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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

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No one could have predicted…

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The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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You are here: Home / Conservatives and competency

Conservatives and competency

by Kay|  September 23, 20122:32 pm| 82 Comments

This post is in: THIS WAS AWESOME, Wingnut Event Horizon

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I wrote this last week:

Maybe I’m missing it, but I’d love to see evidence of real pushback in PA outside a courtroom. I know the governor and his cronies and the Romney bundler they hired to do voter education are a lost cause, but we saw county election officials advocate on behalf of voters this year in Florida, and that can be powerful.
Demand accommodations. Ask for administrative rule changes that can go in without a change in the state law. If the state government won’t protect the right to vote and courts are dithering and punting, what about trying county-level action or pressure from mayors and large public entities like universities? Everyone in the state has an interest in NOT having a massive failure of the election system resulting in tens of thousands of provisional ballots, which seems to be where this is headed barring judicial action. Ohio had a dispute over provisional ballots that went on for more than a year. It was litigated in both the state and federal systems. Imagine that times 100 races.
Everyone in the state has an interest in avoiding a sad mess, particularly in local races which can be so close. If these efforts are already being made in PA and I just don’t know about it, I’d love to hear what they’re doing while waiting for the judges.

And then many of you sent me this!

Lehigh and Northampton counties may join Allegheny County in taking advantage of a loophole in the state’s voter ID lawthat allows them to issue legally acceptable photo identification to the general public through county-run nursing homes.
Such a plan is “under serious consideration” in Lehigh County said Frank Kane, chief of staff to County Executive Bill Hansell. County officials are watching how Allegheny County’s ID program fares.

Northampton County Executive John Stoffa said he will consult county Registrar Dee Rumsey to see what it would take to issue IDs through the country-run nursing home. In some ways, he said, the county is the ideal institution to issue identification because it has plenty of records to verify voters’ residences.
“It wouldn’t be a perfect system,” Stoffa said, “but it would be better than nothing.”

Better than nothing. Governor Corbett is failing to administer elections properly. He’s failing at a core state duty. That means county-level people have to ACT and do his job. Pennsylvania will now have a situation where access to a ballot is easier or more difficult depending on the county one lives in. That’s a failure of state government, but it was foreseeable that this would happen, because it happened in Ohio and it happened in Florida. Conservatives at the state level have now reached the point where they are so in thrall to their lunatic base that they cannot perform basic state government functions, like running an election.

I love voting rights volunteers but I don’t want to get too far away from the idea that a fundamental role of the state is to administer elections competently. We can’t turn voting rights over to campaigns and volunteers. Those who are charged with administering elections have a duty to serve voters. That’s what we’re paying them for.

Volunteers have been flooding into offices set up by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, some even traveling from out of state. Their motivation? They want to combat a new law rammed through the state Legislature by Republicans that asks all voters to show government-issued ID at the polls.
“It’s really lit a fire under a lot of people,” said Mark Nicastre, communications director for the state Democratic Party. “We’ve been very lucky to get probably three times the number of volunteers that we otherwise would have seen, and somewhere around six times the number of contributions.”
Republicans say new state laws that shorten early-voting periods, make it harder for third-party groups to register voters, or require voters to show photo ID at the polls are nothing more than reasonable precautions against voter fraud. But to Democrats, the laws are GOP attempts to make it more difficult for young people, minorities, and the elderly to cast their ballot—or, in other words, attempts to suppress the vote and sway the election.
In key states like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio, new election laws pose a logistical challenge for Democrats but also offer political payoff: galvanized activists and a feeling that Republicans have unfairly targeted certain communities.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats and civil-rights groups have been contacting voters that may lack identification and driving citizens to government offices that issue the approved identification. “I think it’s actually going to drive up voter participation because of the legwork the Obama campaign, state organized labor, church groups, the NAACP and the state party—what we’re all doing,” said Jason Henry, campaign manager for state Senate candidate Kimberly Villella.

This is great, too. When voter suppression efforts make The Simpsons, concern about voting rights is officially mainstream. It took seven years, but we got there.

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82Comments

  1. 1.

    c u n d gulag

    September 23, 2012 at 2:41 pm

    GOP POV:

    Voting isn’t a right.
    It’s a privilege!

    And if you’re not privileged, you can’t vote!

    To vote, you have to be free, white, male, straight, Christian, own some property (or people, like the good old days), and be over 21.

  2. 2.

