Discussions about voter suppression and other voting rights issues. Voter fraud stuff will pop up in here, too. Category added 1 May 2013, so earlier posts may not show up here reliably.
The odds seem very slender that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be able to stay on the Supreme Court through the Trump Administration.
Which is a darned shame, because it is now that we need her most.
Ginsburg Slaps Gorsuch in Gerrymandering Case
The newest Justice tried to give a lecture about the Constitution. His colleague had other ideas.
It’s become almost cliche in modern times that conspiracy theorists on the side opposite the incumbent President speculate about their sworn foe delaying the elections so as to hold onto power and become a mad tyrant. I first heard that sort of rumbling back during the Clinton Era, where a combo of Gingrichian “win at any cost” politics combined with debacles like Waco and Ruby Ridge to lead to reports of FEMA slave labor camps and anticipated false flag operations to justify Clinton canceling the election. This ramped up further (while shifting wings) during Bush’s tenure (amplified by fears of folk like Cheney, events like 9-11 leading to increased security and civil liberty lockdowns, and the hamfisted justifications leading up to the Iraq War), when a number of people sincerely argued that Bush would cancel both elections during his tenure. Then, of course, once Obama was in office, things shifted the other direction, and that Kenyan Atheist Muslim Terrorist would clearly cancel the elections in 2012, and then in 2016, so he could hold onto office.
This article is a little bit different. Rather than asserting such a scheme, it asks identified Republicans a series of questions. They were asked if Trump won the popular vote (nearly half said yes), if millions of illegals voted (68% said yes), and if voter fraud occurred often (73% yes).
Then they were asked these questions:
If Donald Trump were to say that the 2020 presidential election should be postponed until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote, would you support or oppose postponing the election?
What if both Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress were to say that the 2020 presidential election should be postponed until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote? Would you support or oppose postponing the election?
Of those polled 52% said they would support a delay if only Donald Trump asked for it, and 56% said yes if Congressional GOP backed him up.
That’s … pretty remarkably scary.
The article does note that, if this weren’t a hypothetical, if this were a real proposal being made, they think that more folk would oppose such a radical move. But, hey, nobody thought Trump would win, either.
A lot of folk were worried that the far-Right National Front in France would gain a large foothold of power, based on an upswing in support from a stagnant economy and (especially) Islamicist terrorism over the last year. And the first round of election that fear seemed to be coming to pass. Then …:
'France's far-right National Front performed unexpectedly poorly in Sunday's regional elections, securing control of exactly zero regions. In the first round just one week ago, it finished in first place in six out of 12 regions and was expected to prevail in second-round voting in at least two, and perhaps as many as four, regions. The unexpected defeat came in the context of soaring turnout. Just 48 percent of eligible voters cast ballots last week, but, faced with predictions of National Front victory, that surged to 59 percent today.'
Turning out for elections matters. That's a lesson that the Democrats keep struggling with, especially in off-year elections, when turnout drops in general — and which the GOP then sweeps in and gains more seats in Congress. You think your going out and voting doesn't make a difference? The French just proved you wrong.
French far right faces unexpected defeat after turnout soars
Showing up to vote makes a difference.
If you are going to posit that a fundamental right — voting — requires some sort of positive ID, then you are morally required to make rightfully obtaining that ID as easy as possible.
This sort of looks (and smells) like anything but.
Originally shared by +Susan Stone:
Voter ID and driver’s license office closures black-out Alabama’s Black Belt
Twenty-nine counties now have no place where you can get a driver’s license.
This article looks at some mass social changes and their timeline of acceptance (based on state laws then federal laws/rulings), including women's suffrage, abortion, prohibition, interracial marriage, and now same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization.
This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind
As the Supreme Court considers extending same-sex marriage rights to all Americans, we look at the patterns of social change that have tranformed the nation.
I would consider proportional voting for President f it were done on a national basis; while it's being voted for only in those GOP-led states that have tended to vote majority Democrat in presidential elections, it's clearly just manipulation the rules in one's favor.
But I'd rather see spotty state proportional voting (which is, at the very least, locally democatic) than proportional voting by congressional district. Given the manipulation and gerrymandering of district lines by whomever (GOP or Dem) is in charge of the state lege right after the decennial Census, multiplying that effect by letting it influence the presidential elections, too, is practically criminal.
(h/t +Les Jenkins)
Republicans are trying to legally rig elections: Michigan edition – AMERICAblog News
Like similar proposals in other states, a new bill in Michigan would allocate electoral votes wildly unrepresentative congressional districts.
An Arizona state constitutional amendment, passed by the voters, may be struck down by SCOTUS because it (quite intentionally) cuts the legislature out of the role of establishing congressional districts. The US Constitution says that the "time, place, and manner" of state elections shall be determined by the state's legislature, and a majority of the justices, based on their questions in oral arguments today, didn't seem to think that the amendment seemed to comply with that.
