Nice when stuff like this works against them:
The Republican push to make it more difficult to vote this year — seen by many as a racially tinged attempt to keep Democratic turnout down — could not have failed more spectacularly, a top African American activist told a left-leaning think tank Tuesday.
Chanelle Hardy, a vice president at the National Urban League, told an audience at the Center For American Progress in Washington that, as conservatives had suspected, there was a drop-off in enthusiasm among the African American electorate between 2008 and 2012. Republicans based a lot of their strategy on enthusiasm dips like these, assuming that Obama wouldn’t be able to maintain the same level of minority turnout he had enjoyed in 2008.
Unfortunately for those Republican strategists’ plans, however, other Republicans in legislatures across the country were on a quest to impose restrictions on voting, chasing the ghost of in-person voter fraud. Those Republican legislators flipped a switch with the African American vote, Hardy said, rekindling whatever enthusiasm had waned after 2008’s historic Obama win.
This was really true in Ohio, in my experience, and not just among African Americans. I saw real anger among liberals and Democrats here and this is a predominately white, rural county.
I went to the Senate field hearing on voting rights that Durbin and Sherrod Brown held early in the 2012 cycle and I was really struck by how deeply offended people were. I “got it” sitting there among preachers and community leaders and others in a way that I haven’t before and I’ve been following voting rights for more than a few years. There was a sense of determination and seriousness and profound offense that I could feel. Driving home from the hearing I was thinking about how small and petty the conservative side of this battle seems when compared with the liberal side.
On that note, we can look at three proposals for new voting rules, one from a conservative leader/entertainer in the Washington Times and two others from elected Democrats.:
Let’s also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is on welfare. Once they get off welfare and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That’s insane.
In addition to suspending a welfare recipient’s right to vote, we also need to get our voting system straightened out and eliminate voter fraud. We need to ensure that only Americans vote by requiring polling places to validate the identification of each voter.
This celebrity is parroting the new focus on the Right, which is centered around the idea that undocumented immigrants are voting. It’s really senseless to try to placate them with voter ID laws because they simply up the ante once the ID laws are in place. They’ve gone from demanding voter ID in Ohio (2006) to demanding photo ID (2012) once the 2006 voter ID demand was met.
Here’s the elected Dem proposals:
Yesterday, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) unveiled a bill they’re calling the “Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act.” Under their proposal, states that “aggressively” pursue election reforms would be rewarded with federal grants.
And what kind of reforms are proponents looking for? It’s not a short list, but the Warner/Coons bill calls for flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration; expanding early voting; “no-excuse” absentee voting; and “formal training of election officials, including state and county administrators and volunteers.”
In the House, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) unveiled a related proposal, the “Streamlining and Improving Methods at Polling Locations and Early (SIMPLE) Voting Act,” which is even more ambitious. Most notably, it would require 15 days of early voting in all states for federal elections — and because Congress has authority over regulating federal elections, the assumption is states would simply apply identical standards for all down-ballot races.
Face
Who cares what he says? He’ll be dead or in jail by the end of the year, or so he promised.
Personally, I’m voting for the former, unless the latter comes first and causes the former.
Baud
The GOP will not give up on this so neither should we. This will be a long fight.
Kay
@Face:
I don’t really agree with that. Conservatives and media are fond of the idea of insisting that elected officials DENOUNCE any and all statements by liberals of any stripe, whether they’re elected or not. I don’t know why there’s a double standard. Mitt Romney was never asked to disassociate himself from any of the lunatics he kowtowed to.
JPL
The author of the Washington Times article is an American Icon according to said publication. Those words have lost their intended meaning I think. It’s time for Ted to read the Constitution.
Betty Cracker
The voter suppression strategy sure as hell blew up in Rick Scott’s face here in FL. When I think of people standing in line to vote until one o’clock in the morning after the election had already been called, it makes angry — and incredibly proud of the voters’ persistence.
Kay
@Baud:
It was another example of something big that was going on in 2012 that wasn’t covered by political media. They covered the laws. What they missed was this whole group of people who were absolutely fuming and plenty “enthused”.
They covered the Republican side. There was this whole other story that I kept seeing. I haven’t decided if it matters. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s better if they miss it.
MattF
@Kay: So, what do you think– now that ex-Senator Santorum has joined the WND/birther/sharia crowd, do we ignore him? You’d think lining up with the likes of Pamela Geller and Jerome Corsi (not to mention a notable lack of success among voters) would put him well over the crackpot line, but it’s not so obvious to me. I’d certainly prefer not to spend energy getting angry over what he says. But as long as ‘mainstream’ Republicans maintain a ‘no enemies to my right’ policy he’s not ignorable.