    Valdivia

    September 23, 2012 at 2:42 pm

    Thanks Kay, this may be a case of people being galvanized even more because of these laws: unintended consequences.

    I did hear from a friend in Yonkers that someone claiming to be a volunteer for OFA came by to an old age home and told them if they filled out registrations to vote they would take care of them. Never did and then they all got a mailing to come vote on the wrong day. Assholes playing tricks. Hate that.

  3. 3.

    Maude

    September 23, 2012 at 2:47 pm

    PA radio will have more shows on how to get ID and what to do if you get to the polls and something is amiss.
    This is backfiring in the GOP’s face.

  4. 4.

    Kay

    September 23, 2012 at 2:51 pm

    @Valdivia:

    Pennsylvania is going to be a train wreck if they end up with different ballot access by county. Jesus Christ. That’s completely unacceptable.

    We’ve gone from “states’ rights” to absolute chaos. Why not just make rules at the precinct level?

  5. 5.

    Peter

    September 23, 2012 at 3:03 pm

    This is backfiring to an extent as is. If the court DOES wind up issuing that injunction, and all the benefits they planned to reap from voter suppression go away? Oh lord will this have been a bad move for them.

  6. 6.

    General Stuck

    September 23, 2012 at 3:03 pm

    Conservatives, the activist brand, are not interested in competency. And now, we have reached a stage where reality itself has a liberal bias, and the nutters have fully entered a fourth dimension of politics. Desperately trying to take the rest of us with them.

    I’m reading blogs and right wing publications that have always been mired in goofy ideas while making goofy arguments to justify their beliefs. But the shit has gone around the bend, and I cannot find one iota of evidence these people have, indicating the slightest concern they currently possess for our country, unless they are running it. Completely. Permanently.

    There is no lie, false meme, nor embrace of madness they are not open to. Everything Obama does or says, there is an immediate declaration that it is not only wrong, but purposeful toward his ultimate plan of destroying life as we have known it on planet earth. And if more than a few minutes pass with Obama silence, then the red meat produces itself with fantasies of evil doings he must be thinking.

    Voter suppression. pfft. Happiness for our wingnuts these days, means one of their own as dictator for life with our without a revolution.

  7. 7.

    Maude

    September 23, 2012 at 3:04 pm

    @Kay:
    Someone in that other Voter ID thread left a link about PA counties. I got back too late to the thread to say thanks. If Steep were here, He;d find it. He’s a whiz at that.
    I hear NY and PA radio.

  8. 8.

    mish

    September 23, 2012 at 3:07 pm

    There’s is this, also. Montgomery county is on top of this issue as well.

    http://articles.philly.com/2012-09-22/news/34023153_1_voter-id-requirement-id-cards-issue-cards

  9. 9.

    Valdivia

    September 23, 2012 at 3:10 pm

    @Kay:

    Oh I agree Kay, this is going to shape up to be a clusterf*** but it is amazing that they thought this would just go unnoticed.

  10. 10.

    James E. Powell

    September 23, 2012 at 3:11 pm

    I hate the fact that we have to rely on courts to address this blatant vote suppression. When there is no political cost to doing stuff like this, we are living in a very screwed up country.

  11. 11.

    Kay

    September 23, 2012 at 3:14 pm

    @mish:

    “I don’t think anyone contemplated the possibility of a county nursing home becoming an issuer of an identification document that could be used to satisfy the voter-ID requirement,” said Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), a key force in enacting the law last March.

    He pushed a law and he STILL has no idea how it will be administered. PLENTY of people “contemplated” that it would be impossible to ramp up ID access that fast.

    The state government failed and (so far) courts have failed. That leaves local government.

  12. 12.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 3:15 pm

    @Maude: Was it this article I posted? http://articles.philly.com/2012-09-22/news/34023153_1_voter-id-requirement-id-cards-issue-cards

    It says that Montgomery County (western Philadelphia suburbs, the richest per person PA county) is also setting up to provide Voter ID, and that various other counties, even Republican ones, are considering it.

    (And Mish beat me to it!)

  13. 13.

    General Stuck

    September 23, 2012 at 3:16 pm

    @General Stuck:

    means one of their own as dictator for life with our without a revolution.

    Clarification. The unbound full bore to suppress the vote of key democratic constituencies, does in itself represent a passive form of revolution. Along with the revival of Jim Crow laws directed at Hispanics, ALEC bullshit for centralized monkey wrenching of organized labor rights, draconian bills to manage the female reproductive biology, and general re submission for them along Victorian era lines. And that ain’t all. The only question is how far they are willing to take it, in the end when the passive rebellion of civil disobedience fails, as it will fail. In a world of nukes this country is fat with.

