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.
Yeah, she looks pretty darned suspicious. The key was discovering that her drivers license shows her maiden name as the middle name (as, apparently, Texas law required back when she got married in 1964), but her voter registration shows her born middle name as the middle name. According to Texas' new Voter ID law, that's a sign that she may be a miscreant trying to cast an illegal vote!
Sure, she was one of those weasly "female judges" who was able to maneuver through the problems. But I'm sure spotting "voter fraud" like this will keep plenty of other potential evil-doers from casting their votes in Texas elections.
Which is: No, they aren't designed to curb massive, or even significant voter fraud. They are designed to curb massive, or even significant voting from populations that their partisan supporters would rather not vote (as further indicated by how they get passed alongside bills to restrict early voting, etc.).
Yeah, seems like only a few months ago when Republican leaders and strategists were all talking about how they had to stop being ideologically extreme and pursue the interests, and votes, of women, minorities, youth …
So is this massive flurry of GOP activity on abortion, etc., simply reverting to form? Or trying to raise money now before putting back on a "moderate" face next year (or in 2016)? Or a sign that somr of them are worried they might not be around in 2-4 years, and need to pass these laws while they still can?
Whatever it is, I really don't get the sense that they are making much effort to win the hearts and minds of the folks they were all outwardly sure they had to win the hearts and minds of.
Rubio Plans To Introduce Texas-Style Abortion Ban In The Senate
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is planning to introduce a bill in the Senate that would ban abortion after 20 weeks, the Weekly Standard reported on Wednesday. The bill is meant to mirror anti-abortion legislation passed last month by the House of Representatives. Under the plan reportedly being proposed by Rubio, a woman would be unable […]
So this is pretty cool news (though, given Rick Scott, I have to wonder what the actual motivation is, or when the other shoe will drop). But aside from restoring earlier voting, etc., this one provision to Florida's new law caught my eye:
'It also seeks to make ballot length more manageable by restricting constitutional amendments to a maximum of 75 words ….'
My first thought is that such a restriction is kind of arbitrary. On the other hand, maybe it will help restrict lengthy, detailed legislation proposed as constitutional amendment, a practice that serves neither voters nor the state constitution well. Short amendments would require more careful crafting, and turn the focus on basic principles, not specific rate schedules and the like.
On the other hand such amendments might carry more unintended consequences, or at least require more creative adjudicating with how they fit in with existing constitutional principles.
In general, though, I think it's an intriguing idea, an embodiment of the KISS principle, and perhaps one of the more meaningful (if less urgent) aspects of the electoral reform passed by Florida.
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Florida Reverses Voter Suppression Laws
In a rare case of apparently doing the right thing, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida has signed into law a bill that reverses most of the changes made after he came into office that made it more difficul…
Though it is legal (indeed, constitutionally mandated, per the Supreme Court) for college students to register and vote in the college communities they are temporarily attending, that just doesn't sit right with some state GOP legislatures. So they keep trying to find ways to discourage it, like:
– Not letting parents deduct their student kids as dependents if they register to vote at college (North "We hate taxes, unless we can use them to do stuff we like" Carolina)
– Requiring colleges to treat students who register to vote there as in-state students, creating a financial disincentive to the colleges that have been encouraging them to register to vote. (Ohio)
The problem being, of course, that college students tend to vote Democratic, and thus affect local and state-wide politics. If only they could be discouraged from voting while young and radical, or at least until they go back home, then (the Republican thought seems to be) all would be well.
A great lesson in civics and civil responsibility, GOP. You get a gold star and an American flag for that one.
Boy, the Republicans are really afraid of the youth vote.
Fear of the youth vote, now in Ohio
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that students have a constitutional right to vote where they go to school, even if they’re considered an out-of-state student. But since the 2012 election, Republi…
While Wisconsin's GOP keeps preaching fiscal responsibility and budget cuts, Scott Walker's proposal to end same-day voter registration would actually add millions to state spending because of other federal election laws that would kick in if it went away.
But as long as it keeps those people from voting, I'm sure they'll think it's worth it.
(I do find it amusing that Walker's son used same-day voter registration in this last election.)
Apparently Husted is not going to press for changes in how Ohio allocates its Electoral College Votes.
I'll disagree with TP here, though, in that the scheme itself (allocate out ECVs by congressional district, with the senatorial ECVs going to the statewide winner) is not "rigged" — but the gerrymandered congressional districts are that would go into it are.
Indeed, I have to wonder if the increased importance of such district drawing under such a scheme would have brought such gerrymandering under greater scrutiny, which may be why Husted's backed off.
