Over the weekend, the New York Times’ version of Nate Silver, Nate Cohn, wrote up a “well, actually” piece about the Georgia voter restriction law. According to the best research available — two papers (!) — it seems that it’s hard to see a major impact on turnout, and partisan advantage, for some examples of voter suppression.
First, pardon my commitment to “data” and “science” if I don’t think that two studies of questionable applicability tell me much of anything about the effects of the Georgia law. This is, in general, my gripe about data journalism: there’s just not enough good data to draw evidence-based conclusions, so it devolves into speculative punditry with a patina of scientific respectability. I stopped following Nate Silver on Twitter because I can get uninformed speculation from the guy sitting alone at the end of the bar if I ever feel the need.
Second, some things are beyond the need to do a sketchy “well actually” analysis piece, and a fundamental right like voting is a great example of one of those things. “Well, actually, we found two studies of people who had their little toes amputated and they walk just fine” is not a justification for a program of toe amputation. Voting is a right, full stop, and people’s right to do it should not be unreasonably infringed. Six hour lines with no water is an unreasonable infringement. We don’t need to go further than that, and we certainly don’t need a privileged white dude who grew up in a Seattle suburb and moved to DC after private college to push out a “well, actually” piece about a Jim Crow revival.
In summary, cancel your subscription.
Trump campaign and defaults
SFAW
Fixed
The Rethug version is “Six hour lines with no water is an unreasonable infringement. Unless you’re black, brown, a student, poor, a Demon-rat, or some other type who is not really ‘Murican.”
schrodingers_cat
Done a long time ago. When they started their BUT HER EMAILZ in the run up to 2016. The only thing I miss is their Food Section.
Ivan X
Ha ha, no you can’t. There’s a pandemic afoot, doncha know.
Pardon my commitment to “nuance” and “imperfection” if I still find merit to the good parts of the NYT despite their garbage fire political coverage.
patrick II
Thank You.
Baud
The right wing wired Village thinks that if Democratic voters are able to overcome obstacles, Democrats can’t complain about the obstacles. I recall similar thought pieces when Dems overcame gerrymandering in Virginia.
oldster
Preach it, MisterMix! Every word you say is true.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The Village is the R base. Overwhelmingly wealthy, white and male. That is a R demographic.
Belafon
The worst part of the law is the legislature having the right to swing in and replace boards, thereby negating the votes of people as they see fit.
Brachiator
@SFAW:
Yep. The long lines exist because the election officials deliberately create obstacles by choosing polling locations, not having enough, and eliminating reasonable alternatives, etc.
Jeffro
Attempting to disenfranchise other citizens should be a crime, in and of itself. Just the attempt.
Dee-Lurker
These stories bury the lede that the major problem with the Georgia law is the legislature granting itself the power to override the Secretary of State. This could mean the state leg selects the slate of electors in spite of vote tabulations. That these stories ignore the razor in the apple or mention it in passing several paragraphs down is troubling TO SAY THE LEAST.
Snarki, child of Loki
“In summary, cancel your subscription.”
But I’d have to GET a subscription first, and that’s just unacceptable.
Fair Economist
Incompetence does not excuse evil.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Privileged people like Cohn might take a seat for a while and let other people talk–people like Stacey Abrams, for instance, who’s on the scene and has experienced what laws like this do.
Baud
Brachiator
And often, the punditry is irrelevant to the supposed data. Data journalism is no substitute for getting out, digging in and getting the facts.
I listened to a good NPR story about voter suppression in Arizona. One law would require that a person attest to their birth date as shown on their birth certificate. No big deal, right? Except in some tribal communities where people are often born at home, the date on the certificate is often arbitrary, based on the date the document is processed, and does not reflect the actual birth date.
The people who wrote the Arizona law know that having to declare a birth date might trip up some people. You would not know about this or its potential impact if you were just trying to analyze the data.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
Sitting here waiting 15 minutes after my first Pfizer dose!