  14. 14.

    mish

    September 23, 2012 at 3:19 pm

    @Kay:

    The current state government in PA has failed in more ways than you can imagine. Corbett and his cronies really are idiots.

  15. 15.

    General Stuck

    September 23, 2012 at 3:19 pm

    On the other hand, maybe I should stop reading right wing blogs.:)

  16. 16.

    scav

    September 23, 2012 at 3:22 pm

    @JoyfulA: pragmatically, as far as the county is concerned, doesn’t making sure all its possible voters can vote basically amplify their (county) importance to the election and possibly influence policies their direction? Sets up a county-against-county war, in which case the wealthier ones might have an advantage. Ow Ow Ow ow ow.

  17. 17.

    Maude

    September 23, 2012 at 3:22 pm

    @JoyfulA:
    Thank you, thank you. I am so bad at going through threads. I’ve bookmarked it. I’m in NJ and I will follow the info on radio to see how things are going.

  18. 18.

    geg6

    September 23, 2012 at 3:23 pm

    Just want to give a hip hooray for Kim Villella who is running for State Senate in my district against the incumbent, Elder Vogel. Who is exactly what that name makes it sound like.

    It’s been a huge push to get people IDs. And I agree, it might even backfire on those assholes Corbett and Turzai by getting everyone fired up and on the same page. Even my low info voter friends have noticed that this is nothing but voter suppression and are not amused.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    September 23, 2012 at 3:25 pm

    @mish:

    The Pennsylvania law is draconian. It’s far worse than Ohio’s version. They put absolutely no thought into this, and then they sat on their asses since March while the problems piled up. Where are they?

    The Secretary of State should be fired. She supported the law and ignored the practical application. Whatever her motives ( I think they intended to disenfranchise, but they deny that, and it doesn’t matter) she should be fired for not doing her job.

  20. 20.

    James E. Powell

    September 23, 2012 at 3:26 pm

    @General Stuck:

    On the other hand, maybe I should stop reading right wing blogs

    Back during the Bush/Cheney Junta, I used to have three or four relatively sane ones that I would read to keep up with what the right-wing was talking about. They have all gone around the corner since the combination of Obama’s rise and Palin’s fall.

    Really, from what I saw and heard, their complete descent into madness started when the rest of the country did not fall in love with Palin like they did. They still don’t understand what happened or why.

  21. 21.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    @Kay: But Kay, the secretary of state is married to the governor’s chief spokesman!

  22. 22.

    Chris

    September 23, 2012 at 3:31 pm

    @James E. Powell:

    Really, from what I saw and heard, their complete descent into madness started when the rest of the country did not fall in love with Palin like they did. They still don’t understand what happened or why.

    The liberal media failed to report her awesomeness, and elitist, out-of-touch RINO staffers of the kind traitor McCain always surrounds himself undercut her by not allowing her awesomeness to be unleashed, either because they were afraid of True Conservatism or they were liberal plants or they were just jealous.

    Seriously. That whole thing about Palin’s expensive wardrobe? I’ve read bloggers blame that on McCain’s campaign people who FORCED her to buy that stuff because they were too elitist to realize a gal like her always looked better in wholesome blue collar clothing anyway.

    Their icons can do no wrong. Everything that’s gone wrong with them is a vast conspiracy.

  23. 23.

    geg6

    September 23, 2012 at 3:31 pm

    @mish:

    Word. Corbett has pretty much fucked up everything he’s touched and so has the GOP-run state legislature. This is just another egregious fuckup in a whole series of fuckups. I’ve never been a huge Ed Rendell fan, but he looks like Thomas Jefferson next to these guys.

  24. 24.

    Citizen Alan

    September 23, 2012 at 3:33 pm

    @General Stuck:

    There is no lie, false meme, nor embrace of madness they are not open to. Everything Obama does or says, there is an immediate declaration that it is not only wrong, but purposeful toward his ultimate plan of destroying life as we have known it on planet earth. And if more than a few minutes pass with Obama silence, then the red meat produces itself with fantasies of evil doings he must be thinking.

    I just love this more than I can say. Just quoted it on FB.

  25. 25.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 3:35 pm

    @scav: If any counties have any particular policies they’re pushing vis-a-vis other counties, rather than by the party of the majority of county commissioners or specific county issues, those policies are invisible to me.

