Tag: Voting Rights

Voting Under Fire?

There has been a wealth of opinions on whether our right to vote is under assault from dark forces….it seems that some areas are being hit with all kinds of limitations…..I understand the concern about voter fraud….although I cannot say that I can find a report that states that it is a nationwide problem but that is that….my problem is where does limiting voting spots or times or some such help prevent voter fraud?  And why is it seem to be a problem only in states with GOP control?

Anyway there has been a report about the voting across the US………

Voting is one of the critical ways for citizens to voice their opinions and desires to leaders and express their will for the direction of the country. But while voting is the crucial bedrock of a healthy democracy, citizens’ access to voting varies considerably within the states where elections are the most hotly contested.

With election administration delegated to officials and boards in more than 3,000 counties and localities in the United States, the ease with which one exercises his or her right to vote can depend on where he or she lives. Not only do state voting laws differ across the nation, even within a state, county-based election administration varies widely.

This report evaluates the election performance of counties in the 17 states that had the smallest margin of victory between the two presidential candidates in 2012. This analysis allows us to better understand how well the election process is working within a state, and will hopefully encourage state and local officials to consider how they can improve the voting experience for their citizens.

Read more and download the full report here.

IMO, there should be a push to get MORE people to vote than ones that seem to limit who can vote…..but thenb there is always an agenda when dealing with politicians…..right?

I know that many organizations are trying to push back on what they see as infringements on the rights of the voter….and today there was a piece of good news for them and their agenda……

A nearly 2-year-old requirement that almost all of Pennsylvania’s 8.2 million voters must show photo identification before casting a ballot was struck down today by a state judge, setting the stage for a courtroom showdown before the state’s highest court. Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard L. McGinley, a Democrat, said the law would unreasonably burden the fundamental right to vote, and the state had been unable to convincingly explain why it was necessary. “Voting laws are designed to assure a free and fair election; the Voter ID Law does not further this goal,” McGinley wrote in his 103-page ruling. The law, one of the strictest in the nation, was signed by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett in March 2012 over the protests of every single Democratic lawmaker in Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled legislature. Enforcement of the law has been blocked by court orders pending resolution of the constitutional challenge. Both sides had vowed to appeal a negative decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. At a 12-day trial, the plaintiffs including the NAACP, the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters, and Philadelphia’s Homeless Advocacy Project emphasized problems in processing and distributing a new voting-only ID card available for free to voters who lack other acceptable IDs. They said dozens of registered voters who applied for those cards before the 2012 election did not receive them before ballots were cast.

This will be the precedence cited with any further attempts to block what they see as an infringement on the rights of Americans, all Americans, to vote……

And the situation goes on……….

Gerrymandering

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Voting

Today’s focus is on politics in general in the US.  One of our fundamental rights is the right to vote and it appears to be under attack.  These days there is a lot of debate about voting and voting rights.  Even if you deny the attack on voter rights you have to be aware of the game played to insure a certain outcome to an election…..that game/tactic is the one we call gerrymandering.

For those not sure what the term actually means…….

…….a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries to create partisan advantaged districts. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander.

In addition to its use achieving desired electoral results for a particular party, gerrymandering may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, or class group, such as in U.S. federal voting district boundaries that produce a majority of constituents representative of African-American or other racial minorities, known as “majority-minority districts”.

There are two techniques for the act of gerrymandering……these are packing….this is when a minority is in a few districts so that they can elect only a small number of representatives…..and then there is stacking…..minorities are spread thin across many districts so that they can elect NO one……

If you understand the definition then you can understand what is being done…..it is an attempt to create a foolproof win for a particular party.  Do not get me wrong…..I am not blaming one party over another…..this is a process that is done after each census…..about every ten years or so.  And both parties are guilty.

But when did this process begin……was it an original part of the government from the beginning?

To answer the question simply……

The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette on 26 March 1812. The word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under the then-governor Elbridge Gerry. In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party.

It was said the the re-drawn districts had the shape of a salamander….ergo Gerry after the gov and mander from the salamander and it has ever since been known as Gerry-Mander.

This is nothing, serves NO purpose other than making a loss proof district for politicians…..and in today’s country used to make it harder for some voters to elect a desired representative……it has NO socially redeeming qualities….it has out lived its usefulness, at least in my mind…..but then I am not a bottom feeding politician……time for it to GO!  As a matter of fact it is time for the whole electoral college con to go (that is a post for another day)……..