Kathleen
cmorenc
The only genuine voting fraud that occurred in Georgia was their unexpected discovery that their own fraudulent assumption that they had a secure demographic electoral lock on Georgia. However, those assumptions implicitly depended on continuation of a securely advantageous differential in voter turnout between Rs and Ds. The recent Ga legislation is squarely aimed at restoring the former differential by creating obstacles to voting deliberately designed to restore differential R turnout advantage by erecting obstacles custom-designed to frustrate and discourage D turnout.
SFAW
@Kathleen:
I’m guessing they know what the actual “problem” is that’s being “solved.” Unless they’re liars, complete morons, or both, which is always a possibility.
Scout211
Well, actually . . . this is one of my gripes about the state of the news reporting today. I don’t watch any broadcast live but I read news stories on selected news sites. The headlines and the stories, whether they are news or “analysis,” typically have headlines that include “may,” “could,” “might,” etc. They are all about something, something right now that “may” affect something, something in the future. The journalists seem to think they have the ability to predict the future based on speculation and a few facts. Very few facts, actually.
elm
He also explicitly refused to evaluate the most significant part of the bill (according to him) — which is the legislature taking control of state election certification and allowing the state certification board to hijack county processes.
And he intentionally chose not to consider the clear intent and motivation for the bill.
He writes for the Times imprint that claims to do data and explanatory journalism and then explained how he didn’t want to look at the important parts. He chose to cherry-pick some barely relevant data to say other parts are fine.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: Yay!
Benw
Or if you’re Republican: “A full stop to voting is right”
Fucking fuckers
Mathguy
@schrodingers_cat: 50% of the Times is wonderful. 50% of it-political reporting, much of the op-ed section, weddings, and their “what hovel can you buy for $3 million” stories- is pure awfulness.
trnc
That’s probably the point of those items in the bill – give the media something easy to latch onto like “no water allowed” so they can say, “That’s not REALLY what it means” while deflecting from the more sinister items.
Walker
The law allows the Georgia legislature to nullify a voting precinct. People do not get the benefit of the doubt when they write laws like this.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ivan X:
My god, we don’t pardon things here. This is Balloon Juice!
elm
@Belafon: Indeed. And the worst part of Cohn’s column is that he acknowledged they are hugely important and then brushes them aside:
He chose to write about -only- what he considers voter suppression and then claims that choice justifies writing about only what he considers the parts that are fine.
John S.
@SFAW: Which is precisely why we end up with these anodyne stories in the FTFNYT. Because they know the “problem” being solved is voting while black or brown, making it harder for white Republicans to win elections at a state level outside the safety of their gerrymandered districts.
Cathie from Canada
I’m seeing a lot of preemptive revisionism on the voter suppression laws now — oh noes, its not racist at all, why that’s just a terrible slur from the awful LEFTISTS on all the good and decent people of our proud and noble state who are just trying to innocently CLARIFY the rules so that we can PREVENT any of that awful voter fraud, and MAKE SURE that future elections are COMPLETELY FAIR and the result is UNQUESTIONABLY CORRECT, and of COURSE its not intended to stop QUALIFIED people from voting perish the thought!
I’m now seeing these laws referred to as ‘voter fraud laws” or vague terms like “voting rules” which hides their intent — the only term that should be used is “voter suppression law”.
Almost Retired
“Well actually” arguments notwithstanding, the intent behind these changes is so blatantly obvious that no benefit of the doubt should be extended. So what if some blue states have more restrictive absentee ballot policies. The fact is that a free and fair election occurred in Georgia with absolutely no evidence of fraud. The system worked, didn’t it? But the Republicans lost so they had to make changes to address the “problem.” Guess what ballot “problem” they’re trying to address?
Baud
@Scout211:
Yeah, they do that a lot to generate click bait headlines.
The Thin Black Duke
It’s fucking incredible. I’ve lived long enough to see South Africa end apartheid as America welcomes it again.
Brachiator
I ran across a tiresome discussion somewhere in which a person said that the GA laws hurt Republicans as well.