  26. 26.

    shoutingattherain

    September 23, 2012 at 3:36 pm

    @James E. Powell:

    Really, from what I saw and heard, their complete descent into madness started when the rest of the country did not fall in love with Palin like they did. They still don’t understand what happened or why.

    It was at this point that my family split apart into the squabbling, angry mess it is today. Since forever Thanksgiving was a challenge, but it’s impossible now.

  27. 27.

    geg6

    September 23, 2012 at 3:36 pm

    @Kay:

    Nuh guh happen. She and her husband are huge Corbett cronies. This was a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise voters and Turzai gave up the game many months ago. People are pissed.

  28. 28.

    mish

    September 23, 2012 at 3:37 pm

    @Kay:
    it is draconian. Unfortunately, Carol Aichele’s job was to push this nonsense through. Her testimony at the trial was laughable. She testified that she didn’t know what the law said. Corbett has claimed to not know what the law says. She claims 99% of people have ID.

    These people are evil. Stupid, but evil. Volunteers are working hard on the ground to make sure people have ID and are praying, to whatever deity you believe in, for an injunction.

  29. 29.

    Kay

    September 23, 2012 at 3:38 pm

    @JoyfulA:

    You’ll notice that these massive election system failures only occur when conservatives are in charge of elections: Florida 2000, Ohio 2004 and now Pennsylvania.

    Go back to Government 101, conservatives. Start at “minimally competent” before graduating to ideological policy preference. See if you can manage to run an election before changing the rules to satisfy the base.

  30. 30.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 3:38 pm

    @Maude: Thank you! It was easy for me to find because I tweeted it this morning.

  31. 31.

    Linda Featheringill

    September 23, 2012 at 3:40 pm

    @shoutingattherain:

    It was at this point that my family split apart into the squabbling, angry mess it is today. Since forever Thanksgiving was a challenge, but it’s impossible now.

    Maybe you should spend the holidays in a place you’re actually thankful to be. Just saying.

  32. 32.

    Chris

    September 23, 2012 at 3:42 pm

    @General Stuck:

    And if more than a few minutes pass with Obama silence, then the red meat produces itself with fantasies of evil doings he must be thinking.

    Yeah, the obsession with what he’s thinking is one of the weirdest things about them.

    “It is one of the biggest dividing line between liberals and conservatives: sensitivity. Liberals are supposed to be the sensitive ones, but even the liberals who worked themselves into a froth over George W. Bush never really cared very much about what he thought of them. But conservatives care what President Obama thinks. They care to the point of imagining what he thinks.”

  33. 33.

    gnomedad

    September 23, 2012 at 3:44 pm

    Apparently, Fox Nation thinks getting Homer’s vote is some kind of win.

  34. 34.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    September 23, 2012 at 3:44 pm

    @Citizen Alan:

    That reminds me of what I said in the SPT thread. They are running against an Obama that doesn’t exist anywhere but in their own minds. Even the bobbleheads are now noticing it. In that Holmes piece that Sara quoted he said that POTUS went on vacations to Hawaii and Europe and my question was when did he go on vacation to Europe? I would love to hear the details because I sure as hell don’t remember it.

  35. 35.

    geg6

    September 23, 2012 at 3:46 pm

    By the way, we got a postcard in the mail from the state saying what IDs you can use. They name a bunch of things like student IDs and state employee IDs and military ID but only say that the military, veteran, and military dependent IDs require an expiration date. But student IDs generally don’t have expiration dates, so I’m confused as to whether they will actually work as valid IDs. Everyone I’ve talked to has said that you need an expiration date on any ID you use.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    September 23, 2012 at 3:47 pm

    @gnomedad:

    I think they’re wrong. When “Republicans seek to disenfranchise voters” reaches popular culture consensus, they’re losing.

  37. 37.

    Mike W

    September 23, 2012 at 3:47 pm

    @Kay: From a Republican perspective, how are any of those failures?

  38. 38.

    scav

    September 23, 2012 at 3:48 pm

    @JoyfulA: Oh, that’s good then, there’s hope they’re at least doing it for laudable reasons. I was thinking entirely hypothetically as I know sub-nothing of internal PA county / regional politics.

  39. 39.

    Gozer

    September 23, 2012 at 3:48 pm

    I live in Lehigh Co. practically on the border of Northampton Co. and I can easily see how the voting law shenanigans is going to backfire on the GOP here. Though we have a huge number of Latinos and plenty of students, transplants, and commuters from Philly/NYC/N. Jersey we also have a population that is OLD. This law is really fucking with older voters and I can imagine a fairly high percentage of said voters don’t like their rituals to be disturbed.

