Voting Rights

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old salt
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states ... me-threats

The sky is falling – that's what you may believe about a rash of new election laws being introduced, largely by the GOP, in statehouses across the country. Alternatively, you may think these laws are absolutely crucial to ensure election integrity.

The Conversation's Senior Politics Editor Naomi Schalit interviewed election law scholar Derek Muller about how he sees these new laws. Muller provides a surprisingly sanguine interpretation of what's going on. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

One group has said that “Americans’ access to the vote is in unprecedented peril.” What do you think?

I would not say that. These election bills marginally increase the difficulty for some voters by reducing some of the options, whether it's voting by mail or early voting. But many of these bills also expand voting opportunities, and many of them are tinkering at the margins of expansions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

In some circumstances, voters are no worse off than they were in 2018, and in some circumstances, they are better off. So, while there's a lot of heated rhetoric, I would say the changes to election law so far have been fairly modest.

So, if you compare the new laws to what the status of the laws was before those pandemic era expansions, it’s not that dramatic?

In many states, voting in 2022 and 2024 will not look very much different than it did in 2016. In some cases, there are bigger changes, but many times they're marginal things not obvious to the vast majority of voters.


Critics say these laws make it harder to vote. Are you seeing any evidence of that?

It depends on how we define "harder." Let's pick a law in Iowa. You could request absentee ballots up until 10 or 11 days before the election, and now it's up until 15 days before the election. Is that harder? You can still show up and vote on Election Day, you can still vote early. It's just that the window of opportunity to request an absentee ballot has narrowed.

On the flip side, does it really discourage many voters or prevent them from being able to vote? I think those are the open empirical questions that will have to be asked in the future.

Anything that limits or constrains voting days where they used to exist before does make it marginally harder. But the question is how significant the marginal cost is.

Do these laws have measurable effects on turnout?

I'm not a political scientist, so I'm careful about these kinds of questions. But a lot of the empirical literature is quite mixed. There's some evidence that some kinds of voter identification laws reduce turnout by a point or two. There are others that suggest they have no discernible impact on turnout.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the Department of Justice will scrutinize the wave of new laws and take action on any violations of federal law. What does it mean to have the attorney general say this?

The attorney general can investigate and scrutinize those laws. That's principally the attorney general's power under the Voting Rights Act, to think about initiating claims alleging that the political process is not equally open to participation on the basis of race.

But scrutinizing laws is very different from bringing a lawsuit, and bringing a lawsuit is very different from a court agreeing that the law does have that effect. Complicating matters is the Supreme Court is considering a case about how the Voting Rights Act should be construed – Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. The court might make it actually harder for the Department of Justice to bring those claims in the future. But undoubtedly the department investigating what states are doing will put legislators on their toes to think about how to tailor laws in a way that will not subject them to the department's wrath.

Do we know whether these laws affect election outcomes in terms of partisan politics? The criticism is that "the Republicans are putting measures into law that will help them win elections."

One question is whether it even affects turnout in the first place. Then the next question is, even if it does affect turnout, does it benefit one political party over another?

So it's political parties fighting over this, whether or not it actually has the effects that people think.

Do moves like this actually backfire by upsetting people who feel targeted?

Undoubtedly, actions in North Carolina and Georgia over the last several years significantly mobilized Democratic voters and voters of color to turn out as a kind of backlash. There were significant Democratic victories in North Carolina and Georgia shortly after controversies over voting laws came to the surface. How you measure that backlash is another political science question, but it remains a viable tool for those who oppose the laws to simply mobilize, get out the vote and elect their preferred candidates.


How do these laws comport with the general democratic standard of everyone who is eligible can cast a vote?

We have dramatically expanded opportunities to vote in the last several decades. Early voting was basically nonexistent 20 years ago, no-excuse absentee voting is now the default in many states, several states mail every eligible voter a ballot.

