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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.
[1] Requires cookies
(Score: 2, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 28 2018, @10:33AM (52 children)
Good on SCOTUS then. Telling states what they can and cannot do is way outside the mandate of the DOJ. Quite frankly, it's not remotely within the mandate of any bits of the federal government except the courts. Congress passes laws, the FBI sees that they get brought to the DOJ if they think they've been broken, the DOJ takes them to the courts if they also find it necessary but none of them were ever meant to have that kind of authority to interpret laws; that's firmly a courts thing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:14PM (50 children)
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed to stop Jim Crow, as well as many other ways of rigging elections, and it helped immensely for decades. Recently, there was this argument that the nation wasn't racist any more and so the Voting Rights Act was no longer needed. So the act was gutted.
Since then we've seen that racism is still very much alive, and now that the Voting Rights Act is toothless the states that used to practice Jim Crow have brought it back with just enough minor alterations in methods that they can claim it's not the old Jim Crow. That argument that America had matured and was no longer racist was completely bogus. Not that we really needed this proof. Bogus arguments are par for the course among politicians, especially on the right. One of the most rancid was this totally made up fear that there was rampant double voting that had to be stopped with measures such as photo ID.. One of the craziest twists was declaring that a freaking hunting license was acceptable photo ID, but a university ID card was not. There's no evidence double voting was a problem, and it is extremely unlikely voters would bother trying. It's hard enough getting people to vote once. Committing a felony for 1 more vote makes as little sense as committing it for 1 more cent.
Do you really think states should be allowed to get away with rigging elections? That's what they're doing. Gerrymandering, vote suppression, caging.... What's to be done about it, if not the Voting Rights Act? Another Civil War?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 28 2018, @12:50PM (31 children)
Irrelevant. The prior restraint by the DOJ was not the appropriate solution.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:20PM (6 children)
Imagine this scenario, if you will:
1. State government passes a law that's blatantly illegal under the Voting Rights Act and/or US Constitution (e.g. 15th Amendment) in both its intent and application.
2. Various civil rights and voting rights organizations sue to challenge the law on that basis.
3. 2 years of legal wrangling ensue, during which time the state government is re-elected in part thanks to the illegal law (yes, I know, but it's not an oxymoron in this case) they just passed.
4. The civil rights and voting rights organizations win in court, and the law is struck down.
5. The state government immediately passes a law that's nearly identical to the one that just got struck down, and this cycle repeats itself.
All of this not only could happen, but arguably is happening in many states, including Arizona.
That's the reason for prior restraint.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Saturday April 28 2018, @06:32PM
You have only identified a fundamental flaw with our current "Justice" system. The fact nothing can ever be done through a court in less than a year (other than stopping Trump unmaking DACA or making any other change to immigration law.... those take hours) is the problem you are concerned with. Admitting the courts aren't fixable and giving the Executive branch what are obviously Judicial powers is no solution. Fixing the courts is the solution.
At this point the process is the punishment. Look how many cases take years and years to get to entirely obvious conclusions. Or to even start. Look at a case I happened to notice again recently. The lawsuit between Michael Mann and Mark Steyn has drug on for years and can't even get to the discovery phase after hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal expense. Does anyone think a 99% person has a possibility of getting justice in such a system? Do YOU have a few hundred thousand dollars and hundreds of hours to waste on just the earliest pre trial motions? IBM v SCO was another entirely obvious case between two very well funded litigants that again took a decade to drag to a bitter end so far after the events that nobody cared anymore. Cops can catch a killer, have video and DNA and it will still be years before a conviction and in a death penalty case another decade or two of pointless wrangling. So neither civil or criminal law work anymore.
A normal sane person believes nothing that happens in a courthouse can possibly benefit them, only harm them. Any attempt by a normal person to use the courts will simply bankrupt them. That is a problem.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 29 2018, @11:49AM (4 children)
Yes, I'm well aware that they had good intentions. I'm also aware of what good intentions are used to pave. There is no excuse for seceding judicial power to the executive though. The judiciary at least likes to pay lip service to impartiality; the executive does no such thing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday April 30 2018, @01:35AM (3 children)
The states in question could (and sometimes did) sue to put their chosen laws into place over the objections of the Feds, so the judiciary wasn't cut out of the process. What this meant was that the new law wasn't in place while they wrangled over it.
I'm reasonably convinced the Supreme Court made the wrong call when they got rid of the prior restraint clauses, mostly because the day after their decision the states that no longer had prior restraint and had argued it was unfair because they weren't racist anymore immediately passed laws that were racist in application if not intent.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 30 2018, @11:35AM (2 children)
If you're talking voter-ID-type laws, they're not remotely racist. What is racist is supposing that black folks can't manage the mental or physical effort of going down to the DMV, paying $10-15, and getting a state ID if they don't already have a driver's license. It's also foolish as anyone who wants to cash a check of any kind already has to have an ID, so it's a problem that was never going to exist in the first place.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday April 30 2018, @04:33PM (1 child)
The racist part is when they put the nearest DMV 50 miles away from where black people are likely to be, inaccessible to public transportation, and make it so it's only open during working hours on weekdays so most black person with jobs have to choose between their paycheck and being able to vote.
