Voting Rights

[Farfromgeneva]

Back to the Suppression Playbook. Remember when the GOP believed in local control? Or really, anything supporting a free and open society? Long gone …

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/03/opin ... -bill.html

“Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas, is expected to sign a bill in the next few days that would make it immeasurably more difficult for cities in the state to govern themselves. The bill would strip cities of the ability to set standards for local workplaces, to ensure civil rights, and to improve their environments, trampling on the rights of voters who elected local officials to do just that.

The bill, recently approved by the Texas House and Senate, would nullify any city ordinance or regulation that conflicts with existing state policy in those crucial areas, and would give private citizens or businesses the right to sue and seek damages if they believe there is a discrepancy between city and state. That means no city could prohibit discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. employees, as several Texas cities have done. No city could adopt new rules to limit predatory payday-lending practices. No city could restrict overgrown lots, or unsafe festivals, or inadequate waste storage. Cities would even be banned from enacting local worker protections, including requiring water breaks for laborers in the Texas heat, as Dallas, Austin and other cities have done following multiple deaths and injuries.

Business lobbyists and Republican legislators who have pushed the bill said its purpose was to rid the state of a patchwork of conflicting regulations. In fact, that patchwork largely exists only in three or four mostly Democratic cities in an overwhelmingly red state, and the bill is the latest effort by Republicans to rid the state of any policies that conflict with their hard-right agenda — even if those policies are fully supported by voters in those cities, who elect representatives to serve their interests.

Already the state won’t let cities ban discrimination against low-income renters, and it prohibits them from cutting their police budgets. Dozens of other bills have been introduced to restrict election reforms by Texas cities and counties, including one that would let an official, most likely a Republican, overturn election results in a single place: largely Democratic Harris County, which includes Houston. “The bill is undemocratic,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio told The Texas Tribune. “It is probably the most undemocratic thing the Legislature has done, and that list is getting very long. Local voters have created city charters, and I can’t imagine that they will be pleased to have their decisions usurped by lawmakers.”

By reducing the right of localities to make their own decisions, Texas has joined dozens of other states that have asserted their dominance over cities in recent years through a practice known as state pre-emption. One watchdog group has counted more than 650 pre-emption bills in state legislatures this year; the large majority have been introduced by Republican lawmakers to curb policymaking in cities run by Democrats.

It’s not a new phenomenon — city halls and state capitols have always jockeyed for authority, and in a legal showdown, the state usually wins, as the more supreme power. But conservatives used to champion ideas like local autonomy, devolution and even block grants as a way of weakening centralized control. The 20th-century movement toward “home rule,” letting localities handle most of their own affairs, was once supported by both Republicans and Democrats. What’s now become clear is that Republicans dislike local control if they are not in charge of it. The home rule movement has steadily faded in the last few decades as state lawmakers on the right have become more aggressive in invalidating the priorities of elected officials in cities, which have moved leftward in their voting patterns in recent years.

“We are seeing a real increase in the pre-emption of local authority,” said Clarence Anthony, chief executive of the National League of Cities, and former mayor of South Bay, Fla. “Local officials are elected by citizens to represent them, and they’re the ones who know what their citizens need the most. But we’ve been seeing state legislators trying to have control over local communities, and that’s not good governance at all.”

Many of the recent bills are particularly brazen in their disdain for local decision-making. The Florida Legislature passed a bill in early May allowing businesses to challenge municipal ordinances in court simply for being “unreasonable.” If they win, the businesses can collect $50,000 in attorney fees from the taxpayers if the ordinance is not withdrawn, but cities can’t collect attorney fees if they win. In Tennessee, Republicans were angry that leaders in Nashville blocked a bid to host the 2024 G.O.P. convention, so they passed a bill to shrink the size of the Nashville Metro Council and upend its voting district maps, which many residents say will dilute the political strength of minority groups. A local court put that law on hold for now, but the final outcome has not been determined.

Most of these legislative power plays follow the ideological patterns of the hard-right MAGA core within the Republican Party, which is often more visible at the state than the national level. The efforts tend to fall into the following categories:

Democracy and voting. Several states are trying to make it harder for citizens to enact laws or constitutional changes through the referendum process, after abortion-rights supporters won several ballot initiatives in 2022. In Ohio, Republican lawmakers put a measure on the August ballot that would raise the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment to 60 percent from a simple majority, where it has been since 1912, hoping to head off organized efforts to permit abortion in the state, as well as to raise the minimum wage and undo Republican gerrymandering. (They put the measure on a low-turnout election day, rather than the better-known day in November.) Arkansas now requires signatures from 50 counties (of 75) to get an initiative on the ballot, up from 15. Anyone can propose a ballot initiative, regardless of their ideology — recent measures in Kansas and Kentucky, for example, were proposed by anti-abortion groups. (Both were ultimately rejected by voters.) Restricting these ballot measures is fundamentally about depriving voters of a way to put a check on legislators, regardless of ideology.

In addition to the Texas bills, several states have tried to usurp the role of local election boards and officials, restricting attempts to expand voting and making it more difficult for voters in urban areas, who are often people of color, to cast a ballot. One study showed that there were 244 bills introduced last year in 33 states to interfere with election administration, 24 of which passed. Republican officials in Georgia, urged on by Donald Trump, are still trying to take over the election board in the Atlanta area, though a bipartisan panel recommended earlier this year that they stop.

Law enforcement and courts. Many rural legislators who live nowhere near urban areas are trying to capitalize on an exaggerated fear of crime to change the way cities enforce the law and prosecute criminals. In Mississippi, new laws allow the state to take over policing and the court system in Jackson, which is more than 80 percent Black, but nowhere else. The N.A.A.C.P. immediately sued the state after the laws were enacted in April, saying the laws discriminate against Black citizens and erode their political power. A new law in Georgia creates a commission with the power to remove local prosecutors. One elected district attorney there, Fani Willis of Fulton County, is investigating Mr. Trump over possible election fraud.

