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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
Federal Court Rejects Texas Voter ID Law
Thursday, August 30, 2012 9:24 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Quote:A federal court has ruled against a Texas law that would require voters to present photo IDs to election officials before being allowed to cast ballots in November. A three-judge panel in Washington ruled Thursday that the law imposes “strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor” and noted that racial minorities in Texas are more likely to live in poverty. The decision involves an increasingly contentious political issue: a push, largely by Republican-controlled legislatures and governor’s offices, to impose strict identification requirements on voters. The ruling comes in the same week that South Carolina’s strict photo ID law is on trial in front of another three-judge panel in the same federal courthouse. A court ruling in the South Carolina case is expected in time for the November election. http://nation.time.com/2012/08/30/federal-court-rejects-texas-voter-id-law/#ixzz253hjSXQ2] NOW we're getting somewhere! I hope there's time before the election to do away with as many of these voter-suppression laws as possible...if we got rid of them ALL, we might actually have a fair election. What a thought!! Hey, I can dream...
Thursday, August 30, 2012 3:06 PM
KWICKO
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)
Friday, August 31, 2012 7:36 AM
Friday, August 31, 2012 8:12 AM
Saturday, September 1, 2012 7:05 AM
Quote:Jacob Monty looks at the demographics of his state of Texas and does not like what he's seeing. Though the Lone Star state is a sure thing for Mitt Romney in November, it could be majority Latino by 2030, and those Latinos are voting overwhelmingly Democrat. "The future of the Republican Party lies in keeping Texas as a Republican state. And if we allow our numbers to slip in Texas, we run the risk of losing the firewall that keeps the Republican Party as a viable option," he said.
Saturday, September 1, 2012 7:36 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: Pretty much say it all. And you're right; I've been hearing stuff like this off and on:Quote:Jacob Monty looks at the demographics of his state of Texas and does not like what he's seeing. Though the Lone Star state is a sure thing for Mitt Romney in November, it could be majority Latino by 2030, and those Latinos are voting overwhelmingly Democrat. "The future of the Republican Party lies in keeping Texas as a Republican state. And if we allow our numbers to slip in Texas, we run the risk of losing the firewall that keeps the Republican Party as a viable option," he said. No WONDER they're trying to suppress the minority vote!
Monday, September 3, 2012 2:30 AM
AURAPTOR
America loves a winner!
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: No WONDER they're trying to suppress the minority vote!
Quote: Top lawmakers in the Alabama Legislature said Thursday that more people voting in the Uniontown municipal election than there are voting age people is a prime example of why the state needs to fight voter fraud. House Speaker Mike Hubbard, Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh and Senate Majority Leader Jabo Waggoner said the voting pattern in Uniontown, with a population of 1,775 according to the latest census, was suspicious. The town has 2,587 registered voters, according to a report in the Tuscaloosa News. About 125 percent of the voting age population in the town voted on Tuesday and 45 percent of those who voted did so through an absentee ballot, although the state average for voting absentee is 3 percent to 5 percent, according to the News report. http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20120831/NEWS02/308300028/GOP-leaders-Voter-fraud-alive-well-
Monday, September 3, 2012 5:47 AM
FREMDFIRMA
Quote:This was not the first time that McCotter's staff had used this tactic to place him on the ballot, the AG's office said. "But perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that evidence indicates similar fraudulent petitions schemes were used in prior elections." The petition forgeries will remove McCotter from office. After state election officials found the "duplicate and triplicate" copies of petitions, they told McCotter that he would not qualify for the 2012 ballot. He has decided not launch a write-in campaign. Michigan's Republican attorney general deserves credit for handling this case professionally. You might think that the state's highly partisan Secretary of State, Republican Ruth Brown--whose subordinates found the forgeries and reported it to the AG--would take notice. However, she is one of a handful of ideological state election officials who believe that non-citizens are voting in her state.
Quote:It is more than ironic that while one Michigan constitutional officer, Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette, is prosecuting election fraud, that another Michigan constitutional officer, Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, is imposing insulting hurdles on the state's voters under the guise of fighting the imaginary epidemic of illegal voting. It is good to see that Michigan Republicans are not of one mind on what constitutes election fraud. Michigan's Republican governor recently vetoed a new voter ID bill, another laudable move. A Republican congressman and his "dysfunctional" staffers are now Exhibit A for election fraud in Michigan. There is not a single Democrat involved.
