In Alabama due to Voter ID laws, it is illegal to vote without a government-issued ID, which usually means a driver’s license. That wouldn’t be such a big deal if Alabama wasn’t closing places to get those IDs in 12-15 counties. Which all happen to be primarily African American.
[These are] counties where some of the state’s poorest live. Counties that are majority African-American. Combine that with the federally mandated Star ID taking effect next year, and we’re looking at a nightmare. Or a trial lawyer’s dream. When the state passed Voter ID, Republican lawmakers argued that it was supposed to prevent voter fraud. Democrats said the law was written to disenfranchise black voters and suppress the voice of the poor.
But yeah, Democracy, am I right?
Team Blackness also discussed the heartbreaking school shooting at an Oregon’s Umpqua Community College, police corruption–this time in Miami, and how some banks are making it hard for minorities.
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WereBear
Like it wasn’t hard enough for these folks.
Yatsuno
It’s going to get worse. From what I understand this is just the first ROUND of closings. They plean to shutter all but 4 in the state. I can’t find the link right now because of work but the remaining 4 would be in the only major metropolitan areas in the state. They know what they’re doing.
The Other Chuck
I say send in the fucking army and have them run polling places. Let them scream their fool heads off about jackboots and tyranny, I don’t fucking care. In fact, ima pull on my own pair so I can be first to stomp on those necks, red as they are.
Cervantes
Sick.
dr. luba
I may be missing something, but just how are people supposed to get and renew their driver’s licenses? Travel halfway across the state?
DanF
But they’re going to have a voter registration van – complete with Rebel Flag on the side for easy identification. It’ll be in a county near you every third Thursday of the 13th, 14th and 15th month of the year. Just listen for “Dixie” blaring over the loud speakers!
sukabi
Their goal is to eliminate democratic votes, but there will be a backlash, as it’s going to make it next to impossible for ANYONE to get a driver’s license. Or have they “privatized” the testing part and require you to go to the state dev to get the actual license?
At any rate, the state can look forward to many lawsuits, and the doj being all up in their business.
sukabi
Should be DMV ..
WereBear
@dr. luba: I suspect renewals will be done by mail.
ruemara
I dunno, I was reassured with great vehemence that since they were allowing you to get to where you needed to go to get that ID, this wasn’t targeting the black vote at all. As long as you can get to a government building. So we should all calm down & stop being hyperbolic.
Cervantes
@WereBear:
Not so much by mail but electronically — which raises an obvious question.
Bobby Thomson
But Chief Justice Roberts is an honorable man, as are they all, honorable men.
catclub
I think this is a very well designed fear, uncertainty, and doubt, plus random change, campaign. There is a long list of ID’s that are satisfactory. There are also ways to get a free ID if you have NONE of those. The change and the complications will
all be legal, and anyone who is motivated and capable, can get one. But it will still cut off some voters. Mission accomplished.
SFAW
@ruemara:
Exactly. It would all be so much easier for real Americans if some people knew their place. Being uppity is not what real Americans do, after all.
ETA: I forgot to ask: who reassured you with great vehemence? Some real-world “friend”? Or someone on a blog?
kc
This has gotten relatively little attention on Twitter. Maybe we need a catchy hashtag.
SFAW
@Bobby Thomson:
Excellent choice.
Cervantes
@ruemara:
Right, and, obviously, no one should accept that assurance at face value.
But note that they’re justifying the closures on budgetary grounds; the offices being closed were only open part-time and were not owned by the state; they were the least busy offices, the busiest one serving on average only 7 customers per day; there are still places in each county where people can go to get their licenses; and so on.
The effect on voting rights may not be justifiable on those grounds. And being blind to exactly where the now-closing offices are is a problem.
rikyrah
This is who they are, Elon. This is who they are.
Emerald
Old times there are not forgotten.
Shakezula
@ruemara: Look there’s free ID if you discount the cost associated with getting the documents that will allow you to have the ID and getting to a place where you can submit the form (literacy test anyone) for the ID, so please CALM DOWN and stop reading Raw Story. It’s bad for you.
Frankensteinbeck
@catclub:
IE, comfortable enough financially that driving an extra twenty miles or taking time off work to fit the other office’s schedule isn’t a big deal.
Cacti
Sheriff in charge of Oregon shooting investigation had previously posted a Sandy Hook truther video on his Facebook page.
Mike in NC
In a somewhat related story, a few years ago the Republicans running NC decided on a solution to the state’s above national average unemployment rate. Namely, to close a bunch of Division of Employment Security (DES) offices and lay off most of those displaced employees.