    Of course, like most of the counties in the Philly orbit, pretty much all of the Lehigh Valley went for the Pres.

  40. 40.

    mish

    September 23, 2012 at 3:53 pm

    @geg6:
    The student ID’s are not valid because they don’t have an expiration date. Some of the community colleges and state universities are been more proactive than others about providing expiration stickers.

  41. 41.

    geg6

    September 23, 2012 at 3:53 pm

    @Gozer:

    Well, Beaver County went for McCain, but people here are just furious over this. And for the same reason people in the Lehigh Valley are. This place is polluted with old, old people. Election Day is a social event for them and they aren’t going to like having to argue with their next-door neighbor Gladys who went to high school with them and has been checking them into the polls for the last thirty years about who they are and can they prove it.

  42. 42.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 3:53 pm

    @Kay: I had to fight about precincts in 2004. Some of our townships’ polling places were so crowded that people (including my 80yo parents, who drove by at three different times, hoping for a lull) were waiting in lines around the block for hours.

    The county board of elections controls how many and where, so I nagged every politico I know to add precincts to the township. Done, finally, by 2006. But who knows how many people didn’t get to vote in 2004? Or what things would still be like if I hadn’t had, that year, the time and contacts to push? As far as I know, I was the only angry person.

  43. 43.

    mish

    September 23, 2012 at 3:58 pm

    @geg6:
    my child, who was working as a clerk at the primary, asked to see my ID. I declined. Just on principle.

  44. 44.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 4:00 pm

    @mish: That’s the best I’ve heard. But ID was optional for the primary, mandatory for the general.

  45. 45.

    raven

    September 23, 2012 at 4:01 pm

    Just got home from my swim and popped on my Facebook. I posted the “Conservative History of the US” last week and I find a comment from an old high school buddy, “where will we go when Obama destroys us?” This guy spent his career in sales and lost his job six years ago. The last time I saw him he apologized for how he and, more importantly, his family treated me when I came home in 1969. Our mutual friend had been killed and I was active in the VVAW. His mother told me in the same conversation that I had no right to protest the war and that her kids were NOT going to fight it! It bothered me for years and I was shocked and and happy to get some kind of recognition that I was mistreated, not by DFH’s, by right wingers. I just flushed him and don’t give a fuck if I ever hear from him again.

  46. 46.

    geg6

    September 23, 2012 at 4:03 pm

    @mish:

    Yes, that’s what I thought and what everyone I’ve been working with on this issue says. But the mailer doesn’t say that. It only says that the military/veteran IDs have to have the expiration date.

    It’s terribly misleading and I don’t think this is a coincidence.

  47. 47.

    mish

    September 23, 2012 at 4:07 pm

    @geg6:
    agreed.

    misleading = feature, not a bug.

  48. 48.

    Linda Featheringill

    September 23, 2012 at 4:07 pm

    @geg6:

    This place is polluted with old, old people.

    Beaver County, PA

    http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&met_y=population&idim=county:42007&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+beaver+county+pa

    Total population: About 154,000
    65 and older: About 32,500

    Older folks make up 21%+ of the population. There are a remarkable number of folks 85 and older. You guys must be treating them very well.

  49. 49.

    ChrisB

    September 23, 2012 at 4:15 pm

    Remember, it’s Philadelphia where this matters and to me it’s a given that there will be huge disenfranchisement if the law’s application is not enjoined.

  50. 50.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 4:17 pm

    @Linda Featheringill: Or did treat oldsters very well, until the last 2 years, the Corbett reign. The nearly free prescription drugs, the support to “age in place,” the no taxation of retirement pay, etc., is going, likely to go, or gone. And you see in this thread the types of nonsense money is being wasted on.

    But if you want to live where you can be a 67yo young whippersnapper wet behind the ears—

  51. 51.

    shoutingattherain

    September 23, 2012 at 4:18 pm

    @Linda Featheringill:

    Maybe you should spend the holidays in a place you’re actually thankful to be. Just saying.

