There is little to no doubt that the GOP-driven endeavors to block voting for legitimate (and likely Democratic) voters in a number of states has nothing to do with voter fraud and everything to do with trying to tilt the odds in their favor for the next election.
So I, with my complete lack of education in the law, find myself wondering whether disenfranchised voters constitutes a class in and of themselves and they can actually sue the entirety of the Republican party in general and in specific the legislatures in the nine states that are complicit in this indisputably partisan endeavor? Of course, the whole point of this exercise is to target the poor and those least likely to have the resources to defend their rights, so it’s not likely to happen. But I still wonder if it’s possible?
PAD
• 
The short answer as I understand it is no, they could not sue the Republican Party as a whole, or the specific legislatures. What they CAN do (and have in some cases) is file a civil rights case against the state itself, which will be defended by the state Attorney General’s office.
The Republican Party (specially one arm, such as the NRCC) can be made a party to that type of suit if it is determined that they had an active role in generating the legislation directly, but that would be almost impossible to prove.
Generally speaking, individual legislators are protected from suits in the ‘performance of their duties’, to theoretically avoid being sued after every vote (which sadly, I could see happening.)
Jeff L is basically right. Think about Proposition 8 in California. The only way the advocates for the referendum/amendment got involved in the suit at all was that the AG’s office and the California Governor took a dive and refused to defend the law in US District Court, so somebody had to be allowed to argue in favor of its legality. The suit was actually filed against the State of California and its chief officers in their official capacity.
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The Republican Party couldn’t be a party of the suit, because they wouldn’t be part of the remedy. When you sue to stop a law, you sue the implementing agency or government to get an injunction preventing them from carrying it out. Step One is generally to get a restraining order keeping the law from being executed while the suit is proceeding, with Step Two being a permanent ruling holding the law to be unconstitutional. Because the Republican Party doesn’t actually carry out laws, there’s nothing to enjoin.
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You can’t sue a political party for monetary damages for a couple of reasons. One is that it’s appalling: an organization legally advocates for a political policy preference, and you take them into court? Seriously? Punishing someone for political advocacy is the worst abuse of freedom of speech I can think of. (No hyperbole there– I’m seriously trying to think of a worse one and I’m stumped. I suppose you could actually lock them up, as opposed to bankrupting them, but the point remains: using the legal system to silence opposition is the ultimate free speech abuse.) And if you don’t find that argument compelling because you’re clearly righteous and the other party is clearly wicked, consider the shoe being on the other foot in a state under the other party’s control. I’m sure a Republican voter could find all sorts of interesting things to sue the DNC over in Alabama.
Except the show will probably never be on the other foot. The Dems are disorganized wimps too weak to game the system ruthlessly like the GOP does.
Sorry guys, my family’s in town, so I don’t have time to read all the blabber, especially when so simple a question can be answered quickly: No.
Of course, anyone with $300 and service fees can file a federal lawsuit, but to survive a motion to dismiss, the plaintiff genuinely has to be among the injured — someone actually denied the right to vote or imminently threatened with denial of his or her right to vote.
That is called standing to sue.
Now, I cannot speak for any state other than Florida, but I am a clerk here, so I am our resident expert re how the system works. And, in Florida, it is not possible for a clerk to deny a voter the opportunity to vote. If you don’t have the photo ID, if you don’t have the documents, you still can vote provisionally by filing an affidavit on the spot (we have to give you a blank one) and casting a ballot which will be reviewed later to ascertain if it’s authentic. The panel which conducts this review includes a superior court judge plus two other election officials, and if you demand it, you must be told if your vote counted, and if not, why not. You then would have the right to seek redress in superior court (and if an election really were that close, there’d be no dearth of lawyers to take the case).
That’s right, Peter: If YOU show up at my precinct and swear you live in it, I will have to let even you vote! So, all this talk about “mean ol’ Republicans” preventing anyone with the right to vote from voting is just more demodonkey doo — a 100-percent fantasy to take our minds off the issues which count (Obama’s total mishandling of the economy, his support for unconstitutional programs like Obamacare, and his out-of-control spending which sooner or later — and probably sooner — is going to bankrupt this country or, more likely, generate a genuine national-security crisis in some place like the South China Sea).
Oh look. The return of yet another obsessed idiot who waits for politics to come up on this blog and otherwise is never heard from. Somebody flip on a light so he and the others can scuttle back under their rocks, okay?
PAD
The light is on, Peter. What it reveals is a political campaign on behalf of office holders with little more to offer America beyond more robbing of Peter to pay Paul (the ultimate definition of corruption in government).
You asked a question, purportedly honestly, and received an answer from someone who knows the facts. No one who legally can vote will be denied their vote in Florida, whether they have a driver’s license or not. But, that answer does not square with your talking points, so now you’re mad.
Clearly, I don’t control the subject of the blog (you do). But, as long as I have everyone on the line, and since I also am running for President myself, let’s take this opportunity to do some counting, upon the central slogan of my campaign, which is:
“If not you, who; if not now, when — do we pay back the Chinese?”
Let me explain to you the ramifications of that:
If I am elected, we will borrow no more money, and in addition, I need $100 billion a year for eight years (not a lot of money for the U.S. Government) to make a TOKEN payment to China. This token payment, made over eight years, will repay ONE HALF of what Barack Obama & Co. borrowed in ONE YEAR. Yet, to put this government in that kind of beneficial financial condition — to restore America’s triple-A credit rating and comport with section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment — it would be necessary to REDUCE THE SIZE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BY 40 PER CENT or raise taxes on EVERYONE by the same amount (and no government could stay in office were it to do that).
The flip side is that the people can continue to be irresponsible — they don’t have to vote for me at all (I can go back to Naples to play with my trains since I have all the time in the world), and they then all can be surprised when the Chinese ambassador tells the Obama Administration, in its second incarnation, that BECAUSE THEY WERE IRRESPONSIBLE, China can’t loan us any more money. In that case, it would be necessary either to reduce the size of the federal government by 40 per cent or raise taxes on everyone by the same amount (and no government could stay in office were it to do that).
In other words, those “mean ol’ Republicans” DON’T HAVE TO PREVENT legitimately registered, legal voters from voting because (a) this election shouldn’t even be close and well might not be by the time we actually vote, and (b) in the long run, it makes NO DIFFERENCE who wins, because unlike some people writing here, I can count, and your account is overdrawn!
When you make an ášš of yourself, Peter, the best thing to do is just admit it — it saves a lot of pain and does wonders for your credibility. Trying to extend your longevity here will yield results little different from those which confronted Richard Nixon at the end of Watergate: The whole world turns out to be watching when your roof falls in.
I figure that this is something which will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court.
I’d also suggest, Peter, that the way to go with this is to try to contact and ask Bob Ingersoll.
Even if it is, it would never get off the ground soon enough to make a difference.
Frierson’s Law of Hotel Liaison Realities for convention committees (propounded by the late Meade Frierson III):
This applies to any situation in which legal “remedies” in the problematic, distant future cannot possibly compensate for the immediate damage.
(MFIII was an experienced corporate lawyer – he knew whereof he spoked.)
It’s kind of the same thing as those “We are not responsible for damages from unsecured shopping carts” signs you see in front of grocery stores; the fact is, the store IS liable, and putting up a sign doesn’t absolve them of liability. What the sign actually means is that, if you suffer damages from an unsecured shopping cart, you’ll have to take them to court to get anything out of them. You’ll probably win, but the court costs will likely be more than whatever your damages were in the first place…
Not for this election, no. But what makes you think the GOP is going to back off a winning strategy?
PAD
Advocating for a law, even a law to take away votes, is protected by the first amendment. It’s protected free speech, you can’t sue over it.
Passing a law is obviously not grounds for a law suit- you really think the people that make the laws are going to allow a law that will allow them to be sued? I mean, come on.
By default, the government can’t be sued for money unless a law is passed allowing for this. I believe this is called Sovereign immunity. I believe lawmakers are protect by some sort of high officer legal doctrine, I mean of course they are going make sure there’s a law that protects them when they make the laws.
And the republican Supreme court has said there’s no constitutional right to vote. Just saying.
Also, being poor is not a protect class for civil rights law suits. It’s also a tougher constitutional argument in general. Especially with a republican supreme court.
I tend to think that if a suit like that were possible, someone would have already tried it. After all, there were cases of people being purged from the voter rolls in 2000 because they had names similar to those of felons and only learning of it when they showed up to vote.
Well, being able to keep tens if not hundreds of thousands from voting is certainly worth it over at best a few hundred individual and sporadic cases of voter fraud, right?
And you KNOW that only a few hundred individuals and sporadic cases of voter fraud exist how, exactly..That is precisely the point..without something as simple as a Personal ID, voter impersonation is incredibly difficult to prove.
I think we can make a safe assumption on the numbers for several reasons.
1) This was a GOP hunt for fraud in order to support their recent activities. I doubt that they’re going to undersell the findings if at all possible.
2) Registration fraud, a part of the numbers the present, is almost always caught well before the voting stage. That’s a large chunk of their findings and if you eliminate that you have an incredibly small number of actual voter fraud cases in a ten year period.
3) Take a look at some other numbers. The amount of registered voters on the voting rolls is less than the number of voting aged citizens and the number of people who actually vote is less than the number of people registered to vote. We’re not seeing numbers in voting habits to indicate that there’s a giant epidemic of voter fraud out there.
Yes, it’s circumstantial, but we’re not even seeing a one to one ration of voters to registered voters. We’re certainly not seeing cases where we have widespread issues of more votes than registered voters all across the country. We do see it sometimes here and there, but more often than not it’s a tabulation error that’s caught and corrected. Usually it’s something goofy like a count for X county being mistaken for Y county or two counties being added together by accident.
but on the whole, we are not seeing signs of actual votes being greater than the voter registration rolls.
4) As someone else mentioned in a different conversation on this topic; it’s easy in his POV to commit fraud because no one checks IDs in his local election places. Someone could come in, claim to be him and vote in his place or anyone else’s place that they had basic name and address info for. Might be true. Doesn’t make it proof of the fraud and, if it happens, it doesn’t make the fraud invisible.
I vote as you in your voting place. One hour later you walk in. Fraud detected. you prove that you are you. You get to vote. If they’re keeping proper records, they should be able to backtrack the fraudulent vote and excise it. Fraud detected and dealt with.
Maybe I come in to vote as you at 8AM thinking that I’m getting there before you. You were there at 7:10AM because you had an early day at work. I say I’m Jerome Maida. I’m busted. Fraud detected and dealt with.
When you look at all of that, especially the numbers from area to area, I’m fairly confident that we’re not seeing a huge, or even medium, rash of voter fraud every election. It’s actually harder to commit successful and undetected voter fraud than some people think and the numbers just don’t back up the claim.
Because, Jerome, people do this thing called “journalism”:
New database of US voter fraud finds no evidence that photo ID laws are needed
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/11/13236464-new-database-of-us-voter-fraud-finds-no-evidence-that-photo-id-laws-are-needed
One would think that, given the chance, those who are so in favor of voter ID laws would have more than ample proof of it.
They don’t. There is no such proof.
Why? Because there is no voter fraud to the level that even begins to require laws that do nothing but disenfranchise voters.
Until the day comes that it can actually be proven that more fraudulent votes are being cast than these laws are intentionally designed to prevent, let’s call this what it truly is:
Criminal voter suppression.
Yes, Craig, there is proof..you just choose not to see it…and you’re going to get cocky with me about people “doing this thing called journalism”? Really? Can we please just have a conversation?
No, Jerome, we can’t, because you’re pulling the same bûllšhìŧ you always pull. You say there’s proof? Great. So, where the fûçk is it then?
Philly? Great, well, glad to see that your ONE example, which was quickly countered by Jerry, is enough for you to ensure that tens if not hundreds of thousands are not allowed to vote.
I’m surprised you didn’t just point to Chicago; every other head-stuck-in-the-ground Republican tends to do so.
Or maybe I should just accuse you of voter fraud? Well, šhìŧ, that should now be sufficient to keep Republicans from voting. Start passing laws! I mean, I don’t need proof, after all. I just need a boogieman, a desire to not want to have to win an election fairly, and a bunch of right-wing talking points.
And to also reply to another post: you don’t even want to bring up education, voter or otherwise, when it comes to large sections of this country and the GOP’s base.
Okay, Craig..why is it that much of a burden for people to have an ID card..Jesus Christ…As I’ve stated elsewhere on this thread, you need a photo ID for a variety of things…Buying alcohol, cigarettes and driving among them…Do you feel it is a great burden for people to show ID for these things as well? What, really, is the big deal…other than people won’t be able to vote for dead people anymore? In PA, an ID card is provided for free..so really, other than laziness or WANTING illegal aliens, dead people and people who have moved to vote illegitimately, what’s the problem?
“I’m surprised you didn’t just point to Chicago; every other head-stuck-in-the-ground Republican tends to do so.”
Well, to be completely honest, I tend to point to Chicago a lot these days as well. I’ve killed hours of time with several friends ripping on that place in the six months or so.
Because it’s not the job of the electorate to prove that something is NOT happening. It is up to the morons perpetrating this farce to prove that it IS happening. Which they have failed to do.
PAD
“As I’ve stated elsewhere on this thread, you need a photo ID for a variety of things…Buying alcohol, cigarettes and driving among them…Do you feel it is a great burden for people to show ID for these things as well?”
Except it’s not just a photo ID. It requires you to have a specific photo ID. Now, that doesn’t seem like much, but it can be.
Some people who are elderly don’t drive any more. They therefore don’t have a driver’s license. Hëll, some people who aren’t elderly don’t have a driver’s license for any number of reasons ranging from choice to medical issues.
They may have several other valid forms of photo ID that, until now, have all been acceptable for voting. They’re not any more.
You can’t use a student ID. Even better, you can work for the school, even Penn State, have a state issued employee ID with a photo on it and that doesn’t count as a valid ID for voting. You could be a retired vet with an ID card and that may or may not be valid (I keep getting two stories ion that one) and screwed because you don’t drive, don’t have a DL and just assumed that you could vote as per usual.
And, so I’m hearing through the military friends grapevine, there may even be issues with active military voters. Guys who are active military, especially if they’ve been deployed, are given a bit of a break on issues with driver’s licenses. Since they get moved around a lot and cannot just swing by the hometown (theirs, not where they’re at at the moment) DMV, they can drive while their DL is from a state that they haven’t been in for years and the original DL may even be expired. They could and should be able to use their military ID, but the military ID must have, unless I’m hearing about and reading pert of the Penn. regs wrong, an expiration date on it to be considered a valid ID. The problem is, not all military ID’s have expiration dates. Retired service members’ cards have them and dependents do, but not every active military does.
There are a lot of issues coming up right now, some valid and accurate, some based on misunderstandings, that need to be addressed and ironed out in a year that isn’t part of the run to a major election.