The obvious answer: The officials don’t care if some Republicans are hurt as long as more Democrats are hurt. Also, the history of these laws show that officials always carve out exceptions for white voters, while insisting on strict enforcement when it comes to black voters.
Old School
Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes or .24%
David Perdue finished at 49.7% requiring a runoff with Jon Ossoff.
It wouldn’t have taken a “major impact” on turnout to change the election results in Georgia.
Roger Moore
This is a serious flaw. If they were being serious about data, they would be willing to admit when there is insufficient data to talk about the issue. “We don’t have enough data to draw conclusions but are still studying the issue” is a very reasonable answer. People don’t like to hear it, but it’s better to admit when you don’t know than to pretend you do.
John S.
@Cathie from Canada: From the same folks who brought you Political Correctness, Snowflakes and Cancel Culture.
Of course none of those apply when a conservative gets the vapors and thinks it’s wrong to call these laws racist or voter suppression, and then want to boycott baseball for it.
elm
@Almost Retired: The intent is obvious, isn’t it.
I suppose that’s why Cohn chooses to rule it out of scope (twice).
And later:
Another Scott
It’s worse than that.
Numbers without context are not data. You see this all the time in economics reporting and in federal budget reporting. $BIG-SCARY-NUMBER does not mean anything to people unless it’s put in context, as Dean Baker reminds us frequently.
Some people crawling over broken glass, or waiting in line for 10 hours and missing a shift at work, or having to take 3 buses to travel to a remote polling location, or spending cash one cannot spare for “proof” of being eligible to vote, etc., etc., does not mean that the these voting laws have no effect.
Why can’t these “reporters” and pundits put themselves in the shoes of the people subject to these restrictions??
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Benw:
When they were busy hustling Amy Coathanger through the Senate, during that approximately twenty minutes some of her rulings came to light, one of which essentially said guns were a right and voting is a privilege.
That’s what we’re up against.
MisterForkbeard
@Roger Moore: The right article to write is “There’s not enough data for a definitive answer on this. What little data we do have suggests that through heroic turnout, effort and planning, the negative effects can sometimes be mitigated. But there are definitely negative impacts.”
quakerinabasement
@Dee-Lurker:
No, this story doesn’t “bury the lede.” It quite transparently discusses that aspect of the Georgia bill. It recognizes that this is an issue that can’t be tested with existing data. Only then, the article proceeds to investigate its main focus: the degree to which convenience in voting affects turnout.
lee
For me having Nate Silver’s name attached to an article has almost reached the point of having GG’s name attached to it. I’ll not read it and discount anything that it claims.
elm
@quakerinabasement: He notes that those aspects are potentially the most important and then, arbitrarily, decides that they are out of scope for his column.
But he and the NYT chose the scope of the column. He can’t make a convincing case.
Benw
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: yea hooo!
Suzanne
I would go as far as to say that I would rather let 100 undocumented immigrants vote than prevent even one citizen from being disenfranchised. There will always be error, but the error should always fall to more, not fewer, people voting.
Baud
Part of it isn’t just that voting is more restrictive than it was before. It’s all that the rules keep changing, and I expect that they change more for out voters than GOP voters. That in itself can discourage turnout.
germy
Kay
This actually made me laugh out loud:
If you’re hoping against hope that you happen to encounter an honest judge to stop a coup, your democracy is in real trouble.
The incredibly cavalier complacency is what gets me. These people are so invested in propping up institutions they simply refuse to see failures.
“It’s fine! The coup did not actually occur, because coups are illegal”
Jesus fucking christ, it may be hopeless. It’s this insanely legalistic view that can’t be penetrated by actual events.
lowtechcyclist
I thought Jamison Foser nailed it:
https://twitter.com/jamisonfoser/status/1378776557674655744
Anoniminous
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
The tentacles will eventually retract back into your skull and the talons turn back into regular fingernails.
Ask me how I know.