    I do already. We haven’t had a complete family Tgiving in 2 years. My con direct family would be bearable for one meal a year because we’re related and know there are certain subjects which shall not be mentioned. Sadly, the bros-in-laws are under no such unspoken agreement and it’s been their contributions to the holiday convo which has been the source of much consternation and ill-will. There was a time I would just let it go, but as I’ve gotten older I have concluded that I’m running out of time to fight with these motherf**kers so I’m nah gonna bak down. Now I have TG with my next door neighbors. It’s become a potluck. Really fun. Nice people, the kind of next-door neighbors you hope to get. More fun than the in-laws, fer shur.

  52. 52.

    bemused senior

    September 23, 2012 at 4:19 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt: They’re probably remembering Michelle and a friend taking their daughters to Europe.

  53. 53.

    RaflW

    September 23, 2012 at 4:21 pm

    Minnesota, which is facing a Voter ID constitutional amendment (dig that, f’ing up the constitution to strip rights. Good lord. Anyway…) this Star Tribune poll shows that support for the Photo ID amendment has dropped from over 80% to 52% in less than a year.

    We’ve got about 6 weeks to go. Voter education is in full swing. It’s going to be closer that we’d imagined, but the Strib has a poor track record on polling.

    Still, though, it’s very clear that even if it’s 55% (ie: the margin of error) the story is overwhelmingly that the more voters know about Photo ID, the more they dislike and distrust it. So there’s hope.

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    September 23, 2012 at 4:23 pm

    @shoutingattherain:

    Mine split over the 2000 election and we’re just starting to repair the damage now. (My dad was never all that fond of C+ Augustus personally, more a fan of Team Republican, but those fuckers at Fox News are NOT HELPING.) Try to keep in touch with any nieces/nephews if possible so they know that not all of their relatives are crazy right-wing nutjobs.

  55. 55.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 4:23 pm

    @ChrisB: Supposedly, Mayor Nutter is considering the county (Phila. is a county as well as a city) approach, and the county has a community college and a bunch of colleges and universities that can issue Voter ID. I expect he’ll wait until the court rehearing this week before launching such a massive undertaking.

  56. 56.

    Chris

    September 23, 2012 at 4:26 pm

    @shoutingattherain:

    There was a time I would just let it go, but as I’ve gotten older I have concluded that I’m running out of time to fight with these motherf**kers so I’m nah gonna bak down.

    Plus frankly if they’re not considerate enough to STFU about the subject there’s no reason you should be.

    I for one would be delighted to limit my conversations with conservative relatives to talking about movies or what’s new in all our lives or all that stuff. Unhappily, that’s not a two way street.

  57. 57.

    geg6

    September 23, 2012 at 4:28 pm

    @RaflW:

    That’s sorta been the story here. At first, everyone was, well, just go and get ID. And then a bunch of people tried to do it and found out exactly how hard it is, especially for the oldsters. And now the oldsters are pissed off and wanting someone’s head. When it was only “the blacks” and those DFH young people, they were fine with it. But now that it is disenfranchising them, it’s an OUTRAGE!

    Whatever. They are now pissed and are not feeling very kindly toward Corbett or the GOP leg.

  58. 58.

    raven

    September 23, 2012 at 4:29 pm

    @Chris: I just can’t do that because I’ll end up clockin some motherfucker.

  59. 59.

    kay

    September 23, 2012 at 4:29 pm

    @shoutingattherain:

  60. 60.

    raven

    September 23, 2012 at 4:34 pm

    Mornin Joe recoils and being called “one of them” (us)

  61. 61.

    geg6

    September 23, 2012 at 4:36 pm

    @Linda Featheringill:

    First, there are a lot of seniors, proportionately, simply because of the great diaspora caused by the crumbling of the steel industry and the reign of St. Ronnie of Raygun. Young people left here in gigantic numbers and we have not recovered from that to this day.

    Second, this is, or used to be, one of the best places on earth for seniors. PA had all kinds of perks for oldsters and the Western PA region is very senior friendly in many ways, what with fabulous hospitals, lots of free and discounted things to do, a very reasonable cost of living, and great services. People who grow old here stay these days (and avoid FL like the plague, a big change from when I was young). And due to favorable reviews in oldster media, seniors and retirees have actually been moving here from other places.

    Another thing that Corbett and his cronies have fucked up royally.

  62. 62.

    Paul

    September 23, 2012 at 4:43 pm

    @Kay:

    I don’t get why the Secretary of State is an elected position.

    Having said that, the current secretary of state in PA was elected. So, I can understand people that didn’t vote for him complaining. But all those people that either stayed home or voted for him really has no case.

  63. 63.