There are benefits to having so many opportunities, but those come with costs: The systems they create are sprawling, they are unwieldy at times, providing many more opportunities for things to go wrong or for people to be skeptical of the outcome. And stretching an election out over six or eight weeks means we're all voting with different kinds of information at the beginning of an election season versus at the end.

In some of these laws, state legislatures' involvement in elections has been increased – although I think the public is not necessarily aware of the involvement of partisans in election administration already. Is that a concern?

Most of our elections are run by partisan officials. Secretaries of state have a Republican or Democratic affiliation, and their role in certifying election results has typically been a pro forma task.

At the same time, especially before the election, there were changes being made by county or state officials, things executive branch officials were doing, that didn't necessarily comport with what the legislature had expressly provided in non-emergency situations, that caused a lot of friction between the legislature and those officials.

So, some of the proposed or enacted laws try to rein in local officials' discretion.
In Georgia, the legislature will choose one of the members of the Board of Elections to certify elections, instead of allowing the secretary of state to serve on that board. These tweaks happening in states reduce the amount of discretion that election officials have, or allow the legislature to have some say – not a total say – in that election process. ...
Jeff Davis & Bull Connor = stoking the backlash in GA.
seacoaster
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Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2018 4:36 pm

Re: Voting Rights

Post by seacoaster »

And...we're off:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html

"Election officials in one of the most populous counties in Texas have rejected about half of the applications for ballots because of the state’s new voting restrictions enacted by Republicans last year.

The clerk’s office in Travis County, the fifth-most-populous county and home to the capital of Austin, cited the law’s recent changes to identification requirements in rejecting about half of the 700 mail-in applications.

Other county clerk’s offices in the state, including those in Harris and Bexar counties, also are rejecting applications that fail to meet the new standard, or in which information doesn’t match the voter data on record.

Texas Republicans last year passed the bill establishing new limits on voting over the objections of Democrats, part of a wave of efforts by GOP-led states to impose new restrictions. Many in the Republican Party echoed former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election in arguing for the new restrictions.

The Texas law imposed new criminal penalties for violating voting laws, banned 24-hour and drive-through voting and allowed more access for partisan poll watchers. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit last November, alleging that the state’s restrictions disenfranchise eligible voters — including older Americans and people with disabilities — and that they violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Under the Texas law, ballot-by-mail applications must include a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. The identification number is then verified against the applicant’s voter registration record. If the numbers do not correspond, the new law requires that the application is rejected.

The Texas primary is one of the earliest in the nation, on March 1.

The clerk’s office in Travis said it does not have enough information from the secretary of state to provide voters with what they must do to fix their applications.

“Many other counties are experiencing the same high rejection rate,” the office said in a statement. “We have not received instructions from the state outlining what our office can do to assist voters in submitting a completed application.”

The clerk’s office plans to hold a news conference Tuesday to discuss the issue.

Here’s how the new Texas voting bill will affect access to the polls

In Harris County, home to Houston, the state’s most populous city, about 16 percent of nearly 1,300 applications have been rejected so far based on the new rules, the Texas Tribune reported.

Officials in Bexar County — which includes San Antonio, the second-most-populous city — have rejected 325 applications because the identification section was left unfilled or because the driver’s license number provided on the application was not in the applicant’s voter record.

Last September, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed Senate Bill 1 into law, arguing that it was necessary to “solidify trust and confidence in the outcome of our elections by making it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” but his critics disagreed and took their complaints to federal court."
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old salt
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?
a fan
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 4:53 pm I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?
Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.
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old salt
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:41 pm
old salt wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 4:53 pm I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?
Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.
Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.

