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The Guardian reports:
Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp improperly purged more than 340,000 voters from the state's registration rolls, an investigation charges.
Greg Palast, a journalist and the director of the Palast Investigative Fund, said an analysis he commissioned found 340,134 voters were removed from the rolls on the grounds that they had moved - but they actually still live at the address where they are registered.
"Their registration is cancelled. Not pending, not inactive – cancelled. If they show up to vote on 6 November, they will not be allowed to vote. That's wrong," Palast told reporters on a call on Friday. "We can prove they're still there. They should be allowed to vote."
[...] Palast and the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda filed a lawsuit against Kemp on Friday to force him to release additional records related to the state's removal of voters.
Under Georgia procedures, registered voters who have not cast ballots for three years are sent a notice asking them to confirm they still live at their address. If they don't return it, they are marked inactive. If they don't vote for two more general elections after that, they are removed from the rolls.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:27PM (40 children)
This does not jive with "GOP Candidate Improperly Purged 340,000 From Georgia Voter Rolls, Investigation Claims". TFA doesn't even attempt to make the case that Kemp did anything except follow Georgia law. Am I missing something that's actually a thing or is this just people pissing and moaning about anything and everything because they're behind in the polls?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:39PM (20 children)
Go fuck yourself you ignorant shitstain, you are so obviously biased and then hide behind "I'm impartial and fuck both parties!"
Yeah, uh huh, but you always defend GOP impropriety while pushing propaganda bullshit. You give the GOP the benefit of the doubt every time and assume every liberal person is evil. You're a twisted fuck Buzztard. Legal != ethical, that is the mental loophole the GOP seems to have such success exploiting with you even though there are so many laws you think are wrong. What is WRONG with you? Scratch that, we already know.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:49PM (19 children)
Nah, if he actually did something illegal, slap his ass in butt-rape-prison. If he was following the law, STFU.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:55PM (14 children)
Thanks for confirming your own idiocy. Good job! Down with Democracy! Up with tyranny!
And you wonder why conservative types get labeled fascists.... Actual fascism staring you in the face and you try and shout it down.
(Score: 1, Touché) by VLM on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:59PM (12 children)
Just to help me out here, this "fascism" you talk about... is it:
1) Following the law
or
2) The law that people who don't vote, can't vote?
or
3) Anything any white person ever does under any circumstances AKA its a mere racial slur.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:01PM (11 children)
4) Creating laws to oppress people and claiming it is right and just because "they're following the law"
You are a special kind of stupid
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:05PM (9 children)
So... to clarify, AC is in opposition to taxation, jail or any other form of law enforcement, and registering for the draft?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:09PM (8 children)
Nice try troll, no amount of shitty troll tactics will make this voter disenfranchisement OK.
(Score: 3, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:14PM (7 children)
Such as rationality, reason, civility, intelligence... what other things do leftists oppose?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:22PM (6 children)
You are none of those things. At all. But nice strawman you've put together. More shitty troll tactics, be immeasurable assholes until you get called out, then claim civility and reason. I'd find it funny if it wasn't for the actual undermining of our democracy that is happening right in front of our eyes. The last two GOP presidents lost the popular vote and apparently this has made you all insane to varying degrees.
Go ahead, cry about being called names and ignore the real actions destroying our country.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:02AM (4 children)
If the above phrase is redefined into meaninglessness, maybe the above phrase is EXACTLY what we need!
Look into the non-political concept of brand dilution. If you REALLY want to promote fascism, then label every prominent right-winger since Prez Nixon as "literally Hitler". I strongly appreciate the help turning normal middle of the road people sympathetic toward "literally Hitler". Once the left has trained the center that "literally Hitler" is no big deal, I wouldn't mind rolling out the right wing version of "literally Hitler" but us right wingers can't do it without the help of the left virtue signalling like crazy. The right loves "twitter blue checkmark NPCs" ranting about Trump being literally Hitler because we can't get real "literally Hitler" in a couple years/decades without the ranting today. I love it!