Guns. Only a handful of states — Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York — allow cities to regulate firearms. The other 45 have enacted either extreme or limited forms of pre-emption that reserve this power to the states. This effectively means that cities in those states must accept the same attitudes around the use of guns as rural areas, even if voters might have different attitudes and would prefer different laws. Some states, including Florida and Kentucky, have gone so far as to impose fines or criminal liability on any local official who violates the pre-emption rules.

Discrimination. Many Republican-controlled states have forbidden cities from banning discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. employees in the workplace, and there are hundreds of bills now pending that would override local authorities in order to ban books on L.G.B.T.Q. issues and prohibit drag-queen shows, even if those communities want them. Arkansas and Tennessee already prohibit cities from enacting anti-discrimination protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people, and Texas is one of several states that appears to be heading in the same direction. Many states are also telling local school boards to change their curriculums to limit classroom discussion of slavery, racial prejudice and the civil rights movement.

There are cases where pre-emption laws are in the public interest: for example, when it becomes necessary for states to prevent their cities from creating or perpetuating injustices, to prevent discrimination and help citizens achieve fundamental rights like equal access to housing, employment and the ballot. New York State did the right thing recently by proposing a law to get cities and towns to build more housing for families that are being priced out by restrictive zoning rules, but backed down when suburban towns protested on infringements to their autonomy. California was more successful in acting to remove local zoning laws to foster more low-income housing and increase density around transportation hubs.

But the vast majority of the pre-emption bills and laws in the last few years do not meet that test. They undermine fundamental principles of equality as well as access to the ballot and fair representation.

Some cities, including Nashville, Cleveland and Coral Gables, Fla., have fought back and won in court; in Maryland, Florida and several other states, Democrats have joined Republican moderates to beat back some of these bills. But in many other states, the will of the people in these cities is being silenced. They and their representatives will have to use every legal means available to be heard.“

Parts of that seem designed to tickle Elon’s Twig & Berries.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Commentary on the recent SCOTUS voting rights decision:

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/scotus-vr ... -kavanaugh

“The Supreme Court last week refused an opportunity in Allen vs. Milligan to completely gut the Voting Rights Act. In doing so, the hard right-wing court effectively prevented the Republican Party from terminating multi-racial democracy. The GOP plan to impose one-party rule through judicial fiat lies in tatters, and what has seemed like an inevitable march towards authoritarianism suddenly looks a lot less inevitable.

The ruling has rightly been celebrated. But it's also, in many respects, been underappreciated. Cable news has been obsessed with the second indictment of former president Donald Trump. And partisans on both sides are, in general, unsure what to make of John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, of all people, delivering a stinging, and in some ways decisive, blow against Christofascist hegemony.

This is a huge victory, though, and I think it's important to explain why US democracy, unexpectedly, and rather abruptly, looks like it might survive.

SCOTUS concludes that wholesale disenfranchisement of Black people is bad

The Milligan lawsuit involved a particularly egregious gerrymander in Alabama. Lawmakers drew a map which squished almost all Black voters into a single majority-minority congressional district, allowing white Republicans to control the state's other six seats. Black people make up almost 27 percent of Alabama’s population, but the map restricted them to only 14 percent of the state's representation, since the redrawn map all but guaranteed that a Black candidate had a shot of winning just one district out of seven.

The Alabama map was egregious, racist, and clearly unconstitutional. Nonetheless, it seemed almost certain that the current Supreme Court would refuse to strike it down.

John Roberts has spent his entire career waging a tireless war against the Voting Rights Act. In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, even before Trump increased the conservative majority to 6-3, the court decided that states with a history of racist election shenanigans no longer had to get federal approval for new election laws. States like Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana rushed to pass stricter voter ID requirements, to close polling places, and to purge voters from state rolls. All of these measures have disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters, which was the point all along.

More, in February 2022, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to use its racist gerrymander in last year’s midterm election, overturning a lower court ruling that held the map had to be thrown out. If the court was willing to protect the GOP's racist map-making in 2022, it seemed likely they'd protect them forever.

But somehow they didn't. Instead, Roberts, writing for the majority, rebuked Alabama’s conservative legislature, arguing that "the heart of these cases is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama's attempt to remake [Supreme Court voting rights] jurisprudence anew."

In other words, conservatives brought the case to give the conservative majority on the Supreme Court a chance to throw out precedent and destroy the Voting Rights Act completely, making America safe for racist gerrymanders and the wholesale, unchecked destruction of Black voting power.

Given the court's willingness to abandon precedent on abortion rights, to name just one example, this seemed like a reasonable tactic. But Roberts disappointed them.

Why did Roberts disappoint them? It's hard to say. It's possible that the massive backlash to the court's abortion decision, and the recent corruption scandals involving Clarence Thomas, have made some conservative justices more cautious. Perhaps the Alabama gerrymander was just so egregious that it shocked even Roberts and Kavanaugh. Or maybe, as Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal speculates, Roberts just really hates computers and disliked the way the Alabama legislature used software to create their maps.

Republicans still have to win votes

We don't exactly know why Roberts and Kavanaugh reversed course on voting rights. But we do know that their decision undermines what appears to have been the Republican long term strategy towards seizing minoritarian power.

It's no secret that Republicans have been struggling electorally for some time. They've won the popular vote for president just once in the last 31 years. They face major demographic headwinds.

The party relies mainly on white voters in elections, but the nation is diversifying quickly. In the last census 4 of 10 Americans were non-white, and the white population declined in absolute numbers over the previous decade for the first time in history. In 2022, the erosion of abortion rights galvanized Democratic voters, women, and younger voters, leading to a terrible Republican performance, despite Democratic President Joe Biden's weak approval ratings.

Republicans could address this by moving away from white identity politics and trying to bring in other voters. Instead, though, they've doubled down on extremism, and tried to make up the difference through an assault on voting rights. If only Republican voters can vote, it doesn't matter how few of those voters there are, or how unpopular their policies may be.

Donald Trump's election lies were the most naked expression of this philosophy. He simply claimed that votes in mostly Black cities like Philadelphia were illegitimate. His followers attempted to disenfranchise Black people and Democrats through a violent coup that would have nullified Joe Biden's 2020 victory.