Kay
He’s decided to err on the pro-coup side. What IS this standard! Pro-democracy people now have to prove the coup will absolutely succeed before anyone does anything?
It’s madness. They’ve flipped the standard on its head.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
This is, in general, my gripe about data journalism: there’s just not enough good data to draw evidence-based conclusions, so it devolves into speculative punditry with a patina of scientific respectability.
Yep. Yep. Also, people mistakenly believe that “data” is meaningful just because you can quantify something, or put it on a graph, The newspapers used to regularly report M1 and M2 money supply numbers, until economists decided that these figures did not reliably tell you anything about the economy.
Smart economists now often warn that the stock market is not the entire economy, an idea that the Great Orange Beast never understood.
One of my favorite bad stats: Entertainment news used to report fabulous yearly box office grosses, ignoring the other reality that movie ticket sales have been declining since 2002.
So yeah, context and significance.
And let’s throw in the problem that a lot of business reporters and editors are not really qualified. I’ve read stories where a reporter simply writes down what a business leader or government official tells them, without any ability to evaluate what they have been told. Especially when lots of numbers are thrown at them.
Poe Larity
Being open-minded, I’ll wait for the Freakonomics and Brooks & Capehart opinions on my local liberal NPR and PBS stations.
Baud
@Kay:
I do think our side sometimes overreaches in its rhetoric, but “liberal overreaching” has become its own genre in political reporting, worth writing about regardless of the context or whether it’s even true.
Just One More Canuck
@Roger Moore: It’s okay to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” except, it seems, when you’ve got a column to write. Then it’s all bullshit, all the time
Another Scott
@Poe Larity: [snort] rofl.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Poe Larity: Hahaha. “Brooks” makes it comedy gold.
lee
@lowtechcyclist: IIRC, this is not the first time Nate Silver has ignored/discounted/claimed doesn’t exist structural racism.
pacem appellant
NYT delenda sunt. Also, Wapo, you’re on notice. Better headlines starting now!
Baud
@Kay:
It’s ok for GA to reimpose literacy test because I’m sure some court will strike it down.
Kay
I love the patronizing tone, too. “Did the Georgia election administrator IN FACT find 11k votes and overturn the result? No? I rest my case. System worked”
They’ve managed to switch the burden from coup plotters to democracy enthusiasts. The coup has to succeed or it isn’t a threat. Madness.
J R in WV
@cmorenc:
You leave out the best part! //s
If the gerrymandered Republican-controlled legislature doesn’t approve of the voter’s choices, they get to throw out as many votes as is needed to get the answer they really need and want.
Democratic turnout is irrelevant if a Republican-controlled body gets to count the votes, and if there is no paper trail to audit! No one cares about votes cast if they get to control the rest of the process downstream of the actual votes. Just ask Stalin.
This is what TFG demanded of the Ga Secretary of State. Who did not bow to Trump’s illegal demand, more power to him for being honest enough to not blatantly and obviously cheat in the election.
Hoping Trump gets to stand trial in a Federal court for those attempts to rob the nation of a free and fair election~!!~
Betty Cracker
@Walker:
Bingo! That’s the most insidious and consequential part of the law. Republicans know they can’t remain competitive in a democracy in their current form, so every move is designed to entrench minority rule.
I fully expect the Republican Party to eventually embrace the idea that state legislatures should have sole authority to choose U.S. senators. Most of them aren’t saying so out loud at this point because that would be risky, but as they get more desperate, their concern about optics declines.
Kay
@Baud:
I have never in my life been as confident as these people are every day. They live in some “just” world that I’m not familiar with.
They’ve SO lowered the bar, too. We now LAUD election administrators who don’t cheat! NOT CHEATING is the standard. The minimum. It’s not “a great job”. It’s THE job.