Uncle Cosmo
Slightly o/t, but is anyone else out there as sick as I am of bills given imbecile names to arrive at a cutesy acronym? I don’t give a ratzass which side does it, it’s disgusting.
I wonder if anyone in Congress has the huevos to sponsor a bill with a title like, say, the Educate And Train Super High Intelligence Teachers Act…
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Uncle Cosmo: It may seem silly, but it’s how people will remember the bills, and it also affects the conversation about the bills. Sadly, the Democrats have lost some messaging wars because their bills have not had easy to remember names. It’s just the way the voters’ brains work.
c u n d gulag
Hey Republicans, “Voter Fraud,” like ACORN and The New Black Panthers, are all ‘pigments of your imagination!
Cassidy
@Uncle Cosmo: Actually no. It’s aggravating when it obfuscates the intent, but I think the Dems have gotten pretty good at leveraging this tactic to make a simple name that the uninformed hear regarding legislation. The both sides do it meme doesn’t apply here. The GOP attempts to obfuscate the intent.
Brendan in NC
Dear Ted – Stick to what you know the most about – stalking underage girls at your concerts, and leave politics to those who know more about it than a 5th grader…kthxbai
General Stuck
The stench of electoral desperation from the right wing has passed well into the backlash zone, not only in hyperactive and quite obvious efforts to suppress democratic voters, but in about all efforts to compensate for a shrinking white wingnut voter base. And it is ever more increasing in the governing process as well, in dangerous and existential threatening ways, like taking up unstable weapons, such as paying the nations debt .
Life inside the nutter bubble is one of increasing free floating anxiety, and free associative thinking for some kind of magic scheme to take them back to the way it was. So what were long term projects to stay in power, like voter suppression, they have thrown off thoughtful caution of the guilty, for keeping up appearances as supporters of basic democracy.
And the massive paradox with increasing compulsive purity of ideology, is making their plight even worse. It is the sense of supremacy that drives them away from any solution that could work for what seems like a math problem, when it really is a problem of basic human decency for white nativists in what was founded as an immigrant society, with a constitution anchored by equality under the law. They always have been swimming upstream, now the river of American melting pot destiny is getting too swift for that.
PeakVT
Here’s the elected Dem proposals:
Looks pretty good, but I see nothing about paper ballots.
mingo
Why is there no tednugentdeathorjailwatch tumblr??? The internetz is failing me!
Todd
@MattF:
This.
Napoleon
Meanwhile PA moves to steal the next election:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-03/pennsylvania-proposal-may-help-republicans-win-electoral-votes.html
J
I’m glad that Republican thuggery backfired this time, but it will probably work at the mid term election when the nation’s attention isn’t concentrated on the choice of president.
Snarki, child of Loki
How does that old saying go, “Ballots or Bullets”?
Given the right-wings attachment to the 2nd amendment (and for vote-suppression), it’s clear what direction they’re pushing us.
So how about just lining up the candidates and have citizens take pot-shots and the ones they don’t like.
Okay, that’s kinda radical. Let’s try it in the GOP primary first.
NonyNony
@Napoleon:
If they really wanted the vote count from Pennsylvania to reflect the will of the people of Pennsylvania, they’d sign onto the National Popular Vote initiative and start agitating to get rid of the Electoral College.
So yeah. At least it isn’t as blatant a move as our Secretary of State in Ohio who wanted to hand out Electoral Votes based on gerrymandered congressional districts that give lopsided representation to Republicans.
Felonius Monk
General Stuck
OT
If eemom is out there, she ought to get a kick out of this. Colonel Mustard is plotting an unholy alliance to fix the Obot wagon. You can’t make this shit up.
Hardy, har, har/ Like I said, the stench of desperation.
mdblanche
@MattF:
Considering that the Senate Republicans just contemptuously ignored Bob Dole and took their orders from Santorum’s first column instead, clearly you shouldn’t ignore him. He is a mainstream Republican and an influential one too.
Citizen_X
We need to be as hair trigger (pun intended) about the right to vote as the right is about the 2nd Amendment. That is, any suggestions of infringing the right to vote gets instant pushback.
After all, the right to vote is mentioned more often in the Constitution than the right to bear arms, by a lot (5 times? vs once).
Xecky Gilchrist
@General Stuck: Is it too late for progressives and the Tea Party movement to unite against the Obamacare monstrosity?
