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posted by martyb on Saturday April 28 2018, @08:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the a-"little-hiccup" dept.

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 bzipitidoo on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:35PM (10 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:35PM (#673037) Journal

    What do you suggest for an appropriate solution?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:25PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:25PM (#673051)

    Signs point to "passing snark." [soylentnews.org]

  • (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)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 29 2018, @02:12PM (#673396)

    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)

      by Thexalon (636) on Monday April 30 2018, @05:24PM (#673824)

      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.

      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)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:10PM (#674161)

        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..

        War on Drugs, which there's more than a little evidence was set up to replace the now-defunct Jim Crow laws.

        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)

          by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:48PM (#674175)

          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.

          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)

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 01 2018, @05:11PM (#674210)

            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]

            Inversely, the percentage of individuals in each racial demographic arrested for murder in 2013 (with 2016 population estimates) was:
            0.0102% of Black or African American population (4,379/42,975,959)
            0.0014% of White American (3,799/198,077,165)

            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)

              by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @06:22PM (#674244)

              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.

              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

                by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 03 2018, @01:24PM (#675033)

                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.

                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.

                Rich and middle-class people who are going to commit crimes usually go for

                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...