Voter suppression - an example

[Fern]

-snip-
piasabird: FACT: a large number of voters lack ID, and yet they have the right to vote. The ONLY reason to try to deny them the right is the party most are in.

The vast majority have IDs.

ID is free in NC and you have 3 years before the next election to get one.

This is a made up problem.

Fern

 

[Craig234]

The vast majority have IDs.

So the hell what?

I won't be dramatic enough to say 'if one person doesn't, it doesn't justify denying their right to vote', but it's not one, it's quite a few.

And the only reason for the law is to prevent people rom the other side voting.

That's wrong, but you're apologizing for the wrong.

ID is free in NC and you have 3 years before the next election to get one.

This is a made up problem.

Fern

Irony of the week award (been a while). The made up problem is the 'voter fraud'.

The real problem is the attack on the vote by many people.

These things almost always have that answer - 'just pay the poll tax, it's not that much'. 'Just wait in line for hours'. 'Just register in advance instead of same-day'. 'Just vote on Tuesday instead of voting with your fellow church members on Sunday'. 'Just travel further to another polling place'. 'Just get a new ID'.

Yet many of these are blatantly illegal, measures with that same one purpose - reducing the opponents' vote - that are not justified in adding a hurdle to that basic right.

There are only two sides to the issue, really - those who value democracy and those who are happy to undermine democracy to get more votes for their side.

Ya, there could be extremes that become more debatable. Having poll workers go to each voter and pay them to vote is a bit much - you can oppose that. But these measures aren't those excesses - they're reasonable measures that are proven to serve democracy well in increasing the vote, and the arguments agaisnt them are lies and excuses.

You can argue 'just add the hurdle of getting an ID', but the fact is, a large number of people don't have them, a large majority of whom are Democrats, and that's the motive.

I'd lean towards supporting measures to make the ID thing work - aggressively provide them to everyone. But guess who would oppose that?

In the meantime, you are predictably silent on the rest of the unfair measures.

 

[TerryMathews]

So the hell what?

I won't be dramatic enough to say 'if one person doesn't, it doesn't justify denying their right to vote', but it's not one, it's quite a few.

And the only reason for the law is to prevent people rom the other side voting.

That's wrong, but you're apologizing for the wrong.



Irony of the week award (been a while). The made up problem is the 'voter fraud'.

The real problem is the attack on the vote by many people.

These things almost always have that answer - 'just pay the poll tax, it's not that much'. 'Just wait in line for hours'. 'Just register in advance instead of same-day'. 'Just vote on Tuesday instead of voting with your fellow church members on Sunday'. 'Just travel further to another polling place'. 'Just get a new ID'.

Yet many of these are blatantly illegal, measures with that same one purpose - reducing the opponents' vote - that are not justified in adding a hurdle to that basic right.

There are only two sides to the issue, really - those who value democracy and those who are happy to undermine democracy to get more votes for their side.

Ya, there could be extremes that become more debatable. Having poll workers go to each voter and pay them to vote is a bit much - you can oppose that. But these measures aren't those excesses - they're reasonable measures that are proven to serve democracy well in increasing the vote, and the arguments agaisnt them are lies and excuses.

You can argue 'just add the hurdle of getting an ID', but the fact is, a large number of people don't have them, a large majority of whom are Democrats, and that's the motive.

I'd lean towards supporting measures to make the ID thing work - aggressively provide them to everyone. But guess who would oppose that?

In the meantime, you are predictably silent on the rest of the unfair measures.

Why is it, aside from team politics, OK to add hurdles to the exercise of one right (gun ownership) but not another (voting)?

 

[ShagglestheLion]

Gore.

The Last One.

 

[ShagglestheLion]

What today would bring, if Gore was Prez and Schwartz was Vice Prez.

 

[Craig234]

Why is it, aside from team politics, OK to add hurdles to the exercise of one right (gun ownership) but not another (voting)?

That's an interesting spin on the issue.

I guess if the government wanted to restrict people's gun rights for the purpose of taking their power and enforcing policies bad for them, there's some comparison.

But here's the difference. Guns have a 'public safety' regulatory issue - recognized by the Supreme Court - that voting doesn't.

So the more valid voters who vote legitimately, the better for democracy. There are caveats to that - you don't want invalid voters (like shildren), or peole who have been bribed. You don't want votes mainpulated with gerrymandering, or voters excessively manipulated by advertising. But generally democracy is served by more people voting.