The incidents of actual voter fraud are statistically insignificant. This is, to take the phrase being tossed around a lot lately, a solution without a real problem. If this was about real reforms and not about purge lists, restricting voting days in Democratic leaning areas only and doing what you can to “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania” in an election, then the reforms could wait one year and be done properly and without the complete cluster Fs that we’re seeing in many states now.
If this crap isn’t deliberate, then this is all the most amazingly coincidental series of accidents and goofs that are impacting just one said, and the legal voters on that side, that most people have ever seen. And if they’re really doing it this clumsily, maybe they shouldn’t be doing it at all until they can do it properly.
“other than laziness or WANTING illegal aliens, dead people and people who have moved to vote illegitimately”
Okay, and that’s the anti-gun crowd argument. What? You’re pro-gun ownership? So you want people to be murdered?
It’s not laziness and, despite the accusations of many, it’s not wanting illegals to vote. It is, again, that this “problem” is statistically insignificant. A lot of people don’t see the need to purge tens of thousands of legal voters from the rolls just to prevent the twenty or so fraudulent votes that might occur. A lot of people don’t see the point of telling people who have been legally voting for 50 years or more, and so consistently over that time that they’re in a Voter Hall of Fame in your state, that they can’t vote this year because we can’t trust that they’re not illegals.
I actually agree with you, Bill and some others that some checks need to go into the system, but what we’re seeing this year in many states is inexcusable. Like I said above, the measures that they’re taking are like someone trying to kill a rat in their house with a nuke. And the way that they’re doing it is taking out other people’s houses as well as their own.
“Because it’s not the job of the electorate to prove that something is NOT happening. It is up to the morons perpetrating this farce to prove that it IS happening. Which they have failed to do.”
That’s actually an interesting spin that, while I’m sure it’s been said elsewhere, I’ve missed in the discussion before now. It’s not up to the voters to prove that they’re not breaking the law.
What we essentially have here is the Republican Party accusing voters of being guilty of a crime without charges, trial or due process. And they’re not saying that they can prove that all of these tens of thousands of people in each state are guilty. No, they’re saying that the people have to rove that they are not guilty to be considered not guilty of committing a crime. And, even better, they’re saying that they are guilty of a crime that they have not even actually committed, but rather one that they might commit at a later date.
And, heading off certain arguments that I’m sure will come, the fact that this is voting, a right despite the remarks of some on Fox News today, makes it different than certain other things that you need an ID for.
Driving a car is a privilege. Driving a car is not spelled out in the Constitution in any way, shape or form. The same can be said of operating boats, planes and heavy machinery.
Being able to move about your workplace without an ID isn’t a right and is not spelled out in the Constitution in any way, shape or form.
Not having to show proof of age for a movie or to by booze and smokes is not a right and is not spelled out in the Constitution in any way, shape or form.
Voting is a right. There are multiple sections in the Constitution where the words “the right to vote” are clearly written and spelled out in plain English. Trying to disenfranchise voters in the hundreds of thousands around the country because you accuse them of committing a crime that they have not committed is a violation of both rights and due process.
And even, heading off another argument before it’s thrown at me, the regulations surrounding the purchase of firearms, the right mentioned in the Second Amendment, are actually covered by the Second Amendment itself. Despite the average Republican wanting to pretend that the words don’t exist at all, there is a bit in there about a well regulated militia. Now we, despite the distaste that many of the authors of the Constitution had for the idea, have created a standing army that answers to the Commander in Chief. We don’t need the militias any more. However, you can still argue that the right to bare arms was given with the stipulation that it be regulated. Not a hard argument to make actually and the words are still there as a part of the active document.
But voting has been clearly shaped and declared a right. We don’t infringe on on people’s rights in this country by declaring them guilty of a crime that they have not committed and then claiming that the burden of proof is on the accused.
That’s Cuba. That’s China. That’s North Korea. That’s not us.
Jerome, take no notice: As usual, Craig and Jerry are full of it. Furthermore, Jerry lives in Tampa, which last I checked still is in Florida, so he has no excuse. We’ve had photo-ID requirements in elections in this state longer than I’ve been here. It’s not an issue — if you don’t have a driver’s license, you get a state ID card, which all the old people without cars have so they can cash checks. A passport or military ID also works. So will a personal affidavit executed at the polling place on the day of the election (the individual votes provisionally, and eligibility is resolved later).
All this about people impersonating others at the polls probably is a red herring, regardless of who advances it. The real fear is that the large number of illegals will vote, and not surprisingly they will vote for Obama in an election which shouldn’t be but might be close. Obama’s most recent effort to end run blockage of the Dream Act to allow young illegals to get permits and (in some states) driver’s licenses says everything we need to know about what really is happening. We just had a bunch of Justice Department goons come to Collier County to “protect” all the Hispanic voters — when there hasn’t been any prejudice against Hispanic voters here as far as I know ever (all the legal ones are welcome and ENCOURAGED to vote).
In the ghetto, we call what the demodonkeys are feeding us “jive.” There’s little truth to any of it.
Robert,
I really have no desire to talk to you. You’re a complete nutter and frankly I don’t feel like giving you an excuse for another of your standard posts filled with little more than blarney, blather, bombast and bûllšhìŧ. However, I really feel that we should address what’s becoming a rather… disturbing… aspect of this grandiose fantasy life that you’ve constructed for yourself.
Now, you are completely within your rights to engage in whatever fantasies you want. Unfortunately, it’s even your right to come here and post at length about them as if they were real. And certainly you’ve created an interesting character for yourself insofar as how the fictional “Robert Crim” is a master of all he surveys, possesses a towering intellect, holds Doctorates in every imaginable discipline that a Doctorate Degree is available for, has mastered the knowledge of every other discipline that a Doctorate is not available for, has a budding political career, is loved by all, blessed with movie star good looks and is known far and wide as the wisest sage in the land. Hey, it’s your fantasy life and in most respects we just don’t care anymore and certainly not enough to read through your posts.
But, frankly, this fixation bordering on obsession with me is getting more than a little disturbing.
Now, I will admit that several of us had a good laugh or three at your expense after I explained what The Shroud was here and that you were now shrouded. Several people I correspond with outside of this blog pointed out your early attempts at, even when I was irrelevant to the discussion at hand, making comments to others about me if not addressing me directly. It was funny watching someone claiming to be a grown man basically jumping up and down, having a fit and demanding that I pay attention to him. It made you look kind of sad and pathetic, but it was funny nonetheless.
But this thing where you want to keep inserting me into your personal fantasy life and insisting that we’re somehow or another a hop, skip and jump from each other’s doorsteps is, well, again, getting more than a little disturbing and a bit creepy. It also makes you look like an even bigger idiot than your usual delusions since, while this blog doesn’t have any information on it that directly debunks the other parts of your fantasy life, there is vast amounts of documentation on this blog that debunks your obsession with wanting to believe that you are near me.
It’s been brought to my attention in the past that you have several times now stated definitively that I am wrong about something, that I should know better on a topic or that I am being deliberately deceptive about things. And it’s the backbone of your statements that you cite, both then and here, that have been leaving us scratching our heads and wondering just what the hëll you’re burbling on about.
You have now on multiple occasions stated as a fact do back several of your assertions that I (A) live in Tampa, (B) live right there near you or (C) a combination of A&B.
For the record, despite your apparent desires to have me living close to you, I don’t live in Tampa. Moreover, I have never lived in Tampa or claimed to have ever lived in Tampa. Even better, I don’t even live in the Sunshine State.
Now, I realize that we’re in the rather difficult point where we’re breaking down you fantasy and insisting that you give up your obsession. I realize that your mind is now racing to find a reply to somehow save this fantasy for you. Or you could be preparing to lash out by falling back on your prior attempts to get a response from me where you claim that all I do is come here and lie and use that to say that I have either in fact stated that I live in Tampa or that I have implied that I do and thus your delusion is warranted. I’m going to cut that off at the knees with three easy to follow points that explain why I couldn’t get away with that on this blog.
1) There are a number of regulars on this blog that I’m friends with on Facebook. Since my Facebook page shows the state that I live in and updates that are occasionally related to local events in my area, they might think me odd to say that I live in a completely different state on this blog. And I might even get called on it by the powers that be since Peter himself is on Facebook and on my Friend List. Out of that fair sized group, there are good few who I also exchange emails with as well as items in the snail mail. That means that they have my street address, they can see that my address is missing such words as either “Tampa” or “Florida” and thus they might call me on making such claims here. Moreover, both Mulligan and Myers have actually been in my house and would definitely find my implying or stating that its location is in Tampa to be, well, odd.
Now, before you go and break your brain trying to salvage your delusional, fantasy life obsession with me by claiming that #1 is full of lies or by lashing out and claiming that everyone else would let me make such statements because they’re all liars…
2) In the past few months, there was another thread topic that focused on Florida. That would be the Zimmerman/Martin incident. Back in the thread where we were discussing the portion of the rightwing media that was attempting to assign blame to the victim, several people asked me my professional opinion on some legal issues down there involving the incident and the police since my chosen career is law enforcement. My response to them was, in very plain English, that I couldn’t really say since Florida was not my state of residence and thus I didn’t know the little details insofar as the local laws and ordinances. Oh, and in that same response, I reference the state that I do live in by name.
3) In the last year or so that you’ve been spreading your idiocy here, I have made very specific references to where I live when current events discussed here tie into my state. I have for example –
Discussed the fact that my state’s Governor is Bob McDonnell.
Discussed the fact that my state’s AG is Ken Cuccinelli.
Mentioned that Eric Cantor is not only from my state but represents the district close to mine.
Discussed the headaches caused for my fellow officers and I by the fights and protests over the ultrasound bill that was all over the national news.
Discussed the all day drives down to and then back up from Dragon*Con last year.
Flat out stated in multiple threads that I live in Virginia/the Central Virginia area.
Now that we’ve established this more clearly than one would think would be needed for even someone as terminally thick as you…
#1 – Please give up this rather disturbing fixation/obsession that you seem to have with me and with inserting me into your fantasy life as some close neighbor or something.
#2 (And the very important one) – As many times that I have referenced my home state in general terms or by name combined with the fact that I have flat out stated that I don’t live in Florida VS you repeatedly stating that I live in Tampa, Florida… Do you really expect any of us to believe that you understand a fûçkìņg thing that you’re reading here worth a dámņ, let alone the complicated legal, medical and scientific texts you want to claim you are such an unparalleled expert on? As many repeated references that I have made to my home state and its representatives and you not only can’t comprehend the simple, basic and easy to understand words used well enough to get that I live in Virginia, but you somehow morph those references into me living down the street from you in sunny Tampa, Florida? And you really think that after watching you mangle and confuse such easy concepts as “Florida” VS “Virginia” that anyone is buying your bull based on your claims of understanding complex equations, formulas, concepts and legal codes?
Riiiiiight…
Ladies and Gentleman, the comedy stylings of one Mr. Robert Crim – Just a little bit creepy and a whole lot stupid.
Back to shrouding you now.
My information that Mr. Chandler lived in Tampa was provided by none other than Mr. Chandler in a post on the Zimmerman case (where he also claimed to be a police officer). If he did not tell the truth then, that obviously is not my problem, especially since he failed accurately to relate the facts in the Horne case and even tried to lie through me in the debate over homosexual marriage. He’s a demodonkey fanatic who tries to intimidate his critics into silence with his bluster, his bombast, and his verbosity — really Jerry, that was almost a short story!
So, what exactly is your claim this time, Jerry — that I don’t work for Jenny Edwards or Florida’s elections? That I don’t know the election law? Or that it’s simply impossible for anyone to know more than you?
Jerry–I draw the line at people on my board feeing as if they’re being directly threatened. If you want this numbskull disemvoweled or banned, say the word.
PAD
While I’m pretty sure that our Jerry Chandler posting here can handle himself, I do feel sorry for the man named Jerry Chandler who apparently does live in Tampa, FL, and whether he needs to be concerned whether Robert will go all Spike Lee on him.
And if I’m full of it, so be it. At least I’ve provided something, anything, that shows that voter fraud is all but non-existent in this country. Robert, on the other hand, probably has other conspiracy theorists quietly backing away at this point.
Peter,
Thank you but, no, it’s fine. If I had felt threatened or truly greatly bothered by it at all, I would never have gone to such great lengths to point out that I have made clear many, many times in the period of time that I have noticed his presence here that I live in Virginia rather than Florida and would have just continued to ignore him completely.
If anything, thanks to the goofy work hours of the last few days leaving me feeling both sleep deprived and unable to sleep at 6AM this morning with nothing to do other than stay quiet, I was relieving the boredom by poking the nitwit with a stick and my goofy humor came out. While I do find it odd that he has repeatedly claimed that I live a stone’s throw away from him down in Florida despite the many references to my actual home state being Virginia, it was more a rather sarcastic set up for #2 at the bottom of the post.
Seriously, here’s a guy who types up posts that on average makes my 6AM boredom/sleep deprived post look short by comparison and each and every post is filled with ravings about his vast intellect and how he knows better than everyone else based on his centuries of study on every topic imaginable and his ability to understand everything better than anyone and everyone else. Yet he’s a guy who, despite clear references made by me to my home state and my flat out naming what state I live in, cannot comprehend the basic words of the English language well enough to work out that I live in Virginia.
And, interestingly, I know for a fact that he read the post(s) where I specifically referenced the fact that I don’t live in Florida and do in fact live in Virginia. How?
April 21, 2012 at 5:13 pm
“Jerry! How have you been?
(For anyone new, Jerry is another one of our regular contributors suffering from Obamaitis — at least in those moments when he’s not trying to impeach the poor Gefreiter.)
I read in the interim that you’re a cop (or at least claim to be), so I have to assume (contrary to at least some of the evidence) that you are smart enough to know when someone has been caught red-handed with his hand in the cookie jar.”
Now, unless Bobby has been sitting at home reading through the archives and taking notes on us all, the only time that my job was specifically mentioned in the period of time that would be in the interim he mentions would be in the Zimmerman/Martin discussions. I was asked by others here, citing my job as a police officer specifically for the reasons for the questions, how the various circumstances around that incident would be impacted by the local laws and ordinances. My responses, quite clear and naming the state I live in, were to say that I don’t know since I live in Virginia and thus don’t know the local level laws and ordinances for areas in Florida.
Yet here we are months later with Bobby yet again since those discussions declaring with the same level of certainty he declares the rest of his “facts” in his posts that I live in Tampa, Florida.
Seriously, this jáçkášš can’t read and comprehend the difference in the words “Florida” and “Virginia” or understand the meaning of a bunch of words joined together and explaining that I don’t live there and do live in here, but he thinks at this point that anyone here is going to believe his claims of understanding complex historical and social issues, equations, formulas, concepts and legal codes?
