“I’ve been assigned six states. Pennsylvania, my home state. Ohio, Iowa, believe it or not, New Hampshire, Florida… Now they are talking about assigning me either Virginia, Nevada or North Carolina. We started off with Michigan, but we look like we are in pretty good shape in Michigan.”

— Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview with Time magazine, on the 2012 presidential race.

Larry Sabato: “Over the past eight elections, Gallup — the most recognizable of polling organizations — has only identified the eventual popular vote winner twice in its early June horse race polling.”

Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer announced that he was ending his independent campaign for president and will instead create an organization focused on getting big money out of politics, Politico reports.

Said Roemer: “As I am no longer a candidate for president, I am free to pledge a good portion of the rest of my life to enacting campaign reform in the halls of Congress and the corridors of the White House. Instead of using my right to the floor of Congress to lobby for corporate clients, I will lobby for the American people who want reform. To be successful, this endeavor must cross party lines. In truth, the two major parties are addicted to special interests and corporate money. I have said it many times: they are joined at the billfold. The two parties have been graveyards of reform too often in the past. They don’t want reform. They only want victory and reelection.”

New NBC News-Marist College polls show President Obama and Mitt Romney deadlocked in three important battleground states.

Iowa: Romney, 44; Obama, 44

Colorado: Obama, 46; Romney, 45

Nevada: Obama, 48; Romney, 46

These three states are all battlegrounds that Obama carried in 2008, but George W. Bush won in 2004.

Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra (R) said he’d like to “create a federal office in Washington that would verify that presidential candidates meet the minimum requirements to hold the office,” the Detroit Free Press reports.

Said Hoekstra: “This is not brain surgery. It should be an FBI person, maybe a CIA person. If you want to run for president, you’ve got to go with the proper documentation and get it certified that you meet the qualifications to be the President of the United States.”

Sen. Dean Heller’s (R-NV) campaign has set up a Spanish-language website which “is not as robust as the English-language version but does have a summary statement about the candidate,” the Las Vegas Sun reports.

“On both sites, information can be found on Heller’s stance on immigration, including similar sections that address the convoluted immigration system…. Yet, only the English-language site addresses Heller’s stance on border security and illegal immigration.”

Also: “Heller, through his statements and votes in Congress, has consistently supported limiting or eliminating the ability to conduct government business in any language other than English… On his Spanish-language website, however, his statement indicated concern over Nevada students whose first language is not English.”

President Obama and Mitt Romney “spoke to each other for the first time since the general election campaign has begun in earnest,” the Washington Post reports.

“According to the White House, Obama called Romney just before noon to congratulate him on securing the Republican presidential nomination after he won the Texas GOP primary on Tuesday. Romney’s victory, coming after his leading challengers withdrew or suspended their campaigns over the past several weeks, gave him at least 88 more delegates, putting him over the 1,144 he needed to clinch the nomination.”

A new new Marquette Law School Poll in Wisconsin shows Gov. Scott Walker (R) leading challenger Tom Barrett (D), 52% to 45% among likely voters.

However, Greg Sargent reports a new poll taken by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake finds the race deadlocked at 49% each.

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds a sharp advance among women “has boosted Mitt Romney to his highest favorability rating of the presidential campaign – albeit still an unusually weak one – while President Obama’s personal popularity has slipped.”

“Obama still beats Romney in favorable ratings overall, by an 11-point margin, 52% vs. 41%. But that’s down from 21 points last month… All Romney’s gains have come among women — up by 13 percentage points in personal popularity from last month, while Obama’s lost 7 points among women. (Views among men have been more stable.) Obama’s rating among women, 51% favorable, still beats Romney’s 40% — but again that margin is far smaller than what it was six weeks ago.”

Mitt Romney appears eligible to be president, according to a copy of Romney’s birth certificate released to Reuters by his campaign.

Willard Mitt Romney, the certificate says, was born in Detroit on March 12, 1947.