I have my doubts, to be honest, largely because I think not letting legislators legislate their own district boundaries seems like an extraordinarily good idea to remove the conflict of interest that results in grotesque gerrymandering. (Both parties have been and are guilty of it, but the most egregious examples at the moment are from the GOP after their 2010 victories in statehouses.) To me, the point is not that the commission in Arizona itself is not a "legislature," but that the commission was set up by the voter of the state, following the state's own constitution as to how laws and amendments may be passed — serving themselves as a legislature.
It's also not completely convincing to me that "time, place, and manner" of elections necessarily includes how districts are drawn. Nor that, in fact, the state legislature has standing in being "harmed" by the amendment. (I can imagine individual representatives, no longer in a "safe" district, considering themselves harmed, but it would take pretty big balls to be that bluntly political about it, arguing that the US Constitution ensures the ability of a legislator to keep his reelections easy.)
We will, I suppose, see. The current SCOTUS has not been much of a friend to anything that smacks of electoral reform, and doesn't seem to consider gerrymandering much of a problem.
(h/t +Andreas Schou)
Supreme Court Justices Skeptical Of Non-Legislative Redistricting
The Supreme Court seems likely to strike down state laws that take redistricting completely out of the hands of state legislatures.
And … that it's not very extensive. At all.
"True the Vote," a "voter integrity:" group, provided an app for folk to report on election day voter fraud they observed. What they got back were … well, more cases of restrictive voter ID laws keeping people from voting than anything else.
True The Vote’s Election Day App Undercuts Its Own Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories
A week before Election Day, the “voter integrity” group True the Vote released a new smart phone app to empower its army of citizen detectives to report suspected incidents of voter frau
There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about electronic voting machines, and a lot of security and transparency issues to suggest consider getting rid of them.
But, honestly, the worst, most stoopid reason to do so is because it costs money to maintain them … and states don't want to spend the money and Congress (coughHouseGOPcough) won't allocate any because the states should have to do it.
I mean, really? We keep calling ourselves the richest country on Earth and We're Number One and all that jazz — and when the voting machines wear out we're simply not going to replace them because someone might have to spend some money?
I don't buy the argument that the US has already become a banana republic, but when we get there, this will be a great piece of evidence.
States ditch electronic voting machines
Nearly 70 percent of voters will be casting paper ballots this year.
And, yeah, it's rabidly partisan, but it's darned funny.
And, yeah, also true: when you don't vote, you let someone else take charge (and that's a message that cuts across partisan lines).
Originally shared by +Les Jenkins:
It's funny because it's true.
The article cropped up in my stream today, which reminded me of a conversation I had last weekend with my mom, which led me to go casting about for a lot of info I've run across over the past months on the article's basic premise, which is, Voter ID laws don't discriminate because almost everyone can get a free state ID if they'd just get up off their butts and get one.
The article also suggests that Voter ID laws impact very few people because very few provisional ballots are cast.
The article is wrong, on both parts.
First off, lack of approved government photo ID (the definition of which varies from state to state, but to generalize) is remarkably widespread. http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf carries a lot of the statistics that are accepted here (the info was gathered in 2006). As many as 11% of the US voting-age citizenry doesn't have approved government photo IDs. Those numbers go up dramatically as you look at the elderly (18%), minorities (25% of blacks), and lower income brackets (15% with incomes below $35K).
Some folk find this remarkable. "How do you live in society without a photo ID?" Those questions are most often asked by people outside of such communities. Folk get by through dealing with businesses that don't require them. The most common ID, for example, is the Drivers License. But if you don't own a car or don't drive, you likely don't have one. And you probably don't have a credit card, so you deal in a cash society that doesn't rely on photo IDs to verify credit cards. You cash your paycheck at a payday cash checking shop (which takes a nice slice off the top to account for their increase chance of fraud). You frequent the local liquor store where they know you and don't need to card you (or you have a friend who does have ID go and pick up something for you).
These are real things, and real people. It's quite possible to live without IDs, even in today's society.
So, why not then get a "free" ID from the state? Because they aren't really free, except for your actual transaction at the window. http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/FullReportVoterIDJune2014.pdf looks at that in more detail, but there are a number of areas where cost come in.
First off, you need to validate your identity to get such an ID. That usually means a birth cert. But as the Brennan Center report notes, 7% of Americans don't have ready access to citizenship papers (birth certificates, passports, etc.). That climbs as income level drops — 12% of voting age citizens with incomes under $25K don't have such documentation. For women, 52% don't have a birth certificate with their current legal name; 34% don't have access to any proof of citizenship with their current legal name.