January 6 was unsuccessful. But longer term, more patient and perspicacious Republicans hoped that a nonviolent, judicial-engineered coup could achieve the same ends. By creating aggressive gerrymanders and putting in place tried and true voting restrictions — like a poll tax in Florida — Republicans could choose their own electorate, and rely on the 6-3 Supreme Court majority to back them up.

The result would effectively be a judiciary-led return to Jim Crow. White conservatives would impose tyrannical rule under a sham "democracy," and everyone else would have no recourse. As the number of white voters dwindled, conservatives could simply ramp up voting restrictions — which would ensure, among other things, their continued domination of the courts. It's a recipe for permanent one-party rule in red states. And not just in red states.

Milligan puts an end to that authoritarian Republican dream. The extremist Roberts court has said that there is a limit in how far even they're willing to go in shredding democracy for the GOP.

In the short term, that means maps in Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina will probably have to be redrawn. Other Republican legislatures can't count on their racist gerrymanders being upheld. None of this guarantees that Democrats can flip the House in 2024. But it gives them a fighting chance.

In the longer term, it means that Republicans are going to have to actually compete for votes, rather than just imposing their will by judicial fiat.

Not utopia. But not bad.

Milligan doesn't solve all our problems. Republicans continue to try to use state power to erode liberty. They're targeting abortion rights. They've passed laws to restrict free speech for Black and LGBT people. They're trying to eliminate trans people in public spaces. Leading Republican candidates like Trump and Ron DeSantis have made their contempt for democratic elections clear. Many US institutions, like the Senate and the electoral college, give Republicans disproportionate power, and ensure that they can remain competitive even with very unpopular policies.

And of course the far right Supreme Court has itself eroded voting rights, and may do so again. As Melissa Murray and Steve Vladek write at the Washington Post, the Milligan decision "does not strengthen" the Voting Rights Act. It "merely preserves the status quo."

The status quo in the US is not great, to put it mildly. But two weeks ago, it seemed likely that John Roberts and his colleagues were going to put a stake through the heart of ballot access. They didn't. Which means, just maybe, US democracy has a future after all.”

[Seacoaster(1)]

Is it really weird to think that the GOP is not interested in black folks voting? Is this institutional racism?

Alabama brushed back again:

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-al ... eme-court/

"On Tuesday, Sept. 5, a federal court blocked the implementation of Alabama’s new congressional map — enacted by the state’s Republican governor and passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature — that does not have a second majority-Black district. A court-appointed special master will now draw Alabama’s congressional map for the 2024 election cycle.

In today’s order, the court found that the Republican-backed plan “perpetuates rather than corrects the Section Two violation we found.” The now-blocked plan has a Black voting age population of 39.93% in the state’s 2nd Congressional District and 50.65% in the 7th Congressional District, thereby clearly lacking a second district that would allow Black voters to have the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.

This victory for Alabama voters comes after almost two full years of litigation. In November 2021, two lawsuits were filed on behalf of voters and pro-voting organizations alleging that Alabama’s congressional map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). A district court blocked the map and ordered the creation of a new map with two majority-Black districts.

The district court’s 2022 order stated that “any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” Today, a three judge panel agreed and held that the map enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature “falls short of this required remedy” and “does not completely remedy the likely Section Two violation that we found and the Supreme Court affirmed” on June 8, 2023 in its landmark Allen v. Milligan ruling.

In its June opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Section 2 of the VRA and affirmed the district court’s decision that blocked Alabama’s congressional map for likely violating the VRA and ordered a new plan with the inclusion of a second majority-Black district.

Shortly after the Court’s ruling, the plaintiffs in the case provided the Legislature with a map that contains the two required majority-Black districts entitled the VRA Plaintiffs’ Plan, but the plan ultimately did not make it out of the Republican-controlled Legislature. Public hearings were held, but Republicans never introduced their plans during these public meetings. Instead, Republicans finally introduced their plans on the first day of the Alabama Legislature’s special session and ultimately passed a new plan “along racial lines (with the exception of one Black member of the house).”

In July, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed the new congressional map into law in blatant defiance of the federal court order, justifying the action with: “The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups.”

In response to Republican officials’ open defiance of a court order the court wrote:

We are disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy. And we are struck by the extraordinary circumstance we face. We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district.

The opinion concludes: “The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. The 2023 Plan plainly fails to do so.”

As a result, the court directed a court-appointed special master to begin working on a new congressional map for the 2024 election cycle. This decision is a long-fought victory for Black voters in Alabama who are now one step closer to having a congressional map that gives Black voters the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice."

Florida too:

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-al ... h-florida/

"On Saturday, Sept. 2, Florida Judge Lee Marsh struck down the state’s congressional map, holding that it violates the state constitution by denying Black Floridians the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice in North Florida.

The congressional map — which was pushed through the Florida Legislature last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — dismantled the state’s historically Black-performing 5th Congressional District formerly represented by Rep. Al Lawson (D-Fla.). The DeSantis map eliminated the former configuration of North Florida’s 5th Congressional District by spreading Black voters across four separate districts.

Saturday’s order stems from a state-level lawsuit, Black Voters Matter v. Byrd, alleging that Florida’s congressional map violates the state constitution’s Fair Districts Amendment by diminishing the ability of Black voters to elect their candidates of choice. Under the Fair Districts Amendment’s “non-diminishment standard,” districts cannot be drawn in a manner that “diminishes” the ability of minority voters to elect their preferred candidate.

In advance of a trial on the merits of the case that was scheduled for late August, the parties entered an agreement that narrowed the scope of the plaintiffs’ claims to exclusively focus on the diminishment of Black voting power in North Florida. In his order ruling in favor of the pro-voting groups who brought the lawsuit, Marsh held that the “[p]laintiffs have shown that the Enacted Plan results in the diminishment of Black voters’ ability to elect their candidate of choice in violation of the Florida Constitution.” Marsh added that “[a]t the hearing on the parties’ outstanding legal issues, Defendants Florida House and Florida Senate conceded as much.”

In addition to striking down the map, Marsh rejected an argument advanced by the Florida secretary of state, who asserted that the plaintiffs had to satisfy certain preconditions used in some federal redistricting cases for the Florida Constitution’s non-diminishment standard to apply. “[T]he Secretary’s arguments have no basis under either federal precedent or Florida Supreme Court precedent,” Marsh wrote.