I just, due largely in part to my mental state at 6AM this morning, found that to be as hilarious, if not more so, than anything else he usually posts.
So, again, thanks but not necessary. I find him more ridiculous than anything else at this point. No threat felt on my end at all.
Mr. Robert Crim,
The only individual I wish to “take no notice of” is you. At best, you are extremely arrogant and condescending; at worst, you are borderline creepy. As far as I am concerned, you are shrouded.
Robert,
You’re a lying piece of šhìŧ. Really, that’s about all you are.
This blog has archives. Everything ever written on it is in the archives save for X-Ray’s vowels and an insane woman’s racist rantings that finally got her banned. The relatively few threads about the Zimmerman case still exist and anyone can access them quite easily. If you want throw around bûllšhìŧ lies and claim that I said that, it should be a snap for you to find, copy and paste and link the post.
I’ll save you a little trouble though.
May 19 2012 – “Well, that’s proof enough for me”
That’s a Martin/Zimmerman thread. I have exactly one post in it. It’s agreeing with Jerome and Bill Mulligan about how stupid Barney Frank had recently been.
Apr 20 2012 – “True Crime”
That’s a thread that turned into a Martin/Zimmerman thread. I have a little over 20 posts in there. I never mention my job or where I live.
Mar 23 2012 – “No Wonder Conservative Pundits have to Blame the Victim”
The first Martin/Zimmerman thread. In something like 40 posts, I make two references to where I live and my job. One in response to a question that Malcolm Robertson asked me. And in one of these posts, I flat out say that I do not live in the state of Florida.
—————————————————-
Malcolm Robertson
March 27, 2012 at 12:52 pm
“I’m hearing this occurred in a gated community. Since you’re a cop, Jerry, can you tell me if that changes the nature of the encounter from a legal standpoint? I’m not trying to be snarky, I’m legitimately curious.”
Jerry Chandler
March 27, 2012 at 4:53 pm
“Hëll if I know. Not my state and even way back when it was (mid 90s to 2000) I wasn’t doing anything that required me to know the local laws to that degree. We had a gated community pop up near where I lived here in Virginia before I bought my present home. Because of where it was located, a lot of kids cut through there and none to my knowledge got arrested for it. We certainly didn’t see any kids get shot for walking while armed with snack foods.”
http://www.peterdavid.net/2012/03/23/no-wonder-conservative-pundits-have-to-blame-the-victim/comment-page-1/#comment-694390
—————————————————-
The other comment in that thread where I reference where I live and, in a way, may work also references VIRGINIA by name.
—————————————————-
Jerry Chandler
March 30, 2012 at 6:54 pm
“Holy crap! I knew this guy’s father. Not close friends type of knew him or close enough to really comment on anything beyond his work character and personality, but I worked on and off around Zimmerman’s father. Robert J. Zimmerman was up until about six years ago a full-time magistrate (which is not a judge despite some of the rumors from earlier in the week) for the Supreme Court of Virginia.
I never connected the name because I actually know a few other Zimmerman families in this area not related to this family so it didn’t stand out as an unusual name to me. But, dámņ, sometimes the “small world” phenomena is just freaky weird.”
—————————————————-
So not only do I specifically state that I do not live in Florida, I also state that I live in Virginia. You will also notice a distinct absence of the word “Tampa” in any post of mine in any of those threads.
Combine that with the fact that I have for years now referenced Virginia as the state I live in in other threads and people here know me out here in the real world and know where I live…
I think we can safely say, especially after you just doubling down on your stupidity, that at best you’re full of šhìŧ and at worst a liar. Me? I think you’re both. Likely quite a few other people now as well.
Peter, the only thing being threatened here are demodonkey pretensions. As for the latest serving of Jerry’s vitriol, I’m reminded only of the famous exchange between Eldridge Cleaver and Ronald Reagan. Cleaver came to U.C. Irvine, where he gave a speech (with me in the audience), challenging then Governor Reagan to a duel. The security people around the governor wanted to take this seriously and send the state militia or someone after Cleaver, but Reagan said, “No,” then issued his own statement: As the challenged person, he had the choice of weapons — words with more than four letters!
End of Mr. Cleaver’s delusions of grandeur.
Bottom line: The issues of the election are on the table (whether you take my candidacy seriously or not), and they are not what Romney paid in taxes in 2009 or phony claims of voter suppression or even the legitimate issue of homosexual marriage. The issues are the mess your standard bearer has made of the economy, his unconstitutional effort to socialize the health-care system, and the sixteen-trillion dollar debt he has run up which, incidentally, isn’t going to be paid by my children but is going to be paid by yours. By any way you slice it, that’s a record to run from, not on, and flinging epithets of “liar,” “knucklehead,” “prìçk,” “šhìŧ,” “áššhølë,” &c., at me is not going to change that.
Harry Reid hasn’t submitted a budget in four years. In any other democracy on earth, he’d be out of office on a no-confidence vote inside of a month. Like I said, this election shouldn’t be close, but it might be and probably will be if people like me allow people like you to hide behind Jerry’s fulminations and blow bubbles or smoke.
Sue the Republicans indeed!
Mr crim,
You have stated that jerry claims to live in Tampa. jerry has called you a lying sack of šhìŧ and shown where he has stated something quite different. You, in turn, claim that somewhere he has said that he dies indeed live in Tampa.
Well! here’s where you either win the argument, apologize for being wrong or STAND REVEALED AS A LYING SACK OF SHÍT!!!
It’s easy to do–just find that claim. It will take a bit of time, perhaps, but nobody here believes for a moment you wouldn’t do it if you really thought you could. I mean just think about how that would frost Jerry’s ášš! And all those folks like Peter, and Jerome and me, people who think he has been bìŧçh slapping you to a degree so one sided that one is tempted to turn away in embarrassment, why, we’ll have to mope around and kick the dirt mutter, well, ok, I guess you got that one right…
It would be a great feeling, winning that argument. And kind of a new one for you.
So hop to it! Or…
…make some mealy mouthed excuse about how you’ve “got nothing to prove” or “I have better things to do with my time” or “When I said he lived in Tampa I meant he USED TO LIVE in Tampa” or something equally sack of šhìŧŧÿ.
Or apologize, which would be a distant third in likelihood and probably the smartest move at this point…which is why it’s so distant.
“… USED TO LIVE in Tampa… “
Which would still be a hard sell. Any time I have referenced the four years I lived down there in the late 90s I have clearly said that I lived in the City of St. Petersburg and for a short period in the City of St. Pete Beach. The only times I went into Tampa were work related or to go hang out in Ybor City with friends. And I haven’t mentioned Ybor City to anyone on this blog in years, so he can’t even claim confusion based on that.
My response to Bill appears to have disappeared, and I haven’t the time to redo it, but maybe it will turn up.
In the interim, it now appears that the admission was something on the order of, “I lived in St. Pete, I pìššëd in Tampa, I moved to Virginia, and in all my verbosity, that ‘lying piece of šhìŧ’ Crim failed to notice the change of address!”
Pray tell anyone, did you all fail to notice the context of it all, which was whether Jerry Chandler knew the election laws of the State of Florida?
Really, Jerry, you’re foaming at the mouth.
“… .the admission..”
The admission? Bobby, really… Why not pretend that you’re a man for all of five seconds and just admit that you were wrong, admit that you doubled down on being full of šhìŧ and not try to spin it like a coward.
The admission? For it to have been and admission on my part, I would have to have been the one wrong here or I would have to have been telling lies about where I lived or deceptively implying that I lived in Tampa.
I flat stated that I don’t live in Florida. Everyone here has seen me point on more than one occasion that I am a proud Son of Virginia. Everyone here has seen more address my local issues and politicians as those of Virginia since not long after the creation of this blog.
Really, Bobby, you’re a lying sack of šhìŧ and an intellectual coward. If you were any sort of man at all, the appropriate response would be for you to admit that you were wrong, apologize for doubling down like a fool and then shut up about it.
Thanks for showing everyone who’s bothering to pay attention to you at all at this point what kind of poor excuse of a man you really are.
Done with you now.
Permanently.
Shrouded.
What “everyone here” sees, Jerry, is, “Everyone here has seen more [sic] address my local issues and politicians as those of Virginia since [sic] not long after the creation of this blog.”
Which I think means something, but when you have to wade through fifteen column inches of that, it perhaps is understandable how the pressure is on not to read it all that carefully.
In any event, I do agree with Bill on this one, especially since what I said to our commander in chief up front was that, when you make an ášš of yourself, the best thing to do is admit it so that the whole world isn’t watching when the roof falls in.
So, for all who are watching now:
It was a ÐÃMNÃBLÊ, ABOMINABLE INSULT to say that Jerry Chandler lived in Tampa when, in fact, he lived in St. Petersburg, and I sincerely pray that the good citizens of TAMPA will somehow find it in their hearts to forgive me.
Okay, there are multiple words from my last post that went *poof* into cyberspace. What’s up with that?
It’s amazing how much of this is probably legal.
The Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) suggested that the House’s end game in passing the Voter ID law was to benefit the GOP politically.
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8
In Ohio, Republicans restricted the states previous early voting, but they left a provision that allows localities to vote on whether or not to have early or extended voting. The localities all voted on the option.
In all of the localities, the Democrats all voted yes. The Republicans all voted yes… But only in districts that leaned heavily Republican in the last elections. In districts that went Democratic, the Republicans voted no. This created a tie vote. So a state official came in to cast the tie breaking vote. The Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, who, of course, voted with the Republicans against early or extended voting in districts that leaned Democrat in their prior voting habits.
So the Republicans killed a law written by a Republican and signed into law by a Republican governor some years ago now to reduce the issues with voting in the state so that they could squash early voting. They then open the option up to the localities and block any district that leans Democrat from having early and extended voting while giving all of the districts that leaned Republican the ability to have early and extended voting hours.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120805/NEWS0106/308050053/Voting-time-partisan-battle
And then, all over the country, the Republicans are working to keep hundreds of thousands of people from voting on the basis of “fraud” that they can, at best, only show about 300 cases of in the last ten years. No, they’re not really the side trying to fix the election this year at all.
None of it should be legal.
But who cares about what’s legal when there’s an election to win at all costs?
Increasingly a revolution sounds like the only real option anymore…
The problem there is, the only side organized and armed enough for a revoluton is the side that needs to be overthrown…
I know if the government was taken down and had to be rebuilt, I wouldn’t want the religio-fascists of the rightwing anywhere near any position of power…
Increasingly a revolution sounds like the only real option anymore…
.
Sure. When you can’t get your way politically, violence is always a good Plan B.
“Sure. When you can’t get your way politically, violence is always a good Plan B.”
Not all forms of revolution are violent. He hasn’t yet advocated for the Republican option of telling everyone that we should be ready to use bullets when ballots fail or praising the fact that we always have our Second Amendment remedies to turn to if things don’t happen the way we like in November.
After I mocked Bladestar’s advocacy of a revolution, Jerry Chandler wrote: Not all forms of revolution are violent. He hasn’t yet advocated for the Republican option of telling everyone that we should be ready to use bullets when ballots fail or praising the fact that we always have our Second Amendment remedies to turn to if things don’t happen the way we like in November.
Ummmm… Unless Ladestar is a different person, rather than a typo, he said this:
The problem there is, the only side organized and armed enough for a revoluton is the side that needs to be overthrown…”
I’m thinking I interpreted his first comment correctly. And I’m going to stick with my core belief: There is no justification for political violence in a democracy. None. (This is a statement so obvious that I would almost feel bad for going after a strawman, except it was actually in response to someone’s post.)
Sorry, Jerry, but telling someone who has either lived in and/or still been involved with Philly politics for the past 12 years, is like telling someone in Vegas that people don’t really gamble all that much.
.
The last time, in 1999, when Sam Katz narrowly “lost” in a bid to become the city’s first GOP mayor in about half a century, it was noted many times that fraud in Philly elections run about 5%..so a candidate like Katz has to overcome a 10,000 vote “disadvantage” from the get go. And if you really don’t think this goes on in other cities big and small…think again.
.
A friend of mine that I’ve known since high school told me that he was staying a Democrat despite conservative leanings because it is almost impossible to run as a R in our hometown, and that his grandmother had still voted the past six years in city elections..which is extremely impressive seeing as how she had been deceased.
And a Republican just got busted last month for having his wife vote for the last few years… Despite her being dead.
Goes both ways. The catch is that the numbers are still inflated. The higher “voter fraud” numbers being thrown around by the GOP, when you can actually find out how they arrived at the numbers they use, are actually bulked up quite a bit by including registration fraud in there as well. Ðámņ near all registration fraud is caught long before it gets to the voting stage, so it’s not really voter fraud. And, hëll, some cases counted as registration fraud are written off in the end as simple errors like filling the wrong line out.
And none of that changes Mike Turzai’s less than thought out comments, it doesn’t change people in the Pennsylvania Voter Hall of Fame being told that they can’t vote, it doesn’t change war vets being purged in Florida by clumsy Republican overreach on the issue and it sure doesn’t change the garbage going on in Ohio.
For the insignificant amount of “voter fraud” that the GOP cites as having occurred, a little over 300 cases in the last ten years, the measures that they’re taking are like trying to kill a rat in the house with a nuke. If they were serious, they would work to have this year’s election better worked and then wait until after the election, as in not essentially last minute, to work out reforms that are actually addressing the problem rather than just purging (mostly Democratic) legal voters and allowing everyone enough time to both be informed that they might have been put on a purge list and to take steps to address it.
“It was noted”?
That’s all you got? “It was noted”?
Mr. David,
I have been a comic book fan for close to fourty years. I have been a fan of your work as a writer for many of those years. I have read your column in Comics Buyers Guide for as long as I can remember. I have always enjoyed the way you have ripped into the no talent hacks that work in the comic book industry. You could give a class on how to insult someone without seeming to come across as malicious. I have even been amused how you will not admit that you are wrong; even in the face of overwhelming evidence that proves it. I can even imagine you shaking your fist and screaming at the top of your lungs “I will get no comeuppance comic fandom! Do you hear me! No comeuppance!!!” Just like Homer Simpson when he became a food critic in that classic episode.
Your politics are a different matter. You are entitled to your opinion. You seem to be an intelligent and enlightened individual. Yet, you still come across as most liberals. With your head stuck so far up your own behind that you really do not know what is going on in the real world. Do you really believe that one side has not done what they try to accuse the other of doing? All politicans at their very foundation are crooks. Republican and Democrat. They all float in the same boat. How can anyone be so short sighted to think one side is good and the other is bad. I also love how the liberals have already started that this presidential campaign is about rich and poor. That the rich will benefit if the Republicans win and the poor will benefit if it is the Democrats. I know rich, poor, and middle class families. The have all suffered under this administration. Other than Robert Kirkman do you know anyone that has prospered over the last four years?