Oh, and $10-15 for a valid ID to vote is a poll tax, which is illegal under the Voting Rights Act and was long used as a Jim Crow suppress-the-black-vote tactic.
Another example of racist application of non-racist law in my home state (this one was shut down by the court system): The secretary of state made it possible for people in mostly-white areas of the state to vote early on the weekends, while closing down early voting on the weekends in mostly-black areas. He even made noises about wanting to put an end to what had become a common practice of black churches doing a service the Sunday beforehand focused on the importance of civic engagement, followed by members carpooling down to the polls in the afternoon to vote. Mostly white churches in rural areas, on the other hand, could and did do the exact same thing.
The people passing and implementing these policies sometimes will try to dodge the "We're trying to stop black people from voting" (which is still illegal) by arguing "No, we're trying to stop people from the opposing party from voting" (which is apparently OK).
My opinion on the matter:
1. The problem these guys were claiming to solve was a non-issue. Voter impersonation fraud was as best as anybody can tell extremely rare, because it's a high-risk zero-reward crime (e.g. you're caught immediately if you try to impersonate somebody who already voted). Which means these measures weren't about stopping fraudulent voters, they were about stopping qualified voters.
2. If you are trying to stop citizens from voting, and there's good reason to believe they are, then you don't believe in democratically elected government and have no business holding office in one.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 30 2018, @04:57PM
Ah, so you're saying black people can't overcome exactly the same inconveniences that every other racial group in the nation does? Glad we cleared that up.
As for equation to a poll tax, that's ludicrous. In fact, the poorer they are the more likely they are to already have an ID. You can't sign up for government handouts without one and you can't cash the resulting checks without one either.
Can you say "working as intended" then?
That would be a valid argument if both claims made in it weren't patently false. Zero-reward would require that their vote not be counted for the candidate they favor. And, no, you will not be "immediately caught" or even caught at all if you vote in a different polling place than the actual person, given the situation of using someone else's name. To my knowledge there currently are no setups in the US where it's even possible to check that someone hasn't voted in another polling place already. I'm fairly certain it will remain this way too, given that every single attempt to eliminate voter fraud causes Democrats to go absolutely ape-shit.
Having no business holding office in one would exclude roughly 100% of all elected officials. Now I have no problem with excluding them on these grounds but you can't be partisan about excluding authoritarian asshats who are just in it for the money and power.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:35PM (10 children)
What do you suggest for an appropriate solution?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:25PM (1 child)
Signs point to "passing snark." [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 29 2018, @11:50AM
No, just offline for the day after my morning coffee. I usually am on weekends.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 29 2018, @11:53AM
We already have a solution in place. This is clearly the job of the judicial branch. If they can't be arsed or are unable to do their jobs in a timely manner, that is an entirely different problem.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday April 29 2018, @02:12PM (6 children)
Compare hard demographic numbers like poverty rates, educational achievement, prison rates, and see if folks were better off or worse off during Jim Crow era.
Note that history might imply I'd assume everyone was better off during Jim Crow era. Not so, it seems a fair debate perhaps 50:50 odds and widely open to interpretation.
Interestingly that would seem to imply voter participation has little correlation with civilization wide measures of success. Yes ending Jim Crow laws dramatically staggeringly increased the supply of Smug, but you can't eat smug, it doesn't teach kids the 3 Rs in school, it doesn't provide jobs, doesn't reduce crime or prison populations...
Its entirely mathematically possible that preventing 140K votes is bad solely and exclusively in the sense of reducing smugness levels, its not bad in any other fashion.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday April 30 2018, @05:24PM (5 children)
Poverty rates (source [census.gov]): Poverty rates for all Americans drop nearly in half between 1959 (the earliest date the Census was tracking this) and 1969. Poverty bottoms out at 11.1% in 1973, possibly due to Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty", and has bounced between 11% and 15% ever since. This change is even more dramatic among black people, with poverty dropping from 55% in 1959 to 30% in 1974, and today it's down to 22%.
Educational achievement (source [ed.gov]): Across all racial groups, the percentage of Americans completing high school doubled from the 1950's to today. Again, with black people it's even more dramatic: 20% of black people graduated high school in the 1950's, now 70% do. Similar increases have also occurred for college-level education: Nowadays well over 25% of young Americans have a bachelor's degree, and black people have gone from almost never completing college to about 17% completing college.
Now, you are right that imprisonment rates, especially among black people, have gone way up since the era of Jim Crow laws. This doesn't have much if anything to do with the levels of reported crimes, because right now the US crime rates are about the same as they were in the 1950's, and there are way more people in jail than there were in the 1950's. What it does have a lot to do with is the War on Drugs, which there's more than a little evidence was set up to replace the now-defunct Jim Crow laws.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:10PM (4 children)
Those are impressive numbers, but there are so many simultaneous changes as per your comment about "possibly due to Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty"" and so forth that its hard to say how the cause and effect works.