Finally, Marsh rebuffed the Florida House, Senate and secretary of state’s argument that the Florida Constitution’s “non-diminishment” provision violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by requiring the “Defendants to implement a racial gerrymander.” According to Marsh’s order, the “Defendants have not proved that race predominated in the drawing of the district…Defendants’ racial gerrymandering affirmative defense thus fails at every level, for multiple, independent reasons.” Accordingly, Marsh reaffirmed the constitutionality of the Fair Districts Amendment’s protection for minority voters, finding that it “is justified by a compelling state interest in rooting out persistent discrimination in the state.”

On Sept. 4, two days after Marsh’s ruling, the defendants appealed this voting rights victory, resulting in an automatic pause of the trial court’s order pending further review. If accepted for review, the appeal will ultimately be decided by the Florida Supreme Court on an expedited schedule per the agreement reached by the parties on Aug. 11.

The agreement notes that if the Florida Supreme Court agrees to hear the appeal, it must issue a decision by Dec. 31, 2023 in order to provide enough time for the Florida Legislature to adopt a new map if necessary during its 2024 legislative session, which begins on Jan. 9, 2024."

[MDlaxfan76]

They're going to keep trying no matter what.

Pretty amazing in 2023, but here we are.

John Roberts, whaddya think now?

[MDlaxfan76]

Back to the Suppression Playbook. Remember when the GOP believed in local control? Or really, anything supporting a free and open society? Long gone …

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/03/opin ... -bill.html

“Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas, is expected to sign a bill in the next few days that would make it immeasurably more difficult for cities in the state to govern themselves. The bill would strip cities of the ability to set standards for local workplaces, to ensure civil rights, and to improve their environments, trampling on the rights of voters who elected local officials to do just that.

The bill, recently approved by the Texas House and Senate, would nullify any city ordinance or regulation that conflicts with existing state policy in those crucial areas, and would give private citizens or businesses the right to sue and seek damages if they believe there is a discrepancy between city and state. That means no city could prohibit discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. employees, as several Texas cities have done. No city could adopt new rules to limit predatory payday-lending practices. No city could restrict overgrown lots, or unsafe festivals, or inadequate waste storage. Cities would even be banned from enacting local worker protections, including requiring water breaks for laborers in the Texas heat, as Dallas, Austin and other cities have done following multiple deaths and injuries.

Business lobbyists and Republican legislators who have pushed the bill said its purpose was to rid the state of a patchwork of conflicting regulations. In fact, that patchwork largely exists only in three or four mostly Democratic cities in an overwhelmingly red state, and the bill is the latest effort by Republicans to rid the state of any policies that conflict with their hard-right agenda — even if those policies are fully supported by voters in those cities, who elect representatives to serve their interests.

Already the state won’t let cities ban discrimination against low-income renters, and it prohibits them from cutting their police budgets. Dozens of other bills have been introduced to restrict election reforms by Texas cities and counties, including one that would let an official, most likely a Republican, overturn election results in a single place: largely Democratic Harris County, which includes Houston. “The bill is undemocratic,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio told The Texas Tribune. “It is probably the most undemocratic thing the Legislature has done, and that list is getting very long. Local voters have created city charters, and I can’t imagine that they will be pleased to have their decisions usurped by lawmakers.”

By reducing the right of localities to make their own decisions, Texas has joined dozens of other states that have asserted their dominance over cities in recent years through a practice known as state pre-emption. One watchdog group has counted more than 650 pre-emption bills in state legislatures this year; the large majority have been introduced by Republican lawmakers to curb policymaking in cities run by Democrats.

It’s not a new phenomenon — city halls and state capitols have always jockeyed for authority, and in a legal showdown, the state usually wins, as the more supreme power. But conservatives used to champion ideas like local autonomy, devolution and even block grants as a way of weakening centralized control. The 20th-century movement toward “home rule,” letting localities handle most of their own affairs, was once supported by both Republicans and Democrats. What’s now become clear is that Republicans dislike local control if they are not in charge of it. The home rule movement has steadily faded in the last few decades as state lawmakers on the right have become more aggressive in invalidating the priorities of elected officials in cities, which have moved leftward in their voting patterns in recent years.

“We are seeing a real increase in the pre-emption of local authority,” said Clarence Anthony, chief executive of the National League of Cities, and former mayor of South Bay, Fla. “Local officials are elected by citizens to represent them, and they’re the ones who know what their citizens need the most. But we’ve been seeing state legislators trying to have control over local communities, and that’s not good governance at all.”

Many of the recent bills are particularly brazen in their disdain for local decision-making. The Florida Legislature passed a bill in early May allowing businesses to challenge municipal ordinances in court simply for being “unreasonable.” If they win, the businesses can collect $50,000 in attorney fees from the taxpayers if the ordinance is not withdrawn, but cities can’t collect attorney fees if they win. In Tennessee, Republicans were angry that leaders in Nashville blocked a bid to host the 2024 G.O.P. convention, so they passed a bill to shrink the size of the Nashville Metro Council and upend its voting district maps, which many residents say will dilute the political strength of minority groups. A local court put that law on hold for now, but the final outcome has not been determined.

Most of these legislative power plays follow the ideological patterns of the hard-right MAGA core within the Republican Party, which is often more visible at the state than the national level. The efforts tend to fall into the following categories:

Democracy and voting. Several states are trying to make it harder for citizens to enact laws or constitutional changes through the referendum process, after abortion-rights supporters won several ballot initiatives in 2022. In Ohio, Republican lawmakers put a measure on the August ballot that would raise the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment to 60 percent from a simple majority, where it has been since 1912, hoping to head off organized efforts to permit abortion in the state, as well as to raise the minimum wage and undo Republican gerrymandering. (They put the measure on a low-turnout election day, rather than the better-known day in November.) Arkansas now requires signatures from 50 counties (of 75) to get an initiative on the ballot, up from 15. Anyone can propose a ballot initiative, regardless of their ideology — recent measures in Kansas and Kentucky, for example, were proposed by anti-abortion groups. (Both were ultimately rejected by voters.) Restricting these ballot measures is fundamentally about depriving voters of a way to put a check on legislators, regardless of ideology.

