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The Center for American Progress reports
As residents of Arizona's eighth congressional district cast ballots in a special election to replace former Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) in Congress, roughly 140,000 of them may be unaware they are eligible to vote because they did not receive the ID card the county is required to send them after they register.
According to the Arizona Republic, Maricopa County officials have not sent all voters the cards they can use to cast a ballot under Arizona's voter ID law because of an issue with the company used to print the materials. The paper reports that just 60,000 ID cards have been mailed to people who recently registered or changed their registration, while about 140,000 have not been sent.
[...] Arizona was one of the first states in the country to enact a non-photo voter ID law when a ballot measure was approved by voters[1] in November 2004. Under the law, the state must take steps to ensure that all eligible voters have an acceptable form of ID. According to the secretary of state's office[PDF], "a county recorder must issue a voter ID card to any new registrant or an existing registrant who updates his or her name, address, or political party preference".
But because of an error by the company used to print the ID cards, they have not been mailed out since December.
Although these citizens could provide other forms of ID at the polls, some voters told the Arizona Republic they're concerned that less informed voters may not realize they are registered without the card.
[...] During the presidential primary in March 2016, some Maricopa County voters waited in line for up to five hours to cast a ballot. The chaos led to an investigation by the Department of Justice and numerous lawsuits, including one filed by the Democratic National Committee.
Before the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Arizona was required to pre-clear any changes to its voting law with the DOJ.
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(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 01 2018, @06:22PM (1 child)
I didn't claim it was just Nixon. If you look at incarceration rates, though, they skyrocket during Nixon's administration, peak somewhere around 2010, and have only recently started to come down again. And there's no correlation between crime rates and incarceration rates: For instance, crime peaked in the early 1990's, but incarceration rates continued to go up.
As far as why black people are more likely to commit violent crimes:
1. Poor people in general are more likely to commit street crimes. Rich and middle-class people who are going to commit crimes usually go for tax evasion, bribery, and embezzlement rather than armed robbery - it's much easier, less risky, and the take is usually greater. Black people are more likely to be poor, hence they are more likely to commit street crimes.
2. Black people were through racist housing policies (in place until the late 1970's officially, and still largely going on unofficially) forced to live in areas where lead poisoning is much more common, and there's good reason to believe lead poisoning leads to criminal behavior [wikipedia.org].
3. In environments where violence is common and the police aren't doing a good job of investigating crime, the only defense against violence directed at you is your friends directing violence at the person who went after you.
The most recent calamity black folks have had to endure in a big way: They were forced into predatory subprime mortgages to buy a home even if they were qualified for prime rate loans, and when their adjustable rates went up they were unable to make the loan payments. This meant that the 2008 mortgage crisis basically wiped out a decade's worth of wealth building by black people [prospect.org]. You can blame the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations for all looking the other way while this was going on.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 03 2018, @01:24PM
Really? I would think incarceration is many years downstream of reported crime. In the manner that most drunk driving ends very safely, until one time it doesn't.
The online police blotter in my burb looks a lot more like traffic violations, alcohol related everything (driving, fighting, passing out) with a side dish of pills in recent years, and domestic disturbances over various relationship problems. There's a lot of white people on the street (more or less) getting into verbal and physical arguments. Generally not ending in shootings, admittedly.
I would tentatively agree with the lead poisoning situation. The "lets live in a tribal manner" is a problem in itself, not a cause of the problem.
There's nothing uniquely black about the housing bubble other than across the board poorer people always get screwed more, that wasn't invented just to punish black folks...