I think you have the cynical worldview that pervades the GOP. The cynical worldview that allows this kind of thing to happen. The notion that people are so stupid that they will buy your big lies because, you know, why not? Your own base does. The GOP has morphed into this vast beast of bullying and lies, with your very own TV network to sell it to the suckers. And there are oh-so-many out there.
PAD
Mr. David,
I read through your reply a number of times just to make sure I fully understood it. I really did not even expect you to reply, much less even post my comments. You replied, but did not even answer my questions. Just kind of talked around my statements.If I may I would like to address just a couple of remarks.
You talk about “my big lies?” Not exactly sure what I have lied about. I talked about both sides of the political aisle. One side will push some type of agenda and the other side will scream that if it passes it will be the downfall of civilization. Then at some other point in time; the side that was against the issue will take it as their own and swear we cannot live without it. It was not too long ago that the Democrats were pushing voter registration reform. I have the old newspaper column in front of me. It is dated Friday, November 6, 2006. Voter fraud does happen. A lot more than people realize. It is just that most people do not realize that their name has been fraudulently used and it is a crime that is rarely prosecuted. A lot of that depends on who it benefits. Just crooked politics as usual.
You also mention my “own base” in your reply. I would have thought the man who has given us so many great stories would be smarter than to assume many things. Especially before posting them. I actually have many liberal beliefs. I just refuse to go along with everything someone says simply because they consider themselves to be a liberal thinker. I was also raised Democratic. I went to many Democratic fundraisers as a child. I am also friends with many liberal, Democratic, attorneys. There are a lot of good reasons why so many attorneys go into politics. Having no moral center certainly helps. So I have no idea what you are talking about with my “base” as it pertains to your comments. Perhaps you mean my teenage daughters. They are the closest thing I have to a base.
Then you reference my “very own network” in your comments. Sorry Peter, but I do not have my own network. If I did I would hire you to give commentary. Not that I believe everything that you say. These comments prove it. I just think you would do well on tv. You have great verbal skills and you would defend your position with fire and wit. No matter how right or wrong your opinion. Unlike you I do not like to assume. However I am going to take a guess and say you meant Fox news with that statement. Does Fox news have an agenda? I do not know. I have never worked in their production department. I think it is very naive to say that they are the only network to have one. Unless of course you are only try to promote your own agenda by trying to discredit them.
I remember in 2008 when Obama was starting his run to the White House. Many of his critics stated that he was too much of an elitist. That he would be out of touch with the American public. The liberals countered by saying that was the type of person we needed in the White House. You included. Now those same people that championed elitism have reversed their stance. They have made the exact same malicious charges against Romney that they once defended gainst Obama.
I am not a political person. I just get so sick of the double talk. Why do people and policies have to be judged only along party lines? Why defend one person and then condemn another for basically the exact same act? Why must a policy be cheered or criticized simply because which party introduced it? Why can it not be judged on its own merit?
I really expected better of you than what I received in your response. I have been a fan of yours for many years. I always saw you as a man of integrity. A man that stood on his own principles and ideas. I never would have thought of you as just another sheep following the herd. I certainly would have never thought you would assume and surmise. I thought you were smarter than that. Like I already stated; I expected a lot better from you. Maybe I am doing the assuming. Maybe that was not a well thought out reply. Maybe you were just trying to bully and intimidate me. Those are the tactics of the ignorant.
James Howell,
Seriously? You actually read that and thought that Peter was saying that you had your own network? That you had a base? And then you argued against those points?
Are large chunks of the internet community just completely ignorant of the generic “you” in conversation or is this the new game?
Mr. David,
I have been a fan of yours for close to thirty years. I can remember being a kid and picking up Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man issue 107. I was blown away. I have followed your work for all of these years. Your column is always the first thing that I read every month when I receive my new copy of Comics Buyers Guide. I have followed your website for many years. I have never posted on your site before and it appears I have a lot to learn about the proper protocol.
I was more than a bit surprised by your reply to my original post. I do not completely understand why you would even reply and not discuss the topics I brought forth. I really did expect a better response. I made some facetious comments kind of breaking down your asinine reply. I am not a political person. I primarily come to your site for information about the comic book industry. Politics turn my stomach. Anyone that has actually read my posts can verify that. My “networks” of choice are ESPN, Cartoon Network, the History Channel, and TV Land. My original post was on the hypocrisy of both parties. Once again, anyone that actually read my through my posts got that. Any person that thinks one party is all good and the other is all bad has their head in the sand. Their head in the clouds. Their head in the dirt. Which ever phrase you choose to use. Both parties have taken advantage of the American public. That is a fact. I could care less about your politics.
You also make a comment directed towards me that states “You also seem to have an odd obsession with people and áššëš. Perhaps it’s just a case of writing what you know.” Classy. Mr. David you are a great writer. If you are going to insult me; I know you can do better than that. You have also used that line more than once in the past. Maybe I am just not worth an original statement.
Jerry Chandler,
Perhaps you did not read my response. For one thing I was being a bit facetious. I can assure you that I know the meaning of the word your. I was also covering all of my bases when giving a reply. Especially in the fact that Peter David did not read what I had posted and got completely away from what I stated. Putting me in the same category with the GOP and what I assumed to be Fox news was completely absurd. It had nothing to do with what I stated. Politicans from both sides of the aisle have failed the American public. There is no way that can be debated. As I have no doubt that he did not completely read my post; I can also tell that you did not completely read my words. From what you state it appears that you are the ignorant one. Since you do not have a clue as to what I stated or the intent. I will also give you a little piece of advice. No one likes a bûŧŧ kìššër. Perhaps you should remove your head from Peter’s rear end and try to form an opinion of your own. If in fact that is possible.
Ahh, another classic: if you happen to agree with the host, you’ve got no thoughts of your own.
If only we could count the number of times this strawman has been used here over the years…
I read part of it. But by the time I got to the line –
“Then you reference my “very own network” in your comments. “
– and you continuing to argue against a straw man of your own making I decided that your post wasn’t worth finishing.
“I will also give you a little piece of advice.”
No, I’ll give you a piece of advice. If you don’t know what the hëll you’re talking about and try to insult someone based on your lack of knowledge, well, you look stupid and maybe even a bit of an ášš. I’ve been around here a long time. Anybody else that’s been around here a long time knows that, yes, I tend to agree with Peter on a number of issues. They also know that I’ve disagreed rather adamantly with some of Peter’s statements about politics, his opinions various events and even once or twice about the nature of the contents in his works of fiction.
And I reacted to you taking the generic “you” that is fairly common in conversation and turning it into a straw man argument since that has in fact happened here several times in the semi-recent history; to me on two occasions in fact. You can after the fact try to claim that you were just “being a bit facetious” about it, but that doesn’t change the fact the first half of your post responded to his statements as if he was actually saying those things to you about you.
So, yeah, I quit reading it by the time you mentioned the network thing because your points and your post looked like a waste of time. And you then commenting to me as you did with zero knowledge of my history here? That made you look stupid and maybe even a bit of an ášš.
James Howell, You are not helping your case here by insulting Jerry. Anyone who has been on this board for any significant amount of time knows he is anything but a bûŧŧ-kìššër. He is arguably the most independent thinker on this board and possibly the most informed and most fair. PAD is a liberal, but he has stated that Jerry is one of the few people here whose arguments are so persuasive at times, backed by info, that he at times will cause him to rethink his position. I am a “Coulter conservative” and you know what? He has made me look at issues and individuals in a different light as well. And the best thing? If someone presents a good argument, he is open-minded enough to tell them that they helped make him think about something differently also. In short, he is a THINKER and a persuasive DEBATER, two characteristics that based on your childish rants on this thread, you have not shown that you possess. Thank you and good day.
It is rare that I will say I agree 100% with Jerome, but this is one of those times. The only people who would insult and miscategorize Jerry as you do is someone who monitors this space solely to see when I say anything politically related so that they can disagree with me and toss insults around. And really: how pathetic is that? My opinions on politics may be 180 degrees away from Jerome, but he posts here regularly, so at least I can respect that. You, who display your ignorance while cloaked with arrogance, earns no respect from anyone except, I’ve no doubt, similarly-minded individuals who only stick their noes in whenever politics come up.
You also seem to have an odd obsession with people and áššëš. Perhaps it’s just a case of writing what you know.
PAD
Craig J. Riles,
I do not mean to correct you, but I did not state those comments about Jerry Chandler because he agrees with Peter David’s position on the voter registration topic. I made those comments because he jumped in and made some asinine comments to a facetious reply I made to Mr. David. Comments that he admits he posted without thoroughly reading my post. Yet I am the one that has been labeled arrogant, ignorant, stupid, and an ášš. I guess that is life on the internet.
Jerome Maida,
I posted that response to Jerry Chandler because of his remarks to a reply I made to Mr. David. They are relevant to my posts. I did not start an attack on him. He was not even on my radar. I made some facetious comments as a reply to Mr. David. I had posted about the hypocrisy of both political parties. How it had been not too long ago that the Democrats were screaming for voter registration reform. Mr. David’s reply was completely off target. Making smoke and mirror comments about what I assumed was Fox news and the GOP. He implied that they were my base. Which was completely off target. I do not even watch Fox news. I am not a political person. You describe Jerry Chandler “In short, he is a THINKER and a persuasive DEBATER” Yet he admits that he did not even read through my comments before making a response. Is that the sign of a great thinker and debater? Yet, I did read his comments completely before making a response and I am called arrogant, ignorant, stupid, and an ášš. You state that I am not helping my case. That does seem to be true. Because no one, including Mr. David, has discussed the issues I have posted. I defend myself against someone that posted comments about my statements. Never mind that he admits that he did not read them thoroughly before posting. I am starting to learn the protocol for posting on this board.
Jerry Chandler,
I feel as if I posted something in the Twilight Zone. Where up is down and right is wrong. You admit that you did not thoroughly read my comments before posting a reply. Is that how you always post? Without reading the whole story. You do not mind calling me names. Unlike you, I did read your post before responding. You jumped in and made comments on some facetious statements I made in response to Mr. David’s asinine reply to my original post. I did not even expect him to reply to my original post. I just thought if he was going to reply to my post he could have stayed on target. Instead I get this smoke and mirrors response about the GOP and what I assumed is Fox news. I know that he has an axe to grind and propaganda to spread on both subjects, but did I have to get lumped in with them? I am not a political person. I do not watch Fox news. My original comment was on the hypocrisy of both parties. How it had been not too long ago that the Democrats were pushing for voter registration reform. Not one person has commented on the actual issues I raised. You jump in with a reply to my post. A reply without even reading my complete post. You were quick to label me as stupid and yet you are posting without reading everything completely. I stated my response to you as it pertained to this thread. Not to your amazing history on this board as you were quick to pat yourself on the back concerning that fact. If you thought my points were worthless why did you reply to begin with? I actually read what you and the others posted. I gave each of you that courtesy. Somehow I am stupid, arrogant, ignorant, and an ášš because you posted without reading what I had stated. Thank you for sharing your intelligence with me. You have brought me enlightenment if I do indeed post again on this board. In the future I will only skim through and not read everything someone shares bfore I post a comment. Then I will call them names and rip them apart when they try to correct me. You have truly shown me the way.
Bored now. Idiot shrouded. Others may waste time with him as they wish.
PAD
I almost get a vibe from this like we’re getting our political season visit from Ben Bradley. Strange posts that get stranger and even a name that’s right up his alley with “James” being generic enough and “Howell” being a riff on Romney and the meme among some out there that he’s essentially Thurston Howell III without the charm or comedy value.
Doesn’t matter though. Not interested in going down this rabbit hole.
“Not interested in going down this rabbit hole.”
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Nor I, really. Anyone who not only insults a respected regular here, but does so so ignorantly, to have Jerry Chandler, PAD, Craig Ries and myself all come to the conclusion is not worth my time. Shrouded. At least for now. Maybe in a while he may show he has something interesting to say and display some manners..I doubt it, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt when he shows he deserves it.
Funny. I mention the Ben Bradley vibe I’m getting from James Howell’s posts and then James Howell really does go poof.
Unfortunately a suit just failed in Pennsylvania.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/15/pennsylvania-voter-id-decision_n_1772584.html
Perhaps in the State Supreme Court or Federal Court.
The DOJ should have a suit in each State that has done this.
I don’t see why this should be a partisan battle. There should NEVER be an argument against voter participation.
There should also never be arguments against education, science, and the arts, either.
Sadly, slowly but surely we’re losing the war.
NEVER is pretty absolute, Roger…Somewhere along the line, many – especially Democrats – seem to feel voter PARTICIPATION is more important than voter EDUCATION or voter MOTIVATION…A higher percentage of our populace voting doesn’t automatically make our democracy healthier…especially if many of those really don’t care one way or the other or – worse – are dead.
But perhaps it WOULD make American democracy healthier.
Since apathetic voters many times vote for the less offensive candidates, while motivated voters may favor the radicals that appeal to “their side”.
Really, Rene, that’s what you’re going with? You truly think having choices made by the disinterested and uneducated – regarding politics, not school level – is healthy?
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First, what hard facts do you base this assumption on? Second, you know what? I like passionate people..give me that any day over the person who votes for Romney or Obama or anyone else based on ridiculous reasoning or ignorance.
Not healthy, necessarily. But maybe not any more unhealthy than the choices made by the passionate? That should be self-evident. You like passionate people? So you like a passionate Stalinist? Or a passionate Islamic Jihadist?
I’m not sure it’s a good idea, this continuing radicalization of American conservatives. I’m not sure the appropriate response would be a knee-jerk radicalization of American liberals.
I would prefer someone who is BOTH passionate and moderate. Failing that, I think I’d rather have an apathetic moderate than a passionate partisan.
NEVER is pretty absolute, Roger…Somewhere along the line, many – especially Democrats – seem to feel voter PARTICIPATION is more important than voter EDUCATION or voter MOTIVATION…
Participation is necessary, but not sufficient.
And it is certainly necessary; education and motivation are useless if an eligible voter cannot vote.
Jerome–I totally understand that to the GOP, the only right that cannot be infringed upon is the 2nd Amendment. But I want you consider something:
On the one hand, the Right is in violent opposition to curtailing the right to bear arms, and it literally doesn’t matter how many people die. Blood doesn’t matter. Lives don’t matter (unless they’re in a woman’s womb; then they’re sacrosanct.) No matter how homicidal and suicidal we seem to the rest of the world, no matter how much blood is spilled, we must do nothing to change the current laws or make them more stringent.
But oh my God, quick: we have unsupported allegations of massive voter tampering. Three hundred–I say, three HUNDRED!–in ten years! And who knows how many more that we don’t know about? (As opposed to a five year period within the last ten where there were 179,000 gun-related deaths–73,000 homicides, 102,000 suicides, and 4000 accidental.) The GOP must swing into action. And it doesn’t matter that the right to vote was put into the heart of the Constitution. That right must, should, indeed has to be curtailed so that no one (i.e., a Republican candidate) can be hurt by it.