Its kind of like how nobody cares anymore about claims of right wing women abuse because its become business as usual for all prominent right wing political figures to be accused of molesting some woman about three weeks before the vote or election or confirmation. Its not possible for them not to be accused... Of course the left's antics have set back womens rights by decades by getting everyone to ignore the claims, but feminists will vote lefty 99.999% of the time anyway so it doesn't hurt their power base so they'll keep on doing it.
Its like George Soros gives the left lots of money but nobody is giving them any brainz... And the alt-right or modern right is kinda the opposite, all the brainz and none of the money.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:31AM (3 children)
Sociology fail.
This time you're making the same error that the DNC makes (as opposed to the SJWs I mentioned above). You're assuming that there are a significant number of people whose political views fall between right-wing (DNC) and far right-wing (GOP). Most people do not hold right-wing values. However, the GOP picks up voters, because the GOP is currently running a populist angle.
This makes sense because the working class is suffering, but they are lacking in education and political awareness. They know that the status quo is stacked against them. Right now, the DNC represents the status quo. The GOP are the ones out there who are actually selling solutions and proposing changes, promising hope that their solutions and changes will elevate the working class. The descent into fascism happens the same as the descent into XML: "if it's not working, you're not using enough of it!"
Certainly, a section of the working class may be elevated by the implementation of these populist, racialist, and nationalist ideas.
The GOP proffers solutions, and a desperate working class takes the solutions on the table for want of better alternatives. You're not attracting an elusive "middle," because there simply aren't many people there. You're attracting the desperate, despite your filthy views. Though you already said that in a way: "Its like George Soros gives the [pseudo-]left lots of money but nobody is giving them any brainz."
Also in a demonstration of the stopped watch effect, you're correct that the section of the petty bourgeoisie that is obsessed with promoting race and sex as the fundamental divisions of society are damaging the progressive goals of the civil rights movements, including women's liberation, because of the lack of an alternative to the two right-wing capitalist parties for the working class. Basically, the DNC set the stage for the alt-right to come to power. Of course, you've shamelessly demonstrated that you agree with the basic idea that race, at least, is a fundamental division of society. So perhaps that cancels out of both sides of the R vs. D equation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:28AM (2 children)
Millenials turned up at Bernie rallies with wild enthusiasm, but stayed home on election day so they could post political memes on Facebook and Twitter.
It's been this way as long as I've been alive - the far-smaller Republican Party has far-greater voter turnout.
As for Hitler himself, what he offered the working man of his day was relief from the war reparations imposed by the Versailles Treaty. Those reparations were in monetary form, rather they were required to be such "hard currency" as a great many tons of steel, coal and other valuable commodities.
With its economy already wrecked by WWI, those reparations threw a great many german people out on the street.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:11AM (1 child)
Yep. 1920s Germany is the spot-on example. If we see the Democratic Party as a modern day SDP, the similarities are striking. (Per Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], "The Social Democrats and Communists were bitterly divided and unable to formulate an effective solution: this gave the Nazis their opportunity and Hitler's message, blaming the crisis on the Jewish financiers and the Bolsheviks, resonated with wide sections of the electorate." This [wsws.org] is worth a read for, among other things, the Trotskyist perspective of those events. And as we have an actual wolf pack ready to feast, I guess a sarcastic thanks to SJWs and other partisans for crying wolf so many times, as VLM pointed out.)
(TBH, having just wrote that out, I'm still queasy at the prospect of voting for a Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2020. The trouble is, even if a Democratic Party candidate wins in 2020, I have no confidence that they have learned their lesson, so it is likely none of the underlying social problems will be resolved or at least lessened. It would merely be kicking the can down the road a few more years. The coming whirlwind is beyond the capabilities of capitalism to prevent, because it stems from the inherent contradictions of capitalism.)
Those millennials who stayed home posting dank memes are a good example of voters who are left of the Democratic Party. They couldn't vote for a right-wing candidate like Hillary Clinton, and they did not see a compelling reason to vote for Jill Stein, MD instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:08AM
Sure as hell could find a bunch of reasons not to vote for Jill Stein, Stuffed Shirt.
People complain about the anti-science republicans, but those old geezers are a goddamn college of nobel laureates compared to the science-means-what-we-say-it-does woo-woo nutjobs of the greens.