There were a lot of worries over the last few years that Obama's less-than-progressive track record was going to cause "enthusiasm" problems for support of the Democratic ticket this year.
Obama can thank the GOP for drumming up Romney "anti-enthusiasm" to counter that problem. Because between the GOP primary Race to the Right and some of the charming anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, rapey-rape-rape, anti-99%, anti-47%, etc., etc., remarks coming from GOP leaders and candidates and prominent supporters this year, there was plenty of enthusiasm to go around for younger voters to keep Romney (et al.) out of office.
While this was bad news for Romney and the GOP, it's not exactly comforting for the Democrats, I believe.
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How Young Voters Became The Deciding Factor In The 2012 Election
NEW YORK — Mitt Romney lost the youth vote by a huge margin, and with it, he lost the presidency. Sixty percent of young voters who cast ballots chose to reelect President Barack Obama, against the 3…
Honestly, it's way too early to be calling the 2012 presidential race, in my opinion. Yeah, the polling shows at least an Electoral College victory for Obama, but that's still contingent on some swing stats, voter turn-out, voter suppression concerns, etc.
It ain't over until it's over.
The GOP, though, seems to be already laying the groundwork to explain why all their pundit calls for a Big Romney Victory will turn out to be busts. And the reason: Hurricane Sandy blunted the "Ro-mentum". Never mind that any post-Denver debate surge by Romney had flattened well before — that's their story and they're sticking to it.
Except it's spun even more than just that. Sandy became an excuse for a "blackout" of campaign news by the (liberal) media, thus Romney's campaigning about the economy, jobs, etc., etc., was all hidden away from the public. Plus, Obama, rather than having to face charges about what a failure he's been, was able to play the role of "Comforter-in-Chief" and get sympathy for, um, all the sympathy he was giving.
(Side note here on irony if a hurricane that may well have been made worse through global climate change played an role in the defeat of the party that's led the rhetorical fight on denying there's any global climate change.)
The GOP isn't officially conceding defeat, of course. But that some of them are already making a lot of excuses in advance for Romney not winning is … interesting, to say the least.
1. Every pundit seems to have a strong idea that Their Candidate Will Win.
2. Some substantial proportion of those pundits (let's say 50%) will turn out to be, in fact, dead wrong.
3. All the wrong pundits will have plentiful reasons why their predictions were wrong, ranging from it being the fault of the electorate (poor turnout, lying to pollsters, flighty whimsy) to it being the fault of sinister forces (voter suppression, voter fraud) to it simply being One Of Those Things.
4. Not one single pundit will lose their job, stop being invited to news shows, or be too shamed to have a strong idea in 2016 that Their Candidate Will Win.
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The Volokh Conspiracy » Pundits and Predictions
I agree with most of Ilya’s post below on why political pundits are overconfident that their side will win elections. I would just add an even more cynical point: A lot of political pundits are overco…
Every four years the US gets into a big internal debate (at least in some circles) about the Electoral College and how it distorts the system from a pure, fine democracy into safe states, swing states, and the potential for winning the popular vote but not the electoral vote.
For my non-US readers (or those here who never quite figured it out in civics class), the race for president is tallied up within each state. Each state has a number of Electoral Votes, based roughly on population, equal to the state’s count of House representatives (population based from the previous census) plus the state’s count of Senators (2 from each state). The District of Columbia gets 3 EVs, though they have no voting members in Congress.
The original plan was that each state would determine how to choose its Electors (everything from popular election to selection by the state legislature), then those Electors would brave the transportation system of the late 18th Century, meet together (as an Electoral College), and elect the president. It’s since gotten a lot more systematic than that, though technically the Electors do get together to cast their vote; all states require their Electors to vote there as directed, so it’s pretty much a formality at that point.
In the majority of states, the Electoral Vote is winner-take-all; if you get the majority of popular votes in a state, you end up with all of that state’s EVs. A few states allocate them more proportionately; Maine and Nebraska allocate one for the winner inside each Congressional District, and their two state-wide Senator votes based on the state-wide winner.
The main critique of the system is that the Electoral College is not proportional to the voting public. It is possible (and has happened) that someone could win the popular vote and lose the Electoral Vote (e.g., barely losing in many states, winning big in a few others). Comparing the EV percentage vs the popular vote percentage in any given election shows this distortion. For example:
In 1968 (the last time there was serious Congressional discussion of changing this system), Nixon got 301 Electoral Votes vs Humphrey’s 191 and Wallace’s 46 — a 56/36/9% split, even though the actual popular vote was 43/43/14%.