PAD
On the one hand, the Right is in violent opposition to curtailing the right to bear arms, and it literally doesn’t matter how many people die. Blood doesn’t matter. Lives don’t matter (unless they’re in a woman’s womb; then they’re sacrosanct.)
I think it’s interesting that you brought up abortion in this context. That is an issue where the Left is just as rabid as the Right is on gun issues. (Although, speaking as a Romney voter who supports gay marriage, I am perfectly aware that neither the Left nor the Right is a homogeneous bloc. And yes, I did vote against the gay marriage ban this past May on the same ballot I selected Romney in the primary– in fact, since Romney was effectively unopposed at the moment, the amendment was my primary reason for voting, if you’ll excuse the pun. But I digress.) If you’ll recall the absolute furor when the Supreme Court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion ban five years ago, the Left was perfectly capable of claiming that something that only affects at most a few hundred people a year is a disaster for human rights. This despite the fact that the Gonzales v Carhart opinion should have killed any hopes of overturning Roe dead, and so could, and should, have been seen as a victory for abortion rights. But no, a regulation on the fringe of abortion rights was upheld, so it was a dark day for America, bemoaned by, among other people, Sen. Harry Reid, who actually voted for the bill in question 3 years earlier. (I never get tired of pointing that one out.)
Okay, the idea that people wanting actual voters to vote is somehow a big, bad right-wing conspiracy has me ready to explode. We are NOT talking about a “poll tax” or “Jim Crow” laws here. The core of these laws is that you should you have to present a photo ID such as a passport or driver’s license to vote. Common sense says that yes, this is a good idea and hardly a hardship. Such identification is required for numerous other activities. You need a photo ID to purchase alcohol and tobacco; to board an airplane; to cash a check; to get senior discounts; for prescription purchases; at border crossings; to check into a hotel; and to apply for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
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It should be noted that Eric Holder, the country’s Attorney General and a fierce opponent of photo ID laws — he recently called them a modern-day poll tax, which is outrageous — nevertheless requires one to get into his Department of Justice office.
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Another noteworthy stat that contradicts the idea that only Republican or “racist” states are pursuing and passing these laws is this: 31 states, more than half those in the Republic, have passed photo ID laws of one form or another, sometimes in a bipartisan manner.
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This is hardly considered an obscene requirement across the globe. Nearly 100 other nations have voter ID laws on the books. The United States has been the country resistant to a common sense change on this, and it is well past time for a change. Roughly 70 percent of those polled favor the idea. Only two groups, liberals and blacks, poll negatively, which of course explains the negative attitude toward photo ID laws that is consistently seen in the NAACP, the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, including editorial boards.
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The reason for supporting Voter ID Laws should be glaringly obvious: to prevent voter fraud, with which the United States unfortunately has a rich history. Despite what many spew about it being rare and, almost laughably, “virtually non-existent”.
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Consider this: The Pew Center on the States recently published a study that should concern all of us. It found 24 million voter registrations in the United States are either invalid or contain significant errors. Almost 2 million dead people are still on the rolls, and nearly 3 million people are registered in two or more states. An organization known as True the Vote recently reported there are 160 counties where more people are registered to vote than there are eligible voters. What an incubator for voter fraud! Also, it should be noted a lot of Al Franken’s “late votes” in “winning ” Minnesota was in districts where there were more votes than voters. How, exactly, does that happen and no one raises a fuss about it?
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Photo ID laws are designed to prevent impersonation fraud, where someone claims to be another person, living or dead, and votes on his or her behalf. They also are designed to prevent voting under fictitious registrations, voting by illegal aliens and double voting by people registered in more than one state.
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How can any reasonable person object to any of that?
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There is no question that, properly crafted, photo ID laws are constitutional. In a 2008 case upholding the Indiana photo ID law, liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the 6-3 majority, said: “We cannot conclude that the statute imposes ‘excessively burdensome requirements’ on any class of voters.” That is especially true inasmuch as laws deemed constitutional provide that any voter without a driver’s license or passport can get an ID from the state at no cost.
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This is John Paul Stevens, for heaven’s sake, not some “extreme right-wing Justice”.
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Opponents of photo ID laws object on two grounds. No. 1, some claim there is no voter fraud in the United States; others say the level of fraud is low and tolerable — which makes me wonder how much is tolerable to these folks. No. 2, they say these laws are an effort to suppress the turnout of minority voters, who often do not have a photo ID.
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As to whether voter fraud is an issue, here is a quote from that 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision: “Flagrant examples of such fraud … have been documented throughout this nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.”
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Time does not allow me to list all the fraud cases I could, all of those I have read about and come across in the public literature on the subject, but I was surprised at the number of reports and cases. The list includes the familiar ACORN (in Nevada) and the Service Employees International Union (in Texas). Also, cases have turned up in New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Kansas, Colorado, South Dakota, Washington state, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois (in Chicago, of course), Mississippi, Florida Alabama, Georgia and Missouri (in St. Louis and in Kansas City).
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Even Chris Matthews, who no reasonable person could describe as a conservative or GOP lover has said “impersonation fraud” has gone on in Philadelphia “for a long time”. He said, “I know all about it in North Philly — it’s what went on, and I believe it still goes on.”
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Those opposed to photo ID laws frequently claim there are few prosecutions for impersonation fraud. They are correct, but for the wrong reason. It’s not, as the opponents claim, because it does not happen often; rather, it is because they are so hard to prove.
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As the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said in the Indiana case, while noting the under-enforcement of voter fraud cases, there is an “extreme difficulty in apprehending a voter impersonator.”
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That is the point: A photo ID requirement would give police and prosecutors a real tool in detecting and prosecuting such fraud. So why are so many adamant about not giving them that one, simple, commonsense tool?
“It should be noted that Eric Holder, the country’s Attorney General and a fierce opponent of photo ID laws — he recently called them a modern-day poll tax, which is outrageous — nevertheless requires one to get into his Department of Justice office.”
And the simple answer to that, whether you like it or not, whether I fully like it or not or whether anyone else likes it or not, is that it’s not a Constitutionally protected right to enter his office. Nor to drive a car or any other example most people bring up. Voting is.
Oh please supply us the the evidence of fraud that makes disenfranchising so many voters worthwhile.
Because the facts are it does not exist. except in the most infinitesimal amount.
http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/12/13/388169/pa-goper-admits-theres-no-evidence-that-voter-id-laws-are-needed-but-hes-ramming-one-through-anyway/?mobile=nc
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?pagewanted=all
And what of all those people who legitimately have the right to vote but (for one reason or another) don’t have a valid photo ID?
There have been several times where I didn’t have one that lasted for months, mostly when I was younger than 30.
For Example I didn’t have a state issued photo ID until i was 22 years old. I never really had a need for one before then, or could get around the inconvenences of not having one fairly easily.
I didn’t have a driver’s license until i was 26, didn’t have a car and so didn’t really need one.
And I didn’t have a passport until I first went to Europe at the age of 30.
And I’ve lost my wallet irretreivably (stolen, dumped out of a capsized fishing boat etc) a few times and had it take up to a month for the ID/DL to be replaced.
What of those voters/potential voters in similar situations in states that have or are considering these laws. And since all of those ID’s require money to get (especially the passport), what of those people who can’t afford to get them, yet still want to vote as is their right?
Mathews said more than that last year.
“I know all about it in North Philly. It’s what went on. And I believe it still goes on. The question is, can we correct it without screwing up our system? I want people to vote, that’s the number one goal. But I also want to make sure people don’t cheat. So, let’s get out of here.”
As I said before, and Mathews basically said here, the issues should be addressed, but we don’t want to jam people up in the hundreds of thousands right before a major election just to address the few and far in between incidents of fraud.
Okay, the idea that people wanting actual voters to vote is somehow a big, bad right-wing conspiracy has me ready to explode.
No, Jerome: the “conspiracy” is to PREVENT actual voters–specifically those most likely to vote Democratic and those least capable of defending themselves–from being able to vote. And if genuine investigative journalism were not a dying art, then you could be sure that sooner or later, someone WOULD uncover a conspiracy. This began somewhere. Somewhere, in some closed door meeting, Karl Rove or someone very much like him developed a strategy that targeted young Democrats, elderly Democrats, and poor Democrats. And you know me: I’m no conspiracy theorist.
I am, however, a fan of Ian Fleming. Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. And we’re way above three.
Mark my words: this period is going to be viewed as an absolute nadir of the GOP, and that’s including Watergate. The party that was on the wrong side of every major issue. That tried to block health care when it will eventually be commonplace. The party that thought global warming was a trick and that stem cell research was immoral. What we’re seeing now, this targeted war against American citizens and their right to vote, will be understood for what it is: a screaming howl of a dinosaur sinking into the tarpits of extinction it so richly deserves and has brought upon itself by embracing the activities of its most extreme voices and severing itself from the moderate viewpoints that truly guide this country.
PAD
Well said, PAD.
The way I see it, the GOP is more organized and motivated, and could have easily buried the Dems many times over, if only they were a little less extreme.
They have a huge potential “market” in blacks and hispanics, who share the traditional religious values the GOP pretends to champion, yet they HAVE to antagonize these groups with their ultra-ruthless laissez-faire capitalism and their draconian anti-poor brown imigrant law (because it’s apparently only the brown and/or poor they object to).
Likewise with women. In my home country, women have traditionally voted for conservative politicians, because conservatives here are more pragmatic than ideological, and women do like that. But not the GOP, the pragmatism of a Buckley is a thing of the past. They are ultra-militant now.
It’s like they do their dámņ best to make it very, very, very hard for you to vote for them if you’re not white, male, and Protestant. And guess what, that demography is shrinking.
I’d like to believe that PAD is right about the future of the Republican Party; the problem is that I’ve heard that idea too many times before. Disenfranchising voters? When *hasn’t* that happened in the past several elections? Hëll, I hoped the Florida debacle in 2000 (no matter what a person thought of the outcome, is there any legitimate doubt that ton of votes were thrown away because of a bad misprint?) Especially given how close that tally was and how pivotal. A lot of people seem okay with blocking legitimate voters (which is the *real* “voter fraud”) as long as it’s “the other side.”
During the Clinton impeachment and rout in the Congressional elections I remember the claim that the Republican Party had “gone down in flames.” We saw what happened in the next election. and the next. And the next.
After eight years of Bush, I remember the idea that the R’s were completely sunk, just to pick up seats in the next election. Now Romney seems to have a chance – a very small chance I think – but far more than I would have expected only one election post-Bush.
Who would have thought the R’s had any chance to regain the White House so soon after Nixon and Ford? One Democratic term was all it took, and a bad economy, and crisis or two, and attack politics. No, I’m not saying Romney has any of Reagan’s charisma or prospects, just that nothing seems to finish off a party.
I’d love to see America reject the R’s and the D’s and at least open up to the Greens and the Libertarians, but I don’t see any evidence that they’re willing to.
a screaming howl of a dinosaur sinking into the tarpits of extinction it so richly deserves and has brought upon itself by embracing the activities of its most extreme voices and severing itself from the moderate viewpoints that truly guide this country.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for America to become a one-party state. There are 314 million people in a country that’s spread across the width of a continent. You really think they’re all going to gravitate toward one party? Or even enough for a permanent governing majority for the Democrats?
I doubt it. For one thing, functioning democracies abhor single party rule. You can have de facto single party in some areas. There’s almost no point in Republicans nominating House candidates in Boston, for example. But across an entire nation? Elections are essentially markets, and there will be a demand for a not-Democrat alternative in the fall. A few years ago, the Conservative party in Canada was essentially wiped out (down to two MPs as I recall). Guess who’s now the governing party in Canada? The reformed Conservative Party. Even if you’re right about the Republican Party imploding, either it will revive itself, or a schism in the Democratic Party will result in a new party that will be the functional equivalent of a revived GOP. (New! Improved! No MSG!)
For another thing, setting aside theory, the Democratic Party as actually observed does a terrible job of appealing to large sections of this country. Health care may “eventually be commonplace,” but the actual Obamacare legislation remains godawfully unpopular. I think gay marriage is the way of the future, and that future may arrive sooner than we think, but it is and will remain anathema to a great many people. You can dismiss them all (unfairly) as hate-filled neanderthals, but they exist. Plus there are people who simply don’t believe in the welfare state. Again, you can attribute that to malice or unreconstructed hatred of portions of the population, but it’s there.
Take everything into account, and there remains a pool of potential voters that is easily large enough to support a conservative party. By far the most likely outcome is for them to continue to gravitate to the organized and funded alternative to the Democratic Party, namely the GOP. But let’s assume you’re right and the Republican brand is fatally tainted. Take down the sign above campaign headquarters that says “Republican” and put one up that says “Federalist,” but you won’t like them any better. A conservative party will always exist, and in this country it will probably be the Republican Party.
The thing you’re most wrong about, unfortunately, is your belief in “the moderate viewpoints that truly guide this country.” We lurch from extreme to extreme. There hasn’t been a true moderate running things in Washington since Bill Clinton, and that seems unlikely to change. You’re assuming that the Republican Party is this alien creature that parasitically feeds off of its voters and feeds them nonsense. I regret to inform you that there are tens of millions of Americans who actually believe that nonsense, just as there are tens of millions of Democratic voters who believe the nonsense spewed out by, say, Paul Krugman. Unfortunately, this country has the political parties that its voters deserve.
“Don’t hold your breath waiting for America to become a one-party state. “
I don’t believe he said that, David. But it is entirely possible that a party could collapse and a new one with like ideas but a different MO could come into existence from the ashes. I’ve said for some few years now that I would love to see the moderates in both parties break away and form a new party.
Hëll, one thing I likes about some of the (very few) sane candidates in the Reform Party was that they at least espoused the idea of being fiscal conservatives, and real ones rather than what the Republicans have become, and more or less socially liberal. I was kind of annoyed that the party didn’t get bigger based on that idea.
David, I don’t our host is calling for one-party rule so much as for the current incarnation of the GOP to demise and recreate itself, in much the same way that the Democratic Party did in the ’80s-90s.
In order to file a suit a valid ID would be required.
Al Franken won his Senate seat by 312 votes.
At least 341 convicted felons voted illegally in that race.
Every illegal vote cancels out one legal vote.
Could a legal Minnesota voter sue for having their vote canceled out by an illegal vote? That’s actual disenfranchisement, not some theoretical case. Their vote was illegally nullified.
Sorry Jay, that’s just another right wing lie that has been thoroughly debunked. Not that that has ever stopped it from being repeated by the right wing noise machine.
http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2010/07/franken-coleman-senate-recount-flap-over-felon-votes-shows-gop-playing-fast-
No, Ed, you’re… I’ll say “misrepresenting” what I said.