How often do you change your driver's lic # or last 4 didits of your ssn ? It is ez to get an absentee ballot.
a fan
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:47 pm
a fan wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:41 pm
old salt wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 4:53 pm I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?
Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.
Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.
Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.
Typical Lax Dad
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Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 12:10 pm

Re: Voting Rights

Post by Typical Lax Dad »

a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 9:17 am
old salt wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:47 pm
a fan wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:41 pm
old salt wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 4:53 pm I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?
Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.
Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.
Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.
A farce.
“You lucky I ain’t read wretched yet!”
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MDlaxfan76
Posts: 25762
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:40 pm

Re: Voting Rights

Post by MDlaxfan76 »

seacoaster wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 6:39 am And...we're off:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html

"Election officials in one of the most populous counties in Texas have rejected about half of the applications for ballots because of the state’s new voting restrictions enacted by Republicans last year.

The clerk’s office in Travis County, the fifth-most-populous county and home to the capital of Austin, cited the law’s recent changes to identification requirements in rejecting about half of the 700 mail-in applications.

Other county clerk’s offices in the state, including those in Harris and Bexar counties, also are rejecting applications that fail to meet the new standard, or in which information doesn’t match the voter data on record.

Texas Republicans last year passed the bill establishing new limits on voting over the objections of Democrats, part of a wave of efforts by GOP-led states to impose new restrictions. Many in the Republican Party echoed former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election in arguing for the new restrictions.

The Texas law imposed new criminal penalties for violating voting laws, banned 24-hour and drive-through voting and allowed more access for partisan poll watchers. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit last November, alleging that the state’s restrictions disenfranchise eligible voters — including older Americans and people with disabilities — and that they violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Under the Texas law, ballot-by-mail applications must include a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. The identification number is then verified against the applicant’s voter registration record. If the numbers do not correspond, the new law requires that the application is rejected.

The Texas primary is one of the earliest in the nation, on March 1.

The clerk’s office in Travis said it does not have enough information from the secretary of state to provide voters with what they must do to fix their applications.

“Many other counties are experiencing the same high rejection rate,” the office said in a statement. “We have not received instructions from the state outlining what our office can do to assist voters in submitting a completed application.”

The clerk’s office plans to hold a news conference Tuesday to discuss the issue.

Here’s how the new Texas voting bill will affect access to the polls

In Harris County, home to Houston, the state’s most populous city, about 16 percent of nearly 1,300 applications have been rejected so far based on the new rules, the Texas Tribune reported.

Officials in Bexar County — which includes San Antonio, the second-most-populous city — have rejected 325 applications because the identification section was left unfilled or because the driver’s license number provided on the application was not in the applicant’s voter record.

Last September, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed Senate Bill 1 into law, arguing that it was necessary to “solidify trust and confidence in the outcome of our elections by making it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” but his critics disagreed and took their complaints to federal court."
yup, so lots of totally valid citizens are being denied...and not told how to correct that...
User avatar
MDlaxfan76
Posts: 25762
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:40 pm

Re: Voting Rights

Post by MDlaxfan76 »

old salt wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 6:56 pm
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states ... me-threats

The sky is falling – that's what you may believe about a rash of new election laws being introduced, largely by the GOP, in statehouses across the country. Alternatively, you may think these laws are absolutely crucial to ensure election integrity.

The Conversation's Senior Politics Editor Naomi Schalit interviewed election law scholar Derek Muller about how he sees these new laws. Muller provides a surprisingly sanguine interpretation of what's going on. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

One group has said that “Americans’ access to the vote is in unprecedented peril.” What do you think?

I would not say that. These election bills marginally increase the difficulty for some voters by reducing some of the options, whether it's voting by mail or early voting. But many of these bills also expand voting opportunities, and many of them are tinkering at the margins of expansions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

In some circumstances, voters are no worse off than they were in 2018, and in some circumstances, they are better off. So, while there's a lot of heated rhetoric, I would say the changes to election law so far have been fairly modest.

So, if you compare the new laws to what the status of the laws was before those pandemic era expansions, it’s not that dramatic?

In many states, voting in 2022 and 2024 will not look very much different than it did in 2016. In some cases, there are bigger changes, but many times they're marginal things not obvious to the vast majority of voters.