    Mike E

    September 23, 2012 at 4:49 pm

    That judge who upheld the shitty ID law married my two good friends 20+ years ago, and now they’re considering nullifying their marriage in order to get re-wed (prolly by a justice o’ th’ peace) out of disgust with this hack. Spite divorces are so old school yet tres chic.

  64. 64.

    kay

    September 23, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    @Paul:

    I think she was appointed, but in any event I don’t agree with you. They should expect she’ll do her job, and if she doesn’t they should complain.

    She’s in charge of elections. It’s her job to anticipate problems. If the counties are scrambling to find loopholes, she failed.

  65. 65.

    shoutingattherain

    September 23, 2012 at 4:56 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    Try to keep in touch with any nieces/nephews if possible so they know that not all of their relatives are crazy right-wing nutjobs.

    I get along well with my niece and 2 nefs, my older, liberal brother’s kids, daily blog denizens who were brought up without with the same kind of poisonous prejudices that I was brought up with (late-50s, 60’s Baltimore was a very bigoted place and my folks fit right in to that). They’re all Obots who really have a good handle on what constitutes fairness and they and their friends are very aware of voter suppressions and other RW powergrabs and it REALLY PISSES THEM OFF, especially my niece who is NOT a fan of forced, invasive, transvaginal ultrasounds. Bless her heart.

    And they live in PA so this is very close to the surface for them. They all have the proper IDs and are ready to pull the handle for the O’man. They’re envious of Uncle Shoutingattherain because I live in Oregon where we figured out how to make this whole voting thing as easy as possible long ago. We’re a blue state, and we act like it sometimes.

  66. 66.

    kay

    September 23, 2012 at 5:13 pm

    @Paul:

    Appointing election officials seems like a quick fix to me. It’s too easy, and it won’t solve the problem, even if one believes that “partisan election officials” are the problem. The governor will simply appoint a partisan election official.

    At some point we’re going to have to insist that election officials facilitate elections, however they get the job. Looking at process fixes, or focusing on how they got the job, lets these individuals off the hook. Remember when term limits were all the rage?

  67. 67.

    Hob

    September 23, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    @Paul: The Secretary of State is not an elected position. Where on earth did you get that? Nor is the current officeholder a “him.”

  68. 68.

    Geoduck

    September 23, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    @shoutingattherain:

    because I live in Oregon where we figured out how to make this whole voting thing as easy as possible long ago

    Here in Washington state as well. Do the whole thing BY MAIL. It makes the whole process sooo much easier.

  69. 69.

    dance around in your bones

    September 23, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    I posted this the other day on a dead thread from a friend of mine on the ground with OFA:

    It is always instructive to go out of your comfort zone, and so I made calls to Florida on behalf of the Obama Campaign (Organizing for America) to hear the usual good and bad news … one person informed me neither he nor his wife was “going to vote for that black person.” A few did say they were either voting for him or leaning toward him, with the caveat being gays and abortion, GOD cited as the all knowing judge. So I asked them if they knew any gays, which they did, and I expressed my opinion that they were just as loved as the rest of us (gently, I think the ladies were not looking for a fight, really). And I told one lady about my miscarriages and how I felt nature took the biological process disinterestedly, and women should have a choice. She of course wanted to know if I thought it would have been okay with me had my mother chosen to abort me, and I couldn’t say I think we are reincarnated, just spirits looking for a body wherever it may be.
    __
    Plus there were the lonely ones, the lady who couldn’t find another apartment in her area and was in poor health and started crying because she had only 1,400 dollars to live on a month … the young man who was apparently disabled and told me he couldn’t finish high school because of his medical problems. They all sounded like Obama people, or the kind Bill Clinton would sit down and listen intently to. Hope they feel well enough to get out and vote for him.
    __
    But I am reading that the Reps are pissed and their tails are all twisted because Mittens is falling behind … “he should be ahead by now” … well, folks, you can’t BUY the presidency. And you have to have a viable candidate, hmmm? They are grasping at non-issues, sound bites, when they should have their own platform. I saw this guy from the NY Times yesterday talking about that on Charlie Rose, basically that they can’t seize on an issue here and an issue there to attack Obama with … they have to have a core set of beliefs to come from.

  70. 70.