The article you linked to doesn’t actually debunk the statement that 341 illegal votes were cast. The electoral consequences of those votes are disputable, but that doesn’t change what I said — that every single illegal vote cast disenfranchises one legal voter.
But if you want to adopt the standard that voting irregularities that might not actually affect an electoral outcome, then let’s run with that. Let’s just ignore all disenfranchised voters until they reach a number where it might affect a race. Is that what you’re saying?
Al Franken won his Senate seat by 312 votes.
At least 341 convicted felons voted illegally in that race.
What Jay Tea is insinuating, but just won’t actually say, is that since these felons voted, they *must* have voted Democrat. But, again, who needs proof when we can just rely on Faux News talking points?
It’s also apparent that Jay didn’t actually read the article Ed linked, especially given the irony of this discussion starting out talking about voter fraud, and the #1 point in the article:
“1. First is the implication that if voter ID cards were used on Election Day, felons wouldn’t be able to vote. This is a longstanding Republican issue to limit voting among the disenfranchised. Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer has used this controversy to call for picture IDs for voters. But guess what? Convicted felons have driver’s licenses. They have photo IDs. Voter photo IDs wouldn’t halt felons from voting. This Minnesota Majority report is being used for other political reasons.”
But then, this is Jay Tea, so I’m not sure why I’m wasting the keystrokes.
…and yet no one wants to argue that 341 felons illegally voted.
No one seems to care about the 341 legal voters whose votes were canceled out.
No one seems to care about how those 341 American citizens were effectively disenfranchised.
Instead, they want to leap to the defense of a bunch of hypothetical disenfranchisees who might be slightly inconvenienced in the future.
So much for reality trumping theory.
…and yet no one wants to argue that 341 felons illegally voted.
A) Were their votes counted or were they rightfully tossed out? I don’t believe that link said so, and, quite honestly, I don’t trust your word on the matter either way.
B) It’s still not fraud, and it wouldn’t have been stopped by voter ID laws.
But, by all means, please go picking and choosing exactly which 341 people were supposedly disenfranchised. But make sure they voted Republican first, OK?
Meanwhile, while you’re having a hissy, countless others are being thrown off the voting rolls around the country for the “crime” of not being Republican while you stand back and watch with approval.
His “point” and his “facts” are actually even more laughably bad than they look at first blush. I have a post that got clogged in the filter due to a couple of links. But, short version, the joke of a conservative hack group that claimed the fraud was claiming around 1,500 cases at first. The final tally of actual fraud? Not enough to impact an election unless you only had three total voters.
Oh, and look…
They’re playing fast and loose with the numbers again (“When 1,099 felons vote in race won by 312 ballots”) and giving a new publicity push to their “findings” just in time to plug a new book.
http://www.minnesotamajority.org/
Short versions then since the original was either beaten senseless by Tron or captured by the MCP…
“The conservative group Minnesota Majority first alleged that 1,250 people, including over 800 felons, were illegally voting. But the vast majority of those claims didn’t pan out.
“They claimed in November 2009 to have 800 additional individuals who were illegal felon voters,” Freeman said. “When they summited names to us in late February 2010, it was down to 451. We have processed that 451, and more than half of them were either not felons or not on probation when they voted. The rest of them we investigated more fully, and today we reported that the remaining cases presented sufficient support to charge, so we charged them.”
Freeman said he made a commitment to get the cases taken care of before the 2010 elections. He noted that .00006 percent — six-one-thousandth of one percent — of the voters in Hennepin County had been charged with improperly voting.“
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/minn_conservative_groups_voter_fraud_allegations_about_five_percent_accurate.php
Interesting, the crooks & liars link keeps blocking it from going up. Okay…
Crooks & Liars
August 09, 2012 01:00 PM
Stupid New Right Wing Meme: Felons Elected Franken
“Right-wingers are in a tizzy over excerpts from a new book by two of the GOP’s leading voter-fraud hucksters alleging that Minnesota’s Democratic Senator Al Franken would not have won a statewide recount in 2009 were it not for ex-felons voting illegally.
They are jumping to the false conclusion that illegal felon voting in November 2008 not only tipped a recount in which Franken won by 312 votes—out of 2.4 million cast between the two men—but that tougher state voter ID laws would have changed the result. Both claims are wrong.”
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“The problem with this assertion—from a newbook by The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund and George W. Bush Justice Department attorney Hans von Spakovsky—is that it is not just factually wrong, according to Minnesota Supreme Court records, the Minnesota prosecutor who investigated most of the cases, and some of the country’s top election scholars, but it is intended to rile a segment of the Right that thinks it is patriotic to demonize voting by non-whites and disrupt voting for everyone else.
“They are talking in code to their base,” said Rutgers University’s Lori Minnite,co-author of Keeping Down The Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters. “My guess is that von Spakovsky and Fund know exactly what they are doing.”
“There is no basis in fact, whatsoever, in these inaccuracies propagated by the Minnesota Majority here, none,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Wednesday. “After the most closely scrutinized election in Minnesota history in 2008, there were zero cases of fraud. Even the Republicans lawyers acknowledged that there was no systematic effort to defraud the election, none.””
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And, as I mentioned in a post that may or may not have gotten through, the groups that did the “research” is little more than a hack, right wing advocacy group. Minnesota Majority has no real credibility here. They’ve claimed as many as 1,500 cases and they’ve been thoroughly debunked.
Dear Management
Please give my posting caught in the filter due to the included links a swift kick.
Thanks
I looked in the filter, Jerry. The only thing there was a link to a “Hunger Games” video.
PAD
Huh… Guess it just went missing in cyberspace then. I’ll have to retype it later.
A related thought I’ve heard echoed elsewhere: In the unfortunate event that Romney/Ryan wins, let’s hope its by a landslide, because if it turns out to be a very narrow margin of victory in swing states (very likely), and the margin lines up with the projected number of people disenfranchised through GOP voter-screening laws in those states …
Then…what? Finish the thought. If that happens, then what do you believe will occur? It’ll be challenged in court? You really think Obama would subject the country to months and months and months of court battle while John Boehner succeeds him into the presidency and runs the country?
Demand a recount for one state? Because that worked out SO well the last time that happened.
If they win by narrow margins in swing states, here is what will happen: The GOP will party down, slap each other on the back, and then target more states with the exact same tactic. They will grow bolder and even more self-righteous and eventually they will collapse under their own arrogance.
PAD
As much as I’d hate to admit it, you’re probably right, PAD. God knows the media won’t do anything except cover the drama of it all rather than the substance.
The only worthwhile thing that might come from such a thing is that if people actually took to the streets, cried tyranny, and suggested 2nd Amendment remedies against such blatant fraud, the GOP will suddenly realize the clearly constitutional and obvious need for comprehensive gun control legislation.
This is interesting and has a good question: http://www.mediaite.com/online/msnbc-broadcasts-19-segments-on-voter-i-d-this-week-ignores-poll-showing-74-support-for-i-d-laws/
A few years ago, a Gallup poll discovered that 56% of Americans supported the idea of an amendment forbidding flag burning.
At the same time, 78% of Americans favored establishing English as the national language.
Maybe MSNBC didn’t mention it because “POLL FINDS THAT 74% OF AMERICANS ARE IDIOTS WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THE STUPID THINGS THEY SUPPORT” isn’t news.
A poll. Jesus Christ. A poll that three quarters of Americans have no problem with it.
You know what Americans did have a problem with in the 1950s? Interracial marriage. Ninety-six percent were opposed to it. A more recent poll shows that 86% have no problem with it, but that means that 14%–more than one out of ten Americans–either STILL oppose it or haven’t made up their minds. And in that same poll, 95% of people who identified themselves as liberals favored interracial marriages. Only 78% who identified themselves as conservatives favored interracial marriage.
Gee, with all these statistics and GOP-engineered undertakings aimed at blacks, the poor, the young and the elderly, how could anyone possibly mistake the GOP for a bunch of racist gun-toting anti-constitution, anti-rights (except their own) fools? I mean, I simply can’t see where that’s coming from.
PAD
You always pull out this crap when it’s a poll you don’t agree with , PAD. Seriously, I think you have it copied and paste it whenever something like this is brought up…”Americans also had a problem with interracial marriage..blah, blah, blah”..When it’s a poll that you agree with, you have no problem using it…“POLL FINDS THAT 74% OF AMERICANS ARE IDIOTS WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THE STUPID THINGS THEY SUPPORT” isn’t news? Wow! What respect for other’s opinions you have here!…It is such disgusting, elitist thinking that anyone who disagrees with your stance is automatically an idiot…That is not critical thinking…That is thinking your view is the only one that is just and righteous and that is almost frightening .And if a major news network is going to do 19 stories and make Voter ID the biggest issue of the week – like there is nothing else going on – the least they can do is tel us what the polls say..They report on polls daily and for various reasons but not one for a story they are pushing hard, because it doesn’t fit their narrative..And you seriously don’t have a problem with that at all?
Jerome: YOU brought it up. You latched onto a poll as if it means anything.
Polls are meaningless. People who respond to polls routinely declare that they hate excess reporting of sensationalistic news stories…at the exact same time they’re watching them eagerly. People often respond to questions they don’t truly understand. Not to mention that oftentimes the results of the polls are presented without the context of the questions. So most polls consist of statistically insignificant samplings of people who know little to nothing of the subjects they’re being questioned on, with questions that can easily be biased to elicit desired answers.
They mean nothing. MSNBC didn’t report a poll? Good. I wish they wouldn’t report any of them. All they are is a snapshot of what a handful of people “think” that can be massaged any way that the pollsters desire.
PAD
That student ID may not get you into the voting booth
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/17/13332451-that-student-id-may-not-get-you-into-the-voting-booth
“On a national scale, voter ID laws could have a significant impact on student voters in the November elections. Stern said college students were one of the demographics targeted by voter ID laws because students are likely to vote for Democrats.”
Why do Republicans hate their fellow Americans so much?
No, I’m serious, I really want to know, because it’s been apparent for some time now that if you’re not an older, rich, white Christian male, they REALLY don’t give a dámņ about you or your rights.
Oh, and another bit from this article, to piggyback on what PAD said above on guns in this country:
“Gun permits will do in Texas, not student ID under new law
In Texas, student IDs might be rejected at the polls while gun permits are accepted, depending on a lawsuit over the state’s voter ID law. Texas’ law passed the legislature but has been blocked by the Department of Justice. If the state wins against the Justice Department, no student IDs from public or private schools would be accepted at the polls.”
This is about as messed up as it gets.
And to piggyback on something Jerome said earlier about voter education:
““Voting as a liberal, that’s what kids do,” (NH state House Speaker William O’Brien) was recorded saying at a New Hampshire Tea Party event. “They lack the life experience and they just vote their feelings.””
Life experience and feelings!? Woopdefreakingdo. Life experience has told me that most people are idiots, no matter how old they are.
So, why the hëll does it matter how they vote? Shouldn’t the most important thing be that they vote at all? Not in this country!
Well no, Craig..people voting out of ignorance or compulsion is not healthy…I think you would agree that an idiot who feels Obama is a Muslim and was born in Kenya and votes against him for that reason is a lot less healthy than someone who votes based on how the economy is affecting them or because he or she don’t like Obamacare or Obama’s view on abortion…Voting is important, but it is helpful – and there is no purely objective way to quantify it – if people vote based on knowledge and facts than on “well I just feel he cares about me”…One can at least be somewhat proven..the other in pure faith…I don’t feel voting purely on emotion or “feelings” is a good thing in the long-term
Isn’t there a bit of a double standard in there, Jerome?
If I happen to say that people should ideally be well-informed and well-educated before they exercise their free speech rights, I’ll be rightfully attacked by Conservatives for trying to be Big Brother.
But it’s apparently okay to restrict people from voting because they’re not (in your opinion) well-informed.
Not to mention that some Conservatives are so fond of claiming they’re above “emotions” and “feelings” and that only Liberals do things because that’s-what-Liberals-should-do.
In my way of seeing things, Conservatives are deeply emotional creatures, even more than Liberals, only they’re less honest about it, and feel a greater need to rationalize what they do, because they’re deep down more embarassed about some of their own positions.
Rene,
“Isn’t there a bit of a double standard in there, Jerome?”
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No, not really.
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“If I happen to say that people should ideally be well-informed and well-educated before they exercise their free speech rights, I’ll be rightfully attacked by Conservatives for trying to be Big Brother.”
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Well, yeah.
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“But it’s apparently okay to restrict people from voting because they’re not (in your opinion) well-informed.”
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No, it’s not..and not even close to what I said. What I said was “voters participating” is not the sign of a healthy democracy…Some countries make voting mandatory and compulsory and some even compel with gifts/vacations..I don’t think people who don’t care SHOULD vote, not that they should be prevented from doing so.
Why should someone who genuinely doesn’t care cancel out the vote of someone who thinks what they’re voting for is important?
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“Not to mention that some Conservatives are so fond of claiming they’re above “emotions” and “feelings” and that only Liberals do things because that’s-what-Liberals-should-do.”
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Well, liberals say the reverse all the time..Bill Maher has compared the Republicans to children…Al Franken has said “the GOP’s love for America is like the love a child has for his mooooomy..but the Democrats’ love is like that in a mature, adult relationship.”
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“In my way of seeing things, Conservatives are deeply emotional creatures, even more than Liberals”
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Of course you feel that way.
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” only they’re less honest about it, and feel a greater need to rationalize what they do, because they’re deep down more embarassed about some of their own positions.”
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Isn’t it possible they rationalize things because they are simply more rational? Even the majority of the true áššhølëš on this board that have been shrouded at least try to come across in a rational manner – the insane, ant-senitic Dee would be an exception if she/he didn’t describe himself/herself as liberal, but she/he loved Reagan, so let’s just call she/he insane with both left-wing and right-wing voices in her head.
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By contrast, if one states they are a conservative and especially a Christian conservative..look out…If you state that more people are now on food stamps than under any other President in American history, instead of having a debate about some of the reasons and solutions for this, what I and many on the Right can expect is accusations that we are somehow using “code” for Obama’s race.
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If we note that this IS the longest recession since the Great Depression and people are hurting, we are told we are “blaming the black guy for the mess the white guy left”..There is to be no discussion on how Reagan inherited a mess too and saw unemployment go to 10% before turning things around..or how Clinton arguably had a mess to fix or how Dubya arguably had a mess to fix after the dot-com bubble burst and 9/11..and eventually helped guide the country to 52 straight months of economic growth…Nope, the argument is encapsulate din a matter-of-fact soundbite and that’s it.
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The main difference is I enjoy debating people who disagree with me..I will either hone my arguments, possibly educate them and have them show me their point of view OR I may actually have cause to rethink my position…But time and time again people on the Left call myself and others who may agree with me on certain things racist, homophobes, neanderthals, etc…There is no discussion most of the time because, hey, they just take it on faith that they are right, no debate is necessary or even wanted and those who feel the need to debate things are uneducated and stupid and not worth wasting their time with.