Quote:It’s OK if you’re a Republican. Even if you commit voter fraud. Even if you are found guilty of three felony counts of voter fraud by a jury of your peers. Even if you are found guilty of six felony counts overall. Even if you are the secretary of state – the chief election official – of the first state in the union to institute polling place photo ID restrictions which Republicans claim are meant to prevent voter fraud but actually succeed only in keeping longtime voters (like 80- and 90-year-old nuns) from being able to cast their previously legal votes. So long as you’re a Republican, you won’t spend any time in jail for voter fraud. And, if you’re Charlie White, Indiana’s lucky, now-former Republican secretary of state who received just one year of home detention for all of those crimes, you’ll likely be “elated,” just as White was after his sentencing hearing last week. Less happy are those legal voters who have been kept from voting at all under the laws that White supported — and then violated — during his run to become secretary of state in 2010.
Quote:A jury found a former Republican governor's aide guilty of election fraud on Tuesday over an automated phone message he authorized on Election Day last year that prosecutors said aimed at suppressing black voter turnout. Paul Schurick, 55, the campaign manager for former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to violate election laws and two counts of election fraud. He faces up to 12 years in prison and will be sentenced in February. He did not react when the jury read his verdict.
Quote:The GOP in their old fashioned ways OUTSOURCED THE JOB of collect signatures to a corporation named, Kennedy Enterprises. The Republican Party of Wisconsin paid this corporation nearly $100,000 to circulate recall petitions. Not only are there fraudulent names, but actual people who did sign the petition were told it was a recall for Governor Scott Walker. “Affidavit of voter in Senate District 30 attesting that circulator Richard Madrill claimed the petitions were to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker.” “Another voter has filed an affidavit attesting that circulator John Prijic claimed the petitions were for work to be done on a local park.” Affidavit of voter in Senate District 30 attesting that circulator Annette Lord claimed the petitions were to recall Republican Senator Cowles, when in fact it was to recall a Democrat. Republicans have a long history of claiming Democrats using ACORN and other organizations to commit “voter fraud”, but it seems as though they only say that to divert attention away from their own fraudulent behavior.
Quote:A worker collecting signatures to get Republican GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on the Virginia primary ballot turned in fraudulent signatures, Gingrich told a woman at a campaign stop in Iowa on Wednesday. Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond confirmed the story, which was initially reported on CNN, and said: "We are evaluating our options." Of the 11,100 signatures the campaign turned in, 1,500 of them turned in by the worker were false, Gingrich said. He said that the campaign needed 10,000 to be placed on the ballot. Virginia Republican Party officials said that Gingrich, who lives in Virginia, failed to meet the requirement to get on the ballot for the March 6 primary. Texas Gov. Rick Perry also failed to qualify for the ballot. He announced on Tuesday that his campaign is suing the state party over access to the ballot.
Monday, September 3, 2012 7:13 AM
Monday, September 3, 2012 2:33 PM
Monday, September 3, 2012 4:00 PM
SHINYGOODGUY
Monday, September 3, 2012 5:13 PM
HERO
Monday, September 3, 2012 5:20 PM
1KIKI
Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012 2:11 PM
Quote:Arthur Davis claims “The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt,” Davis wrote. Davis wasn’t ever exactly a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. Some positions he took during his time in Congress included “supporting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, voting against a bill to prohibit workplace discrimination against gays, voting for a ban on partial birth abortion, backing a renewal of the Patriot Act, and voting to allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Refuge in Alaska.” He was also the only black member of Congress who voted against President Obama’s health care bill. Setting aside Davis’ nod to absentee fraud — a problem a voter ID law would do nothing about — the meat of his op-ed is this:Quote:Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights — that’s suppression by any light. If you doubt it exists, I don’t; I’ve heard the peddlers of these ballots brag about it, I’ve been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed at least a few close local election results.Some pretty serious accusations he’s making there, but Davis isn’t naming names. Asked to provide specific examples of when he witnessed voter fraud and why, especially as a former federal prosecutor, he didn’t report such schemes to authorities. “I know that those are the talking points that some groups opposed to my article have disseminated and I choose not to play that game with you or them,” Davis