SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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) 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.