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Voter Suppression

Pancho

By Pancho
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aggie08
aggie08

This is how fucked up all of this is: this is pretty much the only CR thread with no GRHorn or Donkey or Don Johnson or Johnny Sack, etc. playing the both sides card or trolling or telling everyone th

bolverk
bolverk

One thing that strikes me is tha lack of voices here or elsewhere to defend against this worst act against democracy. Sure, you're against the abuse of FISA warrants. Me too! We should totally ha

Brisketexan
Brisketexan

Today's Wisconsin vote will go down as one of the most shameful episodes in the post-civil rights era.  And it is 100% on the GOP.  This is their baby -- they INSIST on in-person voting in the middle

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Homercles

Homercles 10206

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Disingenuous analogy because you don’t call out any responsibility for or risk to others your friend has. The Republican Party isn’t some deadbeat friend drinking his life away in his apartment; their integrity has far-reaching consequences for Americans present and future. 
Maybe the better analogy is: the Republican Party is like your alcoholic friend who works as a police officer. He’s always drunk on the job, speeds through school zones, takes bribes, selectively enforced the law based on race, gender, or whatever criteria de jour, and is, overall, becoming an increasing danger to his community. You’re the guy buying him drinks before his shift.  
But I guess good for you being loyal to him at your community’s expense. 


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DanRydell

DanRydell 799

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45 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Done posting in the CR. Discourse is not welcome. Imagine talking to someone you know the way you all talk to each other in here.

Be better.

If anyone I know went out of their way to praise a lying piece of shit "for being honest", I'd talk to them fuck ton more harshly than anyone has talked to you on here.

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Smax

Smax 3800

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On 12/6/2018 at 8:33 AM, SubliminalHorn said:

And even when that alcoholic destroys his family and friends, huh? Or in this case, the country and rule of law. 

 

 

I dont view the "GOP as destroying family and friends", thats the difference. Are they going through some issues, sure but that doesnt mean Im turning my back on them and joining up with the crack head hooker on the left

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SubliminalHorn

SubliminalHorn 7009

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20 minutes ago, Smax said:

 

 

I dont view the "GOP as destroying family and friends", thats the difference. Are they going through some issues, sure but that doesnt mean Im turning my back on them and joining up with the crack head hooker on the left

Going through some issues? LOL. They are the party of racists and xenophobes. Minor issues. 

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Kyle

Kyle 207

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An interesting story out of the city that invented fixing elections: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-met-chicago-13th-ward-alderman-race-kass-20181206-story.html

The history of the little guy being squashed by massive Chicago political clout at election time is just too long to print without weeping.

But the story for today is so amazing that some Chicago election officials have never seen the like.

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Celery Man

Celery Man 21099

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the implication in the article is that the suit will get quashed by people loyal or beholden to the political boss.  sounds shitty.  if true, no huge surprise that local politics in Chicago is a cesspool, same as it is here and other places.  corruption like that should be rooted out, whether it's this guy in Chicago or our AG in Texas, or Trump in the White House.

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Pancho

Pancho 46351

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On 12/6/2018 at 4:46 PM, Buzzrock said:

 Republicans in Georgia also oversaw record voter registration and the biggest minority voter turnout ever.

 

 

They didn't oversee this rather they just happened to be in power when it happened.  None of those things were because of Republicans. 

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Pancho

Pancho 46351

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On 12/6/2018 at 5:39 PM, The People’s Elbow said:

Disingenuous analogy because you don’t call out any responsibility for or risk to others your friend has. The Republican Party isn’t some deadbeat friend drinking his life away in his apartment; their integrity has far-reaching consequences for Americans present and future. 

Maybe the better analogy is: the Republican Party is like your alcoholic friend who works as a police officer. He’s always drunk on the job, speeds through school zones, takes bribes, selectively enforced the law based on race, gender, or whatever criteria de jour, and is, overall, becoming an increasing danger to his community. You’re the guy buying him drinks before his shift.  

