Obama eyes tax credit for service by students

TAYLOR, Mich. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama recalled paying off his mountain of student-loan debt and promised struggling college students yesterday that he would help them pay for school.

Obama said he would give students a $4,000 tax credit to help pay tuition and fees in exchange for 100 hours of community service. The campaign said the program would cost $10 billion a year.

"You get a hand living your dreams, and then you help your fellow citizens live theirs," Obama told students at Wayne County Community College. He listened as they told stories of balancing family demands, high fuel prices and school costs.

The event stressed Obama's plans to help Americans struggling in a tough economy while showing voters in the swing state of Michigan more about his modest roots.

Michigan Republicans have been trying to portray him as an elite senator out of touch with daily struggles in the state, which has the nation's highest unemployment rate.

- AP

WASHINGTON - The Democratic National Committee said yesterday that it would sue next week to compel federal regulators to investigate whether Sen. John McCain violated election laws by withdrawing from public financing.

The lawsuit will ask that the U.S. District Court order the Federal Election Commission to examine, within 30 days, the legality of McCain's decision to reject $5.8 million in taxpayer funds.

By turning down the money, the presumptive Republican nominee avoided strict spending limits between now and the GOP's national convention in September.

At issue is a $4 million line of credit the McCain campaign obtained late last year. While the loan was not secured by the promise of public funds, his agreement with the bank required McCain to reapply for public funds if he lost early primary contests and to use that money as collateral.

The DNC filed a complaint with the FEC in February, arguing that the bank arrangement violated federal regulations. The six-member FEC has been unable to act because it lacks a quorum. Four nominees await Senate confirmation.

A federal judge threw out an earlier DNC lawsuit, noting that federal rules gave the FEC up to 120 days to act on a complaint. That deadline expires Tuesday.

McCain's campaign and his bankers adamantly deny that they used the public funds as collateral. Republican National Committee chief counsel Sean Cairncross called the suit "meritless."

- AP

Florida's election fiasco in 2000 prompted many states to adopt electronic touch-screen voting systems, but after a spate of malfunctions and meltdowns in 2004 and 2006, paper ballots are making a big comeback.

At least 55 percent of American voters this fall will mark their choice for president on paper ballots that will be read and tabulated by optical scanning devices - nearly double the percentage in 2000, according to Election Data Services, a Virginia consulting firm that has been tracking voting technology since 1980.

Electronic touch-screen voting will decline for the first time in eight years, and punchcard ballots, once used by nearly one-third of the electorate, will be used in only 12 counties in Idaho.

In the trend toward paper-backed systems, the hulking old mechanical-lever machines, introduced more than a century ago, are also headed for extinction. Only New York state still uses them.

- Boston Globe