told TPM in an email. “It strikes me as the ‘shoot the messenger’ politics both the left and the right deploy and I hope you will do me the courtesy of printing my reply.” Davis said he has “seen numerous vote fraud prosecutions in Alabama including guilty pleas involving a former Circuit Clerk in Hale County as recently as 2009 I believe.” He elaborated in an email to Dave Weigel:Quote:“I choose not to make allegations regarding specific individuals in the media,” Davis told me, via e-mail. “As you might guess, the purpose of my editorial was to voice an opinion and to state the foundation for it, not to engage in name calling. Anyone who is even a casual observer of Alabama politics, however, knows quite well the frequency of absentee ballot charges and convictions within counties in the congressional district I represented, specifcially Hale, Greene, Lowndes, Perry, and the Bessemer areas within Jefferson County.”Weigel points out that one voter ID case out of Greene County has been a major talking point for conservatives who support voter ID initiatives. Asked why more voter fraud cases weren’t prosecuted, Davis told TPM that “common sense suggests that the use of the names of dead or fictitious people does not leave a victim to swear out a complaint.” http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/alabama_democrat_artur_davis_flips_on_voter_id _but_wont_say_who_he_saw_committing_fraud.php
Quote:Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights — that’s suppression by any light. If you doubt it exists, I don’t; I’ve heard the peddlers of these ballots brag about it, I’ve been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed at least a few close local election results.
Quote:“I choose not to make allegations regarding specific individuals in the media,” Davis told me, via e-mail. “As you might guess, the purpose of my editorial was to voice an opinion and to state the foundation for it, not to engage in name calling. Anyone who is even a casual observer of Alabama politics, however, knows quite well the frequency of absentee ballot charges and convictions within counties in the congressional district I represented, specifcially Hale, Greene, Lowndes, Perry, and the Bessemer areas within Jefferson County.”
Tuesday, September 4, 2012 2:50 PM
Quote:The authors of Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy,46 found that “between 1865 and 1900, 19 states adopted or amended laws restricting the voting rights of criminal offenders.” In many states, these took the form of laws which had the unhidden agenda of keeping the country?s newly-enfranchised black men from voting. For example, the records of the 1901 Alabama Constitutional Convention indicate that there was an intentional bias behind the proposed changes to make its election laws more restrictive. In fact, this issue was considered so important that they discussed it on the third day of the 82 days they met:Quote:“And what is it that we want to do? Why it is within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State. This is our problem, and we should be permitted to deal with it, unobstructed by outside influences, with a sense of our responsibilities as citizens and our duty to posterity.”These records clearly indicate that the delegates are discussing how to maintain white supremacy without violating the United States Constitution. They continue lauding Mississippi?s restrictive voting system:Quote:“Mississippi is the pioneer State in this movement. In addition to the payment of a poll tax, there it is provided that only those can vote who have been duly registered, and only those can register who can read, or understand when read to them, any clause in the Constitution. The decision as to who are sufficiently intelligent to meet the requirements of the understanding clause is exclusively in the hands of the registrars.”The methods used to restrict voting in Alabama included poll taxes,49 literacy tests,50 and Article VII, section 182 of the Alabama Constitution, which disqualified certain persons from registering and voting if they fell into one of the nearly 30 enumerated categories including “any infamous crime or crime involving moral turpitude.”51 However, Article VII, section 182 contained many ambiguities which made it easy to subjectively exclude specific persons from voting. For example, after 100 years, “moral turpitude” has yet to be defined. http://www.ceimn.org/files/Facts%20about%20Ineligible%20Voting%20and%20Voter%20Fraud%20in%20Minnesota_with%20appendix.pdf
Quote:“And what is it that we want to do? Why it is within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State. This is our problem, and we should be permitted to deal with it, unobstructed by outside influences, with a sense of our responsibilities as citizens and our duty to posterity.”
Quote:“Mississippi is the pioneer State in this movement. In addition to the payment of a poll tax, there it is provided that only those can vote who have been duly registered, and only those can register who can read, or understand when read to them, any clause in the Constitution. The decision as to who are sufficiently intelligent to meet the requirements of the understanding clause is exclusively in the hands of the registrars.”