On the other hand, guns pose a public safety issue in some situations, if some people get them, if they're too powerful allowing criminals to do too much harm.

So that one is a measured right - trying to provide the legitimate gun owner the freedom to be armed, while trying to reduce the harm from abuses.

Some groups will think more gun rights are better, others less.

A state saying 'we think a 30 day waiting period is better than 10 days' is one thing, a state saying 'our party has a majority and we'll pass laws to keep the other side from voting' is another. There are legitimate reasons to restrict the gun right somewhat - lines that have some subjectivity - based on public safety.

But roadblocks just for the sake of roadblocks could well be unconstitutional.

 

[sm625]

Rachel Maddow is voter suppression. Along with Hannity and Limbaugh and O'reilley and Savage and Beck. These guys all follow the corporate script. They are all quite wealthy and you might think they have some independence, but they do not. They would not have gotten as far as they did if they werent completely controllable and corruptible. They are allowed to say what they want most of the time, what you would call limited autonomy. But when it comes time to serve their master, they do. And their master wants 99% of the wealth to reside in the hands of the top 0.1%, with just enough table scraps going out to the top 1%. The top 5% are only given the illusion of wealth. The rest have nothing at all, not even illusions. Just carrots to chase.

One of the chief purposes of all these people is to make sure the electorate is ill informed and has never one thought about how dysfunctional our system is, from top to bottom. Even now, with this incredible tool we call the internet, there has been zero improvement in political literacy. There is not even the will or desire to improve it. It is so locked down that people cannot even contemplate how to fix it. These people I mentioned are key to maintaining that level of control.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Eaglekeeper, you seem to just be making up nonsense. Have you watched the videos?

Terrymathews, both parties are guilty of gerrymandering. But what you are ignoring is that Republicans are far worse about it - not to mention the other things I raised, which they seem to do pretty exlusively. Where are the Democrats passing measures to prevent mass numbers of Republicans from voting, reduce voting hours and locations etc.?

The issue boils down to this: the more people who vote the better Democrats do.

That happens to make Democratic interests align with the American interest, the democracy interest, that more people voting is better.

It takes that non-partisan American principle that more people voting is better and Republicans make it a partisan issue, with them against voting, for their own gain.

Democrats may or may not be 'better people' - we can't tell because their interests happen to align with democracy's interests. But we do know that Republicans are attacking democracy for their own interest - putting the interests of democracy below the interest of grabbing power for themselves. That violation of democracy makes them not trustable with American values - win at any cost is the principle they're following.

I'd like to say that democracy will defeat this threat - but two facts, extreme concentration of wealth and the allowance of unlimited money in elections - question it.

Nationally, more voters voted for Democrats for the House than for Republicans, but Republicans got a good-sized majority, giving them the power to block not only the Democrats' political agenda, but the people's agenda, to the extent that the majority of voters represent the people - and that's not even counting the voter suppression effects. A minority gaining power over the majority is close to definition non-democracy. It's the same result as any other election fraud, like balllot stuffing.

The question is, do the people in the minority party doing these things oppose it because they support democracy, or support it to 'win at any cost'?

We have our answer from at least one Republican here.

Can you point to any law/rule being passed that identifies that such will apply to seomone that is registered as a Democrat?

You seem to ignore that the makeup of the states and country is that the Democrats concentrate in the urban areas giving them an extra domineering majority within those districts.
However, they are sparse in the rest of the districts.
The rest of a state should not have to be ruled by a concentrated majority.
districts are supposed to be proportional in population within each state.
If you are having twice the number of one party within a district because of the way the population is; then expect that there will be less representation in the non-populated areas.

Representative districts are not supposed to reflect the concentration state wide - that is why there are Senate seats.
Representative districts are supposed to reflect the local area concerns; apparently the voting patterns suggest this. Urban reflect the values/demands of the urban areas, the rural areas have different sets of concerns and both groups elect representation that reflects such.

You are wanting the overall representation to reflect the numbers (which are controlled from within the urban areas). The Constitution was not set up that way. Just like the EC was setup to prevent the overloading that you are desiring.

That happens to make Democratic interests align with the American interest, the democracy interest, that more people voting is better.

This is your opinion; apparently there are enough areas of the country that do not agree; and they select a representative that supports their concepts/opinions/beliefs.

The question is, do the people in the minority party doing these things oppose it because they support democracy, or support it to 'win at any cost'?

Ask the Democrats when they were out of power what they felt a few years ago.