But I guess good for you being loyal to him at your community’s expense. 

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WhatTheBuck

WhatTheBuck 28934

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2 hours ago, Pancho Negro said:

 

They didn't oversee this rather they just happened to be in power when it happened.  None of those things were because of Republicans. 

Well, it kind of was because of them. It's just not what they wanted. They'd rather minorities didn't vote at all. 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 90663

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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/11/kasichs-camp-slams-gop-effort-to-head-off-primary-vs-trump-1054858

Quote

Trump-aligned Republican activists in New Hampshire are quietly maneuvering to fortify his standing and avoid a potentially disruptive primary challenge in 2020.

In the most far-reaching move, Donald Trump’s allies are looking to scrap the state GOP’s tradition of remaining neutral in the primary — to clear the way for an endorsement of the president. They’re also moving to install one of their own as head of the state Republican Party.

The efforts wouldn’t stop a moderate Republican like John Kasich from taking on Trump. But they are designed to shield the president from the kind of damage that a serious primary fight could do to him heading into the general election. An endorsement would provide much more than just a verbal statement of support: It would enable the New Hampshire Republican Party to throw the weight of its entire apparatus behind Trump against any GOP rival.

A top strategist to Kasich said the attempt to stack the deck for the incumbentwill have no bearing on whether the outgoing Ohio governor decides to run, or on his ultimate success given the significant bloc of independent voters there.

But the early moves on behalf of Trump, which are being closely monitored by the president’s 2020 reelection campaign and outside advisers, demonstrate the degree to which the state party has coalesced behind the president and is working to head off a serious problem before one emerges.

One of the endorsement measure’s proponents, Bruce Breton, said he was motivated by the “hundreds of Trump supporters” he’s heard from since he declined to seek the state GOP’s vice chairmanship because of the “flawed” neutrality requirement. 

“They don’t want [a] primary fight,” Breton, who is close to former Trump campaign manager and New Hampshire native Corey Lewandowski, said of his state cohorts. “I think it will galvanize the president’s supporters."

 

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 106956

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Think about this: there is a major political party in the US, currently in power at the highest levels that, internally, says this about itself: "If eligible voters are actually allowed to vote, we will lose."  That's how fucking bankrupt the party is -- it's central electoral strategy is NOT to have winning ideas, but to insure that people are not allowed to vote against its shitty ideas.

JFC.

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elfenix

elfenix 34756

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Think about this: there is a major political party in the US, currently in power at the highest levels that, internally, says this about itself: "If eligible voters are actually allowed to vote, we will lose."  That's how fucking bankrupt the party is -- it's central electoral strategy is NOT to have winning ideas, but to insure that people are not allowed to vote against its shitty ideas.

JFC.

who are the underwriters on that one?

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Gil Bang

Gil Bang 26247

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Iowa is regularly at the center of our national political conversation, thanks to the biennial Iowa caucuses, which mark the beginning of both the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries. Now, with Senate File 575, Iowa is once again making headlines, this time for its attempts at voter suppression.

Under SF 575, which passed out of a committee earlier this month, students at Iowa’s public universities — University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and the University of Northern Iowa — would be unable to vote early on campus. This is because of a provision introduced in the bill that would prevent satellite voting locations from being set up in a “state-owned building.” This would not impact students attending private universities in Iowa.

Additionally, this bill would require the approximately 70,000 students at Iowa’s public universities to fill out a form when they graduate indicating if they plan to stay in Iowa, or move out of state. If they indicate that they plan on moving, the state will automatically purge them from the voting rolls. If their plans change, and they remain in Iowa, they would have to start the voter registration process from scratch.

“As we’re encouraging kids to stay in Iowa, we should be making it [as] easy as possible to be Iowans, to participate in our elections, not making any barriers for them,” Jamie Fitzgerald, a Polk County Auditor, told KCCI Des Moines “It’s perplexing.”