In addition to the Texas bills, several states have tried to usurp the role of local election boards and officials, restricting attempts to expand voting and making it more difficult for voters in urban areas, who are often people of color, to cast a ballot. One study showed that there were 244 bills introduced last year in 33 states to interfere with election administration, 24 of which passed. Republican officials in Georgia, urged on by Donald Trump, are still trying to take over the election board in the Atlanta area, though a bipartisan panel recommended earlier this year that they stop.

Law enforcement and courts. Many rural legislators who live nowhere near urban areas are trying to capitalize on an exaggerated fear of crime to change the way cities enforce the law and prosecute criminals. In Mississippi, new laws allow the state to take over policing and the court system in Jackson, which is more than 80 percent Black, but nowhere else. The N.A.A.C.P. immediately sued the state after the laws were enacted in April, saying the laws discriminate against Black citizens and erode their political power. A new law in Georgia creates a commission with the power to remove local prosecutors. One elected district attorney there, Fani Willis of Fulton County, is investigating Mr. Trump over possible election fraud.

Guns. Only a handful of states — Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York — allow cities to regulate firearms. The other 45 have enacted either extreme or limited forms of pre-emption that reserve this power to the states. This effectively means that cities in those states must accept the same attitudes around the use of guns as rural areas, even if voters might have different attitudes and would prefer different laws. Some states, including Florida and Kentucky, have gone so far as to impose fines or criminal liability on any local official who violates the pre-emption rules.

Discrimination. Many Republican-controlled states have forbidden cities from banning discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. employees in the workplace, and there are hundreds of bills now pending that would override local authorities in order to ban books on L.G.B.T.Q. issues and prohibit drag-queen shows, even if those communities want them. Arkansas and Tennessee already prohibit cities from enacting anti-discrimination protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people, and Texas is one of several states that appears to be heading in the same direction. Many states are also telling local school boards to change their curriculums to limit classroom discussion of slavery, racial prejudice and the civil rights movement.

There are cases where pre-emption laws are in the public interest: for example, when it becomes necessary for states to prevent their cities from creating or perpetuating injustices, to prevent discrimination and help citizens achieve fundamental rights like equal access to housing, employment and the ballot. New York State did the right thing recently by proposing a law to get cities and towns to build more housing for families that are being priced out by restrictive zoning rules, but backed down when suburban towns protested on infringements to their autonomy. California was more successful in acting to remove local zoning laws to foster more low-income housing and increase density around transportation hubs.

But the vast majority of the pre-emption bills and laws in the last few years do not meet that test. They undermine fundamental principles of equality as well as access to the ballot and fair representation.

Some cities, including Nashville, Cleveland and Coral Gables, Fla., have fought back and won in court; in Maryland, Florida and several other states, Democrats have joined Republican moderates to beat back some of these bills. But in many other states, the will of the people in these cities is being silenced. They and their representatives will have to use every legal means available to be heard.“

Parts of that seem designed to tickle Elon’s Twig & Berries.

HooDat, where are you on this???

[youthathletics]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

[MDlaxfan76]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

super tight election decided by 251 votes makes sense to look at whether fraud could have tipped the balance. Especially with some actual potential evidence of such.
https://apnews.com/article/mishandled-b ... 027d64ae2d

2020 had no such actual evidence, nor was any POTUS state count remotely close enough to have been effected by fraud. It would have required massive fraud efforts and there was never any legitimate basis to even suspect such. Instead, totally bogus, easily disprovable, claims were made about 'fraud', all of which were embarrassingly rejected in the courts as bogus. And all audits removed any shred of continued question, though obviously that didn't prevent the ongoing MAGA BS.

If you'll recall, the few instances in which fraud actually happened, it was mostly done by Republicans.

But this 'project' in 2020 and extended is all about delegitimizing all elections, delegitimizing democracy itself.

[Typical Lax Dad]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

I know Joe and his political rival. His rival was an undergraduate student when I was in graduate school. Good dude…been orbiting politics for 20 years. It’s a small world. Joe’s son and my son were in the same soccer class at 5 years old. Mine was 4 though. Also went to HS together. I think Joe was sitting down during that time or at least for part of it…. Local elections with 200 or 300 vote margin of difference should be subject to review if there is good reason.

[youthathletics]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

super tight election decided by 251 votes makes sense to look at whether fraud could have tipped the balance. Especially with some actual potential evidence of such.
https://apnews.com/article/mishandled-b ... 027d64ae2d

2020 had no such actual evidence, nor was any POTUS state count remotely close enough to have been effected by fraud. It would have required massive fraud efforts and there was never any legitimate basis to even suspect such. Instead, totally bogus, easily disprovable, claims were made about 'fraud', all of which were embarrassingly rejected in the courts as bogus. And all audits removed any shred of continued question, though obviously that didn't prevent the ongoing MAGA BS.

If you'll recall, the few instances in which fraud actually happened, it was mostly done by Republicans.

But this 'project' in 2020 and extended is all about delegitimizing all elections, delegitimizing democracy itself.

BS.....the point is fraud happens and it only gets worse with more lenient voting methods. To your point, if you do not have concrete proof, you validate the fraud as...oh well, unless and until it suites or favors those that decide its worthy of investigation. We have to stop accepting it is going to happen b/c we do not have proof at the moment. Just zoom out, since you made the point this was such a small election....it only magnifies as the election is larger.

No need to reply and start the voting arguments all over again.....we have more important things to do like criticize OS for everything he says.

[youthathletics]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

I know Joe and his political rival. His rival was an undergraduate student when I was in graduate school. Good dude…been orbiting politics for 20 years. It’s a small world. Joe’s son and my son were in the same soccer class at 5 years old. Mine was 4 though. Also went to HS together. I think Joe was sitting down during that time or at least for part of it…. Local elections with 200 or 300 vote margin of difference should be subject to review if there is good reason.

neat story, small world.