A genius move to make it harder for moochers and losers without jobs to file for unemployment benefits (which at the same time were radically reduced across the board).
benw
@Shakezula:
And it was also pointed out in the other thread that the rules for getting a free ID are pretty confusing. I can see a lot of people showing up at the county clerk (whose hours are all during the regular work day) with the wrong set of docs and being told “sorry come back with the right papers tomorrow.” Who the fuck is going to do that?
Patricia Kayden
Voter suppression tactics are also going down in North Carolina.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/01/1426873/-The-sneaky-new-voter-suppression-tool-in-North-Carolina-uncovered-by-one-of-our-own
jl
Can we go after GOP under RICO laws. Seems to me to be getting to that point.
I was during Bush I presidency that I started asking myself what the difference was between the GOP and a white collar crime ring. That was probably the start of my long sad slide into a hardened partisan attitude.
BTW, I heard a news report this morning that Jeb? fell down a few points to 4 percent in Pew national poll, just above the likes of Rand and Huck. Trump still has big lead. So, look at Trump’s continued dominance in GOP primary, which says to me that a good rock solid 30 percent of GOP primary base is just fine with this vicious racist apartheid style approach to politics, and this crap like we see Alabama is not going away until we get a federal government strong and united enough to make it go away. A Democratic president Senate back in sane hands, and narrowed partisan gap in House will help with that in 2016.
D58826
Sort of off-topic but falls in line that the world (or at least the American part of it) is rapidly becoming unhinged. The Vatican has confirmed that yes the Pope did shake hands with Davis along with a few dozen other people in a rope-line type event. The Vatican also confirmed the audience that the Pope had with a former student and the student’s family. The student is gay and the ‘family’ includes his partner. The Pope was aware of this, it didn’t matter and gave both men a hug when they met. The Davis camp continues to insist that the Vatican is not telling the truth about her meeting with the Pope.
In the meantime the sheriff running the mass shooting investigation turns out to be a Sandy Hook truther and a member of a group similar to the Oath Keepers. In his letter to Biden written just after Sandy Hook he claimed that he has the power to decide what laws are constitutional and whither he and his department will obey them. In this particular case he told Biden that he would not obey any federal gun control laws.
I just wonder how SNL and the Onion can come up with skits when this kind of stuff happens in the real world.
D58826
@Cacti: ooops beat me to it
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
It says to me that they want that approach so badly that they will ignore everything else about your candidacy.
Belafon
Hospitals That Have Dealt With Mass Shootings Send Pizza to Each Other
http://jezebel.com/hospitals-that-have-dealt-with-mass-shootings-send-pizz-1734309492
ruemara
@Shakezula: Got it! I must run information sources past my betters to know if it’s worth reading. Must get over that self directing thing I do.
ThresherK
What about the county clerk’s office?
Hey, for the performance of basic government services to the governed, it’s a place nothing can possi-bligh go wrong.
D58826
Jeb!’s response to yesterday’s shooting – ‘stuff happens’. When given the opportunity to be a bit more tactful he replied that no those were the words he wanted to use.
gratuitous
Let’s see if we can’t squeeze a little lemonade here: This shows me that the Republicans are extraordinarily resourceful and imaginative when it comes to concocting things to further their own agenda. In the future, whenever I hear a Republican bleat that something is “too complicated” or “too hard,” I will point out that disenfranchising minority voters was pretty complicated and hard, too. But by golly, the Republicans buckled down and came up with an answer there!
Elizabelle
@D58826: PBO just made mincemeat of Jeb! in his presser.
Said the American people could consider all the shootings, and decide for themselves whether that’s just “stuff happens.”
Really good presser.
Matt McIrvin
@Shakezula: Recently I had to get my hands on both a birth certificate and a marriage certificate for job-and-benefits-related reasons, and it set me back an amount of money that would be a significant concern to many people. I was somewhat chagrined to realize that most states have outsourced this to a company that is a subsidiary of frickin’ Elsevier, the same people whose extortionate practices have driven whole segments of the scientific community away from publishing in traditional journals.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@benw:
Yep. It was very unclear whether or not you could be charged with fraud if you had an expired DL and got a free voter ID. Also unclear if an expired DL was adequate for voting, or if only a valid one was permitted.
Apparently people in Alabama can renew their licenses online, which isn’t very helpful for people who lack internet access. And it’s not clear what people who don’t have a license or ID card are supposed to do if there’s no DMV for three counties.
Part of the issue is that they’re a poor, mostly rural state, which means it’s hard to deliver services, but this is only going to make everyone’s life more difficult.
jl
@D58826: That is pretty much what Trump said about it.