Also "Jim Crow laws" have at least three entirely separate meanings in practice. One is the elimination of voting prevention laws. Another is association WRT blacks such as relative seat position on the bus or in the restaurant or separate bathrooms or schools or whatever. Another is the effect of elimination of the civil right for white people to have freedom of association which leads to secondary effects WRT white flight as a workaround resulting in racial economic segregation in housing and all kinds of weird downstream stuff.
And there's implementation specific details such as there must be a big difference in end effects between "almost no blacks can legally vote" vs "almost no blacks can not legally vote".
And a side dish of statistical manipulation, such that much as you haven't been able to profit off Dow Trading Theory for a century in the market because its manipulated, or the unemployment rate is manipulated extensively such that it'll never be reported as bad as the great depression even if no one is working, likewise now that "rate of poverty" is a political football it'll never mean anything in an absolute sense again. Probably some other measure of well being could be invented, percentage of married families or percentage of money spent on entertainment or something..
Yeah I donno about that beyond a simple level of both are coincidentally bad for blacks, one because of skin color, and one because of disproportionate representation in the trade. Kind of how the "Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment" was inherently black whereas the health department enforcing food safety rules in fried chicken restaurants is merely coincidentally black. A fairness and freedom of choice argument vs predestination, a kid born black never decided to be prevented from voting or not to be treated for an illness, but certainly did consciously decide to sell crack as a side biz. The war on drugs is kinda like how black men are 100x more likely to rape than white men, aside from the correctness of the precise number, does that mean enforcement of anti-rape laws is good idea in general because rape is bad, or via identity politics is it pro-women or anti-black or all three things at once, and which isolated argument is or should be most or least important to society, etc. Clearly historically so far, most of the country has decided for decades its far more important to lock up the bad folks than to fix the discrepancy by race employment figures for certain small businessman side jobs that happen to be categorized as illegal pharma distribution.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:48PM (3 children)
Here's John Ehrlichman, aide to Richard Nixon, explaining why they ramped up the War on Drugs, in 1994:
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
And there's evidence that Reagan had similar motivations for his role in it, and Bill Clinton while not particularly racist himself definitely was willing to sell out black people with actions like the 1993 crime bill to avoid being portrayed as too friendly to black folks.
Or you can read a book on the subject: The New Jim Crow [newjimcrow.com], which is specifically about how US government policy created the mass incarceration of black men as a way of preventing black people from achieving legal and social equality.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 01 2018, @05:11PM (2 children)
Now, hold on here for a minute.
I don't deny that politician X Y or Z might have hated black folk and here's some convoluted and complicated indirect effect way to F them over so decades ago they pushed it precisely because they don't like blacks. But right from wikipedia, lets look at some crime stats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide [wikipedia.org]
This is not really related to drug trade because the numbers are infinitely smaller than the drug trade as a whole. Yeah I admit a minor level of crossover between employment in illegal drugs and murder, but murder is rare enough that its like correlating lightning strikes with standing out on the street slinging crack, it happens but its not "really" related.
And my theory is that because black folk murder about ten times more often than white folk, there should be about ten times as many of them in prison. So... lots more blacks are in prison than whites, is not a white problem or a national problem, or a drug problem, it is a black problem. If they stop murdering (and numerous other crimes at similar levels), they'll stop filling up the prisons.
Its like a divide and conqueror scheme in that there's intentional effort to scramble up completely unrelated points:
1) Black folks got screwed in the south intentionally WRT voting rights a long time ago
2) Black folks around ten times more likely to be violent criminals and everything that goes along with that such as neighborhoods turning into poverty despair and lots of suffering and, yes, indeed lots in prison, lots more per population than white. And its all their fault, even if Nixon hated blacks and didn't mind seeing them in prison, its not like he personally forced every black murderer every year including after his death to pull the trigger.
3) Black folks cannot achieve legal and social equality if they're ten times as violent as whites, its a chimerical goal. Its not possible, without substantial changes, so having bad feelings about it is irrelevant.
4) There are side issues such as if blacks are ten times as likely to murder than whites, clearly we need black-control, but that is politically unacceptable, so we have to dog whistle it and call it gun-control instead, which is essentially a wasted effort targeting the wrong cause of the problem. Clearly large and ridiculous levels of gun regulation with no black-folks regulation, and infinite pushes for more gun regulation doesn't seem to be working very well. To some extent, support of gun control is inherently racist. Demands to ban assault rifles are little more than thinly disguised dog whistles against young black men. I mean for gods sakes, the definition of an assault rifle vs a hunting rifle is the assault rifle has the same design, you could even say its the same genetics or same species, except the one defined as evil happens to have a black skin, more than a little symbolism here.