Didn’t they link up years ago? What else could ‘firebagger’ mean?
ETA: you’re right about the stench, but the Colonel isn’t saying anything new. The conversation has just wandered a bit since the ludicrous peak of HillaryIs44.
Napoleon
@NonyNony:
I am from Ohio also. Have you seen anyone in the MSM mention his plan? I was thinking of writing the local paper and NPR station here in Cleveburg and asking them to cover it.
Napoleon
@General Stuck:
Why is it that so many law professors are a-holes?
Kay
@Napoleon:
Husted clarified and said he was misunderstood. He said he doesn’t plan to pursue changes.
Schlemizel
@Face: @mingo:
Most accurately, April 12. 2013
Here is the countdown clock
The Motor City Meathead Dead Or In Jail
Your welcome 8-{D
amk
One simple solution. Fucking vote every two years instead of every four at every level. Now it’s all rearguard action.
Napoleon
@Kay:
Thank God – Those schemes are nothing short of plans to in essence institute a dictatorship of the right in this country.
El Cid
You could save a lot of time by assuming that anyone voting for non-Republicans is voting illegally.
Schlemizel
@amk:
There was a recount for a state senate race here in MN this fall. They were doing a report about it while the counting was going on & I could very clearly hear the offical say “The only vote cast on this ballot is for President of the United States” and someone else agreeing “Only vote on ballot is for Prez”.
What kind of a jackhole would do that? A Johnson or Stein voter? A complete moran?
Kay
@MattF:
I think it’s ridiculous to ignore Santorum and it’s giving Republicans a complete pass to do so. He was competitive in their presidential primary. They should have to wear that like a badge.
It’s not my job to parse who meets the “respectable conservative” mark and focus attention there. I think doing that job for them works to the benefit of Republicans. They were afraid of Donald Trump. They would not repudiate or distance themselves from that disgusting clown. That says something important about the “conservative movement” all by itself.
I didn’t invent or embrace these conservative standard bearers. Republicans did. It’s on them.
Jay C
@El Cid:
“Could”?? Isn’t this attitude the fundamental guiding principle for a non-trivial number of Republican state officials already???
BruceK
There are entirely too many people who are, financially, one random misadventure away from destitution. May the author of that first proposal learn first-hand the pervasive stress and fear that imposes on a person, and then consider whether they should also be deprived of their fundamental rights as citizens as punishment for suffering a catastrophe.
And if that first proposal becomes part of Republican policy, they won’t be able to get me to pull the lever for anyone bearing their standard unless they exhume my stone-cold corpse and reanimate it.
(And because I wouldn’t put that past them, I’m leaving instructions that once my viable organs have been harvested for donation, my remains be cremated and buried in three separate locations on two separate continents…)
Roger Moore
@JPL:
I’m an iconoclast. Does that mean I get to smash him into little pieces? Please?
Kay
@MattF:
I feel like this goes to the much larger game that conservatives play, where they pretend there is some abstract idea that is “The Republican Party” that is much better and more principled than the group of people who make up the ACTUAL Republican Party.
It drives me crazy. Political parties are defined by the people within them. There is no “real” Republican Party that exists alongside (and above!) the actual entity. You want to embrace Rick Santorum? Guess what? The Republican Party now includes Rick Santorum and the composition of that real group of individuals is now changed. They seem to have this idea that they can include and incorporate “interest groups” yet the organization remains somehow apart. It defies common sense.
I don’t present a purely aspirational “Democratic Party” that excludes the members I don’t like or agree with as some imaginary “real” Democratic Party, because that’s not reality. No such organization exists.
peorgietirebiter
@Napoleon: The folks over at Lawyers, Guns & Money have been eviscerating the ACA/Obama as corporate Judas whine. When the facts support your case, you argue the facts etc.
slag
While I appreciate the Republicans’ help, I’m not so sure it was required. Maybe I live in a liberal bubble, but everyone I spoke to was, without question, going to vote. The frustration was there, but it certainly wasn’t a deal-breaker. Particularly when it came to the proposition of seeing Obama be a one-termer. That was not acceptable.
I hope Dems can follow through on those two proposals. And I hope that Ted Nugent can follow through on his previous proposal to be dead or in jail by April. I’m very bipartisan in that respect. If it’s a good proposal, I’ll take it–no matter which side of the aisle it comes from.
Napoleon
@peorgietirebiter:
Yeah, well fuck them too. They never got HCR passed but Obama did in the form of ACA, which beats their non-passed “pure” plan since it was not and will never be inacted.