Baud
@Kay:
C’mon, Kay. You were as surprised as I was that there’s still an honest Republican in office.
lowtechcyclist
@lee:
This was Nate Cohn, not that there’s much daylight between the DataNates these days.
elm
@lee: This is the other bad Nate, Nate Cohn. He also dgaf about those things.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s a weird issue for me because I’ve been following it so long I’m actually hopeful. Ten years ago it wasn’t even a top ten issue in Democratic politics. It really only “broke out” in 2012. It used to be like 15 AA voting rights people meeting in Cleveland, with no white people even there.
We only got white Democrats here to sign a voting rights referendum in 2010 because we passed it with a labor-backed referendum and told them their labor law wouldn’t pass unless black people could vote for it- which was true.
It’s the most activism I’ve seen around voting in my adult life. Shot to the top of every D pols list.
Baud
@Kay:
I’d imagine 2016 woke up a lot of Dems about the importance of the vote.
Kay
Does anyone know if the GA law allows the voter to use their Social Security number rather than a driver’s license number on the absentee ballot?
I ask because we had the same confusion in Ohio (there are two similiar numbers on driver’s licenses) and we solved it with the “SocSec # option”
I use my Social # on my absentee rather than my driver’s license # because I’m still bitter about having to fight for it :)
James E Powell
@Kay:
For years, white Democrats would not stand up for African Americans’ voting rights. Part of it is fear of backlash, part of it is the never-ending search for crossover Republicans.
I’m really really hoping we are over that now.
Kay
So if you’re looking for a compromise on ID, I would suggest offering a Social Security number. Move Republicans away from using driver’s licenses as ID, because that’s where the opportunities for suppression come in, and “voting” shouldn’t be conflated or connected in any way to “driving privileges ” anyway. That’s a bad frame.
If you have to pick your battles, pick that. Don’t let them narrow to driver’s license or you’re potentially suppressing millions.
If the GOP want a national photo ID they can damn well create one. They can’t use a driver’s license as a proxy.
Poe Larity
@mrmoshpotato: Relatively, Brooks is the progressive of the duo now.
It’s so funny it’s sad.
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: The weird mutation now is that mainstream Democrats have come around, but people who consider themselves “far left” are now the ones disdaining “identity politics” and chasing after crossover Republicans.
Kathleen
@SFAW: Just think if a “reporter” asked that question Rethugs would be forced to show their cards, which would lead to data driven examination of their claims. I just crack myself up sometimes.
Kathleen
@trnc: Knowing full well Vichy media will let them get away with it.
LongHairedWeirdo
“We can’t prove that this set of laws, which are clearly designed to deter some voters from voting, including direct cruelty to those most vulnerable to being disenfranchised, and actually allow the legislature to overturn an election, are actually going to *result* in those effects, so you should just let people’s rights be violated for a while, because, what’s an election or two going to matter in the long run? Remember that old saying, ‘justice delayed is just fine?'”
I mean, seriously, this country has gone completely insane. Donald Trump was a horrible person who was a horrible president, and because he’s still popular with some folks, everyone pretends like we didn’t see the horrors with our own eyes. Some of the worst, most infected wounds were just caused by Republicans who are still clinging to the lie that Trump’s objectively wrong, evil, and illegal actions weren’t actually wrong, evil, and illegal, and instead pretending (or whatever you call “LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU”) that Democrats did it because they dislike Trump, personally. Or politically. Or whatever,
Evil is evil. It doesn’t matter if the Republican base has been fed so many lies, and have become so trusting, that they don’t recognize evil when it’s causing harm right in front of their faces.
Benw
@Kay:
That’s good!
We really need H1/S1 in effect ASAP because we can’t keep going on with every damn midterm election being life or death for democracy.
J R in WV
@Scout211:
Wife, a veteran of 40+ years in the news biz, rejects the use of any conditional words in any news story. Because “Unicorns may squirt gold emissions into President Biden’s Federal Reserve bank!” is actually a true statement. Vanishingly unlikely, but that “may” creates a potential truth condition.
“TFG could begin a legitimate string of hole-in-one scores in his golf game tomorrow!” is also a true statement useful on the Sports pages.
Come on, man! Give me a Break!!!