Black folks in prison in ridiculous numbers is caused by black folks needing a better culture a better way of dealing with being inherently extremely violent, not some long dead cracker president who hated them, or weird claims about cultural dislike of violent drug dealers being somehow racist. If its not a black cultural problem, then what does it mean when a black tells another black to "stop acting white"? Clearly black culture is inferior to white culture in the sense of having a murder rate ten times higher, and the strategy has shifted thru numerous mostly ineffective solutions ranging from making them agricultural equipment, jim crow, welfare, mass imprisonment concentration camp style. And there's been calls for stuff that is unlikely to help. Reparations, legalized drugs, maybe tearing down statues (of Nixon?) will magically fix everything ... But it almost certainly will not.
Now the southerners around the era of reconstruction thought the technology to keep a high crime population somewhat more civilized was in fact jim crow, however unappealing that solution is to northerners. The northerners who knew nothing other than being certain of their own superiority and their moral code of might makes right, enforced change on the southerners, with predictable results, LOL. Throwing another technology on the table, military and ex-military blacks tend to be a lot better off than non-military, now I don't think a blacks-only draft would realistically be implementable, but... Or another anecdote, I have experience that nation of islam blacks don't really like white people (LOL as I recall I was a 'white devil') but none the less on average islam seems to be a technology blacks can deploy that results in better outcomes. Or they can continue to listen to gangster rap, spend government money on drugs, go to prison, and blame whitey for everything, which is very popular for ... some group benefiting off the ole divide and conqueror strategy, LOL. Or invent a newer technology for self control / civilization that works, no idea what that would be. Historically it seems civilization can only be developed from within, never imposed from the outside, so... best of luck? Live apart until they catch up? That went over real well in South Africa, LOL.
However uncertain or debatable I may me on the above claims, something I am far more certain of... whatever problem black folks have in 2018... I don't think it was Nixon. That might sell books to college profs to indoctrinate the students trendy political views, but its merely enjoyable fiction, like trying to apply Harry Potter to real world, good luck there. There's nothing with reading entertaining fiction or conspiracy theories, just don't try to actually apply any of it, or its not going to usefully work as a predictive model.
(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...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday April 28 2018, @05:23PM (12 children)
But it wasn't prior restraint, it was more like parole or probation since it was in response to previous violations.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 29 2018, @12:02PM (11 children)
An interesting viewpoint. Unfortunately nothing will ever make it wise to give the executive branch the ability to decide the legality of things. Our founders had a hell of a lot of examples of why doing so would be foolish, which is why we have those powers explicitly separated.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @04:03PM (1 child)
If you actually understood the issue, you wouldn't be taking such a position.
The executive branch is generally what decides what is and isn't legal. The judicial branch is what decides what is and isn't constitutional. There is some degree of overlap in terms of _how_ laws are interpreted, not what they are, but for the most part, the executive branch is what determines legality of various things.
The law in question functioned relatively well for decades, the only reason that it's been under attack is that it turns out that the poor and people of color don't vote for the racist and classist policies that the Republican party has been running on over the last few decades. And rather than waiting for the Democrats to complete their conversion to becoming a second right wing party, the GOP keeps looking for ways of preserving their power by disenfranchising voters.
This current situation is a great example of that. These are people who are legally allowed to vote who mostly won't vote because we've been throwing people in prison due to misunderstanding eligibility. Meanwhile the much bigger issue of elections fraud remains and issue and uses those few situations of voter fraud as an excuse to make it harder for entire classes of voters to vote.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 30 2018, @11:46AM
Yes, I would and I do. Short of martial law, which I am also not in favor of, there is no possible situation that would make fucking up the separation of powers a good idea though. I know you regressive asshats want a God Emperor who never has to answer to anyone and will just mandate people think, speak, and act like you want them to but those of us who are sane do not.
Eligibility to vote is exceedingly uncomplicated. You must have an insanely low opinion of their intelligence if you believe they can't fully understand it. I suppose it's possible you're correct though, so let's find out. Show me someone legally eligible to vote who let genuine fear keep them from voting for Obama. Just one will do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday April 29 2018, @07:06PM (8 children)
So do you advise dissolving the DOJ and the position of Attorney General? Because it would be even less advisable to have prosecutors and judges under the same umbrella in an adversarial system.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 30 2018, @11:50AM (7 children)
Prosecution is a perfectly valid Executive branch function. It calls a question to the Judiciary's attention it does not declare guilt.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 01 2018, @08:48AM (6 children)
However, prosecution does have the discretion to prosecute or not.
In the case in question, the DOJ only had supervisory power BECAUSE the judicial branch found that Arizona was apparently unable to comply with the law unsupervised. It was for a limited time, and if Arizona genuinely believed the DOJ was overstepping, they were free to bring the issue back to the judicial. That's not much like the bad old days where it was illegal if the king said it was illegal and there was no recourse.
It's exactly the same situation as a parole or probation officer. He can't find you guilty of a new crime, but he can determine that you haven't lived up to your end of the agreement that granted you provisional freedom from prison.
I am absolutely open to alternative suggestions for dealing with a state that has been found to have knowingly abridged the Constitutional rights of it's citizens, and for that matter, suggestions on curbing the power of parole/probation officers over natural people.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 01 2018, @10:28AM (5 children)
You're correct that the fucking up of the separation of powers wasn't as egregious as it could have been. It was there though. What was done was essentially handing the DOJ the power of the judiciary mixed in with the presumption of guilt rather than innocence. That they could appeal any decisions does not change that.
