WASHINGTON  – President Barack Obama on Thursday promised a more efficient record system to ease delays in health care for wounded veterans, as the government copes with more than 33,000 military personnel injured in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under the new system, an electronic record would follow a service member in the military and then later in the Veterans Affairs Department’s medical system.

There is currently a six-month backlog in disability claims at the VA. Because the two agencies have different medical systems, veterans have complained about bureaucratic hurdles and long waits as they enter the VA system.

Recounting the hundreds of stories he said he heard from frustrated veterans unable to receive needed treatment, Obama said: “It’s time to change all that, it’s time to give our veterans a 21st century VA.”

He said his new military and veterans affairs budget focuses heavily on more spending for diagnosing brain injuries and psychological disabilities that have gone untreated.

“We have a sacred trust with those who wear the uniform of the United States of America, a commitment that begins with enlistment and must never end. But we know that for too long we’ve fallen short of meeting that commitment. Too many wounded warriors go without the care that they need,” Obama said.

More than 1.6 million troops have deployed in support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Of those, more than 33,000 have been wounded.

Obama made the announcement with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. He said he’s asked them to come up with a unified systems, and they’ve taken the first steps to do that.

The electronic record keeping system would handle military service members’ administrative and medical records from the day they enter service and insure that those files are transferred automatically to the VA when they leave active duty.

As the president tackles the larger problem of health care for all Americans, he is proposing massive spending to enable providers to keep patients’ records on computer networks, a development that Obama says will cut costs in the long term and reduce medical errors.

Obama has been pushing as well for increased spending for veterans, claiming those who have and are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are not getting the care they deserve. The president’s plan was praised by veterans advocates.

“Historically, the onus for enrolling in the VA system has fallen on the service member once they come off active duty,” said Ray Kelley, legislative director for AMVETS.

The program introduced Thursday will be part of overall Defense Department spending of $47 billion on health care in the next fiscal year, the White House said.

Over the next five years, the White House said, spending for veterans affairs was set to grow by $25 billion.

There are more than 23 million veterans in the United States, and nearly 5.5. million people sought health care at a VA facility last year.

WASHINGTON – Voter turnout will be the highest in decades, dwarfing recent presidential elections, experts predict.

The only question dividing experts is how huge will it be. Will it be the largest since 1968, largest since 1960 or even, as one expert predicts, the largest in a century?

Soaring early voting levels hint at a big turnout, but that could just be the same voters casting ballots earlier instead of more voters hitting the polls. Weather should generally be favorable, according to forecasts.

What early voting numbers mean and how much of the youth and Hispanic votes turn out are the big factors political scientists look at when trying to predict how many eligible Americans will vote.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University is so optimistic he’s predicting the highest level in a century.

“We’re going to definitely beat the turnout rate in 2004, the question is by how much,” McDonald said. “We have a chance to beat the 1960 turnout rate.”

“It’s not just an election of a generation, it’s an election of generations with an ’s’,” McDonald said Friday.

He’s not alone. The dean of voting turnout predictions, Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, this week amped up his turnout forecast. Initially he said it would be around 2004 levels, but now he is looking at a turnout that would be the highest since 1960.

“It’s driven by 90 percent of the American people thinking the country is on the wrong track,” Gans said Friday. “The only question is how many Republicans are not going to show up.”

MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky predicted the highest levels since 1968, which he said is still quite impressive given that the polls show this election is not that close and fewer people tend to vote when the race isn’t tight.

The McCain campaign released a strategy memo earlier this week, saying “turnout is going to go through the roof,” and predicted that more than 130 million people would vote. And Obama campaign manager David Plouffe on Friday said, “we think turnout is going to be higher than that” but wouldn’t give a number. Four years ago, 122.3 million people voted for president.

Calculating turnout rates isn’t uniform. McDonald bases his turnout calculations on eligible voters, not just those over 18 and he subtracts felons and foreigners and others. Other people have different calculations for eligible voters; some experts just use the percent of the voting age population, regardless of eligibility.

McDonald predicts 64 percent of the eligible voters will cast ballots. That’s more than 2004’s 60.1 percent and a hair above 1960’s post World War II high of 63.8 percent. The high for the 20th Century, using McDonald’s calculations, was 65.7 percent in 1908 when William Howard Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan.

Record heavy early voting – people lining up to vote early in
Florida and elsewhere, Georgia getting more than twice the early votes it did in 2004 – is one key factor, McDonald said. Democrats are voting in person earlier than Republicans, he said.

Gans isn’t swayed by the number of early voters, but their enthusiasm and willingness to brave long lines to vote early “indicates a very high motivation.” And that along with increased voter registration made him up his forecast.