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A perfect example is that I bring up a poll showing 74% of the people support an issue and am told that is only proof of how ignorant and STUPID the unwashed masses are..If that much of the populace is THAT ignorant, why have people vote at all? We’ll just install a brilliant dictator who will save us from ourselves and all will be well. I think our system is far preferable and that freedom and discussion are good things but that may only be me.
They don’t hate them, Craig.
They’re afraid of them.
PAD
And as David Byrne sang in (his) song “Dirty Old Town,”
Keep youu head down and keep your nose clean
‘Cause people who are scared do dangerous things
Not to mention that fear leads to anger, anger to hatred, and hatred to the dark side.
PAD
Dammit, PAD, I was thinking about using that, but decided not to, since you mentioned afraid, and the actual quote says fear.
Arrg. 🙂
I am not sure if this has been posted yet, but a recent survey of the data shows that there were only 10 cases of voter ID fraud in the last decade, just 10 cases.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/election-day-impersonation-an-impetus-for-voter-id-laws-a-rarity-data-show/2012/08/11/7002911e-df20-11e1-a19c-fcfa365396c8_story.html
But the Penn. ID law alone could disenfranchise as many as 750,000 voters.
Please conservatives, tell me how you justify this?
Apparently, the modern conservative maxim is “Better that 750,000 innocent suffer than that one guilty person escape.”
““Better that 750,000 innocent suffer than that one guilty person escape.””
Yeah, that’s something that I left alone up above when pointing out the lie in Jay Tea’s unsourced “facts” about 341 convicted felons voted illegally putting Franken over the top in the Minnesota election. He was trying to peddle that lie as a way of playing the “But look at all of the legal voters disenfranchised by those evil, mean felon votes!” game with us.
But apparently his thinking skills aren’t too sharp here. He doesn’t even realize that he’s essentially saying that he’d happily support the idea of purging and disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters in order to save the, false and trumped up, number of voters he cites.
Can you imagine Jay Tea in the home repair business with that attitude?
“Well, I’m sorry to say that your gutters are absolutely in need of repair and at least one segment needs to be replaced, Ma’am. Now, if you’ll just give me a few minutes to set the explosives I need to blow your house up, we’ll have it taken care of in no time at all.”
Both parties would like to disenfranchise voters. The Republicans say they want to crack down on voter fraud, but only because they perceive these votes as going to the Democrats. I’m sure they won’t mind if some people who should be able to vote decided they didn’t want to bother getting an ID to vote.
The Democrats are trying to play this up as a voter suppression issue, but don’t seem to mind trying to suppress the votes of the military when it comes to absentee ballots. We have Holder suing a state over that now. This is, of course, because they perceive the military vote as going more Republican.
Neither side can really claim a moral high ground in this.
That said, what is actually wrong with the concept of preventing people who should not legally be voting from doing so, while at the same time trying to make sure that the people who can legally vote are encouraged to vote while minimizing or eliminating any barriers that would be seen as disenfranchisement? The big question is how to do that. Would the voter ID laws be seen to be so disenfranchising if there were some mechanism in place so that the states would make sure people had valid IDs so that they wouldn’t be disenfranchised? I’m just talking theoretically here – from a practical standpoint you might not ever get a program to make sure of this. Still, though, shouldn’t there be some discussion of how to work to a place that honors what both sides claim they want, minimizing voter fraud without disenfranchising anyone?
The Democrats are trying to play this up as a voter suppression issue, but don’t seem to mind trying to suppress the votes of the military when it comes to absentee ballots.
* sigh * Tell you what, Tom. Turn off Fox News long enough to read this, from USA Today:
Conservative blogs and opinion pieces have also misrepresented the case, claiming in headlines that President Obama was suing to “restrict military voting.” A fundraising email appeal from a group called Special Operations Speaks — which wants to “remove Barack Obama from the White House” — wrongly says that Obama “deploys army of lawyers to suppress military’s voting rights,” claiming that “Obama needs the American military to not vote, so he has set out to make it as difficult as possible for them to do so.” But that’s not what the Obama lawsuit aims to do at all.
The lawsuit, filed by the Obama campaign, Democratic National Committee and Ohio Democratic Party in July against Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general, asks for an injunction to block implementation of state laws that modified in-person early voting regulations. In the last presidential election, all Ohio residents — military and otherwise — could cast their votes in-person early up through the Monday before Election Day. But contentious legislation passed by Ohio’s GOP-controlled Legislature in 2011 limited early voting for nonmilitary residents, giving them a deadline of 6 p.m. Friday before the election. Military members and overseas civilians could still vote through Monday. Both parties have squabbled, with Democrats saying the law is a suppression of nonmilitary votes and Republicans arguing that they are just easing a burden on polling places and guarding against fraud. (Mail-in absentee ballots are not affected; the new regulations affect in-person early voting.)
You can read the entirety of the article here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-08-07/fact-check-obama-ohio-military-voting/56859922/1
You’re being lied to, Tom. It’s a conservative talking point and it’s a lie; nothing more.
PAD
I read the link, Peter, and what it relates is Lori Robertson’s opinion supporting the Democrats in opposition to some other opinion supporting the Republicans; and, if you want to call them all lies, that’s fine, and if you want to call them all talking points, that’s true too, but be consistent.
What is truth? As a matter of law, states are under no obligation to have early voting at all, and a case can be made for not having it, including the right of candidates (especially those lower on the ticket) to have the full time for making their case which a termination of early voting would allow.
Hence, states have wide latitude in determining how much early voting will be allowed and when it will terminate. The Justice Department has no constitutional authority to extend or contract that time.
What the Justice Department’s lawsuit attempts to do instead is create a claim based on equal protection involving the military, but as anyone knows, soldiers are under the immediate command of the federal government, MUST follow orders, and may not be able as a result to get to the polls during the early periods allotted civilians. Therefore, they clearly are not in the same class as civilian voters.
Since soldiers and civilians constitute different classes of voters, as a matter of law, there is no equal-protection issue here (the lawsuit is Holder’s puffery designed to generate publicity around this bogus claim that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote).
The reality is that there are all sorts of reasons for a State to terminate early voting a few days early. It’s terminated on Saturday before an election in Florida so clerks and other election officials can gather materials and prepare the additional polling places needed for the actual day of voting.
Holder is not even contesting such a law here (which ought to prove the politics of it all in Ohio).
No federal court that doesn’t want to be reversed is going to say that two days of no-voting in Florida is legal but three days in Ohio is illegal, simply because it was “mean ol’ Republicans” who passed Ohio’s law. If Romney elects to spin the suit as picking on the military in response to Obama trying to spin the suit as picking on civilians, I call that fighting fire with fire — neither side is being perfectly candid in its presentation.
“The Democrats are trying to play this up as a voter suppression issue, but don’t seem to mind trying to suppress the votes of the military when it comes to absentee ballots. We have Holder suing a state over that now.”
Until you pony up a link, I call bûllšhìŧ. The only charge I’ve heard about that is Ohio and it was a lie that has been thoroughly debunked. As a matter of fact, I believe I linked to it in this thread.
That said, what is actually wrong with the concept of preventing people who should not legally be voting from doing so,
Which isn’t happening in the first place…
while at the same time trying to make sure that the people who can legally vote are encouraged to vote while minimizing or eliminating any barriers that would be seen as disenfranchisement?
Which isn’t happening either.
The entire premise of this blog entry is the fact that barriers ARE being erected all across the country as we speak.
Voter fraud is virtually non-existent, therefore the only purpose of voter ID laws is to disenfranchise voters.
Craig, the entire premise of this thread is demodonkey doo foisted upon us by people who never heard (or fully approve) of ACORN. Truth is: We WANT people possessing the right to vote in Florida to vote. Get your ášš to the polls! COME!!!!!
Worth reading to see just how the GOP’s organized disenfranchisement is hardly limited to the canard of voting fraud.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/18/republican-voter-suppression-early-voting_n_1766172.html
PAD
And yet, some how, many people will still vote for the group who is (only) working very hard to take their rights away at every opportunity.
Not THEIR rights. OTHER people’s rights. So that makes it okay.
PAD
Having different voting hours in different sections of the same state is problematic..I can see that being struck down as unconstitutional because the voting hours in the same state should be uniform throughout it…But the rest of it? 35 days to vote? Really? Why would anyone automatically assume that’s a good idea? That means someone could vote before all the debates all over…Or before an October Surprise of event that could possibly change their minds happens…And I’m pretty sure if it was churches in Alabama and Mississippi that were talking about taking “Souls to the Polls” many would be saying that this is an example where the church is influencing politics too much and the usual anti-religion garbage..but because it’s an “oppressed” group that makes it okay…This is not close to Jim Crow and those who keep bringing up racial code from the ’60s are intellectually bankrupt and either know Jack Shìŧ or are full of it..I mean, really, 11 days to vote is some sort of extraordinary burden? Ridiculous
This is not close to Jim Crow and those who keep bringing up racial code from the ’60s are intellectually bankrupt and either know Jack Shìŧ or are full of it.
Fight over poll hours isn’t just political
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/08/19/fight-over-poll-hours-isnt-just-political.html
“I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”
Nope, not a God dámņ thing to do with race.
“But the rest of it? 35 days to vote? Really? Why would anyone automatically assume that’s a good idea?”
Look up the early voter law that they just rolled back. It was signed into law by a Republican Governor, it was actually primarily authored by the man who is their present (Republican) Secretary of State and it had wide support with the Republicans at that time.
The reason behind it was that they were facing more and more election days, especially presidential elections since they’re a swing state, where their voting was a mess. The breaking point was likely the reports of lines so long that people were still waiting to vote hours after the polls closed. I’m pretty sure its an apocryphal story, but there was supposedly one precinct where a number of people still hadn’t voted when they called the state.
Whether that last bit is true or not, it’s well documented that they were a mess. The idea was to spread the vote out a bit and give the process some breathing room. And it worked. Elections that took place after the law was put in place were reported to be more orderly and went much smoother.
The catch that presumably annoyed the Republicans is that the votes started going a little more Democratic; as it certainly did in the 2008 POTUS election. The Democrats turned out to have finally gotten their ground game together for the get out the vote drives. So some of the days they targeted were days key to that. The Sunday before election day? That’s when a number of the local black churches would organize to go out and vote after services. Since the black voter block tends to vote Democrat, especially older church goers, that Sunday had to go.
Throw in the game that’s now going on where Democratic leaning areas are being blocked from exercising local authority to allow early and late voting days while the republican leaning areas are being allowed to do that… The naked partisanship stinks to high heaven.
No..I agree that the hours to vote should not be different from county to county within a state..Placing greater emphasis on counties favorable to you fails to backfire..Just ask Al Gore…
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But I still feel over a month is ridiculous…Maybe a week, tops..
I’d actually go with ten days prior plus election day. That way you get two entire weekends in the deal and some breathing space for everyone else.
I think that getting the two weekends in is ideal since you have a lot of professions that require you to be on the road or in the air and far away from home during the week. Not everyone trusts absentee ballots or the mail with matter such as voting, so people like that might find voting like that better. Plus you have two weekends for church groups (for both sides) to organize their community members to vote.
I think a ten day window plus election day when organized properly would do well in a state like Ohio.
You still need some time for the poor election workers to set up the actual polls on election day. If you put these people on the line for 15-hour days, two weeks before and on the day of the election, you saddle yourself with exhausted workers prone to mistakes.
The Monday before election is out for early voting if early voting is in a restricted number of polling places (someone has to set up the additional places). As for the preceding Sunday, that day off would be appreciated by the staff, I’m sure. Whether the preceding Saturday should be off obviously is a matter of opinion (and I don’t support that), but this is not a matter for a federal lawsuit. Ohio is within its rights.
Re different hours, what about states which cross time zones?
There’s obviously more to the problem than mere politics.
Hmm, maybe a suit against these guys has a better chance?
Flurry of Voter ID laws tied to conservative group ALEC
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/21/13392560-flurry-of-voter-id-laws-tied-to-conservative-group-alec?lite
But then, the courts have already given the thumbs up to our legislators being whørëš to lobbyist pimps.
I was appalled to learn of these guys. I just tweeted about them.
PAD
The righteous (lefteous?) indignation some are displaying regarding any attempt to create or enforce a voting ID requirement is silly partian grandstanding. Almost every adult has an ID of some sort, and if the $20 or so it takes to get a state ID is all that daunting, then in the very, very rare cases where that is the case, the state or federal government can pick up the tab — which would likely be chump change nationwide compared to every single other safety net program that currently exists for the poor (almost all of which, I might add, require an ID to participate in). After all, the integrity of the voting system should be everyone’s prime concern. And for those who argue — with a straight face, I might add — that voter fraud does not exist in this country and thus there is no need for an ID requirement, all I can say is that is absolutely the stupidest and most laughable claim this Chicago born and bred person has ever heard!
“Almost every adult has an ID of some sort,”
Yeah, and if you had been paying attention you would have noticed that an ID “of some sort” doesn’t work anymore. Even IDs that people have been using for years now aren’t considered proper ID in many states now.
“and if the $20 or so it takes to get a state ID is all that daunting, then in the very, very rare cases where that is the case, the state or federal government can pick up the tab”
Well, how nice of you to have passed that into law in all of the states doing stuff like this. Oh, wait, you didn’t because you can’t. You saying that means nothing whatsoever. So the problem still remains.
“[A]which would likely be chump change nationwide compared to every single other safety net program that currently exists for the poor [B](almost all of which, I might add, require an ID to participate in)”
Yeah and [A] is pointless nonsense insofar this discussion while [B] is, again, not as relevant as you think it is since the same IDs that will allow you access to some of those programs will not allow you to vote in some states right now.
“And for those who argue — with a straight face, I might add — that voter fraud does not exist in this country and thus there is no need for an ID requirement, all I can say is that is absolutely the stupidest and most laughable claim this Chicago born and bred person has ever heard!”
Yeah…
Since we’ve all been discussing the numbers of voter fraud cases out there, I would tend to think that your statement is rather foolish. Now, I might argue that it’s statistically nonexistent. An easy case to make as well given that the number of voter fraud cases that the GOP trumpeted in their findings (plumped up a bit with a few things that were not actual voter fraud) was a little over three hundred cases nation wide in a ten year period.
Russ, 125,225,901 people voted in the 2008 Presidential election alone. Just take that number and compare it to their findings.
125,225,901 People Voted
300 Cases of Fraud (Inflated number at that)
That’s something like 0.02 percent of the votes in that election alone. And they were trumpeting that number as the confirmed cases that they had for the last ten years of elections. I doubt the breakdown over that range is even as high as 0.002 percent.