    Hob

    September 23, 2012 at 5:32 pm

    @kay: I don’t know if other places do this, but the New York City Board of Elections has a system where the D and R parties each get to appoint X number of people– thereby supposedly avoiding partisan bias and keeping things out of the hands of a single person. Problem is, although this may work as a check against one party committing massive election fraud, it doesn’t particularly help with the task of administering elections. For one thing, the parties just treat most of those positions as patronage sinecures, so when any problems come up (as happened in one particularly screwed-up election I witnessed as a poll monitor in Brooklyn) it’s not easy to find anyone who knows what the hell they’re doing. For another, the city is heavily Democratic so most of the significant elections are Democratic primaries, for seats the GOP makes no real effort at winning.

  71. 71.

    MikeJ

    September 23, 2012 at 5:34 pm

    @Geoduck:

    Here in Washington state as well. Do the whole thing BY MAIL. It makes the whole process sooo much easier.

    A reminder to Washingtonians: if you aren’t yet registered to vote, it’s still not too late, but it soon will be.

    October 6 Deadline for mail-in voter registrations and updates
    October 8 Deadline for online registration and updates
    October 29 Deadline for in-person new Washington State voter registration

    Do it online, takes about 90 seconds.

  72. 72.

    CarolDuhart2

    September 23, 2012 at 5:50 pm

    @kay: Kay, somehow I think elections and voting administration should be like a Civil Service position where they are more administrators unbeholden to a party. Like a city manager, but for elections. Of course, I’m writing this from a city that still elects a Coroner, for goodness sake.

  73. 73.

    kay

    September 23, 2012 at 5:54 pm

    @Hob:

    There’s this big debate about electing or appointing state judges ( they’re ruling on behalf of their campaign donors).

    That’s a corruption problem, not a process problem.

    If we have corrupt judges, appointing them isn’t
    going to solve anything. They’ll simply rule on behalf of the partisan who appoints them, and HIS donors.

  74. 74.

    Yutsano

    September 23, 2012 at 5:57 pm

    @MikeJ: Already done. :)

    EDIT: Good thing I checked, my info was totally wrong!!

  75. 75.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 6:06 pm

    @geg6: I read that Jim Cramer (of CNBC) threw a conniption because his father couldn’t get a Voter ID for lack of a birth certificate (or naturalization papers?). Of course, he now has a congressman and various state officials vowing to help.

  76. 76.

    AHH onna Droid

    September 23, 2012 at 6:48 pm

    @JoyfulA: Ha. Youve never lived in Virginia, I take it.

  77. 77.

    Frankensteinbeck

    September 23, 2012 at 7:15 pm

    @dance around in your bones:

    She of course wanted to know if I thought it would have been okay with me had my mother chosen to abort me

    Presumably your opinion would be the same as the opinion of the person who won’t be born because you’re not conceiving a child right now. A theoretical person who might have existed but never did has no feelings.

  78. 78.

    dance around in your bones

    September 23, 2012 at 7:30 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I have conceived a child and I know how special that is. I have also been scared to death that I conceived w/o wanting to and been scared to death.

    I think a soul searching for a body will find one, eventually. I think we agree on this point. If you have never existed (and there are many opinions from when we ‘exist’ – from fertilization of the egg to taking the first breath to reaching the age of one) – you really have no idea of ‘existence’. Until you form a brain, I guess. If even then, considering the research on teenage brains and the lack of development thereof.

  79. 79.

    JoyfulA

    September 23, 2012 at 8:16 pm

    @AHH onna Droid: No, I’ve never lived in Virginia. I’ve driven through several times, though, and have a niece living there.

  80. 80.

    Phoenix Woman

    September 23, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    As has been mentioned, support for Minnesota’s Photo ID amendment has dropped nearly thirty points since May.

    And that’s before people realize just how much it will cost to implement. We’re talking about bankrupting rural counties here. Kittson County alone will have to shell out $160 per person just to meet the requirements of this amendment — and they won’t be one-time requirements, either, despite what the Center of the American Experiment says.

    Want to get the indie voters to vote against this turkey? Publicize the fact that it costs tons of money and won’t do diddly to stop even a miniscule amount of fraud.

  81. 81.

    Starlit

    September 24, 2012 at 12:12 am

    @mish: Stupid and evil keep company oftener than you might think, IMHOFWIW. The inability to apply the idea of “bad consequences” for others can be worse than the refusal to do so, if only because it can look more innocent. Evil needs stupidity: that’s how it gets critical mass.

  82. 82.

    Barry

    September 24, 2012 at 6:21 am

    @Kay: “Pennsylvania is going to be a train wreck if they end up with different ballot access by county. Jesus Christ. That’s completely unacceptable.”

    Bush v Gore – equal protection under the law demands unequal protection.

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