Mike in NC
In 1996 I waited about 90 minutes to vote at our usual polling place in Alexandria, VA. Normally the wait was zero to 15 minutes. Maybe it was just due to heavy turnout.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Welcome back!
LongHairedWeirdo
@Brachiator: Heh. Remember, “Brownie” was doing a “heck of a job” because he kept reading out streams of numbers (tons of ice, number of tents, etc.), many of which were flat out false – e.g., claiming people at the convention center (who had not been reached by FEMA at the time) had all had at least one hot meal in the past 24 hours.
This isn’t even really lying with statistics; it’s pure-D bad faith.
And we saw exactly where it leads: hundreds of thousands of dead US citizens, some of whom are loudly declaring that no, the government does not have a right to protect its citizenry, while also pushing the notion that it may have been a bioweapon.
lee
@lowtechcyclist:
@elm:
Thanks for clarifying that for me!
Brachiator
@Kay:
Providing or recording Social Security numbers increases the potential of identity theft.
I remember when SS numbers were not supposed to be used to prove identity.
My mother is 90 and has not driven a car in decades. She is known where she votes. We could get her an ID card via the local Department of Motor Vehicles, but this is a tedious process.
Also, there should be no charge for getting an ID card, if this is to be required.
The Thin Black Duke
@LongHairedWeirdo: I wouldn’t give the Republican voters the benefit of the doubt. They know it’s evil. They love Trump because he gave them permission to be hateful assholes who don’t give a damn.
J R in WV
Well, actually, the name “Nathan Cohn” appears to be very odd in the context of supporting White Supremacist Fascism across the nation. Perhaps he is a self-hating person like Nazi Stephen Miller of TFG’s White House staff?
lee
@Brachiator: That is the same issue my FIL ran into. His health was such that he couldn’t wait in line to renew his ID. So the last few elections he was unable to vote because of the ID requirement here in Texas.
I often point this out to my fellow Texans that are GOP and usually get crickets in response.
randy khan
Most journalists have a certain level of distaste for obvious stories (even when they’re true) and a lot of interest in man-bites-dog stories, so they have a bias towards “well, actually” analysis. And even people who want to be data driven have a tendency to over-rely on small studies and not to see the critiques of them if the studies say things that make their Spidey sense tingle.
In the current environment, there are some pretty significant confounding factors that would affect any study of the impact of voter suppression, starting with the huge efforts undertaken to overcome it. But it’s easy to miss that point if you look at a study that doesn’t consider them.
Old School
@Brachiator:
As far as I know, this is typically the case. An ID card for voting is free.
Of course, this is usually accompanied by limiting the places where they can be obtained.
Kathleen
@LongHairedWeirdo: It’s clear that acceptance of voter suppression isn’t limited to the Right. Our liberal media are more than happy to fornicate that rodent in service of white supremacy.
JaneE
Well, actually, evil intent deserves condemnation whether or not its goals are achieved.
Brachiator
@Old School:
In California, an ID card from the DMV costs around $30. They are free for homeless persons and seniors age 62 and older. Other people can apply for a reduced fee card.
cain
@Kathleen: That’s not how their business model works. The horse race is so that you’ll hang around and stay for the ads. They are in competition for your eyeballs with other channels – so everything has to be drama’fied. It’s the weakness in 24 hour news.
Of course, that means right wing propaganda is the perfect fodder – since it dominates everyone’s mind. Actual policy is boring and requires focus and asking questions. But you know Rachel Maddow shows that you can make policy interesting if you have a good command of it yourself.
There are just too many journalists that don’t seem to have a policy background but are great at asking horse race questions either at the behest of their editor or themselves as part of competing with other journalists. Eg the gotcha question.
Another Scott
@Old School: … and limiting the acceptable documentation that you are indeed eligible to have such an ID.
“What, you don’t have a birth certificate because when and where you were born they didn’t have such things? Well, sucks to be you then I guess. NEXT!!”