Critics say these laws make it harder to vote. Are you seeing any evidence of that?

It depends on how we define "harder." Let's pick a law in Iowa. You could request absentee ballots up until 10 or 11 days before the election, and now it's up until 15 days before the election. Is that harder? You can still show up and vote on Election Day, you can still vote early. It's just that the window of opportunity to request an absentee ballot has narrowed.

On the flip side, does it really discourage many voters or prevent them from being able to vote? I think those are the open empirical questions that will have to be asked in the future.

Anything that limits or constrains voting days where they used to exist before does make it marginally harder. But the question is how significant the marginal cost is.

Do these laws have measurable effects on turnout?

I'm not a political scientist, so I'm careful about these kinds of questions. But a lot of the empirical literature is quite mixed. There's some evidence that some kinds of voter identification laws reduce turnout by a point or two. There are others that suggest they have no discernible impact on turnout.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the Department of Justice will scrutinize the wave of new laws and take action on any violations of federal law. What does it mean to have the attorney general say this?

The attorney general can investigate and scrutinize those laws. That's principally the attorney general's power under the Voting Rights Act, to think about initiating claims alleging that the political process is not equally open to participation on the basis of race.

But scrutinizing laws is very different from bringing a lawsuit, and bringing a lawsuit is very different from a court agreeing that the law does have that effect. Complicating matters is the Supreme Court is considering a case about how the Voting Rights Act should be construed – Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. The court might make it actually harder for the Department of Justice to bring those claims in the future. But undoubtedly the department investigating what states are doing will put legislators on their toes to think about how to tailor laws in a way that will not subject them to the department's wrath.

Do we know whether these laws affect election outcomes in terms of partisan politics? The criticism is that "the Republicans are putting measures into law that will help them win elections."

One question is whether it even affects turnout in the first place. Then the next question is, even if it does affect turnout, does it benefit one political party over another?

So it's political parties fighting over this, whether or not it actually has the effects that people think.

Do moves like this actually backfire by upsetting people who feel targeted?

Undoubtedly, actions in North Carolina and Georgia over the last several years significantly mobilized Democratic voters and voters of color to turn out as a kind of backlash. There were significant Democratic victories in North Carolina and Georgia shortly after controversies over voting laws came to the surface. How you measure that backlash is another political science question, but it remains a viable tool for those who oppose the laws to simply mobilize, get out the vote and elect their preferred candidates.


How do these laws comport with the general democratic standard of everyone who is eligible can cast a vote?

We have dramatically expanded opportunities to vote in the last several decades. Early voting was basically nonexistent 20 years ago, no-excuse absentee voting is now the default in many states, several states mail every eligible voter a ballot.

There are benefits to having so many opportunities, but those come with costs: The systems they create are sprawling, they are unwieldy at times, providing many more opportunities for things to go wrong or for people to be skeptical of the outcome. And stretching an election out over six or eight weeks means we're all voting with different kinds of information at the beginning of an election season versus at the end.

In some of these laws, state legislatures' involvement in elections has been increased – although I think the public is not necessarily aware of the involvement of partisans in election administration already. Is that a concern?

Most of our elections are run by partisan officials. Secretaries of state have a Republican or Democratic affiliation, and their role in certifying election results has typically been a pro forma task.

At the same time, especially before the election, there were changes being made by county or state officials, things executive branch officials were doing, that didn't necessarily comport with what the legislature had expressly provided in non-emergency situations, that caused a lot of friction between the legislature and those officials.

So, some of the proposed or enacted laws try to rein in local officials' discretion.
In Georgia, the legislature will choose one of the members of the Board of Elections to certify elections, instead of allowing the secretary of state to serve on that board. These tweaks happening in states reduce the amount of discretion that election officials have, or allow the legislature to have some say – not a total say – in that election process. ...
Jeff Davis & Bull Connor = stoking the backlash in GA.
:lol: :lol: :roll:
interview of Federalist Society professor with plenty of prior track record.

