The GOP war on voting - Page 109 - Politics and Economics

Drawing district lines fairly is a problem that can be solved by a computer these days. The rules that the program needs to work with can't be that hard to agree on either if it wasn't for the fact that those benefiting from gerrymandering would be the same people having to agree with this.

I agree with you.

If this article is true then both parties are benefiting from the gerrymandering.

The Arizona case applies only to congressional lines. Nationally, those lines have grown ever more partisan. In 2012, Republicans won 53% of the vote, but 72% of the House seats in states where they drew the lines; Democrats won 56% of the vote but 71% of the seats where they controlled the process.

10-27-2015 , 11:40 AM

#2702

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

Arizona may be a little easier to gerrymander due to the fact that rural Arizona has like one person for every hundred square miles.

10-27-2015 , 12:08 PM

#2703

Noze

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Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 25,711

What about the HORDES of illegals bro? I was told there are several under every cactus and even more drafting off tumbleweeds to increase efficiency in crossing the hostile terrain.

10-27-2015 , 09:04 PM

#2704

Louis Cyphre

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Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyWf

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/in...60e17adc677990

Alabama is being sued because they, apparently, have never gotten around to implementing the "motor voter" law. Of 1993.

Why did it take the DOJ 22 years to even begin to set AL straight?

10-27-2015 , 09:26 PM

#2705

master3004

Revisionist Historian

Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 56,419

Quote:

Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre

Why did it take the DOJ 22 years to even begin to set AL straight?

The same reason the IRS has decided to turn it's back in investigating pulpit freedom Sunday the past few years?

10-28-2015 , 12:10 AM

#2706

rjoefish

Got Out the Vote

Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 31,086

Souls to the Polls seems different than making a state government follow federal law?

10-28-2015 , 12:24 AM

#2707

master3004

Revisionist Historian

Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 56,419

What?

10-28-2015 , 12:29 AM

#2708

rjoefish

Got Out the Vote

Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 31,086

I'm trying to figure out how the IRS ignoring church related activities is the same as the feds suing a state for not implementing a law.

10-28-2015 , 12:42 AM

#2709

master3004

Revisionist Historian

Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 56,419

Quote:

Originally Posted by rjoefish

I'm trying to figure out how the IRS ignoring church related activities is the same as the feds suing a state for not implementing a law.

It's not church related activities, it's churches actively violating the law that insures their tax exempt status

10-28-2015 , 12:46 AM

#2710

Louis Cyphre

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There are citizens in the US who will be voting in their second presidential election next year and weren't even born when that law was passed. Mindboggling.

10-28-2015 , 01:09 AM

#2711

rjoefish

Got Out the Vote

Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 31,086

Quote:

Originally Posted by master3004

It's not church related activities, it's churches actively violating the law that insures their tax exempt status

Which I get. Unless this is just someone not obeying a law so it's the same thing I don't see the connection.

02-15-2016 , 09:40 AM

#2712

Huehuecoyotl

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A pretty good piece by John Oliver, including world's greatest rhyme for remembering when an ID office in Wisconsin is open and something I didn't know, that legislatures make it very easy to voter impersonate other legislature members.

Last edited by Huehuecoyotl; 02-15-2016 at 09:53 AM.

03-14-2016 , 01:39 PM

#2713

Huehuecoyotl

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An update. Faced with the possibility that their voter ID laws might be too harsh and be struck down, some states are softening their voter ID impediments, at least on paper. It turns out those that the exemptions are still pretty hard to utilize

Quote:

While issuing exemptions and softening voter-ID laws sounds like a solution to overly harsh voter-ID laws in theory, it is not working out so well in practice. Despite the Supreme Court’s suggestion in Crawford, there have been few attempts to bring “as applied” challenges to voter-ID laws because these as-applied cases are expensive to litigate and help only a few voters at a time. According to the nonprofit One Wisconsin Now, the state’s DMV has created such a draconian bureaucratic voter-ID exemption process that many voters simply give up in anger and frustration. Analyzing DMV data, One Wisconsin Now’s February 29 lawsuit makes a number of accusations against the DMV, including the complaints from the woman who lost the use of her hands—and who “even provided her daughter with power of attorney giving her permission to sign, but the DMV did not allow it”—and the senior citizen who had been born in a German concentration camp and didn’t have a birth certificate. The suit also asserts that others who tried to get an exemption were turned down over “minor discrepancies in the spelling of their names or uncertainties about their exact dates of birth—even though DMV acknowledges it has no doubts these disenfranchised voters are U.S. citizens.”

Quote:

This raises another problem with voter-ID softenings: election-administrator and poll-worker error. In Texas, state law requires poll workers to accept identification from voters whose names on the rolls are “substantially similar” to those on a photographic ID but MSNBC reported that:

A strict interpretation of the law ended up disenfranchising Taylor Thompson, a student at Texas State University in San Marcos. Thompson’s name on the voter registration card she received in the mail was incorrectly spelled “Tayllor Megan Rose Thompson.” Because it didn’t match her name on her photo ID, which is “Taylor Megon-Rose Thompson,” she was barred from voting.

The law required Texas election officials to accept her voter ID since, by any measure, it was “substantially similar” to her photo ID. Failing that, the law also required Texas election officials to offer Thompson a provisional ballot. They did neither.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...d-laws/473595/

05-23-2016 , 08:16 PM

#2714

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

Well some of our new conservative posters haven't had a chance to participate in the "I just don't see what the big deal is with having to show an ID to vote..." tango yet. Or is it more of a waltz?