Other factors pushing forecasts up include high voting in the primaries, record donations by small contributors, and general interest in the race, McDonald said. Dan Schnur, head of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Politics, points to record television ratings for nominating conventions that offered no suspense.

Indications are that turnout by African-Americans will increase by about 20 percent, said MIT and Harvard political science professor Stephen Ansolabehere.

The only bad weather forecast is rain in the Pacific Northwest and along a small stretch of Southeast coast; McDonald didn’t think that would matter much.

The only dampening factors are the youth vote, which hasn’t shown much in early voting, and as the race looks less close, some people may stay home, experts said.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. – Democrat Beverly Perdue spent Friday talking to those undecided on their choice for governor at early-voting locations, benefiting from a money advantage over

Republican Pat McCrory in the campaign’s final days. With $1.6 million pouring in to her campaign alone during the past 11 days, according to campaign finance reports, Perdue had more leeway to choose her schedule and worry less about paying for television and radio commercials.

“I told my whole team I was going to leave two weeks ago and do nothing but grassroots. But this is my favorite part,” Perdue, the lieutenant governor, said after shaking hands with dozens of people waiting to vote outside Fayetteville’s Cliffdale Recreation Center.

She later did the same thing in Wilmington. “It helps you remember why you’re doing it all.”

McCrory’s campaign said the Charlotte mayor was going full-throttle this week, too, appearing on 15 radio stations and holding a handful of public campaign events. He visited GOP “victory” headquarters Friday afternoon in High Point.

“We’re getting incredible positive feedback and momentum from literally hundreds of thousands of citizens,” McCrory said in a phone interview. His schedule also listed eight fundraisers this week.

McCrory acknowledged that Perdue had more money to spend in the final weeks. Perdue’s last formal fundraiser was Oct. 24, her campaign said.

“I’m not planning on going into debt,” McCrory said, referring to Perdue’s campaign borrowing more than $900,000 from herself or her husband during this election cycle. “I will not spend money I don’t have.”

Both candidates scheduled several campaign events Saturday. An Associated Press-GfK poll released earlier in the week said Perdue and McCrory were knotted at 44 percent of those surveyed, but 8 percent were undecided or named a candidate not on the ballot.

Libertarian candidate Mike Munger, who received 4 percent in the poll, also began a three-day trip across the state Friday. Perdue’s campaign raised $4.6 million from July 1 through mid-October, compared with $2.8 million for McCrory. She spent $5.7 million to McCrory’s $3.3 million during the period and had more cash on hand.

Perdue’s additional contributions included $875,000 in cash from the state Democratic Party. The party previously received $600,000 from the Service Employees International Union, whose North Carolina’s affiliate for state employees endorsed Perdue.

McCrory has received more than $425,000 during the last two weeks thanks in part to the fundraisers, including an additional $73,500 from the state Republican Party, disclosure reports said.

Political parties can give unlimited amounts of money to candidates, while a union’s political action committee is limited to $4,000 per election. A donor can’t direct how party money is to be spent.

McCrory said the donations show that Perdue will be beholden to labor unions if she’s elected. The State Employees Association of North Carolina, the SEIU affiliate, wants the Legislature to remove a ban on state and local governments from formally bargaining with workers.

“The unions are pushing collective bargaining,” McCrory said. “She’s made the unions a lot of promises.”

But Perdue said an endorsement by an outside group doesn’t mean she’ll show favoritism.

“I’m really not for changing the labor laws of this state,” Perdue said, adding that she’s opposed to collective bargaining for state workers.

Also Friday, McCrory’s campaign urged radio stations to pull a Perdue radio commercial that McCrory called “a total lie.”

The ad has two men talking about McCrory’s record. One said McCrory “questioned whether we should pave roads in small towns and rural areas” while another said the mayor “wants to let New Jersey and New York ship their garbage down here to North Carolina.”

McCrory has criticized the state’s road-funding formula, but he said he’s never said the state should stop spending on less-congested areas.

Perdue ran a television ad this fall that said McCrory opposed a 2007 law that proponents said prevented large landfills from being built in eastern North Carolina to take in other states’ trash. But

McCrory said he opposed the bill because it included a $2-per-ton surcharge on trash collected at landfills that cities will have to pay.

McCrory campaign attorney Alan Pugh wrote the ad was untruthful and rose to “the level of libel and slander” needed for a public official to file a lawsuit.

Perdue campaign spokesman David Kochman said McCrory “is pulling a desperate stunt to hide the truth from voters” with the letter.