Of course, the bill makes perfect sense when you recognize that it has been moving through the Iowa Senate firmly on party lines. Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 turned out in record numbers for the 2018 midterm elections, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), and voted for Democrats by a margin of 35 points.

According to the Des Moines Register, in 2016, 56 percent of the people who voted early at a University of Iowa satellite site were Democrats, and only 13 percent were Republicans. The percentage of Democrats at those sites increased in 2018.

But SF 575 does more than just target college students. It will make it harder for all Iowans to vote, by closing the polls an hour earlier on Election Day, requiring a county auditor to verify signatures, prohibiting a county auditor from using the voter registration system to verify absentee ballot requests, and changing the deadlines to submit early ballots. And, it’s important to note that the ban on using state-owned buildings as satellite voting sites would also impact the Iowa Veterans home.

Because the Iowa state government is controlled by Republicans, the bill has a good chance of passing. But the editorial board of the Des Moines Register has come out strongly against the bill.

“This state does not have a problem with voter fraud. It is very close to nonexistent. Yet Republicans cite fraud to justify bills like this one. What they’re attempting to do is disgraceful,” the editorial board wrote.

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“The bill should be squashed by lawmakers. If it passes, Gov. Kim Reynolds should veto it. And in the next election, Iowans should work hard to navigate the increasingly convoluted election laws in this state to kick out of office [Sen. Roby Smith (R)] and others who seek to prevent Iowans from having their say.”

 

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tucker

tucker 238

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The Republican War on Democracy
If you can’t win playing by the rules, you change them

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The demographic changes coming over the next few decades — the continuing rise of a more diverse electorate, with more liberal views than previous generations — won’t destroy the Republican Party or make it electorally insolvent. But it may make right-wing conservatism a rump ideology, backed primarily by a declining minority of older rural and exurban white voters. You can already see this taking shape. Among the youngest Republicans, 52 percent say the government should be “doing more” to solve problems, as opposed to 23 percent of Republican baby boomers.

In this environment, the only way to preserve right-wing conservatism in American government is to rig the system against this new electorate. You tilt the field in favor of constituencies that still back traditional Republican conservatism in order to build a foundation for durable minority rule by those groups. In just the last week, we’ve gotten a glimpse of what this rigging looks like in practice.

Let’s start with the census dispute that’s now before the Supreme Court. The Trump administration wants to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, asking Americans to declare their status in order to participate. The government asks a similar question in the American Community Survey, a more frequently performed survey that is given to a sampling of households. But it hasn’t asked all households the citizenship question on a decennial census since 1950. Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce, whose department oversees the Census Bureau, wants to bring it back. He has the authority to do so. The problem is that he circumvented the official process. The case before the Supreme Court deals with whether the question can stand, given Mr. Ross’s decision to, as a federal judge put it, upend the rules that govern adding a question to the census.

The citizenship question is likely to make the census less accurate, to put it mildly. In the face of the harsh anti-immigrant policies sponsored by the Trump administration, as well as uncertainty about their own status, immigrants may not want to reveal their legal status to the government.

According an analysis from the Census Bureau itself, 5.8 percent of households with a noncitizen — or about 6.5 million people — would not respond to a census with that question on it. There’s some evidence that this outcome is the point. Kris Kobach, a Trump ally who pushed anti-immigrant policies when he was secretary of state for Kansas, was a proponent of adding the citizenship question to the census.

This matters because the census determines congressional apportionment as well as the distribution of Electoral College votes. If millions of immigrants decline to answer the census, then the areas they live in will be undercounted relative to places with fewer noncitizens, which means political power and representation will probably shift as well. A move of just a few Electoral College votes from immigrant-heavy blue states to more white and rural red states could help Republicans win the White House while yet again while running behind in the popular vote. (As it stands, Republicans have lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections.) The Republican Party can maintain a hold on power without changing its priorities or making a fundamentally different appeal to the public.