Small government Republicans in action - making onerous new laws to combat an imaginary problem (that just happen to disenfranchise people likely to vote Democrat). How many people are even going to go through as much effort as the people in the story?

The idea that this has anything to do with fear of in-person voter fraud is so ludicrous on it's face that it literally depresses me that 40% of the population can't seem to see through it. Or maybe they can but won't admit it. That would depress me slightly less.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...972_story.html

Quote:

But Myrtle Delahuerta, 85, who lives across town from Randall, has tried unsuccessfully for two years to get her ID. She has the same problem of her birth certificate not matching her pile of other legal documents that she carts from one government office to the next. The disabled woman, who has difficulty walking, is applying to have her name legally changed, a process that will cost her more than $300 and has required a background check and several trips to government offices.

“I hear from people nearly weekly who can’t get an ID either because of poverty, transportation issues or because of the government’s incompetence,” said Chad W. Dunn, a lawyer with Brazil & Dunn in Houston, who has specialized in voting rights work for 15 years.

“Sometimes government officials don’t know what the law requires,” Dunn said. “People take a day off work to go down to get the so-called free birth certificates. People who are poor, with no car and no Internet access, get up, take the bus, transfer a couple of times, stand in line for an hour and then are told they don’t have the right documents or it will cost them money they don’t have.”

05-23-2016 , 08:18 PM

#2715

Loki

binary duo

Join Date: Nov 2015 Posts: 12,772

Hey man, it's not like a poll tax is illegal or anything

05-23-2016 , 08:19 PM

#2716

AsianNit

banned

Join Date: Sep 2012 Posts: 9,881

Odds that conservatives are going to believe rumors of Obama busing Mexicans across the border to vote illegally for Hillary Clinton?

05-23-2016 , 08:54 PM

#2717

True North

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Quote:

Originally Posted by AsianNit

Odds that conservatives are going to believe rumors of Obama busing Mexicans across the border to vote illegally for Hillary Clinton?

Eleventy billion percent

06-08-2016 , 02:41 PM

#2718

Huehuecoyotl

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Quote:

Sheriff Jon Lopey said his deputies assisted the Attorney General’s Office and the Siskiyou County investigate alleged voter fraud claims last week, but the ACLU says the sheriff instead used the inquiry to intimidate immigrants and minorities, reported the Record Spotlight.

State officials are investigating reports that Lopey and his deputies set up a checkpoint outside a subdivision near Hornbrook and stopped only those cars driven by Hmongs, an ethnic group of people from some mountainous regions of southeast Asia, and asked whether they were registered to vote.

Hmong residents said county and state officials showed up at their homes carrying military-style rifles and threatened to arrest anyone who tried to illegally vote — and civil rights activists say many of them stayed home out of fear rather than vote in the primary.

Like how is this even possibly going to root out voter fraud?

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/righ...ornia-primary/

06-08-2016 , 02:43 PM

#2719

Loki

binary duo

Join Date: Nov 2015 Posts: 12,772

republicans super into pre-crime prevention, ldo

06-08-2016 , 02:52 PM

#2720

einbert

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http://www.sentencingproject.org/pub...ment-a-primer/

Quote:

5.8 million Americans cannot vote because of a felony conviction

1 of every 13 African Americans has lost their voting rights due to felony disenfranchisement laws, vs 1 in every 56 non-black voters.

The 12 most extreme states restrict voting rights even after a person has served his or her prison sentence and is no longer on probation or parole; such individuals in those states make up approximately 45 percent of the entire disenfranchised population.2) Only two states, Maine and Vermont, do not restrict the voting rights of anyone with a felony conviction, including those in prison.

06-08-2016 , 03:11 PM

#2721

Namath12

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In FL you can apply to have your "civil rights" restored once you've completed your sentence. I have nfi how that process works or even whether or not it works. I would assume that most ex-felons don't even bother, which is imo likely a feature.

06-08-2016 , 03:13 PM

#2722

einbert

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I have several friends that have done time, and they would all like to vote but can't. There is a process in place here to have one's rights restored but it takes many years (after being free and clear of probation) and is expensive as well from what I understand.

06-08-2016 , 03:26 PM

#2723

Namath12

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I have a hard time believing that it's not unconstitutional to deny voting rights to someone who has done time in any way, but I'm sure some right ****wad federal judge decided somewhere along the way that it's perfectly fine so idk

06-08-2016 , 03:30 PM

#2724

stinkubus

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 4,422

Thoroughly unsurprised to see the southern states leading the charge in denying people a right to vote.

06-08-2016 , 03:30 PM

#2725

Namath12

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Well never mind, apparently it's been a thing longer than most of us have been alive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement

Quote:

Unlike most laws that burden the right of citizens to vote based on some form of social status, felony disenfranchisement laws have been held to be constitutional. In Richardson v. Ramirez (1974), the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of felon disenfranchisement statutes, finding that the practice did not deny equal protection to disenfranchised voters. The Court looked to Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which proclaims that States which deny the vote to male citizens, except by "participation in rebellion, or other crime," will suffer a reduction in representation. Based on this language, the Court found that this amounted to an "affirmative sanction" of the practice of felon disenfranchisement, and the 14th Amendment could not prohibit in one section that which is expressly authorized in another.

Really enjoyed this bit

Quote:

In 2007, Florida's Republican Governor Charlie Crist pushed to make it easier for most convicted felons to regain their voting rights reasonably quickly after serving their sentences and probation terms.[13] In March 2011, however, Republican Governor Rick Scott reversed the 2007 reforms. Felons may not apply to the court for restoration of voting rights until seven years after completion of sentence, probation and parole.[14]

Rick Scott is the absolute woat

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