Here's a dismantling of his prior bogus claims re objections, from a mere law student:

https://dailyiowan.com/2021/01/07/guest ... -the-same/

I think this a case of a smart guy, an expert, who wants to be reasonable and balanced, but doesn't realize that he's being overly generous about the motivations of the right wing. It's not as if he doesn't know...

Here's a very good, very detailed discussion of the voting rights efforts by both sides, including a discussion of the efforts in Congress, which it's clear he would actually find perfectly acceptable...but he then fails to admit that the GOP is entirely opposed to those reasonable, national level standards.

There's a bit of blindness associated with being so studiously "balanced". https://richardhelppie.com/derek_muller/
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old salt
Posts: 17511
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2018 11:44 am

Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

Typical Lax Dad wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:26 pm
a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 9:17 am
old salt wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:47 pm
a fan wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:41 pm
old salt wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 4:53 pm I'll have a Big Mac, fries & mail-in ballot. obtw, I moved across town since the last election. Do I need to tell anyone ?
Not if you man up, and push for in person voting only.

You and your party still haven't explained why voters can get an ID to vote no problem, but at the same time, they just can't manage to vote in person once every two years.
Wah, wah, wah. Stop whining & update your address on the voter rolls, so you get a ballot for the right district.
Still don't get it....the ONLY person here who's whining is you and your party.

And you don't want to fix the problem because you don't ACTUALLY care. Everyone here sees it, and that's why they mock you.

And you STILL haven't explained why you can't vote in person only. And the reason, obviously, is that you can't come up with an excuse.
A farce.
Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Real ID, state agency & vote roll data bases & internet access now make it easier & more accessible.

The ballot requests denied in TX, in the WP article cited above, show the errors in voter registry rolls & the failure of voters to provide accurate residential addresses or personal ID verification, all of which is now much easier to provide, update & verify.

If TX sent out unsolicited mail-in ballots for 2022 elections, all those erroneously registered voters would receive ballots without verifying their id or correct address for the ballot provided.

The farce is to not acknowledge that these & other similar vulnerabilities & inherent errors existed & were not detected in the 2020 election conducted under covid emergency rules. It's a farce to ignore these inherent vulnerabilities & to gaslight legit efforts to correct them as voter suppression.
User avatar
old salt
Posts: 17511
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2018 11:44 am

Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

MDlaxfan76 wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:44 pm
old salt wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 6:56 pm
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states ... me-threats

The sky is falling – that's what you may believe about a rash of new election laws being introduced, largely by the GOP, in statehouses across the country. Alternatively, you may think these laws are absolutely crucial to ensure election integrity.

The Conversation's Senior Politics Editor Naomi Schalit interviewed election law scholar Derek Muller about how he sees these new laws. Muller provides a surprisingly sanguine interpretation of what's going on. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

One group has said that “Americans’ access to the vote is in unprecedented peril.” What do you think?

I would not say that. These election bills marginally increase the difficulty for some voters by reducing some of the options, whether it's voting by mail or early voting. But many of these bills also expand voting opportunities, and many of them are tinkering at the margins of expansions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

In some circumstances, voters are no worse off than they were in 2018, and in some circumstances, they are better off. So, while there's a lot of heated rhetoric, I would say the changes to election law so far have been fairly modest.

So, if you compare the new laws to what the status of the laws was before those pandemic era expansions, it’s not that dramatic?

In many states, voting in 2022 and 2024 will not look very much different than it did in 2016. In some cases, there are bigger changes, but many times they're marginal things not obvious to the vast majority of voters.


Critics say these laws make it harder to vote. Are you seeing any evidence of that?

It depends on how we define "harder." Let's pick a law in Iowa. You could request absentee ballots up until 10 or 11 days before the election, and now it's up until 15 days before the election. Is that harder? You can still show up and vote on Election Day, you can still vote early. It's just that the window of opportunity to request an absentee ballot has narrowed.