How it should have been done is requiring the states submit any new electoral laws to the DOJ or FBI for review, given them sufficient (but only sufficient) time to review the proposed laws, and then taken the state to court if they believed they were racially motivated and discriminatory. That keeps the powers where the belong and does not presume guilt on the part of the states.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 01 2018, @11:34AM (4 children)
Unfortunately, that leaves the state free to submit one thing but do another. A common problem when it comes to election shenanigans. For example, the case at hand where the state simply disobeyed it's own law.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 01 2018, @07:15PM (3 children)
Breaking the law is breaking the law. There's zero difference as far as that goes between submitting something for review then doing another thing and submitting something for approval then doing another thing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 01 2018, @08:06PM (2 children)
It's a matter of how closely the process is watched and so how early enforcement might intervene.
In this case, it would have been a win for democracy if the intervention could have happened in time for the election.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday May 01 2018, @09:22PM (1 child)
Good luck with that. Bureaucracy has its benefits but speed has never been one of them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 01 2018, @10:39PM
Step one, someone has to be watching.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday April 28 2018, @01:00PM (2 children)
That shouldn't be a large problem, really. It's that state's sole responsibility to have free and fair elections for its people. However...
There should be a US federal level election oversight committee, and if they decide that one state's vote was rigged, just disqualify all the votes of that one state, for that one election (needless to say that that state doesn't get to deliver senators or congresspeople either, for that period of 4 years or so).
I'm sure it would not happen very often then, and only by truly desperate corrupt state-level politicians. Which would help that state's voters to vote the bastards out next time, and thereby reduce the shame that their state was such a corrupt laughing stock that they couldn't even organize a democratic election properly (unlike, say, Afghanistan).
Since the perp state was clearly broken anyway, if they decide to secede out of anger at having their votes rejected, it's good riddance anyway. Corrupt states don't benefit the greater whole, they're just a drain from the whole to the local elite.
Now the next problem becomes: who guards the federal level election oversight committee from fraud? :-)
I think I read that your president Trump is organizing a committee to study voting irregularities, because he claimed that the vote was rigged. Haven't read about their results yet.
[PS I wrote this thinking about the EU and Jaroslaw Kaczynski's PiS government in Poland. I don't think the last election was rigged, but when/if it will be, there are repair mechanisms. The EU mandates that all states that want to be a member are functioning democracies. Amputate the rotten leg.]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday April 29 2018, @07:19AM (1 child)
I said to my Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, thank you for your service, you can go home. Nice way to say, you're fired. They did a great job, they didn't finish the job. Because a lot of the states wouldn't turn over the voter records. It was getting to be a lot of lawsuits for us to get that. So I said, no more Commission, let's do this another way.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday April 29 2018, @10:24PM
On a completely unrelated note, were you able to file your taxes on time this year? I thought you might have had some trouble getting them in before the deadline, considering how busy you've been making America great all over the place.
If you'd like, I can doublecheck them for accuracy just to be safe, no charge. And of course, I guarantee confidentiality through Random-Tax-Return-Reviewer-Client privilege.
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Saturday April 28 2018, @05:10PM (9 children)
In my state, you can get a free photo ID from the DMV if you are below federal poverty line or you are in a homeless shelter. Otherwise, its $25 for a DMV photo ID, good for 8 years. You also can use a student ID card to vote, as well. If you do not bring an photo ID, you would fill out a provisional ballot which would be reviewed by the canvassing board. They do not require a voter ID card, so, there is no need to wait for it to come in the mail. Anyone can get a Photo ID which is printed on site at the DMV office, you walk in and walk out with your ID in under an hour.
The idea that photo ID cards are to disenfranchise people is nuts. The laws are designed to ensure that people do not vote who are foreign aliens or vote twice and the person who shows up to vote is that person. Because we have made it possible to ensure everyone can get a photo ID card from the DMV (which they would need for a thousand other things as well anyway), there is no argument against it except that you want double or triple voting or non citizen voting (the idea that this does not happen is nuts).
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday April 28 2018, @06:18PM (5 children)
> The laws are designed to ensure that people do not vote who are foreign aliens or vote twice
You really believe that? That's just a pretext. It's major overkill for an insignificant to nonexistent problem that was deliberately manufactured and blown way out of proportion to provide the excuse. The way it is implemented is telling. If an item is required to vote, then it should be delivered, free of charge, for everyone. $25 for an ID needed to vote? That's a poll tax! Got to travel to another city because there is no DMV office nearby? Poll tax!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday April 28 2018, @06:53PM (2 children)
Shut. the. fuck. up. with that noise. Requiring a photo ID to vote is not a poll tax. You can't do much of anything without a driver's license (or the ID they issue instead if you can't drive) so asking to see it to vote is not any sort of real burden on a citizen above and beyond the other BS.
Without a government issued ID you can't:
Drive (duh)
Enter most Federal Buildings, including Congress to "petition your government for redress"
Buy an ever growing list of products requiring an age check.