[Typical Lax Dad]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

I know Joe and his political rival. His rival was an undergraduate student when I was in graduate school. Good dude…been orbiting politics for 20 years. It’s a small world. Joe’s son and my son were in the same soccer class at 5 years old. Mine was 4 though. Also went to HS together. I think Joe was sitting down during that time or at least for part of it…. Local elections with 200 or 300 vote margin of difference should be subject to review if there is good reason.

neat story, small world.

It is.

[SCLaxAttack]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

super tight election decided by 251 votes makes sense to look at whether fraud could have tipped the balance. Especially with some actual potential evidence of such.
https://apnews.com/article/mishandled-b ... 027d64ae2d

2020 had no such actual evidence, nor was any POTUS state count remotely close enough to have been effected by fraud. It would have required massive fraud efforts and there was never any legitimate basis to even suspect such. Instead, totally bogus, easily disprovable, claims were made about 'fraud', all of which were embarrassingly rejected in the courts as bogus. And all audits removed any shred of continued question, though obviously that didn't prevent the ongoing MAGA BS.

If you'll recall, the few instances in which fraud actually happened, it was mostly done by Republicans.

But this 'project' in 2020 and extended is all about delegitimizing all elections, delegitimizing democracy itself.

BS.....the point is fraud happens and it only gets worse with more lenient voting methods. To your point, if you do not have concrete proof, you validate the fraud as...oh well, unless and until it suites or favors those that decide its worthy of investigation. We have to stop accepting it is going to happen b/c we do not have proof at the moment. Just zoom out, since you made the point this was such a small election....it only magnifies as the election is larger.

No need to reply and start the voting arguments all over again.....we have more important things to do like criticize OS for everything he says.

Hogwash.

1. The law and the processes put in place, i.e. the lock box video, and the judge who ordered a new vote, worked. That’s how the issue was caught. The 2020 frauds were caught, too. You and Trump WANT to believe there was massive fraud in 2020 that could impact those results and hoped that judges would be politically motivated to rule against the law, but there wasn’t.

2. Personally I don’t understand the issue with people placing other people legitimate absentee/mail-in ballots for other people. Why can someone put multiple envelopes into a mail box but not into a lock box?

3. The incomplete/incorrect/invalid mail-in ballots were found. The law and the election officials chartered with insuring only valid ballots were counted worked.

4. My guess is an election that close would have been obligated to do a recount.

[Typical Lax Dad]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

super tight election decided by 251 votes makes sense to look at whether fraud could have tipped the balance. Especially with some actual potential evidence of such.
https://apnews.com/article/mishandled-b ... 027d64ae2d

2020 had no such actual evidence, nor was any POTUS state count remotely close enough to have been effected by fraud. It would have required massive fraud efforts and there was never any legitimate basis to even suspect such. Instead, totally bogus, easily disprovable, claims were made about 'fraud', all of which were embarrassingly rejected in the courts as bogus. And all audits removed any shred of continued question, though obviously that didn't prevent the ongoing MAGA BS.

If you'll recall, the few instances in which fraud actually happened, it was mostly done by Republicans.

But this 'project' in 2020 and extended is all about delegitimizing all elections, delegitimizing democracy itself.

BS.....the point is fraud happens and it only gets worse with more lenient voting methods. To your point, if you do not have concrete proof, you validate the fraud as...oh well, unless and until it suites or favors those that decide its worthy of investigation. We have to stop accepting it is going to happen b/c we do not have proof at the moment. Just zoom out, since you made the point this was such a small election....it only magnifies as the election is larger.

No need to reply and start the voting arguments all over again.....we have more important things to do like criticize OS for everything he says.

https://apnews.com/article/f5f6a73b2af5 ... b35e82c18d

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The now-disbanded voting integrity commission launched by the Trump administration uncovered no evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud, according to an analysis of administration documents released Friday.

In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who are both Republicans and led the commission, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the documents show there was a “pre-ordained outcome” and that drafts of a commission report included a section on evidence of voter fraud that was “glaringly empty.”

[MDlaxfan76]

oops...caught red-handed. Those pesky absentee ballots strike again....wonder where we heard this before?

super tight election decided by 251 votes makes sense to look at whether fraud could have tipped the balance. Especially with some actual potential evidence of such.
https://apnews.com/article/mishandled-b ... 027d64ae2d

2020 had no such actual evidence, nor was any POTUS state count remotely close enough to have been effected by fraud. It would have required massive fraud efforts and there was never any legitimate basis to even suspect such. Instead, totally bogus, easily disprovable, claims were made about 'fraud', all of which were embarrassingly rejected in the courts as bogus. And all audits removed any shred of continued question, though obviously that didn't prevent the ongoing MAGA BS.

If you'll recall, the few instances in which fraud actually happened, it was mostly done by Republicans.

But this 'project' in 2020 and extended is all about delegitimizing all elections, delegitimizing democracy itself.

BS.....the point is fraud happens and it only gets worse with more lenient voting methods. To your point, if you do not have concrete proof, you validate the fraud as...oh well, unless and until it suites or favors those that decide its worthy of investigation. We have to stop accepting it is going to happen b/c we do not have proof at the moment. Just zoom out, since you made the point this was such a small election....it only magnifies as the election is larger.

No need to reply and start the voting arguments all over again.....we have more important things to do like criticize OS for everything he says.

Hogwash.

1. The law and the processes put in place, i.e. the lock box video, and the judge who ordered a new vote, worked. That’s how the issue was caught. The 2020 frauds were caught, too. You and Trump WANT to believe there was massive fraud in 2020 that could impact those results and hoped that judges would be politically motivated to rule against the law, but there wasn’t.

2. Personally I don’t understand the issue with people placing other people legitimate absentee/mail-in ballots for other people. Why can someone put multiple envelopes into a mail box but not into a lock box?

3. The incomplete/incorrect/invalid mail-in ballots were found. The law and the election officials chartered with insuring only valid ballots were counted worked.

4. My guess is an election that close would have been obligated to do a recount.

Exactly.

youth, the rule of law works.
Potential violations were discovered because the processes to identify such worked. Not because they didn't. And it is reasonable to challenge based on that finding whether the election would have tipped differently had there been no violations, given that the results were so close. The case was brought to court. Exactly as it should be. Victory for election integrity.