On the flip side, does it really discourage many voters or prevent them from being able to vote? I think those are the open empirical questions that will have to be asked in the future.

Anything that limits or constrains voting days where they used to exist before does make it marginally harder. But the question is how significant the marginal cost is.

Do these laws have measurable effects on turnout?

I'm not a political scientist, so I'm careful about these kinds of questions. But a lot of the empirical literature is quite mixed. There's some evidence that some kinds of voter identification laws reduce turnout by a point or two. There are others that suggest they have no discernible impact on turnout.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the Department of Justice will scrutinize the wave of new laws and take action on any violations of federal law. What does it mean to have the attorney general say this?

The attorney general can investigate and scrutinize those laws. That's principally the attorney general's power under the Voting Rights Act, to think about initiating claims alleging that the political process is not equally open to participation on the basis of race.

But scrutinizing laws is very different from bringing a lawsuit, and bringing a lawsuit is very different from a court agreeing that the law does have that effect. Complicating matters is the Supreme Court is considering a case about how the Voting Rights Act should be construed – Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. The court might make it actually harder for the Department of Justice to bring those claims in the future. But undoubtedly the department investigating what states are doing will put legislators on their toes to think about how to tailor laws in a way that will not subject them to the department's wrath.

Do we know whether these laws affect election outcomes in terms of partisan politics? The criticism is that "the Republicans are putting measures into law that will help them win elections."

One question is whether it even affects turnout in the first place. Then the next question is, even if it does affect turnout, does it benefit one political party over another?

So it's political parties fighting over this, whether or not it actually has the effects that people think.

Do moves like this actually backfire by upsetting people who feel targeted?

Undoubtedly, actions in North Carolina and Georgia over the last several years significantly mobilized Democratic voters and voters of color to turn out as a kind of backlash. There were significant Democratic victories in North Carolina and Georgia shortly after controversies over voting laws came to the surface. How you measure that backlash is another political science question, but it remains a viable tool for those who oppose the laws to simply mobilize, get out the vote and elect their preferred candidates.


How do these laws comport with the general democratic standard of everyone who is eligible can cast a vote?

We have dramatically expanded opportunities to vote in the last several decades. Early voting was basically nonexistent 20 years ago, no-excuse absentee voting is now the default in many states, several states mail every eligible voter a ballot.

There are benefits to having so many opportunities, but those come with costs: The systems they create are sprawling, they are unwieldy at times, providing many more opportunities for things to go wrong or for people to be skeptical of the outcome. And stretching an election out over six or eight weeks means we're all voting with different kinds of information at the beginning of an election season versus at the end.

In some of these laws, state legislatures' involvement in elections has been increased – although I think the public is not necessarily aware of the involvement of partisans in election administration already. Is that a concern?

Most of our elections are run by partisan officials. Secretaries of state have a Republican or Democratic affiliation, and their role in certifying election results has typically been a pro forma task.

At the same time, especially before the election, there were changes being made by county or state officials, things executive branch officials were doing, that didn't necessarily comport with what the legislature had expressly provided in non-emergency situations, that caused a lot of friction between the legislature and those officials.

So, some of the proposed or enacted laws try to rein in local officials' discretion.
In Georgia, the legislature will choose one of the members of the Board of Elections to certify elections, instead of allowing the secretary of state to serve on that board. These tweaks happening in states reduce the amount of discretion that election officials have, or allow the legislature to have some say – not a total say – in that election process. ...
Jeff Davis & Bull Connor = stoking the backlash in GA.
:lol: :lol: :roll:
interview of Federalist Society professor with plenty of prior track record.

Here's a dismantling of his prior bogus claims re objections, from a mere law student:

https://dailyiowan.com/2021/01/07/guest ... -the-same/

I think this a case of a smart guy, an expert, who wants to be reasonable and balanced, but doesn't realize that he's being overly generous about the motivations of the right wing. It's not as if he doesn't know...