Apply for government benefits, which almost every one of the "poor" the Progs say are being excluded from voting somehow manage to qualify for and get.
Apply for pretty much any job that pays above the minimum wage.
Obtain a passport. (which itself qualifies as "government issued photo ID btw)
Enroll in a college, university or other educational institution.
Participate in most of the "Community Organized" protests against Voter ID. Let that one roll around in yer empty head a moment.
This case is obvious. The Democratic Party is dead set against Voter ID laws because it stops illegals from voting and makes their usual wholesale vote fraud a lot harder to pull off undetected. So in an unimportant special election a Democratic Party local official (and yes I RTFA so I know that) arranged a major cock up in the implementation of a Voter ID law to provide a pretext for the national party to try to get a Federal Judge to cancel them in time for the important mid term elections in the fall.
(Score: 2) by danmars on Monday April 30 2018, @05:49PM (1 child)
Okay, I have a little bit of second-hand experience for you. I know someone, around 50 years old, on social security disability because of various physical problems. Her only ID is a very expired driver's license. She doesn't have a car and has to beg people to bring her places (including the grocery store) and pay them rather significant sums of money considering her subsistence-level income. Who do you suppose is going to bring her to the DMV to get a voter ID? Those are a lot of the people you disenfranchise; people who are physically disabled.
College students. It's not like voting is in the middle of a big school vacation. Voter ID laws often seem specifically tailored to keep college students from voting near their colleges.
Minority groups. A lot of old African-American people do not have proof of their birth because they were not born in hospitals. (I'm stating this based on some podcasts I've listened to, not firsthand knowledge, but I believe it is true.) Proving they are eligible to vote is orders of magnitude more difficult for them.
People who work on weekdays or don't set their own work schedules. I can take some random day off to go to the DMV and the Town/City Hall to update my stuff. I can drive 8 hours to buy a new certified copy of my birth certificate from where I was born because I lost it in one of the times I moved. That's not true for a lot of people.
It starts to look excessively discriminatory that it is really easy for a white working-class adult, who sets their own schedule and can take paid time off to deal with registration, with a valid driver's license and a car, who has a birth certificate they can easily access or replace, who hasn't moved in the last year or four, to vote. We shouldn't be making it 10x as difficult for people outside that group to vote.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday April 30 2018, @07:04PM
So she gets everywhere else, she hypothetically gets to the polls, but getting to the DMV once per decade is too much? Most states don't require you go in every time you know, you can renew online or by mail a time or two before requiring an updated photo. Plus many States have hardship programs which will allow people like her to renew by mail even more times.
Don't believe propaganda, believe common sense. Do you actually think we have a poor person left who isn't suckling one or more government teats? You have to have an ID, even if only the fake ones the illegals all get, to qualify any of it; connect the dots. Every one of those people drove cars at some point, most have owned a car, etc. Most, when younger at least, went to a bar or other venue that "cards" people and they managed to get in. How long have employers been taking a photocopy of their driver's license during their initial paperwork? All of those things require a photo ID / Driver's License.
You are now arguing against driver's licenses, not requiring one to vote, classic subject shifting. But since they can't get or keep a job without an ID... not seeing how demanding they present something they already have to bother getting to vote is an additional burden.
And ultimately, it really is time to ask the bigger question. America was never intended to be a universal franchise Democracy. The only reason our Constitution was considered acceptable was the assurances of the authors that sufficient safeguards against the abomination of Democracy were included. Why are we insisting on endangering the integrity of our elections because of a highly theoretical and unproven risk to some marginal people unlikely to care about anything but more free gibs? Bluntly, a group of voters entirely unlikely to enhance the quality of our society through their votes. I'm a proud member of Students Against a Democratic Society [wordpress.com].
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday April 29 2018, @02:37PM
Its a massive simplification, probably, such that given 50 possible ways to identify, its always possible to find like 25 free ones.
In my state they solved the problem by making ID cards free. For everyone. But, as I previously wrote, its a massive simplification. There's a web site for my state with the detail which are at least two pages printed out, posted at every voting location every time there's a vote, so since there's not much else to do while waiting, I've read it several times and its changed a lot over the last 20 years. In my state you can also use passports, "free" military ID cards including active AND retired IDs (well, they were free when I was in the army a quarter century ago), a certificate of naturalization, various native american tribal documents, higher educational institution ID card (they removed K-12 in the last decades, I used my high school ID the first time I voted a long time ago), "Confidential electors" basically convince a judge to order the muni court clerk to issue permission to vote anonymously and they give you a little form to hand in when you vote. The weirdest restriction is you can use military ID cards to vote, but not federal or state government ID cards to vote.