But even with no suspicion of violation, a recount and request for audit for an election with such a small differential is perfectly appropriate. Had the election difference been say 10,000 votes in a primary in Bridgewater, not. 351, plausible issue.

And oh yeah, can we agree that if actual fraud is proven in court, there should be serious punishment for the perpetrators?

But here we're not yet hearing any instances of fraud, rather just a violation of the prohibition of helping voters place their votes. Connecticutt has a rule against that...but I agree that if the votes were cast by lawful voters, no actual fraud. But gotta follow the rules, whatever they are... and the willingness to actually break the rules cries out for an audit as to whether the votes were valid without the violation. If fraudulent, jail time!

That said, I agree that the notion that simply helping people who have difficulty getting their votes cast means fraud is ridiculous. Signature matching and sample audits are just fine in identifying any actual patterns of fraud that rise to a level of materiality.

The issue WOULD BE casting votes never intended to be voted by a valid voter OR votes cast on behalf of non-existent/deceased etc voters. It's very hard to do that on a large scale, but Punish that intentional fraud severely. It's super rare, but not non-existent and never will be.

HOWEVER, are you saying that we should assume there's fraud if there's no evidence of fraud?
Really? So, elections should simply be assumed to be fraudulent?

You do realize the wild-eyed crazy theories that were propounded in 2020 were all found to be entirely baseless? But in your world we should assume the fraud was real????

Again, the very small amount of fraud in 2020 happened to be primarily by GOP perpetrators...but nothing that remotely could have changed the outcome of the Presidential election...but in your view we should just assume the massive fraud wasn't caught...despite all those efforts to find any? I mean, ANY ?

Heck, why should we bother voting then?
Oh yeah, that's the point of MAGA logic.

[Brooklyn]

North Dakota GOP discriminated against Native voters by gerrymandering, court rules


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1 ... medium=web


A federal court has struck down the legislative maps that North Dakota Republicans enacted after the 2020 census, ruling that GOP mapmakers violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Native Americans.

In North Dakota, legislative districts have traditionally elected one state senator and two state representatives, but following the most recent census, lawmakers split the 4th and 9th districts into two state House "subdistricts" to ostensibly comply with the VRA. However, said the court, the timing of the state's elections rendered the 9th noncompliant.

While the district has a 54% Native majority and went 51-47 for Joe Biden in 2020, its legislative elections are only held in midterm years, when Native turnout is often particularly low compared to that of white voters. (Lawmakers in both chambers serve staggered four-year terms.)

As a result, Republican Kent Weston won the 9th by a 54-46 margin last year, defeating longtime Democratic state Sen. Richard Marcellais. That left the Senate without any Native American members for the first time since 1991.

The House subdistricts were also flawed in another way, the court held. Rather than divide the 9th District in such a way that Native voters would be able to elect their preferred candidates in both subdistricts, Republicans instead deliberately packed Native Americans into just one of them.

That left District 9A with an 80% Native population while 9B was just 32% Native. The former consequently supported Biden 73-26 and elected a Democrat to the legislature, while the latter went for Donald Trump 61-37 and sent a Republican to the statehouse.

The court set a Dec. 22 deadline for North Dakota's Republican-dominated state government to pass a new map to remedy the violation and ordered that new elections be held in November 2024, when Native turnout should be higher. However, it's possible that a GOP appeal could drag out a resolution until after 2024.




Meantime those Republicans elected under the unfair Apartheid system remain in office. Further proof that we as a society need to get our own house in order before venturing unto foreign politics and wars.

[NattyBohChamps04]

Iowa Republican official’s wife found guilty on all 52 counts of voter fraud charges

The system seems to work pretty good at catching and fixing fraud.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Another chapter in the "We're the GOP; We Can't Just Let Folks Vote:"

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/voting-ri ... avid-stras

"Republicans have done a remarkable job eviscerating voting rights in America. Given that Chief Justice John Roberts has arguably made it his life’s work to make voting harder for millions of people, it’s unsurprising to see the lower courts following suit. But now, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has gone further than Roberts ever did, and its ruling will make it even more difficult to use the courts to ensure free and fair elections.

The ruling the Eighth Circuit handed down last week eliminates the right of private groups to sue to enforce the Voting Rights Act (VRA). It’s the latest step in undermining the landmark law, which was explicitly passed to address the Jim Crow laws that had prevented Black people from voting. It has been in the crosshairs of conservatives for decades.

Back in 2013, Roberts, writing for the conservative majority in Shelby County v. Holder, ruled that Section 4 of the VRA, the preclearance requirement, was unconstitutional. Section 4 required states with a history of discrimination in voting to submit proposed election law changes to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for review to ensure those changes did not result in greater restrictions on voting for minority voters. Roberts’s majority opinion blithely declared that the conditions that gave rise to the VRA in 1965 no longer existed. Functionally, Roberts announced that racism was over, in large part because the VRA had been successful, and any efforts by the federal government to guarantee equity in voting were no longer necessary.

Immediately after Shelby County came down, states previously covered by the preclearance rule moved to pass laws designed to make it harder to vote. Texas’s photo ID law went into effect only 24 hours after the decision. That law had been challenged by the Texas NAACP and the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus because the acceptable forms of ID listed in the law disproportionately affected Black and Latino voters. North Carolina enacted a photo ID law, got rid of same-day voter registration and voter registration drives, and drastically restricted early voting. That law was challenged by the DOJ, the League of Women Voters, and the North Carolina NAACP. Those suits were all brought under Section 2 of the VRA, which bans any law that denies or limits the right to vote based on race or color.

So, even though Section 4’s preclearance requirement was gone, groups like the NAACP and the ACLU could still sue states over racist voting laws under Section 2.

Until now.

The Eighth Circuit just tossed out 50 years of civil rights law

The Eighth Circuit’s decision in Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment eliminates the ability of any private group or person to sue to enforce the VRA. The majority opinion was written by Judge David Stras, a former Clarence Thomas clerk and Trump appointee, and it radically reshapes the voting rights landscape.