That said, this is an almost subtle way to rig the architecture of democracy, comparatively speaking. More recent efforts by Republican-held state legislatures to erect large barriers to voting are more explicit. Republican lawmakers in Tennessee, for example, are pushing broad new restrictions on large-scale voter-registration drives, including civil penalties for groups that unintentionally file incomplete voter-registration forms and criminal punishment for those that don’t attend state-mandated training sessions, according to the Tennessean.

It’s not as if Tennessee has a particular problem with registering voters. What it does have are organizing groups that successfully brought a greater number of black Americans and other people of color to the polls in 2018. In that context, this bill is a form of electoral intimidation — a direct attempt to hinder those groups and their ability to make similar gains in 2020 and on into the future.

Last November, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment to end felon disenfranchisement. Unable to stop the change, Republicans chose to put barriers to its implementation. On Wednesday, the Florida House of Representatives passed legislation that would require former felons to pay fines as part of their criminal sentence before they can vote again. It’s a poll tax. And like those under Jim Crow, it is an ostensibly neutral policy that falls hardest on black communities, which have a higher share of former felons.

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Each of these moves works in concert with the others. Pre-existing malapportionment helps Republicans capture the presidency despite losing a majority of voters. This allows them to build a Supreme Court majority that rules in their favor on key questions of ballot access, voter participation and campaign finance.

Republican lawmakers in the states use the legal leeway from rulings like Shelby County v. Holder to erect new barriers to voting, while Republicans in Washington look for new ways to embed their partisan interests in the electoral system. At the same time, their wealthy allies take advantage of campaign finance loopholes to spend huge sums on behalf of Republican candidates and conservative causes. And on the chance that Democrats overcome these obstacles and win political power — after the election of Barack Obama, for example — Republicans break the norms of politics to keep them from actually governing the way they want to.

Mitch McConnell’s leadership in the Senate during the years he had a majority — and in particular, his “blockade” of Obama’s judicial nominations, including the Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, is a paradigmatic example of the latter strategy. But Republican lawmakers in several states have gone even further, using legislative majorities to strip constitutional authority from newly elected Democratic executives. Republicans in Kansas introduced legislation earlier this week that would strip the recently elected Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, of her power to fill vacancies in top state offices. They cite fairness as a reason to support this proposal, although a leading Democratic critic called it “morally wrong” and an example of legislating for narrow partisan gain.

Wisconsin Republicans attempted something similar after Tony Evers, a Democrat, unseated the Republican governor, Scott Walker. They advanced bills to restrict his ability to run public benefits programs and to curb his authority to set rules on implementation of state laws. They also established a new legislative power to intervene in litigation challenging state laws and wrested the right to decide on legal action against the Affordable Care Act from the attorney general’s office, placing it with the heavily gerrymandered legislature’s budget committee. A judge eventually blocked these efforts, but Republican state leaders have appealed the ruling. And Republicans in Michigan made a similar push to rein in executive power after Democrats won all three statewide races, in an attempt to keep Democrats from overturning Republican actions once they took office.

It’s clear, then, that from the White House and its allies on the Supreme Court down to individual state lawmakers, conservative Republicans have decided that their agenda cannot survive fair competition on equal ground. They reject efforts at electoral expansion — early voting, automatic registration and mail-in balloting — and embrace strategies that put the burden on voters themselves.

Americans have long struggled over the scope of voting and representation. Democracy is — and always will be — a fight. And the lines of this particular conflict are clear. Rather than try to expand our democracy or even preserve it as it stands, Republicans are fighting for a smaller, narrower one that favors their voters over all others so that their power and the interests they serve become untouchable.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-republican-war-on-democracy.html

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GSU&UT

GSU&UT 1799

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3 hours ago, Pancho said:

 

Here is one of the Georgia House members going over this as it relates to the huge asian american population metro Atlanta has.

 

One of my software developer friends came here as a child from Nigeria and just became a citizen a couple of weeks ago. In his official papers he received they screwed up his last name and missed a hyphen, just like has been posted. I reminded him that under this bullshit exact match mechanism, he may have issues with his voter registration, but trying to fix this is going to take MONTHS.

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