In the contested 2000 election, Bush beat Gore 51/49% in the electoral vote, but lost 47.9/48.4% in the popular vote.
In 2008, the electoral split between Obama and McCain was 68/32%, while the popular vote was actually 53/46%.
(Some consider this “problem” an advantage, since it tends to exaggerate the victory in the Electoral College, providing more of a national governing mandate; I’m not sure I buy that.)
Population per Elector, from California (on the left) to Wyoming (on the right).
Further, because smaller states still get their 2 Senator votes included, they end up with a disproportionately higher impact per voter (see chart).
(Some folks consider this latter “problem” an advantage, too, and not just those in smaller states. It encourages, in theory, attention be paid to each state, and requires that smaller states have their concerns given some acknowledgment, since the President is not supposed to be the representative of just the majority, but of the entire nation.)
The other critique — particularly apparent this year — is that the contest narrows down into “safe states” and “swing states” purely based on EVs, not on population. A state (say, California) where candidate X has 60% or more of the vote locked up will basically be ignored by both camps because the state’s EVs will all go to the winning candidate. This effectively disenfranchises other 40% of the populate, and can hurt candidates and propositions in other political contests in that state. Meanwhile, “swing states” like Colorado (cough) and Florida and Ohio, where the vote is very close, get “blessed” by many, many, many visits from the presidential candidates, the vice-presidential candidates, their spouses, their proxies, etc., because swaying just a few voters could net all the state’s EVs.
People who suggest amending the US Constitution to do away with the electoral college, though, ignore a couple of resulting problems as well.
First off, it all then comes down to cities and major urban areas. Not much point for a candidate to campaign in New Hampshire, Montana, or even Colorado, if they can get in front of many, many more people by hitting the East Coast megalaopolis, and maybe the LA area. If you can maybe pick up 10,000 voters going to LA, or 100 voters going to Laramie, which are you going to do?
(Sorry, North Dakota — you’re pretty much screwed under either system.)
Second thought is that concerns over voter /election fraud and recounts suddenly become much, much more widespread. In the current system, if Ohio goes to Romney 60-40 (let’s say), then a recount there that might uncover election irregularities is pretty pointless, since it won’t make the 10%+ shift needed. Recounts will focus on the states where the margins are razor thin.
In a purely popular vote, however, in a narrow race nationwide, aggregate cheating and mismanagement has a much greater effect. Fixing 10 votes from every precinct could turn the election. Every state could become another Florida 2000 — because, to be honest, our electoral practices (even where scrupulously honest) are not nearly as rock-solid procedurally and execution-wise as they should be. In an electoral college system, that “noise” gets washed out by the winner takes all practice. When it becomes a national popular vote, though, the impact of hanging chads and voter suppression, etc., become much more significant, much harder to narrow down or audit.
A more practical barrier to changing to an all-popular vote is that it would require a federal constitutional amendment — and previous attempts have demonstrated that smaller and more rural states will oppose that, as reducing their overall influence.
With a federal constitutional amendment unlikely, various states have looked at different alternatives. Colorado toyed with going to a system like Maine and Nebraska, but eventually rejected it for fear that it would make the state less subject to candidate courting than in its present “swing” status. To counter that weakening of individual status, some states have proposed interstate agreements to commit to casting their votes proportionately together, but nobody’s really jumped on that bandwagon. California looked at a proposal to cast all of its Electoral Votes for the candidate who wins the national popular vote, which would maybe make it more likely to be campaigned in (to get more popular votes), but could lead to its own distortions and problems. (see cartoon).
Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) has proposed an interesting tweak to the system, which would add a bonus 29 electoral votes (equivalent to the state of Florida) to anyone who won the popular vote (sort of a national version of the “proportional electoral vote with a bonus for the winner” schemes in Maine and Nebraska). Not quite sure about the precise number, but it would add an interesting spin to things to prevent a popular/electoral winner conflict. That might encourage a bit more campaigning outside of the swing states (every extra vote counts, at least a little) while not completely overturning the advantages of the electoral system.
Or it might just be adding one more complexity to a distorting process.
It’s not likely to pass (everyone complains about the Electoral College, but nobody in Congress really has a huge desire to fix it, certainly not via a minority party bill), but it’s another example of people trying to fix a system seen as problematic, but with no easy answers that don’t add their own problems.
Dragged kicking and screaming by two federal court decisions (and a rejection from SCOTUS) to reinstate rull early voting for all voters, Ohio GOP Secretary of State John Husted is playing around with the hours of early voting centers to make it more difficult to find out when voting is possible.
'Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted swiftly limited early voting hours on those crucial three days to 8 am–2 pm on Saturday, November 3; 1–5 pm on Sunday, November 4; and 8 am–2 pm on Monday, November 5. That means Ohio voters will have a total of only sixteen hours to cast a ballot during those three days. And before the weekend before the election, Ohio voters will still not be able to cast a ballot in-person on nights or weekends.'
I'm sure that folks who are trying to encourage and enable early voting will be letting folks know about those mish-mosh hours. I hope they are also monitoring to ensure that there are enough (working) polling machines to meet the crowds that are expected to turn out.
I have to give the Romney campaigns kudos for chutzpah for translating the Obama campaign's complains about a law that limits early voting in Ohio for everyone but military personnel into the Obama campaign attacking military voting rights.
Of course, it's therefore worthwhile noting that the Ohio law Romney's campaign is voting for restricts veterans as well. Why does Mitt Romney hate veterans?
(He doesn't, of course, but not only is it a fair parallel calumny, it's even somewhat more factually based.)
The problem being that the problem the solution is intended to solve looks to be a different problem than the one claimed.
Demonstrate that current / traditional polling place security measures are allowing a substantial number of people to illegally cast votes, and that the impact of increasingly stringent voter ID laws is not to disenfranchise still more than that number, and I'll be happy to support such more stringent laws.
Imagine the vitriol and outrage and demands for a multi-year sentence if this guy had been, say, a former ACORN member who cast a single vote fraudulently. Instead, at this guys behest, 110K mostly-black voters got a call saying that they didn't need to go out and vote, the Democratic candidate had won, relax and "congratulations". And he gets 30 days at home, 500 hours of community service, and a one year suspended sentence.
The article does not note if this was a felony charge or a misdemeanor. It would be ironic (and wholly just) were it a felony charge and Maryland were one of the states that disenfranchises its former felons. #ddtb
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STLtoday – Associated Press – News
BALTIMORE (AP) — A political aide to Maryland's former Republican governor was sentenced to 30 days of home detention Thursday for an Election Day robocall conspiracy that prosecutors cast as an …
Of course, it's a GOP state official doing it. And convicted of it.
"Besides the obvious embarrassment of the state official who is in charge of elections being indicted on charges of voter registration fraud, it's just perfect that this happened in Indiana, because Indiana paved the way for the voter suppression laws we're seeing all over the country…. Indiana has one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the country, and that didn't stop their top elections official from registering and voting in the wrong place. That's because voter ID laws target the imaginary problem of voter impersonation fraud, while doing next to nothing to address the fraud that actually occurs." #ddtb
The Maddow Blog – Actual voter fraud
Republican policymakers, at the federal and state level, are often desperate to find real-world, high-profile examples of voter fraud. The good news for the GOP is that a legitimate example has come t…
It's a very positive trend, if you ask me, and a continued sign of the demographic countdown against those opposing equal rights for gays in our society (et al.). #ddtb
Pat Robertson: Those Struggling Financially Must Keep Tithing – I object less to Robertson suggestion that those who are struggling financially should continue to give donations to God, as much as his basically suggesting that they can do so because, really, they aren’t managing their money correctly in the first place, and that’s why they’re struggling, so it’s ALL THEIR FAULT. Thanks, Pat.
Crackdown politics – Really? Obama’s Dept of Justice is going full tilt against state-legal medical marijuana (and people who rent property to dispensaries, and newspapers that take ads for them, etc.)? Wow. Must be a slow campaign cycle …
Cantor to address the rich-poor gap – POLITICO.com Print View – Note: I think nobody (or very, very few) are talking about “pushing different people down the economic ladder.” Most folks are just talking about not stealing pieces from the bottom of the ladder in order to make the top of the ladder that much higher (and more rickety).
How the Deficit Got This Big – NYTimes.com – “A few lessons can be drawn from the numbers. First, the Bush tax cuts have had a huge damaging effect. If all of them expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels. Second, a healthy budget requires a healthy economy; recessions wreak havoc by reducing tax revenue. Government has to spur demand and create jobs in a deep downturn, even though doing so worsens the deficit in the short run. Third, spending cuts alone will not close the gap. The chronic revenue shortfalls from serial tax cuts are simply too deep to fill with spending cuts alone. Taxes have to go up.” It’s not that difficult, except that politics are trumping reality. And, ultimately, reality will bite back.
With nine days to go – Aren’t it the Republicans who have been lambasting the Dems for creating “uncertainty” in the markets, up until, oh, about a month ago?