When they come out rock solid, shoulder-to-shoulder in uninhibited, full-throated support of vaccination (if ever) I'll bother to give them a second look. Until then I think that the goddamn libertarians are a more credible group. Yes, including the goldbugs (and they all failed economics).
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:36AM
You might want to take a break here, and change into a dry shirt.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:44PM
While you have a valid point, in this case the law says "If you haven't voted in three elections and don't respond to a letter, you will be purged from the voter rolls.", and I don't see anything wrong with that. Have you ever maintained a database?
If he's following the law in this case, then good for him. There are immoral and unethical laws that should be ignored, but this isn't one of them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:31AM
Because democracies throw people they don't like in prison while tyrannies only do it when they break the law? Your argument's a bit shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:01PM (1 child)
The headline doesn't currently say "illegal." Did it originally say "illegal"?
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:32AM
It says improperly. If he was following Georgia law, it was not improper. If he was not following Georgia law, it was both improper and illegal.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by RandomFactor on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:10AM (1 child)
TFA uses the word improperly improperly. The article should be aimed at Georgia procedures for cleaning the roles, not the individual tasked with enforcing them.
It appears Kemp was, in fact following the law in the state. Basically just doing his job the same as every year since appointed.
.
from TFA:
.
TFA discusses 2016-2018. However the pace of removing registrations for individuals not meeting the law hasn't changed significantly since 2012. 1.4Million were removed in 2012-2018 (6 years), but .53Million from 2016-2018. You could make an argument that the removal rate has actually slowed a bit the past few years.
.
The particular journalist is a political operative and the article is timed accordingly.
.
If someone does not vote for five elections straight, and ignores a notice to confirm their residence for registration, they probably really don't give much of a damn anyway. The procedure seems reasonable enough as far as where to draw the line for purging the roles. Unless the view is that the roles should simply never be purged.
.
Myself I wouldn't waste a lot of time on it if it came up in Georgia - just cast a provisional ballot and don't yell at your friendly neighborhood poll worker. If a race of importance is razor close fight to get the ballot counted (I'm sure your party of choice would be glad to assist...). If nothing was close anyway, reregister to vote for next time and be done. Total time wasted about 10 minutes (except in the extremely unlikely event of a super close race). The only people who should waste endless hours on politics are politicians :-)
.
I kinda liked how Iraq managed the issue that purging the roles is aimed at (until ISIS started killing people with ink on their fingers...sigh...)
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:26AM
Or they moved out of Georgia.
I moved out of one state into another last year. Being a responsible citizen, I tried to find a way to UNregister to vote in the state I was moving out of, or just tell them "hey, I'm leaving so I won't be voting here anymore". There wasn't one. The system was set up to register people, but no way for the person to unregister themselves. (Perhaps there's some way buried deep in some law book somewhere, but when you're moving cross-country you have more pressing things to worry about, and since it wasn't on their website, I had to just let it go)
Until that state purges their rolls of inactive voters, anyone could walk into my former polling place, pretend to be me, and vote in my name. There's nothing I can do about it. As this is a great way to enable voting fraud, I think this is precisely how certain political parties want it to be.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:05PM (7 children)
There is a question of the Georgia law being reasonable in the first place, the timing of the purge, and the fact that Kemp is doing this for a Governor's race where he is actually a candidate.
Thought experiment, what would you think of a sporting event where one team's head coach was the sole referee?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:35AM (4 children)
Sure, that's a legitimate beef if you happen to live in Georgia (if you don't, it's nunya). That is not, however, the tack they are tacking with the suit or TFA.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Touché) by sjames on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:48AM (3 children)
In fact, I DO live in Ga. And purging a bunch of people who 'just happen' to be mostly of a demographic that is unlikely to support him or his party doesn't really pass the smell test.
He has a lieutenant he could have delegated this particular responsibility to.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:06AM (2 children)
Good on ya for beefing on your own state instead of someone else's then. I'd probably bitch about it if I lived in GA as well. It's none of the state's damned business if I feel like voting or not and I'm highly unlikely to answer bloody stupid letters from them about it. It's annoying enough I'll have to go change my registration when I move a couple blocks north around the first of the year.