Here's a very good, very detailed discussion of the voting rights efforts by both sides, including a discussion of the efforts in Congress, which it's clear he would actually find perfectly acceptable...but he then fails to admit that the GOP is entirely opposed to those reasonable, national level standards.

There's a bit of blindness associated with being so studiously "balanced". https://richardhelppie.com/derek_muller/
When you can't refute the facts, attack the source.
Is that law student the best you could do to discredit him ? He doesn't even address the voting laws addressed by the Prof Mueller.
He lamely disagrees with an opinion on an entirely different subject.

You dismiss the Prof as just one of millions of "smart, reasonable & balanced" citizens who don't see the constant sky is falling threats that you do.
First it was the Russian collusion hoax, then Trump as Putin's puppet -- given Ukraine, how's that conspiracy theory look ?

Now, returning to normal, non-emergency election rules is voter suppression. Can't wait to see what's next.
a fan
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:38 pm When you can't refute the facts, attack the source.
:lol: I'll refute the facts.

Does the writer break down precisely what has changed in each State, let alone each county?

No, right? Then GTFO with your fake analysis as to what has changed. List the changes in each State. Let the reader decide if they're a big deal or not, instead of drawing your own fake conclusion, without detailing all the changes. Cause know what that looks like to a non-brain-dead reader?

Gaslighting.

(boy, that was difficult)
a fan
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:19 pm Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Great. What are they? Good luck coming up with legit reasons that wouldn't also apply to getting an ID. And nope. you don't get to hand us " the military".
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:19 pm Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Yeah---except you forget that you and your team have been telling us that remote voting is inherently insecure. That fraud when voting remotely is as common as speeding. And that your "evidence" that this fraud is rampant is that there's no evidence that fraud is rampant...."therefore" that tells us how easy it is to send in thousands of fake ballots.

You keep forgetting all these complaints.
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by Typical Lax Dad »

a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:26 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:19 pm Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Great. What are they? Good luck coming up with legit reasons that wouldn't also apply to getting an ID. And nope. you don't get to hand us " the military".
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:19 pm Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Yeah---except you forget that you and your team have been telling us that remote voting is inherently insecure. That fraud when voting remotely is as common as speeding. And that your "evidence" that this fraud is rampant is that there's no evidence that fraud is rampant...."therefore" that tells us how easy it is to send in thousands of fake ballots.

You keep forgetting all these complaints.
A poll tax supporter in the second old days. I am sure folks made an argument for it.
“You lucky I ain’t read wretched yet!”
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old salt
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:26 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:19 pm Because voters have legit reasons no to be able to vote in person.
Great. What are they? Good luck coming up with legit reasons that wouldn't also apply to getting an ID. And nope. you don't get to hand us " the military".
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:19 pm Absentee ballots are necessary, have been around forever & can be done securely.
Yeah---except you forget that you and your team have been telling us that remote voting is inherently insecure. That fraud when voting remotely is as common as speeding. And that your "evidence" that this fraud is rampant is that there's no evidence that fraud is rampant...."therefore" that tells us how easy it is to send in thousands of fake ballots.

You keep forgetting all these complaints.
You are intentionally being obtuse. I keep stating that absentee voting is essential & pointing out how security concerns can, & are, being addressed.

In your usual all-or-nothing blindness, you continue to misrepresent my position. I have not said that absentee voting is inherently inaccurate.
It does create opportunities for error, but those can be overcome, more easily now than in the past.

Registration inaccuracies & errors are not fraudulent. They still exist & need to be reduced as much as practically possible.
It is the voter's responsibility to keep their registration information accurate & up to date.
Last edited by old salt on Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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old salt
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:22 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:38 pm When you can't refute the facts, attack the source.
:lol: I'll refute the facts.

Does the writer break down precisely what has changed in each State, let alone each county?