All want power; under what every cloak they can find to get it and hold onto it.

You yourself are acting the same way; you want the control of the HOR and therefore are decrying the makeup of the house because it does not match the overall population percentages.

 

[Craig234]

Rachel Maddow is voter suppression. Along with Hannity and Limbaugh and O'reilley and Savage and Beck. These guys all follow the corporate script. They are all quite wealthy and you might think they have some independence, but they do not. They would not have gotten as far as they did if they werent completely controllable and corruptible. They are allowed to say what they want most of the time, what you would call limited autonomy. But when it comes time to serve their master, they do. And their master wants 99% of the wealth to reside in the hands of the top 0.1%, with just enough table scraps going out to the top 1%. The top 5% are only given the illusion of wealth. The rest have nothing at all, not even illusions. Just carrots to chase.

One of the chief purposes of all these people is to make sure the electorate is ill informed and has never one thought about how dysfunctional our system is, from top to bottom. Even now, with this incredible tool we call the internet, there has been zero improvement in political literacy. There is not even the will or desire to improve it. It is so locked down that people cannot even contemplate how to fix it. These people I mentioned are key to maintaining that level of control.

What a bizarre post.

On the one hand, it's a post railing against concentrated wealth - a topic I agree on - and on the other it lumps Rachel Maddow with Fox figures as a defender of it.

You appear to know zero about Maddow. I don't remember her doing anything in support of concentrated wealth; rather she supports the opponents of it.

Your post is like attacking Obama as the leading figure fighting against non-whites in the White House, or the NRA as an anti-gun organization.

Yes, I'm sure Maddow is well paid. So what? Is this that juvenile argument that anyone who makes decent money is part of the 'pro-concentrated wealth' political machine?

Where the tea party types scream and rail against 'rich' Congressmen who might have a net worth of $2 million while supporting the policies letting billionares siphon their money?

Your comments on wealth are populist. A it simplistic, but I agree on the basic issue at least. But you don't recognize someone on your side - Maddow - when you (don't) see her.

I suspect you have close to never seen Maddow, and are just spewing made up opinion.

The part for lettnig the wealthy take more and more from everyone else is clearly the Republican party. Democrats are far from perfect on that - and are split into the progressives who are more for the people and the rest who are too friendly to wealth - but Republicans are the clearly primary party for the wealthy interests. And you are attacing someone who fights aganist them.

As for their autonomy - at Fox there's pretty cllearly a political agenda - one supporting wealth - in place. People have to stick to it pretty much to be there.

And it's pretty clear that MSNBC has decided on its own formula from more moderate right-wingers like Joe Scarborough to moderate liberals like Maddow. If she arrived at work tomorrow and attacked Obama as a commie Kenyan who wanted to take everyone's guns, there would be a problem. But it's not as if the network is telling her what to say - it's pretty clear that her show is her show, and her views align with what is ok with the network for the demographic they want, as long as it gets the ratings they want.

No doubt there can be conflicts between the type of show they want and some hosts. Note Cenk Ungyer's (sp?) conflict with the network.

But that's not the sort of 'network telling them what to say' you claim, and it's clearly not the pro-wealth agenda you claim is equally pushed by Fox and MSNBC.

Your first sentence makes your post just crazy. Possibly no one in American has done more to publicize the problem of voter suppression than Maddow and you attack her as for it.

 

[Craig234]

Can you point to any law/rule being passed that identifies that such will apply to seomone that is registered as a Democrat?

No, I can point you to law after law after law that just happens to affect a large majority of Democrats.

Laws designed on the basis of 'identigy concentrations of Democratic voters, and look for laws to target those groups'.

Oh, blacks are far more likely to vote on Sundays? Well, get rid of Sunday voting.

Oh, students are far more likely to vote Democratic? Then attack students voting.

Clearly, this slight indirection from just passing a law saying 'Democrats can't vote' is able to fool you into thinking that clearly all these measures are not partisan.

And as I said, generally 'the more people who vote the better for Democrats', meaning that even untargeted meaures to reduce voting like fewer days or ending same-day registration benefit Republicans. Check the facts, and you will learn something on the issue. The political pressure for Republicans is the anti-democracy pressure to reduce voting.

You seem to ignore that the makeup of the states and country is that the Democrats concentrate in the urban areas giving them an extra domineering majority within those districts.

Nothing is ignored. You simply don't understand the issues of districting or gerrymandering and think gerrymandering is nothing more than the rural/urban split.