Quote:our Project’s exposé of the Justice Department frame-up of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman had its roots in brief news reports in Alabama newspapers a decade ago that helped show the ethics lapses of the jurist who later became Siegelman's trial judge, helping the Bush DOJ convict the state's most prominent Democrat on corruption charges. http://justice-integrity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=453:cutting-through-vote-fraud-claims-hypocrisy how big was the voter 'fraud' problem in Alabama? Tiny. Miniscule. Extremely small. Four instances in 12 years. A survey by the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) identified three potential instances of voter fraud between 2000 and 2010. Note that all three cases involved absentee ballot fraud -- which the new photo ID law DOES NOT PREVENT. On a separate page at the RNLA website is one single listing of in person voter fraud in Alabama, a case of an illegal immigrant using the name and birth certificate of a US citizen. Since the man was living under a false name and had a birth certificate, he could have easily obtained a photo id under the false name. Yet again, the new, Republican passed, photo ID law WOULD NOT HAVE PREVENTED this instance of voter fraud either. That's it. 4 cases since 2000. NONE OF WHICH would have been prevented by the GOP's much touted photo ID law. http://www.leftinalabama.com/diary/9865/selective-legislation there is no way of determining, I assume, who is behind this supposed absentee voter fraud, and given Alabama's history, one can't help but wonder how this all came about, at a time when Voter ID laws are being challenged... I agree with this:
Tuesday, September 4, 2012 3:33 PM
Quote:Originally posted by 1kiki: When getting into an arena, driving, buying beer, flying, checking into a hotel room, cashing a check, buying cold medicine, and renting a car are constitutionally protected rights you'll have a point. I have to say, for a supposed lawyer, you have a very poor grasp of law.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012 5:04 PM
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: No WONDER they're trying to suppress the minority vote!
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 7:20 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: There's virtually no in-person voter fraud. You know this. We've gone over this, ad nauseum. You also know that absentee ballots are the one area where voter ID laws ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT HELP. You keep holding up examples of one kind of problem and saying they're proof of another kind of problem. It's quite intellectually dishonest of you.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 7:56 AM
STORYMARK
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 8:52 AM
Quote:Retired US Marine Tim Thompson walked into his neighboring polling place on Super Tuesday, but once inside he faced exactly what he feared: even with a voter registration card — and a career serving his country — he wasn't allowed to vote. Thompson, 55, had a feeling this would happen. In his home state of Tennessee, a Republican-majority legislature recently saw to it that a new law made it all the way to Governor Bill Haslam’s desk — where the state’s top politician extended his seal of approval to a controversial bill that has Thompson and others riled up. Under Tennessee's new Voter ID legislation, only certain, state-issued identification cards count inside polling centers on Election Day. "I served my country. I served my country so you can vote. I've earned my right to vote. This is my ID," Thompson tells polling place employees while pointing to the US Marine insignia on his jacket. More at http://rt.com/usa/news/vote-tennessee-thompson-veteran-073/. Williams, tells Nashville’s WSMV News that it took over two hours of “sitting around waiting” to be allowed to vote. Officials need to examine two proofs of Tennessee residency as well as proof of citizenship to be allowed to vote under the new law. http://rt.com/usa/news/vote-tennessee-thompson-veteran-073/ Carroll, a 86-year-old World War II veteran, was denied his right to vote in Ohio's primary contest today after a poll worker refused to accept Carroll's photo ID from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The poll worker rejected the ID because it did not contain a home address, as required by an Ohio law that was passed by Republicans to combat alleged "voter fraud." Portage Elections Board Director Faith Lyon said the law requires an address on even a veteran’s identification card. Carroll told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he got the ID from the VA after his driver’s license expired because he doesn’t drive anymore: “My beef is that I had to pay a driver to take me up there because I don’t walk so well and have to use this cane and now I can’t even vote,” said Paul Carroll, 86, who has lived in Aurora nearly 40 years, running his own business, Carroll Tire, until 1975. “I had to stop driving, but I got the photo ID from the Veterans Affairs instead, just a month or so ago. You would think that would count for something. I went to war for this country, but now I can’t vote in this country.” http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/2012-election/86-year-old-us-veteran-paul-carroll-denied-right-vote Cooper is 96 but she can remember only one election when she's been eligible to vote but hasn't. She missed voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 because a move to Nashville prevented her from registering in time. So when she learned last month at a community meeting that under a new state law she'd