No, right? Then GTFO with your fake analysis as to what has changed. List the changes in each State. Let the reader decide if they're a big deal or not, instead of drawing your own fake conclusion, without detailing all the changes. Cause know what that looks like to a non-brain-dead reader?

Gaslighting.

(boy, that was difficult)
He addresses that in the longer discussion that MD linked.
Read it, you might learn something.
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:46 pm You are intentionally being obtuse. I keep stating that absentee voting is essential & pointing out how security concerns can, & are, being addressed
In some posts, sure. And then in others, your slip shows, and your tell us that remote voter fraud---fraud---is as rampant as speeding.

But more importantly----you have no clue how other States run their elections, and have no way to make anything more than broad judgements about remote voting. You have no clue how things changed from the 2018 election to the 2020 election in Colorado. But you're telling us, hilariously, that 2018 was fine, and 2020 was bad, and fraudulent.
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:19 pm In your usual all-or-nothing blindness, you continue to misrepresent my position. I have not said that absentee voting is inherently inaccurate.
You said that remote voter fraud is as rampant as speeding. What the heck are you talking about now?
a fan
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by a fan »

old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:48 pm
a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:22 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:38 pm When you can't refute the facts, attack the source.
:lol: I'll refute the facts.

Does the writer break down precisely what has changed in each State, let alone each county?

No, right? Then GTFO with your fake analysis as to what has changed. List the changes in each State. Let the reader decide if they're a big deal or not, instead of drawing your own fake conclusion, without detailing all the changes. Cause know what that looks like to a non-brain-dead reader?

Gaslighting.

(boy, that was difficult)
He addresses that in the longer discussion that MD linked.
Read it, you might learn something.
The DailyIowan piece is shorter than the USToday link, and didn't have State by State details either.

Care to try again?
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old salt
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 7:06 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:48 pm
a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:22 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:38 pm When you can't refute the facts, attack the source.
:lol: I'll refute the facts.

Does the writer break down precisely what has changed in each State, let alone each county?

No, right? Then GTFO with your fake analysis as to what has changed. List the changes in each State. Let the reader decide if they're a big deal or not, instead of drawing your own fake conclusion, without detailing all the changes. Cause know what that looks like to a non-brain-dead reader?

Gaslighting.

(boy, that was difficult)
He addresses that in the longer discussion that MD linked.
Read it, you might learn something.
The DailyIowan piece is shorter than the USToday link, and didn't have State by State details either.

Care to try again?
:roll: ...the other link, at the bottom of the post. Do I need to read it to you ?
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old salt
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Re: Voting Rights

Post by old salt »

a fan wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 7:04 pm
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 6:46 pm You are intentionally being obtuse. I keep stating that absentee voting is essential & pointing out how security concerns can, & are, being addressed
In some posts, sure. And then in others, your slip shows, and your tell us that remote voter fraud---fraud---is as rampant as speeding.

But more importantly----you have no clue how other States run their elections, and have no way to make anything more than broad judgements about remote voting. You have no clue how things changed from the 2018 election to the 2020 election in Colorado. But you're telling us, hilariously, that 2018 was fine, and 2020 was bad, and fraudulent.Read the other link. Prof Mueller reviews the most common issues.
old salt wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:19 pm In your usual all-or-nothing blindness, you continue to misrepresent my position. I have not said that absentee voting is inherently inaccurate.
You said that remote voter fraud is as rampant as speeding. What the heck are you talking about now?
That's not what I said, & you know it.
old salt wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 2:35 am
a fan wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 11:21 pm
Dude. You just told us that voter fraud is as rampant as speeding in America. Wrong -- I said it's as ez as speeding, did not comment on frequency. Like speeding, it's not possible to determine frequency with certainty. That means that at some point, every voter in America has committed voter fraud. No, it means you are making sh!t up.If that's not what you mean, stop making wild claims like that. No wilder than your hyperbolic "analogies".

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