Brachiator
@MattF:
I never paid much attention to him in the first place.
@peorgietirebiter:
They are as relevant to reality as is ex-Senator Santorum.
Bubba Dave
@Napoleon:
Wrong target, mon empereur. LGM has been defending the ACA as an improvement over the status quo that, while far from perfect, was probably the best bill politically feasible and will serve as a foundation for future improvements.
The Moar You Know
@Brendan in NC: So glad that others have heard the stories. He’s been known for that shit for decades. Hope those stories get some traction, or better yet some legal action.
BruceFromOhio
BruceFromOhio: U.S. sailed off the ‘hypocrite cliff’ long ago.
We created the Tea Party; now it’s time to kill it
Only a moron could possibly think cutting taxes on the wealthy could accomplish anything toward restoring sanity in the conservative insane asylum known as The Republican Party.
Let’s be honest; going over the “fiscal cliff” will cut the deficit. We’ll drive towards reduced spending and higher taxes no matter what happens on January 1. We can only hope the trip eventually drives a stake through the heart of the so-called Teabaggers.
Raising taxes on the wealthy, closing loopholes and eliminating deductions is analogous to seeing Michelangelo’s very first short paint stroke on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and claiming it’s a work in progress.
We are more than $16 trillion in debt today, and some estimates indicate that America will be $22 trillion in debt at the end of this president’s second term if nothing changes. Fortunately, at least some of the leadership outside of the Republican-dominated House of Representatives is living in reality, instead of curled up in a fetal position with ears plugged and eyes closed.
You won’t get an argument from me that America has a spending problem. A much larger problem we face, however, is a federal government problem. We’ve got malfunctioning departments stacked on top of bloated agencies that are stacked on top of a bungled mess of various supporting offices that are overstocked with duplicitous bureaucrats appointed by the Bush Administration. We’ve created the very beast that President Eisenhower and Ross Perot warned us about, and it’s stalling our ability to address, resolve and progress.
We can’t keep throwing good money after bad and expect different results. What we need is a wholesale, top-to-bottom assessment of the federal government, and then we need to kick out the lobbyists, the dark money donors and SuperPACS. This should be fundamental before any deals are cut regarding new spending cuts.
The three sacred entitlement cows in the room that no politician wants to poke are ExxonMobil, the Department of Defense, and Grover Norquist. A blinding statement of the obvious is that we are never going to get our financial house in order until these sacred entitlement cows are not only poked, but slaughtered. Until the slaughter is over, everything else is just legislative window dressing.
In addition to slaughtering the three sacred entitlement cows that consume a vast majority of the logic and reality in the Republican Party, let’s truly spread the pain around and raise taxes on everyone, including the corporations that pay zero federal income taxes. Those “people” need to have some skin in the game, too. I recommend at least a 5 percent federal income tax bracket for them. The insane free ride needs to end.
No tax-raising deal should be signed that includes a balanced-budget amendment – its unrealistic and unattainable.
Let’s also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is a lobbyist. Once they get off K-Street and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American working as a lobbyist, chair of a 501 (c), or employed by a think tank should have the right to vote for tax cuts on the rich and tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That’s insane.
In addition to suspending a lobbyist’s right to vote, we also need to get our voting system straightened out and remove state legislatures from the redisticting process. We need to ensure that Americans are provided the right to vote consistently, and fairly.
It shouldn’t take a bruce from the Buckeye to come up with these common-sense bargaining chips before taxes are cut on the wealthy, which will further choke the economy. How about it, GOP?
slag
@Brachiator:
Yes. I remember when the guys at LGM nearly won the Democratic primary. Boy did we dodge a bullet.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL:
An “American Icon” who dodged the draft during the Vietnam war in a most uniquely American way.
Vile, cowardly shit. Literally.
Mom Says I'm Handsome
Does anyone know of any proposals to standardize the voting apparatus itself? The stories about last-minute software patches on USB drives, of touch-screen displays that only register one candidate if you touch THIS pixel, hanging chads and butterflies and and and… It’s all so fucking embarrassing.
Here’s a suggestion. Create a nationwide competition at the university level, where school teams vie to design a complete hardware and software solution (voting machines, tabulators, etc.) that must meet requirements for traceability, transparency, tamperproofing, and cost. The winning team has their solution be proliferated as the national standard. The government contracts with qualified suppliers, using standardized, interchangeable components, to build the devices. They’re field-tested in the 2014 cycle, and by November 2016, they’re fully proliferated. If we can put a man on the moon in a decade, we can build a reliable abacus in four years, for fuck’s sake.