Now, maybe it’s just me, but I think that purging hundreds of thousands of people across the country from voter rolls and creating obstacles for hundreds of thousands more for the upcoming election in order to prevent “fraud” on a magnitude of 0.002 percent of the votes in the last ten years is overkill and asinine.
And, you know what? Telling people that they have to pony up $20 in order to vote probably counts as a poll tax. Poll taxes were deemed unconstitutional by the 24th Amendment.
Jerry — It’s nearly impossible to function in this country without a valid photo ID. Since you are so quick to throw around the term “statistically nonexistent” for REPORTED cases of voter fraud, that’s probably what the number of adults without a photo ID amount to — such a small number of people, they are statistically nonexistent. In Chicago, dead people vote, people vote two or three times at different precincts, and people who have no intention of voting vote because they are paid to vote. Why do you think there are no Republicans or Independents on the city council, and the Democrats have been running the show there for more than 80 years? What non-Democrat is going to successfully report, and then get action, regarding voter fraud in Chicago? It ain’t going to happen, and anyone who thinks it will is hopelessly naive — or from somewhere else. My suggestion regarding free IDs for anyone who needed one was reasonable and in good faith, but I guess the term “reasonable” is now antiquated in this partisan world we are living in.
“Jerry — It’s nearly impossible to function in this country without a valid photo ID.”
Yes, but not all photo IDs that you can use for a multitude of other things will work for voting. It’s obvious from your two posts that you haven’t actually read a thing on this issue beyond blog posts.
And I love your logic in the second half of the post. The proof that something is widespread or rampant is the fact that it hasn’t been reported or investigated. Right. Got it. Good.
Jerry — It’s nearly impossible to function in this country without a valid photo ID.
It’s nearly impossible for middle class folks to do so.
Quite possible for the poor.
I think you need to widen your research a bit.
Not to mention eighteen year olds whose Student Photo IDs would be discounted. Although, good news: in Texas, they’re working on legislation where gun owner IDs would qualify. Student IDs, no. Gun IDs, yes. Easy answer: arm the students!
More demodonkey nonsense from the prime purveyor of demodonkey nonsense on this blog.
1. Poll taxes are not unconstitutional. What is prohibited is preventing one from voting because he or she did not pay one, and that applies to federal elections only.
2. Student IDs are not allowed because they are issued by the schools, not by the state, and that’s true even for a state university. It is widely known that many students live out of state. To vote legally, they have to vote in their own state.
3. A driver’s license is prima facie evidence that the prospective voter resides in the state which issued the license. That’s why there is a debate right now over Arizona refusing, and California permitting, driver’s licenses to illegal aliens recently “legitimized” by Obama (an illegal alien is not a citizen of any of the United States).
4. Similarly for state ID cards and gun permits. A typical “right to arms” provision in a state constitution (e.g., Connecticut) restricts that right to “citizens.” To be a “citizen,” one must reside in the state, and of course that is sufficient to be able legally to vote there.
5. Regardless of where Jerry lives now, he admits to living once in St. Petersburg and therefore knows the election laws of Florida (where we have had photo ID requirements in elections for longer than I’ve been here). He therefore knows that, if one does not have a state ID in Florida, that does not prevent him or her from voting. Rather, the voter is required to execute an affidavit on the spot, swearing to his or her belief that he or she is registered and has the right to vote. The individual then votes provisionally, and whether the vote counts is determined later by a local commission bound by requirements of due process.
No one is being denied the right to vote who actually has the right to vote.
Everything else here is a tempest in a teapot brayed as a talking point in total disregard of the truth. We go out of our way to get people to vote if they legally can.
It is worth noting that entering the words “No one who has the right the vote is denied the right to vote” on google generates 116 million results. This is just the first one:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/22/449243/report-nine-people-denied-voting-rights-by-voter-id-laws/?mobile=nc
So anyone who says otherwise is lying, or ill-informed. or just plain stupid.
PAD
Peter, the link goes to a story of people who were denied a voter ID card, not denied the right to vote. Mr. Crim states that even without said card they could vote, probably receiving a provisional ballot. I’ve had to do that myself on one occasion when there was a mix-up at the polling place over my residency.
If one can vote even without a voter ID card one may well question the usefulness of the card but it is not the same as being denied the right to vote. I suspect that, given the intentions of the articles writer, if these folks HAD been denied the right to vote it would have been explicitly stated that way.
Bill, the two things Sparky the Wonder Dolt keeps doing that invalidate much of his comments are (1) trying to apply his
fantasy lifeknowledge of Florida to a discussion that involves the entire United States and (2) keeps leaving information out.(1) Most people here have been discussing the laws passed in other states and the Bobby comes along and declares that they’re wrong because he knows that Florida isn’t doing that. Assuming we believe this latest addition to his career, as he often seems to add new bits to his resume that are discussion specific so as to claim expertise, he’s still looking only at his area.
(2) He has been leaving out the fact that local level Republicans have been refusing to carry out some of the instructions of these laws and have been for months now. A few have even been interviewed on the cable news. But the fact is that right now you have much of Florida not going all out on the deal.
“The longtime Monroe County supervisor of elections, who is a Republican, insists on offering early voting for 12 days, a move angering Republican Gov. Rick Scott.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/21/2962143/rick-scott-pressures-keys-elections.html
“Local Election Officials Resist Florida’s Efforts to Purge Voter Rolls”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/local-election-officials-resist-floridas-efforts-to-purge-voter-rolls/
““The supervisors are where we were before—we’ve stopped the purge,” Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, told me. “The list was much too flawed for the elections supervisors to move forward with in the same format and without backup documentation.””
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_07/good_day_for_voting_rights038336.php
“VIDEO: Florida Gov. Rick Scott encounters local resistance to voter purge, even from Republicans”
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2012/06/07/video-florida-gov-rick-scott-encounters-local-resistance-to-voter-purge-even-from-republicans/
So, at least right now, Sparky the Wonder Dolt talking about Florida applies even less to the other states where the implementation of these procedures is not being met with the same resistance.
And unlike with Sparky the Wonder Dolt, we know these people are actual officials. We’re not left wondering with them about it as we are left wondering with him if we should take his already proven to be questionable word for it.
It’s funny, my mother got by for almost 70 years with no photo ID. What’s also funny is that it used to be, in New Jersey, the driver’s licenses were NOT photo ID’s. What happens in that case? I know people, one of whom is a disabled Iraq war veteran, where the twenty for the ID would be VERY daunting. Are you going to tell him?
The difference between me and Jerry is that I confine my remarks to what I know whereas he ignores what he knows and pontificates on all the things he doesn’t know.
1. Jerry makes the point that he now lives in Virginia. If he lives in Virginia, he doesn’t live in Ohio, and one should not presume that he knows a rat’s áršë about voting in Ohio.
2. By comparison, I once did live in Ohio (and had an Ohio driver’s license). However, that was so long ago that there is no reason to believe I know much about current Ohio law. I do occasionally work for Collier County Elections, and Jerry admits to having lived (and we may assume voted) in Florida. So, what we know in common are the laws of Florida, not the laws of Ohio. What we know in common about Ohio is what someone has told us.
3. Of course, either one of us can go to a local law library and look up the laws of Ohio. Jerry has not done that and has not cited a single Ohio statute, so how does anyone confirm any of his charges, especially given his track record in these areas?
4. One clarification re Florida: If you come to my precinct and present a valid Florida driver’s license, you’ll first be cross-checked in the computer to insure you are in the right precinct (otherwise, your vote won’t count). If there’s a problem here, you’ll be steered to the clerk’s table instead of the ballot table, and I then will ask you some questions in an effort to steer you to the right place.
There are all sorts of reasons why you might not be on the list of registered voters for Precinct X: You moved and did not tell us; the precinct lines were redrawn since you last voted; you went to the wrong part of the building in a building where more than one precinct is located; you thought you lived in Precinct X when in fact you live in Precinct Y; you got lost on the way to the polls (it happens); (rarely) you were purged for some reason or claimed reason.
If you’re in the right place but are off the rolls for some reason, that’s when you may vote provisionally by executing the affidavit. It’s not like we just let anyone vote. You’re signing something under penalty of perjury, risking being charged with election fraud if you’re lying, and recall you gave us your signature when you registered to vote. If the signature you give on the affidavit and the signature on file don’t line up within reasonable limits, that’s one reason why the election commission won’t count the provisional vote (no proof the voter really was you).
However, we’re not interested in whether you legally can drive a car (or even if you broke the motor-vehicle laws to get to the polls). The driver’s license is prima facie evidence that you are who you say you are and are a resident of the state possessing the right to vote. It simply is one form of evidence you can give me which proves you are who you say you are and have the right to be there. But, it is not the only evidence allowed.
You also have the right to be told whether your provisional vote counted, and if not, why not. If you are dissatisfied with the determination, you can take it to court. Obviously, that happens rarely because few elections are decided by only a few votes, but if such a suit might make a difference, trust me: You won’t have any trouble finding a lawyer to take your case (expense will not be an issue).
Now, maybe that procedure won’t resolve every potential claim; however, if Jerry or anyone else knows of a better, more secure system, we definitely want to hear from you. Since the Bush/Gore fiasco, Florida has amended its laws two or three times to insure that does not happen again. We’re not courting international embarrassment.
5. Re Governor Scott’s recent efforts to unify Florida’s procedures: The rule is 8 days of early voting. Since the polls are closed on Sundays, the 8 days include at least two Saturdays. There is plenty of time and opportunity to vote.
In 5 of Florida’s counties subject to the 1965 Voter Rights Act, those claiming that 8 days is an imposition have gotten a local federal judge (I don’t know what party appointed him) to adhere to the previous standard of 12 days. Scott is opposing that, which is the anomaly, not the norm. It obliges Collier County and 4 others to have longer voting periods than the rest of the state.
There is no reason to have more than 8 days of early voting. Any decision to have early voting at all is a trade-off: Convenience to the voters is offset by cost to the counties and inconvenience to the candidates, who are deprived of time to make their case. This is particularly harmful to candidates down the ticket (one of Florida’s anomalies is that there are no party affiliations given on the ballot, itself, so if I don’t know Obama is the Democrat, I could vote for him, thinking he was the Republican).
In other words, it simply is false to claim that shortening the early-voting time lessens the quality of the election. Voters do need time to ascertain what the candidates stand for or offer — otherwise, what one gets is random lever-pulling in a booth.
A case can be made for voting only on election day. I don’t support that since I can’t vote on election day (I’m at the polls all day). But, if you can’t get your butt to the polls in almost a week and a half when the bus stops at city hall, the reason is because you don’t really want to vote. Adding more days does not fix that.
The proof of the pudding: Rick Scott, himself, once got purged from the lists; he voted provisionally (end of story). As for myself, I voted early just this month in the primary. To check out some candidates for local judge, I waited to the last day (a Saturday). At the time I was there, I was the only voter in the building. And, when I was done, they gave me a sticker to put on my coffee cup, then a second one when I asked (they had plenty).
Of course, I only received one ballot.
Thinking of filing a class action lawsuit against the Republican party isn’t the same as filing a Fosamax class action lawsuit. Your views on the problems are interesting Peter, but I find the comments section to be even more interesting. Thanks for the spirited conversation guys. I enjoyed reading them.
Suspected Ineligible Colorado Voters To Learn Status
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2012/08/29/suspected-ineligible-colorado-voters-to-learn-status/
“Some of the nearly 4,000 letters sent by Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler actually went to U.S. citizens, although it’s unknown how many. And more than three-quarters went to Democrats and independent voters.”
Colorado is something like 32% independent/unaffiliated, 33% Democrat, and 35% Republican. So, yeah, stay classy, GOP.
Tell me: How many of those erroneous letters came from a list less than accurate becasue Eric Holder would not provide a more accurate list?
You support a self-fulfilling prophesy: You support Holder’s efforts to suppress the most accurate list, then slam Republicans for using the next best list — which still is irrelevant, since what counts is not the accuracy of the list but what the voter registrars do with it. If I want to challenge your place on the list, I can do it (and so can any other voter). The question is: What procedures exist to determine the correctness of the challenge? So far, the only claim made here is that “Republicans” are preventing people from voting. Where is the proof of that? Show us the STATUTE which allows some Republican (or for that matter some Communist) not only to kick Craig Ries off the list but keep him off?
Demodonkeys in droves make claims, and they flood the internet with posts; but, nowhere is any actual proof offerred.
What’s more, had you such proof, the proper thing to do would not be to whine on this blog but rather to visit the local ACLU. Indeed, for trying to bring Collier County into the statewide norm of 8 days only of early voting, Rick Scott right now is being sued. Scott’s right or he’s wrong, but at least the ACLU has to produce some evidence of actual injury. So far, no one here has done that.
“Husted backs down on early voting ban”
“But Republicans will appeal ruling allowing early votes”
“Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted backed down under pressure from a federal judge Friday when he rescinded an order preventing early in-person voting during the final three days before Election Day.”
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120907/NEWS/309070098/Husted-backs-down-early-voting-ban
Not quite the full victory any on the Left would like it to be though.
Re: The claims that it’s hard to exist without a photo ID of some sort…
No, it really isn’t.
I don’t drive; therefore, no driver’s license.
I don’t write checks; therefore I don’t need an ID for that.
I don’t buy alcohol or tobacco; therefore, I don’t need an ID for that.
I don’t travel much; therefore, I don’t need an ID to get on the bus or plane (or presumably train).
My current ID is expired, because I can’t be bothered to go renew it. My previous ID was expired for a year before I even noticed it, and then it took me another year to get around to renewing it, because I simply had no need of it. A few years ago, when I *did* travel… I lost my ID while changing (it fell out of my pocket in the bathroom stall the day after arrival, and I didn’t notice until the night before flying home when I was getting ready). What got me through TSA? The tiny little fuzzy grainy picture on my (expired, ’cause I don’t often go there anymore, but I clean out my wallet even less often than I can be bothered to renew my ID) Sam’s Club card that honestly could be pretty much anybody with a beard.
So, yeah. Not really all that difficult to live without a valid ID.
I also don’t really pay attention to the news. Honestly, if it weren’t for this blog and my mother’s Facebook page… if I lived in Ohio, I wouldn’t be able to vote. As it is, in NH I’m able to vote because our version doesn’t take effect until the NEXT election cycle. Y’know, to give people who may not have heard about it time to learn about it (presumably if they’d vote next time, they’d also vote this time, and would then be told), and is far more lenient than Ohio (as in, my expired non-driver’s ID would be sufficient).
Honestly… from what I’ve read and heard about this spate of laws, my big concern is with the timing. You want to change rules and laws about voting? Fine. But don’t cram them in and put ’em into effect a few months before a Presidential election. And SURE as hëll don’t crow that said laws being crammed and put into effect a few months before a Presidential election will deliver the state to a certain party – ’cause that right there, IMHO, constitutes far more serious “voter fraud” than anything that might actually be attempted at the polls (even in the fabled Chicago).