Most challenges to voting laws are brought by groups like the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, the ACLU, and Common Cause. These organizations have the organizational capacity and institutional knowledge to effectively fight the near-ceaseless barrage of laws restricting voting rights, particularly after the 2013 Shelby County decision. Now, at least in the Eighth Circuit — Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota — only the DOJ can pursue these cases.

This is no mere technical change. Chief Judge Lavenski Smith, a George W. Bush appointee, noted in his dissent that in the last 40 years, there have been at least 182 successful Section 2 cases, only 15 of which were brought only by the DOJ. As David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research explained, the DOJ doesn’t have enough attorneys to cover the whole country all at once, and “over the course of over 50 years, private plaintiffs have also brought those cases so that residents of a small county in Arkansas are just as well protected as residents of the entirety of the state of California.”

Another problem with leaving lawsuits to the DOJ is that the willingness of the department to enforce voting rights depends entirely on who occupies the White House. When George W. Bush was president, he installed hardline conservative Hans von Spakovsky in the civil rights division. While there, von Spakovsky backed voter ID laws despite evidence they unjustly affected low-income and minority voters. He also stopped the DOJ from investigating voter discrimination against Native Americans. Instead, under von Spakovsky, the DOJ spent five years chasing after voter fraud despite no evidence that it exists in any meaningful fashion. And under Trump, Bill Barr’s DOJ worked to protect voting restrictions rather than fighting them, and his administration brought no cases at all under the VRA until May 2020.

The Eighth Circuit’s ruling ignores decades of decisions — including Supreme Court cases — holding that private groups can sue to enforce the VRA. Indeed, the dissent cites dozens of cases where private plaintiffs brought such lawsuits. Stras’s majority opinion acknowledges this has been the case for more than 50 years but then engages in a tedious review of the text of the VRA and other random statutes to get to his preferred result of kneecapping the usefulness of Section 2.

This is a hallmark of the modern conservative movement, ignoring the real-world consequences of a decision and the actual way a law works in favor of “textualism.” In theory, textualism is simply a device by which judges interpret a law by looking only at the statute's plain language. However, in practice, the “plain language” approach is a conservative favorite that results in such narrow readings of laws that it excludes many plaintiffs who could otherwise sue. That’s exactly what Stras did here. His opinion is nothing more than him reading Section 2, noting it refers only to the attorney general rather than explicitly referring to private plaintiffs, and throwing out 50 years of American civil rights law without a backward glance.

Federal courts are doing the GOP’s bidding

The Eighth Circuit’s decision is so extreme that it puts that court at odds with the Fifth Circuit, arguably the most conservative appellate court in the country. Earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit came to the opposite conclusion, throwing out Louisiana’s attempt to limit voting rights enforcement to the DOJ only. Having two different federal courts of appeal come to two different conclusions sets up a circuit split, which typically has to be resolved by the US Supreme Court. Otherwise, private groups could bring suits to preserve voting rights in some states but not others, creating a patchwork enforcement scheme.

It’s not certain how this would play out at the Supreme Court. Arguably, the Eighth Circuit’s decision here came in response to an invitation from Justices Gorsuch and Thomas in their concurrence in a 2021 voting rights case, Brnovich v. DNC. That concurrence noted that whether private plaintiffs could sue under Section 2 was an “open question” but one the Court was not taking up at that time. In contrast, Chief Justice Roberts, long in favor of restricting access to voting, surprised everyone when he joined the liberals in striking down Alabama’s congressional maps after the state created only one Black-majority district despite the state having 27 percent Black residents. However, the conservatives on the court now have a 6-3 supermajority, so they can afford to lose Roberts on this one if needed.

Republicans are well aware that their success in elections relies on making it more difficult for people to vote. Since voters of color tend to lean Democratic, conservatives have to work extra hard to keep those voters away from the ballot box. Luckily for the GOP, but unluckily for the rest of us, they have a federal judiciary that is more than happy to help."

The gerrymander. Undercounting the census. Making it harder to vote. Making it harder to sue over the vote. This is the party some of you support.

[OuttaNowhereWregget]

Having spent a little time on these boards of late, I thought of this scene from the movie Remains of the Day in relation to how far America has come in allowing all its citizens to vote. There was a time when women and black folks (among others, I'm sure) weren't considered intellectually qualified to participate in electing those who would serve or have a say in government (as depicted in this scene). Thank goodness those days are over. Yes, I know our system here in the US isn't perfect, but it's a far cry from what it used to be. This scene demonstrates perfectly the snotty, condescending and disdainful attitude behind the mindset of those who consider themselves intellectually elite from, to borrow a phrase that DMac has used in the past, the unwashed masses. I'll add the supposedly uninformed, uneducated and undereducated to that group. I remember Hillary Clinton characterized half of those who supported Trump during the 2016 campaign as a "basket of deplorables". If she, and those who laughed and applauded her remarks had truly had their way, no one in that "basket" would have been allowed to cast a vote (for Trump, that is). Thanks goodness for ol' Abe's view of what government is, and should always continue to be in America:

"...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

People. Uneducated, undereducated, liberal, conservative, etc--all people, and all having a say and a part to play in the government. Anyway--it's a great scene to illustrate an attitude and comportment that (thank goodness) doesn't rule the day here in the good ol' US of A.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Respectfully, piously asserting that a things are a "far cry from what it used to be" and invocation of part of the Gettysburg Address is not much solace to the many thousands of poor souls whose ability to vote is hindered or the value of whose vote is diluted to nothing via gerrymandering.

Good movie though.

[cradleandshoot]

Respectfully, piously asserting that a things are a "far cry from what it used to be" and invocation of part of the Gettysburg Address is not much solace to the many thousands of poor souls whose ability to vote is hindered or the value of whose vote is diluted to nothing via gerrymandering.

Good movie though.

Despite all of your floundering around to the contrary can you name one person who was determined to vote and was denied that right? Your argument always meanders into the land of hypothetical. If they wanted to vote and were eligible to vote then they were able to vote. The one exception of documented voter intimidation I'm aware of happened outside a polling place in Philly. Your basic premise is absurd at face value. Any eligible voters that want to vote and are determined to so will not be denied.Had there been even one documented example of anyone being denied their right to vote the good folks at CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC would have latched on to it like a pitbull on a letter carriers leg.