Let me close with one simple statement……..Remember when the voter pick its candidates….well gerrymandering has made it possible for the candidate to pick his/her voter!

Fact-checking voting laws: a year-end report | PolitiFact

With the upcoming 2014 elections, the mid-terms, you can bet that this subject will get lots of air time….all the debate, the lies, the truths, that head scratching……

I am not a big fan of Politifact….I think their grading system kinda sucks…..something is either true or false….a lie is a lie….no matter how you try to spin it….a lie is a lie!

But this will give my readers an idea of where the debate on voter suppression is at……..at least for now.

Fact-checking voting laws: a year-end report | PolitiFact.

We Can Do So Much Better

Years ago I did a post about the electoral college and why we need to get rid of it and go to national popular vote.  I have nothing good to say about the EC and I believe it cheats the people from being the sole deliverer of a candidate……I am not alone….there are many of us that want to see a better democracy than we have now……

There is a national attempt to eliminate the EC….it is called National Popular Vote Compact……..and Rhode Island has become the latest location to do what they can to eliminate the EC…..

From Think Progress…….

Both houses of the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to add their state to the National Popular Vote Compact, a plan to effectively abolish the Electoral College and ensure that the winner of the popular vote becomes president in future elections. The bill now moves to Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D), who says he supports it.

Under the compact, states whose total votes equal at least 270 electoral votes — the amount necessary to elect the president — must pledge to award their electors to whoever wins the popular vote in the nation as a whole, even if that person does not carry their state. The compact does not take effect until the requite number of states have signed onto it, and must also be approved by Congress before it can take effect.

One effect of this compact, in addition to preventing a situation like 2000 where the loser of the popular vote ultimately moved into the White House, is it would also shut down attempts to rig the Electoral College itself. Earlier this year, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said that “a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red” should rig future presidential elections by allocating their electoral votes by congressional district. Such a plan would not only take advantage of gerrymandering that benefits Republicans, it would also be limited to blue states currently controlled by Republican state governments.

Americans need to get behind this attempt…….we can make a better government and a better voting experience….amd I am all in favor of a better experience and a better country.  How about you?

Gaming The Voter (Cond)

Every day there is nothing but stuff to write about…..we have to pick and choose our fights….I mean there are pressing questions, if you believe the media, that need answering….like why do so many women want to be blonde?  (Sorry that is sarcasm)……

I have chosen to keep an eye on the voting aspects….since SCOTUS made its monumental ruling doing away with the provision of the VRA that made it almost impossible to deny people the right to vote ….we have had North Carolina try (see my post last week) and now Florida has an attempt to limit who gets the right to vote……..

Florida’s controversial initiative to screen for suspected non-citizens and purge them from the voter rolls is allowed to officially resume, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In 2012, the Department of Justice warned that Florida’s voter purge, which targeted roughly 180,000 people, was illegal, and all of the state’s county election supervisors refused to execute the purge. The lists of flagged individuals — many of whom had Latino-sounding names — also turned out to be largely inaccurate. These flagged individuals would receive notifications in the mail notifying them that they had 30 days to contest the purge.

The state had to partially settle with a civil rights group and restore suspected non-citizens to the rolls, but soon tried to re-start the purge just a month before the November presidential election with a drastically pared down list of 198 voters.

After all the legal battles and thousands of wasted taxpayer dollars, the state could not turn up virtually any non-citizens who were registered to vote.

Florida voters, particularly in minority-heavy urban areas, suffered some of the longest lines and most chaotic elections in the country last year. The mayhem was largely created by Republican lawmakers’ efforts to suppress votes. Besides trying to purge voters, Republicans cut the number of early voting days in half, changed ballot length restrictions so they could add frivolous constitutional amendments to 12-page ballots, and restricted voter registration. These voter suppression efforts discouraged at least 201,000 Floridians from voting, and black and Latino voters waited nearly twice as long as white voters. The backlash was so fierce that even Gov. Rick Scott (R), the primary defender of these voter suppression laws, agreed to sign an election reform law undoing most of the damage.

Prominent Florida Republicans admitted shortly after the election that the motive behind all these election law changes was to make it harder for Democrats to vote.

So many states and so little time………I wrote in my original post that the red states would line up to find ways to go about suppression of the vote….so far I have been fairly accurate……any bets on the next state to pursue this line of legislation?