So the difference between the crazy and Very Serious People GOP is… what? Not much.
Any of those GOPers running for pres would be a disaster for the country.
D58826
@Elizabelle: The TV spot for the 2016 campaign just writes itself, assuming Jeb gets that far. Between stuff happens and free stuff the democrats will run out of money before they run out of good materrial
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Elizabelle:
That’s gonna leave a mark.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): He took a whack at the press while it was sitting there, too.
They’re anxious about the Powerful Putin! Several questions. He explained how Putin is basically tanking his own economy, although his foreign adventures might make him more popular at home.
Said he knew the beltway crowd knew how to read a poll. I think he took a very slight pause there, too.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Elizabelle:
I’m still kind of boggled at Jeb. W was in office when Virginia Tech happened, and he at least had the common sense to send condolences, Laura sends hers too, blah blah blah.
“Stuff happens”? WTF?
benw
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Thanks for looking that up last thread. I should’ve given you credit. Require a photo ID and make it harder to get a DL and you make voting harder for the working class. Close the DMVs and you make life harder for the working class. (Alabama gets a special high-five for closing them in predominantly black areas.) Restrict voting hours and eliminate early voting and you make voting harder for the working class. That’s the trifecta. Has Alabama done the last one yet?
D58826
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Remember Jeb is the smart one!!!!! FSM have mercy on us
Elizabelle
Listening to CNN. Reporting the shooter told someone he was tired of being a virgin. He wanted a girlfriend. Aarrgh. Shades of that director’s son who shot up — was it Santa Barbara?
But I remember Lawrence Wright saying what an issue that was for young Saudi men. The Looming Tower, when he presented it at the Kennedy Center. The no hope of what’s perceived as normal human relations driving extremism. Could have been behind Lanza’s shooting, too, but he was better at wiping his hard drive and not leaving a written record.
Elizabelle
@D58826: Have a feeling the Bush daughters, Doro and the little one who died in childhood, turn out to be the smart ones.
That gene pool has some problems.
WaterGirl
With the new Republican governor in Illinois, they are talking about closing a lot of the drivers license facilities for “budget reasons”. I’m sure that closing the facilities has absolutely nothing to do with voter registration.
I hope all these stupid people in IL — who decided to vote for him because the state budget was messed up with the last guy, saying “how can it be any worse?” — now have their answer. A LOT WORSE. Idiots.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Don’t have the time to respond to everything you state above, but as for this:
From one of the PDFs you mentioned:
They add:
And:
Which is boilerplate.
Is it still “not clear [to you] what people who don’t have a license or ID card are supposed to do if there’s no DMV for three counties”?
Matt McIrvin
@jl: I noticed that Trump is no longer beating Hillary Clinton in the head-to-head questions… but Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina do beat her. I think the pattern is that everyone who is a current flavor-of-the-month in the news media gets a big boost, and Trump’s time in that seat is apparently already over, even though he’s still ahead in the primary polls.
D58826
@WaterGirl: It’s a feature not a bug. Destroy government services and then campaign against the incompetent government
Matt McIrvin
@jl: Jeb is averaging around 8-9% in most primary polls. But that’s down from the summer and he doesn’t seem to be gaining any.
It looks to me like Marco Rubio is going to be the next guy to get a surge, and the first one since the Summer of Trump who is actually a conventional politician. Sam Wang’s gut feeling is that Rubio is the actual favorite for the nomination.
Calouste
@Elizabelle: I remember reading an article about Algeria in the early 90s, around the time the islamists won the elections which subsequently got cancelled, and the civil war broke out. Some interviews with twenty-something guys that couldn’t afford a place to live on their own, so no possibility to have sex, let alone get married and start a family. If your life is like that, why not fight in a civil war, it wasn’t like they had much to lose.
Full metal Wingnut
@Elizabelle: PBO is 1000x smarter and more talented a politician than Jeb. And a better public speaker. And I bet it drives that entitled little shit crazy.
Also, if we have to have another Bush, I’d rather have Dubya back than Jeb. The fake Texas accent and malapropisms were at least entertaining.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Cervantes:
Sorry, I guess I will have to clarify that for you:
“not clear [to you] what people who don’t have a license or ID card *AND NEED ONE IN ORDER TO DRIVE OR IDENTIFY THEMSELVES OTHER THAN AT THE VOTING BOOTH* are supposed to do if there’s no DMV for three counties”?
Hopefully my addition above will make my original meaning clear to you since you felt it was ambiguous before.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I think you need a nap.