Abstraction never fixes anything. In that to get a free ID card you need to prove your name and birthday, which takes another states ID card or DL (which probably costs money) or passport (hundred bucks) or birth certificate ($20 in my county). Now to order a copy of your own birth certificate in my county to get that free ID card, you need a government ID (catch 22) or two of: an old fashioned printed out mailed bank statement (micro $), a current signed dated lease, health insurance card (including medicare medicaid or whatever its called), traffic or other muni ticket (some $), a utility bill (not including internet or cell phone), or finally a vehicle registration not including municipal bicycle registrations. So technically its impossible to get a "free" ID card without having at one point in your life having at least minimally participated in society to the level of $5 or so. I don't see that as a serious problem. Note that the card is free in that a copy of your birth certificate is free in perpetuity, my mom ordered a copy of my BC decades ago and I still use it, I think its in my credit union safe deposit box along with other interesting things.
The real problem is the standard left response to increasing voting regulation is it never happens so we should never ever defend against fraudulent votes, which is kind of like saying cute animal species rarely go extinct and nuclear plants rarely melt down so we should actively and aggressively via court orders prevent people from trying to prevent such events solely because they don't happen often. Or take for example, murder by handgun, which as a statistical event is extremely rare, therefore we should do everything in our power to remove all regulation and legal control of it solely because it is a rare event. The left KNOWS the problem is large, therefore intense pressure is put to claim its irrelevant.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday April 29 2018, @02:50PM
As a side issue "many" (most?, almost all?) states have at least one class A RV that travels the rural areas and for free if available can attend special events for mobile DMV processing. I live like 5 miles from an office and have a car etc so like 95+% of the population its irrelevant to me, but supposedly in extreme rural farm counties where the closest DMV might be 50 miles away there is near continuous mobile DMV presence "somewhere at some times" ranging from county fairs to scheduled stops at the volunteer fire dept parking lot every tuesday at 2pm or whatever. If you want you can cry about the nearest office being 75 miles away but if you'll just wait until the county fair or weekly at the volunteer fire dept on tuesday afternoons then it'll be OK.
Note that as a rhetorical argument nothing short of issuing a warrant to track down everyone without an ID and shooting those who won't accept their ID will solve the problem of taking away the vote from people who insist its possible via infinite effort to express no agency in their lives whatsoever such that they've actively avoided all possible ways to vote. As long as that isn't a capital crime, as it should be, that situation will be used as justification to prevent any sort of voting regulation. Could the unibomber have been forced at gunpoint to register to vote from his hermit cabin, if not, then its restricting voting rights. Can a fleeing felon prison escapee register to vote? no, then that is a voting rights violation. But normal people don't mind.
So it doesn't matter if its easier or harder to vote, its not possible to create a scenario thats 100% and thats all that matters, so frankly trying to appease is a waste of time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @09:13PM
In my state
If your state doesn't require a -specific- type of ID to vote, then they've only gone halfway with the election rigging.
a student ID
Many (Red) states don't accept those--even if they are issued by state-run schools.
Oddly enough (or maybe not), those states accept a gun permit as ID.
at the DMV office
Several states have closed down numerous DMV offices--not coincidentally, in the "Black Belt".
Others states have restricted the days ands hours such DMV offices are open.
People who don't have a driver's license obviously need someone to drive them to the DMV.
(The remaining offices are hours away and are only open during working hours.)
a provisional ballot
People in the know call that a "placebo ballot".
Federal law says those have to be offered.
The law says nothing about actually counting them.
the laws are designed to...
...limit voting by non-Republicans. Full stop.
.
North Dakota, besides having a public bank that weathered The Great Depression very well (in contrast to the private banks in the other 47 states) and has stood up again through the Bush-Obama-Trump Depression (in contrast to the private banks in the other 49 states), also does elections right.
They have no voter registration. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [westfargond.gov]
Again, in contrast to the other 49. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [afsa.org]
N.B. Do note especially the (mostly Red) states that make their registration instructions purposely complicated.
In North Dakota, no ID is even needed.
Just find someone who will vouch for you and cast your ballot by mail. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [nd.gov]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @10:38PM
And what does that say about our so-called 'free country'? Nothing good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @04:06PM
The cost of getting a license or ID isn't the cost of the card itself, it's that you frequently have to take a day off of work and find your way to one of the few locations that still does that.
But, that aside, there is no compelling basis for the requirement. Nobody has presented any evidence that people are, as a matter of custom, engaging in voter fraud. The big issue we have is elections fraud by doing things like enacting policies that are intended to make it harder for groups that don't vote the "right" way to participate as well as the campaign finance violations that allow for unlimited spending on political campaigns that can flood the voters with messaging in support of one candidate versus the other.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 28 2018, @05:26PM (2 children)
There is a lot of misinformation here. The statement in TFA that SCOTUS "gutted" the VRA is also misinformation, but it's the common media narrative, so it's not surprising to see it repeated here (and modded up). Let's be very clear about what happened:
The VRA included "preclearance" restrictions on some states and some areas of the U.S. originally because those areas had RECENT issues with voter suppression, segregation, disenfranchisement, etc. The idea of the VRA was that said "preclearance" requirements would expire in a reasonable amount of time, and they would have. The idea was that if there were further issues in various states (perhaps DIFFERENT STATES), Congress could pass a new list for "preclearance."