need a photo ID to vote next year, she talked with a volunteer about how to get to a state Driver Service Center to get her free ID. But when she got there Monday with an envelope full of documents, a clerk denied her request. That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander. "But I didn't have my marriage certificate," Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center. Cooper said she will miss the practice of going to the voting precinct located in the building next door to hers. "We always come here to vote," she said, nodding toward a door where voting machines are set up on election day. "The people who run the polls know everybody here." http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/oct/05/marriage-certificate-required-bureaucrat-tells/ Carlson, a former secretary for the New York City public schools who secured a ride to the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles with state Rep. Mario Scavello, was told when she arrived that the computer system could not recognize ages above 104. After a 90-minute wait, and strong advocacy from Scavello, DOT officials devised a work-around and granted her an ID. Two days later, the Penn DOT responded to the incident by announcing a paper-based procedure for voters older than 104. But most voters will not have an elected official by their sides when they encounter a problem obtaining a photo ID. http://current.com/community/93892468_how-pennsylvania-almost-denied-a-105-year-old-woman-her-right-to-vote.htm uncontested affidavits offer a picture of carousel visits to government offices, delay, dysfunctional computer systems, misinformation and significant investment of time to avoid being turned away at the ballot box. This is burdensome, all the more for the elderly and the disabled. . . . Mr. Ricky Tyrone Lewis is 58 years old, a Marine Corps Veteran and a lifelong Milwaukee resident. He was able to offer proof of his honorable discharge but Milwaukee County has been unable to find the record of his birth so he cannot obtain a voter ID card. Ms. Ruthelle Frank, now 84, is a lifelong resident of Brokaw, Wisconsin. http://collindemsnews.blogspot.com/2012/03/wisc-judge-blocks-voter-photo-id-law.html Mitchell, 93, will not be able to vote for the first time in decades because her old Tennessee state ID failed to meet new voter-ID regulations. Mitchell, who cleaned the state Capitol for more than 30 years, was accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she could not produce a birth certificate. Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in 1918, never had a birth certificate. Mitchell told WSMV-TV that she went to a state driver's license center last week after being told that her old state ID from her cleaning job would not meet new regulations for voter identification. How sad is it that this woman, who literally cleaned the state Capitol -- a former state employee -- is being denied the right to vote with an ID issued by the state. http://www.theroot.com/buzz/93-year-old-woman-who-cleaned-state-capitol-denied-voter-id are details of the many ways people can be stopped from voting, or even obtaining the required ID TO vote. You want details on those and FIFTY-FOUR other documented cases? Go to http://www.lawyerscommittee.org/page?id=0046 ...since it's a LAWYERS' COMMITTEE, that should impress you; you can check the details on every one at the link; they are indisputable. So I'll put all those SIXTY-ONE examples up against your measley three examples with no cites provided. Those are people who have already been denied their right to vote, backed up by facts. Oh, and they weren't all elderly like the detailed ones I gave, there was one as young as 22. But the elderly will no doubt bear the brunt of this, as they've never needed identification before and many won't have birth certificates or drivers' licenses. Yeah, it doesn't disenfranchise anyone, and there are "many" cases of voter fraud going on. You betcha.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 12:36 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Storymark: Yes, but no one actually believes you. You've got to cite something a little more concrete than your say-so.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 12:48 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Hero: Quote:Originally posted by Storymark: Yes, but no one actually believes you. You've got to cite something a little more concrete than your say-so. Today in Arkansas a Dem state legislator pleaded guilty to election fraud.
Thursday, September 6, 2012 12:06 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: I agree with this:
Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:34 PM
Quote: A Mississippi NAACP executive is in jail after being convicted of voter fraud for fraudulently casting absentee ballots, including for four dead people. Lessadolla Sowers, who is a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee, was convicted and sentenced in April for what a judge said were crimes that cut “against the fabric of our free society.” She was given a five-year sentence for each of the ten counts of voter fraud for which she was convicted, but the sentencing judge allowed her to serve the terms concurrently, according to the Tunica Times. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/05/Mississippi-NAACP-Official-In-Jail-For-Casting-Absentee-Ballots-For-Dead-People?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BreitbartFeed+%28Breitbart+Feed%29
Thursday, September 6, 2012 3:21 PM
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: I agree with this:
Friday, September 7, 2012 2:07 AM
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