Cheers,
Scott.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker:
Such a change would require Rs to repeal the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which provides:
Therefore, R efforts will be directed at measures designed to alter the composition of the electorate in their favor, rather than attempt to eliminate election of Senators by popular vote, because that’s much easier to achieve by state legislative means than alternation of the US Constitution.
cain
I guess we should use our right to turn our privilege into a right too?
But then again JFC – in a democracy voting is not a privilege. That a SCOTUS judge is saying this is just beyond the pale.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
For anybody who has been avoiding reading Greenwald, today he gingerly sashays into black on black crime and Chicago murders, lamenting paltry coverage in comparison to coverage allotted to mass kills by white wingnuts.
Will nobody properly vilify the crime rate of those people?
J R in WV
Off Topic Journalism story:
Many years ago Wife was WV statehouse correspondent, and wrote a story that included in the lead “The bill rolled through committee like Sherman marched across Georgia.” When she filed the story to the bureau, the duty wire editor called her because she did not understand the reference to Sherman marching through Georgia!! Duty wire editor working the desk had a Master’s degree from Columbia.
Wife slowly explained that General Sherman split the Confederacy in two by marching from Tennessee to the east coast across Georgia, thus ending any chance of the CSA remaining a viable nation. When editor still failed to understand, Wife said “Do you remember seeing Atlanta burning in “Gone With the Wind?” Then Wire Editor told wife, “Well, I’m from New York state, and we didn’t have anything to do with the Civil War!”
New York had the highest death toll in the Civil War of any state in either side of the conflict by 8,000 deaths at 39,000 compared to 31,000 in Ohio and Illinois in the Union, and Virginia and North Carolina in the CSA. Not to mention the deaths in the draft riots in NYC!
Wife insisted that Sherman and his march to the sea remained in the story, regardless of the ignorance of the very nice young woman working the desk. Who pretty obviously slept through any American history classes she may have been forced to attend.
cain
It’s probably because of gerrymandering or some such. But black voters have shown that they are a bloc to be reckoned with – they should continue to flex their political muscle – it is well earned and desired.
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Racists like to focus on Chicago because that’s where Obama lives.
You would think that Greenwald could at least pick a city in Delaware to update his bigotry.
TomatoQueen
@Brachiator: Thank you for bringing this up.
A Social Security number is not now and never has been anything other than an account number. To use the SSN as ID has been forbidden as long as the program has existed (since 1937), yet people who think it’s fine to do so (the medical field is one of the great offenders) continue, thus setting people up for identity theft. We went through this battle in the 90s, and continue to do so, so let’s not make work and inconvenience and in some cases destroy people’s lives start up all over again.
During the pandemic SSA has had to devote scarce resources to people’s insistence on replacing the Social Security card for all the usual reasons, plus our regular obligation to issue new numbers. Neither can be done without the Number Holder (how we talk about everybody) submitting original documents, in the case of name change, a proof of legal change, in case of new baby a birth record. We’re closed to the public for routine matters. How do we do this? You get to mail in your originals, and we’ll send ’em back when we’re done. In normal times, that’s scary enough. In these times, you’re forced to place your trust. For some people this can be a major nightmarish immigration/employment issue, and there’s nothing so far being done about it–original documents is how it’s always been. SSA on the web has been saying for a long time to memorize your SSN, do not copy it, and don’t show it to anyone (when you start a new job is the one exception for having a copy, and yes employers can be assholes about this).
In Virginia, the state ID process is done by DMV and costs something like $3.50, or it did when my Young Man turned 18. It should be free except DMV would never do anyone a favor.
schrodingers_cat
@Mathguy: Their soft pedaling of the then candidate T’s open xenophobic bigotry was a deal breaker for me. And they still remain unforgiven.
J R in WV
@Kathleen:
Our “liberal” media are owned and operated by fascist-loving wealthy white supremacists… OK, maybe excluding the WaPo. Even the operators of the NYT dream that they will be white enough to survive the genocidal wave.