Instead, there was obviously a stigma for states and areas with these restrictions, and Congress didn't want to deal with the difficult task of actually quantifying where NEW issues of racism might be occurring. Instead, they took the easy way out and kept reauthorizing the original list of "bad actors"... for decade, after decade, after decade.
Meanwhile, there have been some changes in the U.S. (believe it or not). There are states that want to pass arguably racist laws that weren't subject to preclearance. There are other areas where the attempts to pass racist laws were no longer as pervasive. If you think that voter ID laws are only about racism, then why aren't you concerned about the states which were NOT subject to preclearance under the VRA that have passed said laws?? Shouldn't they be put on a "watch list" too?
Well, Congress failed to do its job here. And SCOTUS stepped in and said, "Dudes, you need to actually use updated data if you're going to justify this list." One potential bad effect is that voters in states not subject to preclearance would actually be potentially disenfranchised even if their state had started passing restrictive laws. And that basically means different states are being treated differently for voting rights, which is a problem under the Constitution. A TEMPORARY fix like was originally intended by the VRA is fine -- but the permanent status of this list is problematic legally.
So SCOTUS overrode that list and said it was potentially outdated. That's all they did to supposedly "gut" the VRA. SCOTUS did not preclude Congress from passing a NEW and updated list based on recent data, and indeed there have been efforts every year since then to introduce said list [wikipedia.org].
Thus, a more accurate statement than appears in TFA would be: "Congress abrogated its responsibility to update the VRA, which SCOTUS pointed out. Congress continues to fail to act."
Personally, due to the pervasive racism in the U.S., I'd be fine with preclearance for ALL states. I don't think it's an ideal solution, and I do think it's federal government overreach, but we've had massive federal government overreach since FDR. Might as well use the overreach for good.
I do have a problem legally with the VRA as it was functioning prior to the SCOTUS ruling a few years ago. It was in fact treating voters of different states differently. If there were a current rationale to do so, based on a good source of data, I'd be okay with it (as stipulated in the recent proposals in Congress), but it wasn't.
And this is where your argument runs off the rails. A hunting license (as far as I know) is issued by states just about everywhere. A university ID card isn't generally issued by states. Generally, the standards for getting a state ID are very clear and follow specific procedures. University IDs may not follow those procedures. If the state is in charge of verifying who you are, you need to show state-issued ID. It's generally that simple. You can't show up to a US Passport office and use your university ID to establish your identity. If you don't already have a state-issued ID, you probably won't be able to use your university ID to get a driver's license or hunting license either. Also, university IDs all look different. How exactly is a voting official to know yours is legit? A hunting license at least has a standard appearance.
I agree that some states may have instituted stupid restrictions that are inconsistent. (And I generally agree that most of this movement behind voter ID laws is probably unnecessary.) But I don't see a good argument for accepting a university ID as government ID.
No.
Indeed. So instead of whining about it, call your senators and congressman and get them to actually USE the freakin' VRA instead of lamenting, "Woe is I! The VRA has been gutted! SCOTUS is evil! Racism will triumph!" The VRA is still in effect. It needs to be used. This stupid media narrative is NOT HELPING.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @04:11PM (1 child)
That sounds gutted to me.
The reason for the pre-clearance on those issues is because trying to do something about it after the fact tends to render things moot. They're not going to set aside the results of an election because the state broke the law in how the election was run. And we're getting close to another census year, 20202, wherein the number of politicians elected for each party is going to make a massive impact on the elections for the next 10 years because most states don't have restrictions on how districting is done. A small number have bipartisan or nonpartisan committees that draw the lines, but most of the states the majority party gets to set up the committee and generally has it set up so that they gain maximum benefit.
We have similar problems with campaign laws. By the time there's an investigation and any enforcement action taken, the race is already over and the results are never overturned no matter how egregious the violations are. In most case, the groups breaking the laws get dismantled after the election, no matter what the results are, so there's not much in the way of punishment possible.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday April 30 2018, @07:55PM
Not sure if you actually read my comment in full. Congress has the ability to authorize preclearance again just by creating an updated list of states/areas based on current data. They have refused to do so. The VRA is still perfectly capable of being used in the manner you wish -- Congress is just failing to do so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @09:19PM (1 child)
Clearly, you haven't been to an American university in the last 50 years. We now have international students, both legitimate ones and illegal aliens.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday April 29 2018, @07:32AM
So true. We have international students. But we don't have international hunters. My sons love hunting. They’re hunters and they’ve become good at it. I am not a believer in hunting and I’m surprised they like it. They had so much fun in Africa. But we don't do that here. We don't have hunters coming in from other countries. Usually we don't. There's a lot of money in that, believe me. Personally, I don't like it. But it would be great for our economy. West Palm Beach -- home of Trump International Golf Club and close to my Southern White House -- we have Lion Country Safari. Where you can look at the animals, but no shooting. But perhaps they can have the shooting too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:28PM
Those states were already found guilty in court of infringing constitutional rights and as part of the punishment for those lost court cases, they were required to pre-screen with the branch of government tasked with enforcing laws and court decisions any future changes.