But the exact same thing would have happened. There's been zip, zilch, nada in the way of anything saying he applied the law in any manner except as it was written. Barring evidence to the contrary, it shows him to have integrity enough to do his job as the law requires of him. That's fucking rare for any politician.
I'm not saying don't bitch. I'm saying bitch about what is real, not made-up bullshit. It lessens your credibility when you do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:00AM (1 child)
There are many ways to follow the law. I'm sure you can imagine that some ways are more above board than others. If someone seems to be walking on the line, it's fair enough to look closely and ask questions..
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:36PM
Except that is not the case here. There've been no credible allegations of him improperly discharging his duties; only dislike of the law and assertions that following the law helps him.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:47AM (1 child)
A minor quibble that what you call "sole referee" is actually more like "ultimate responsibility". Much like a CEO at McDonalds doesn't personally fry all the burgers, but is the last word of responsibility for financial performance, etc.
By analogy in the state I live in (not Georgia) there is a state official who is the final chain in responsibility, but the elections are actually kept legit on the ground by thousands of official observers at the polling stations of both (any, really) political parties and that reporting flows up thru the parties. Ditto registrations, the local muni clerk in my state handles that issue at the local level unless a problem is reported, not the guy who holds absolute responsibility back at the state office building.
Its possible in Georgia they do things differently and there exists precisely one bad apple in Georgia; well, that's weird, and that implies to me its unlikely. Now a targeted coordinated politically motivated attack against an individual, that happens all the time and is quite believable.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:07AM
One person can stack the deck a lot in 4 years. Especially in a culture where creating fiefdoms is common.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:27PM (8 children)
I have to agree here. If someone hasn't voted in 5 elections, I don't think they will turn up this time. So the law makes sense to me. Also tryign to pin this one the party in power is standard MO for all parties, everywhere.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:30PM (1 child)
You are an idiot then. It may be reasonable to expect someone won't vote after a pattern of not voting, but removing their ability to do so? Yeaaah, cluebat incoming.
3 years isn't even one presidential election, what a useless shitty argument that doesn't even pass its own bullshit sniff test.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:00AM
You seem to have misread the article.
This process didn't disenfranchise anyone. It finally, after several attempts at clarification, removed an active registration. Nothing whatsoever prevents someone from showing up and casting a provisional ballot, or registering again.
We could have an argument about whether felons should be disenfranchised, and if so for how long, but that's not what happened here.
The other side of the coin is that not cleaning up the list results in all sorts of problems with which computer scientists should be familiar.
As other posters pointed out, his department didn't (because I guarantee he didn't do this himself) remove a particularly large number of people - it was just another year in the calendar, as far as they were concerned. It's only now that the other side thinks that they can get 0.01% more of the vote by kicking up an artificial fuss that it's even a story.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:37AM (5 children)
I didn't say the law made sense or that I agreed with it. I'm absolutely saying that the Georgia secretary of state is damned well obligated to follow the law though. No matter who dislikes the law.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:38AM (4 children)
Nope, sorry. It is the duty of all men of conscience to act contrary to unjust laws.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:48AM (2 children)
You have an odd definition of conscience. See, it's a pretty solid indication you're looking at a tyrant when they ignore the law and do whatever the fuck they like. I guess I'm glad we have less men of conscience.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:24AM (1 child)
It's also damn empowering of tyrants to have a bunch of blind authoritarians following their laws.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:41PM
You're confusing the differing dynamics of people in power and people without power. When people without power refuse to follow the law, the law is probably wrong. When people with power refuse to follow the law, they are tyrants.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:33AM
I suppose you aren't too keen on the concept of a nation of "laws not men".
How do you feel about that clerk in Kentucky who had a problem with gay marriage? Remember her?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:40PM (1 child)
Actually, it's not inconsistent. Either way could be correct based on the information in the summary. Based on recent history I tend to believe that they were incorrectly purged, but that's not proven from the summary. He could have just been properly doing his job.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:20PM
TFA doesn't allege anything except him following the law either, so it's either shitty reporting by an outlet that would be predisposed to make such an accusation or there was so little factual support for such an accusation that they feared a lawsuit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.