Getting that documentation isn't necessarily easy, either. Getting an official birth certificates usually costs money — not an exorbitant amount for most, but for a lot of folks paying $10-20 or more is non-trivial. The numbers can go up significantly if they were born out of state. There can also be costs to obtain copies of marriage licenses for women (generally) to prove that their name has been changed if they did so. There can be further costs if legal intervention is required (e.g., someone who was adopted, someone who didn't have a birth certificate because they had been delivered by a midwife).
Costs for getting birth certificates and the like are often higher for folks no longer in a state. And some states (North and South Carolina, for example), require you to show a photo ID to prove you're entitled to get a birth certificate (a nice Catch-22 there).
IDs are issued by government offices. For example, Wisconsin issued such "free" IDs at their DMV offices. There are costs associated, though, with going to one of the 92 DMVs — bus fare, for example, if you can't bum a ride from a friend (remember, no Drivers Licenses here). Those can add up for each trip taken (if the lines were too long, or it turns out you didn't bring what was needed). Further such locations aren't open 24×7; again, in Wisconsin's case, all but 2 DMVs closed by 5pm; only 1 DMV was open on a weekend day. All of those venues, being outside normal working hours, were crowded, and could require additional trips. The alternative for many would be to take time off of work (thus losing wages) to go there during "normal working hours."
The judgment striking down Wisconsin's Voter ID law (http://goo.gl/KHoUYu) goes through a number of these factors. The Charles Hamilton Houston report linked to estimates that all of these factors combined to cost people seeking "free" IDs $75-150, and those cases where legal intervention is necessary can cost much more.
Free IDs aren't.
The Politico article suggests that this isn't any problem because people who don't have the right ID can cast a "provisional" ballot and then later come back with appropriate identification — and the statistics reported indicates that few such cases exist.
One could counter that all the studies of voter identification fraud are even more passingly rare — so rare, in fact, that it has to call into question why there is such a loud call for laws to prevent such fraud, particularly from the GOP.
But all that aside, the number provided is meaningless. If you're told (or even warned by signs plastered around your neighborhood by "helpful" anti-voting-fraud groups) that you can't register or vote without government photo ID (and, by those warning signs, that it's a crime to do so, subject to all sorts of penalties), you're not likely to go and cast a provisional ballot, esp. if it's not likely your ID-less circumstance is going to change in the next 30 days. The provisional ballot thing is great for folks who leave their ID at home, not so much for folk who don't have ID in the first place, and can't afford to get it (or for whom the cost of getting it is non-trivial compared to others).
One can argue that if someone is truly motivated to vote, they will go through that level of inconvenience or cost. I would suggest that a lot of the folk making that argument either find that cost inconsequential or else don't have to worry about it because they already have the photo IDs and copies of their birth certificates they need. It's easy to trivialize a burden when it isn't your own.
(I also recommend http://goo.gl/4NQKoW is a more recent article, summarizing many of the same themes.)
If we consider this to be a burning issue of our times — if we really do want positive ID for voting, then the answer would seem to be a common national ID card that we would both require and ensure provisioning to every citizen, at government expense. Further, it would eliminate the variations in what IDs are acceptable between states, reducing confusion and questions of fairness (or loopholes). There are some significant downsides to such a program (cost, counterfeiting, database management, not to mention concerns about the Number of the Beast and similar zaniness), but those same problems occur with current state-based ID schemes, only more diffusely and thus hidden from view.
The fact is, we already have a de facto (and shoddily assembled) national ID program by state proxy (with adjuncts like Social Security cards further muddying matters). While people can live without such an ID now, they do face barriers and problems without one, as in the case in point. Maybe we'd just be better off biting the bullet and making what we've already cobbled together something more straightforward.
Going back to the article — are Voter ID laws a poll tax? A poll tax (in this context) is a fee in order to vote. For Voter ID, that fee may be one-time (to get a legit state ID, though parts of it may be repeated because of name changes, residency changes, etc.), but it remains something that people have to pay in order to exercise their constitutional right to the suffrage. It's hard not to argue that the term applies.
The Poll Tax That Wasn’t
When the Supreme Court over the weekend rejected a petition to stop a Texas voter ID law from going into effect for the midterms, the left commenced its wailing and gnashing of teeth. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the law “purposely discriminatory,” and everyone piled in behind her with denunciations of the Lone Star…
In fact, ignoring traffic means you probably will.
Which is my metaphor for the below. People who say, "Oh, it's all just politics, it makes no difference, just going to ignore it, lulz," are simply turning over the process to people who are willing to vote. And the result does make a difference.
Or, as Heinlein put it, "Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you — if you don't play, you can't win." And if you don't play, you'll still lose.