Napoleon
@Bubba Dave:
If that is the case I take it back.
peorgietirebiter
@Bubba Dave: Thanks for pointing that out. They offer some quick talking point facts that blow up the firebag whine.
Brachiator
@Napoleon:
Moi aussi, to the extent that they LGM backed the president on health care reform.
Uncle Cosmo
If Nugent picks death over jail, could someone arrange to have it done using one of the guitars he befouled over the years? (Which is to say, pretty much every one he’s touched since his Amboy Dukes days.)
Tie him down & advertise for one of those girls he stalked–or her husband, or her sons–to beat him to death with it. (Stock spares in case the first one breaks too soon.) I’d guess the line would go around the block…
FlipYrWhig
@Napoleon: Not all the LGMers agree on everything, of course, but Scott Lemieux is particularly adept at kicking against the leftier-than-thou pricks.
FlipYrWhig
Oh, I see where the misunderstanding came from: The peorgietirebiter post that says
can easily be read as
instead of
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
When was the last time a tax increase was on a ballot?
Paul in KY
@J: That is our (Democrats) & the President’s concern. We have to remain motivated for 2014.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
I agree completely with Ted Nugent. No electoral votes for states that are on welfare—getting more money back from the federal government than they pay in federal taxes. When they get back on their feet and are productive members of the union, their electoral votes will be restored.
Hell, I’d allow them to vote if they’d agree to a “tax” of those two unearned electoral votes each state gets. I’m too tender-hearted for my own good.
cosima
I think the minorities got it here in Denver as well.
Here’s how it worked here in Colorado: if a person didn’t vote in 2010 they were “inactivated.” Which, for a mail-in ballot voter (the majority of voters here) meant that you wouldn’t receive your ballot. If you weren’t a mail-in ballot voter you were inactive, but could reactivate yourself online, or go to your polling place to reactivate yourself and vote. There was also the problem of the POS Gessler not sending these inactive voters anything that said that they were inactive. At an Obama rally one of the guys in front of me was shocked & infuriated to find that he was inactive — white guy, about 50, probably votes 90% of the time.
The year 2010 was chosen by our (GOP) Secretary of State “arbitrarily” — of course if a person was choosing an arbitrary year and wants to disenfranchise minority voters it’s highly unlikely that they would choose the year — 2011 — where a minority was voted in as Mayor of Denver. Gessler chose 2010 because that was the lowest turnout year, and the year with low minority turnout, resulting in over 200,000+ inactive voters in Denver County alone.
But the AA community got it. When I was registering voters at Juneteenth and explaining the new rule to them they got it. Talking amongst themselves about “they don’t want us to vote.” Our Hispanic outreach efforts in our (heavily-Hispanic) corner of Denver were hampered by the most incompetent OFA staffers of all time, so I couldn’t say what the response was from the Hispanic community.
Let it all come back to bite them in the arse. But we have to stay vigilant, because they won’t stop trying to keep the Dem vote down.
rikyrah
Voter Suppression is REAL.
it’s not imaginary.
I don’t have to reach back into family lore about voter suppression.
It’s right there in the generation before me.
My father would have been FORTY-TWO YEARS OLD..
if he had stayed in the state of his birth..
before he would have been able to cast his vote..
and, this after he put on the uniform and put his life on this line for this country.
Mama grew up in the Police State known as Jim Crow Mississippi.
The GOP really thought they were just gonna roll on and take away the RIGHT TO VOTE from FIVE MILLION AMERICANS
and nobody was gonna say shyt?
FUCK THAT.
WRONG FUCKING CENTURY.
NOBODY is playing with them.
Kay
@rikyrah:
The Brown-Durbin hearing was held in a courtroom in Cleveland and they put the local community leaders and voting rights activists in the jury box.
Republicans testified and so did Democrats, experts and electeds, so they were at the counsel tables, with Durbin and Brown where the judge would be in a trial.
Having AA community leaders and others as the jury was just a really powerful set up. It switched the dynamic that conservatives have created, where the voter is presumed guilty of something or other. I’m so used to defending on this that it took me a while to figure out why Republicans were so defensive there. It’s tough to face the actual people they’re trying to keep from voting. I think that was it.
Matt
I say we take the Nuge up on his idiotic plan, but extend it to anybody receiving federal funds as a primary source of income. When the GOP realizes that means defense contractors, retired veterans, people on Social Security, and people on farm subsidies can’t vote EITHER, should be interesting…