At the federal level, in the Senate, rural states are overrepresented. A state with under a million gets the same representation as a state with 40 million. That was a political deal that was struck by the original states. But that does not apply within a state. There's no law or justice in saying 'rural voters get to be represented more than urban'.

If 20% of a state's people are rural, they should get 20% of the vote.

That has nothing to do with the issue of gerrymandering or the other issues I raised that you ignored. You should read up on what gerrymandering is.

However, they are sparse in the rest of the districts.
The rest of a state should not have to be ruled by a concentrated majority.

Actually, yes, they should. That's how democracy works. It doesn't matter whether the majority is urban or religious or conservative or dog-loving or anything else. A majority is a majority. The minority is and should be protected constitutionally with their rights, but the majority rules the state otherwise.

You use emotional and inflammatory language about how terrible it is the minotiry 'is ruled by' the majority - while you fight for something worse, the majority ruled by the minority.

districts are supposed to be proportional in population within each state.
If you are having twice the number of one party within a district because of the way the population is; then expect that there will be less representation in the non-populated areas.

That is a false descrition of gerrymandering, of what Republicans are foing. You pretend like districts are naturally made and have random populations. Go learn what it is.

Representative districts are not supposed to reflect the concentration state wide - that is why there are Senate seats.
Representative districts are supposed to reflect the local area concerns; apparently the voting patterns suggest this. Urban reflect the values/demands of the urban areas, the rural areas have different sets of concerns and both groups elect representation that reflects such.

Overall, it should work out reasonably close to the people. If the state has 75% of one party, they should have closer to 75% of seats than 25%.

If a majority of the citizens vote for Democrats, then a majority of the people elected should likely be Democrats - not 4 of 13 because of gerrymandering.

Rural voters are entitled to representation - corresponding to their population. No more, no less.

You are wanting the overall representation to reflect the numbers (which are controlled from within the urban areas). The Constitution was not set up that way. Just like the EC was setup to prevent the overloading that you are desiring.

Yes, I am wanting representation to reflect the numbers. That's not the problem - your wanting the numbers not to matter is the problem.

And again, this is not primarily a rural/urban issue that you're trying to turjn it into.

The constitution, both federal and state, ARE set up that way, with the exception of the federal Senate I mentioned.

The EC has nothing to do with this other than it gives a slight overrepresentation to smaller states because of the Senate numbers.

This is your opinion; apparently there are enough areas of the country that do not agree; and they select a representative that supports their concepts/opinions/beliefs.

No, you are making a false and weak argument, the 'that's your opinion' attack.

It's like saying, the guy who was robbed says he was robbed, but the guy who robbed him says he wasn't, so that's just his opinion.

No, there are facts about the policies being enacted - who they affect. Facts you have no interest in.

When a legislature gerrymanders so that a minority of voters can keep control, when it passes laws that reduce the other side's voters, you pretend 'that's just what the people want', like it's some perfectly democratic thing to allow elections to be bought, to gerrymander, to suppress voting.

It's pretty clear you vase your opinion not on what's fair but on what helps 'your side'. So if Democrats are suppressed on voting, that's 'just the people' doing what the people want and there's nothing wrong with it, but if the minority who are rural have anything done they don't like, that's something you'll scream about as the unfair urban majority unfailry ruling over the rural people.

As I said, you have no idea about what's fair in the elections.

And you still haven't answered whether you watched the Maddow clips.

Ask the Democrats when they were out of power what they felt a few years ago.

What does that have to do with anything? Both parties would prefer to be elected; the question is who will do undemocratic things like voter suppression to get their way.

The Republicans are doing all kinds of things the Democrats did not.

All want power; under what every cloak they can find to get it and hold onto it.

No, you're projecting. Not everyone is willing to gut democracy to win an election.

You yourself are acting the same way; you want the control of the HOR and therefore are decrying the makeup of the house because it does not match the overall population percentages.

That's a lie. I'm not 'acting the same way', am defending democratic practices whoever wins, I am not defending allowing unlimited money in politics, or voter suppression.

I'm only defending gerrymandering to the extent that it's kept equal for both sides. The less, the better as long as one side doesn't get an advantage.

 

[Brian Stirling]

Craig, is doesn't matter how immoral or undemocratic this is, if it benefits his party it's good and that's that.

OTH, if it were the other way around there would be no end to the whining and crying about it.


Brian