Originally shared by +Michael Allen:
It can't be any clearer…#Vote 2014 #Rock the Vote!
No, no, nothing funny going on here at all, nothing to see, move along …
Voter Registration Drive in Georgia Leads to Lawsuit
A nonprofit group working to register minority voters in Georgia filed suit, claiming officials have failed to process tens of thousands of voter applications ahead of the Nov. 4 vote.
For which reason, the idea of registering people to vote who might otherwise feel powerless to act (save, perhaps, through violence) should be seen as a positive way of engaging the populace and getting their buy-in to the system, for the good of society.
Unless you really, truly, want them to feel disenfranchised, alienated, and outside of the citizenry. In which case, on your head be it.
Missouri GOP leader calls Ferguson voter-registration drive ‘disgusting’
Here’s hoping those who are “disgusted” by the voter-registration drive will take a moment to consider a different perspective.
RT @Stonekettle: Well OF COURSE the game is rigged – biggest part of that is convincing you that your vote doesn’t count.
Don’t fall for …
… Followed by arrests of activists that help make it happen on multiple felony voter fraud counts, and full-court-press investigations by state agents. Except four years later, there have been no convictions, multiple mistrials, some accused who haven't even had a trial date set yet, and no witnesses who have yet testified how their vote was interfered with or stolen.
Ah, Georgia …
Top Georgia Officials Are Going After Black Leaders Who Organized Voters | VICE United States
Political activists in Quitman, Georgia are paying a price for the Southern white establishment’s paranoid fantasies.
More notably, state legislatures are easier to influence by big lobbying interests (as was clear back when this reform was first put in), and tying US Senators to votes by state legislators suddenly makes gerrymandering a much more powerful political tactic.
Nope. Not a good idea.
Reshared post from +Kee Hinckley
Repeal the 17th amendment and State issues will take a backseat to national ones in State elections.
❝ How do we know repealing the 17th Amendment would turn state legislative elections into proxies for national debates? Because we’ve seen it before. Consider the most famous Senate race in history, when Abraham Lincoln squared off against Stephen Douglas on the question of the expansion of slavery in 1858. We tend to forget, all these years later, that neither man was actually on the ballot. Instead, Illinois voters were choosing Republican or Democratic state legislators, who would, in turn, pick either Lincoln or Douglas. Because the state Legislature had the power to choose the next senator, and because slavery was the burning national question, there was precious little attention for, say, road building or local tax policy or whatever else the Illinois state Legislature had been up to. The only thing that mattered was a national question and the candidates debating it. In effect, in that election, Illinois chose its state lawmakers without paying much attention to the performance of state officials. ❞
Why the Conservative Plan to Get Rid of the 17th Amendment Makes No Sense
Over the past year, an increasingly central plank of conservative and Tea Party rhetoric is that constitutional change is needed and that the 17th Amendment in particular, which gives state residents the power to elect senators directly, should be repealed. (Previously, senators were selected by the state legislatures). Hard-right figures…
First, it's abundantly clear that the national government is already in possession of massive amounts of information about us as individuals. The whole "The One World Order Government will know what color my eyes are" conspiracy arguments are pretty obsolete at this point.
Second, more and more of our society is based around confirming state ID, from a national basis (getting on an airplane) to a local one (securing the right to vote, not to mention buy alcohol or cash a check).
So, fine. Let's just do it, and then then focus our attention on all the problems that come with such a national ID, including ensuring that everyone can get one, making them as counterfeit-proof as possible, and dealing with errors in the databases. Those problems all happen now, but they're obscured by being split out among the 50 states, and allow said states to play games with them (re voting rights). Let's tackle them as-is and move on.
Reshared post from +Gizmodo
An important read for your favorite conspiracy theorist:
No, Real ID Is Not a National ID Card
Big Brother! Little Brother! Medium-sized Brother! Conspiracy-minded websites are ramping up the rhetoric in the lead-up to full enforcement of the Real ID Act, set to happen early next year. “It’s a National ID card!” they scream. No, no it’s not.
I mean, really — it's at least as important, as a civil society, as the other "national holiday" dates. And providing it as a holiday would remove a lot of the brouhaha over early voting and polling place hours and the like.
Of course, if there really is an effort to restrain voting, especially voting by folks for whom getting to the polls during a working day is non-trivial, then it's obvious why this idea has never and will never get any traction. Let alone the "It will hurt small businesses and reduce profits and make our economy all higgledy-piggledy" fearmongering.
This actually came up in a conversation with my daughter last evening. And except for "it will cost some people some money," I couldn't think of a single reason not to do it, except that giving everyone the opportunity to vote is not high on enough people's priority lists.
Reshared post from +Bernie Sanders
Former Florida GOP leaders say voter suppression was reason…
A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.
