for the better part of the speech was tepid at best except for the portion where he spoke out against gay marriage, which did get him a healthy round of applause.

Romney's presence at the University was not welcomed by all. After the announcement that Romney would be giving the commencement address, students were protesting the school's decision to have him there: Liberty's choice of Romney leads to angry student response.

And this Saturday, there was this: Gay Republicans Slam Romney For Speaking At Liberty:

The gay consevative group GOProud is not happy Mitt Romney chose to speak at Liberty University Saturday.

A statement from GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia was sent to reporters as Romney delivered his address:

Today, Governor Mitt Romney spoke at Liberty University. Liberty was founded by the late Jerry Falwell, who in 2007 said, “AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh’s charioteers … AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”

The speech at Liberty comes just days after top Romney adviser Ed Gillespie said that Governor Romney would campaign on the issue of marriage. In response, JimmyLaSalvia, Executive Director and Co-Founder of GOProud – a national organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights, issued the following statement:

“The father of the modern conservative movement, former US Senator Barry Goldwater, once said of Jerry Falwell that he needed a kick in the ass. With his speech at Falwell’s Liberty University, it is clear that Governor Romney’s message to Goldwater conservatives is: drop dead.

You can read the rest of their response in the post at TPM. He was also met with this from MoveOn today: Romney’s Liberty University Speech Protested From The Air:

The student loan debate was (literally) in the air as Mitt Romney prepared to make his commencement address at Liberty University here. As the graduation ceremony at this evangelical Christian university began, a single-engined plane flew circles around the commencement towing a banner reading “GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT.”

The fight to extend the interest rate on Stafford loans is one of the few where President Obama and Romney are on the same page. Both favor extending low interest rates on Stafford student loans. The extension is currently tied up in Congress, where Republicans and Democrats are split on how to pay for the rate extension.

Transcript of Romney's remarks in the clip above below the fold via:

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