They’ve been supporting fascism since at least 1922, so nearly a century now. One more year to go!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Brachiator: Back when Kristopher Kolumbus Kobach was working voting integrity, there was a not insignificant push to require proof of citizenship, which was going to play hell for older rural people of color and First Nations folks who’d been born at home (because if they weren’t legally excluded excluded from local hospitals, they couldn’t afford it); this would be a significant barrier to voting in light of missing, destroyed or nonexistent records. Most jarring is the notion that people who had moved hundreds of miles away for decades would have to go on an expensive interstate snipe hunt to prove their origin.
I’ve always assumed that voter ID pushes were about getting to that piece of law.
Ruckus
@Scout211:
Facts just get in the damn way. They are also something that can be checked against. Also it takes more effort to write with actual facts, they have to be found, verified and logically arranged. That’s actual work and is a lot more difficult for a lot of people to do. It’s easier and cheaper to hire someone who arranges words in pretty order and can do it rapidly so that little time is wasted on those fact things.
Old School
@Brachiator:
California doesn’t require an ID card to vote. If it did, the courts would require them to be free for anyone who wants one.
JaneE
@Brachiator: My state (CA) does not charge for a senior ID over 62. If you are homeless you don’t have to pay either, and if you are receiving benefits you qualify for a “reduced fee” ID. So far so good, but if you need to get certified copies of your birth certificates and marriage or divorce or adoption documents, there is a fee for those, which may have the same “reduced” versions available.
I have been through the birth certificate process twice, once for myself and once for my mother, and it is not negligible, even without the cost. For me, I lived in the next county over, could take the time off to get it done and had enough cash in my wallet to pay the fees. Any or all of those things are not readily available to everyone by far. At least they are trying to make it easier, but it will still not be easy by any stretch.
germy
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
All that history stuff is so long ago! Why should I have to read and even worse, understand all that? Is it so history won’t repeat itself? I mean it’s taking up time that I could use to be sleeping…..
LongHairedWeirdo
@The Thin Black Duke: Keep in mind that many folks take cues from those around them. If the newscasters all say it’s no big deal, and the leaders they trust all say it’s no big deal, some of them might think it looks bad, but, surely, if it was a *big* deal, someone would be doing something.
It’s like, if you hear a siren from behind, and pull as far right as you can, and stop your car, most folks in line of sight, who need to, will probably do it to. If everyone else is just letting themselves be passed, people who are running on automatic won’t get the reminder they need.
Remember, it’s been close to 30 years that the right wing noise machine has been saying that Democrats are evil, and wrong about everything, and want to harm those who listen to the noise, while assuring them that Republicans are the single source of good and patriotic behavior. You can’t listen to that too frequently, without starting to believe it, just like you probably wouldn’t stick around a fellow who is unfairly trash talking your friends and family, but might listen to someone trash talking the Republican Party, even if they take a few unfair shots.
It takes a fair bit of effort to learn to hold on to a principle, and apply it. And it takes sincere effort to recognize a friend doing something lawful, and not too far from what you might do, that is nevertheless wrong. And most people don’t have those abilities working all the time.
Fox News and rightward journalism are betraying people who trust them, but as long as enough people stick to the lie, and pretend everything’s fine, a lot of folks just won’t notice the wrongness.
I’ll give you this much: I don’t give a Republican voter the benefit of the doubt by default, but I do try to understand that it’s hard to know the truth, when you’ve been surrounded by lies for so long.
LongHairedWeirdo
@cain: On the off chance that you haven’t, watch some Last Week Tonight. John Oliver doesn’t make policy exciting, but he teaches subjects in a fascinating and funny way. Dear lord, if this were a comic book, we’d all be looking forward to the Maddow/Oliver team up issue.
Brachiator
@Old School:
Possibly. But let’s keep this simple since you brought this up:
Are Voter ID cards free in every state where they are required, including subsidiary costs of getting birth certificates or other documents?
elm
@Old School: Even so, that ID is only free if you have the necessary paperwork on hand, have transportation, and your time is worth $0.
If you have to track down a birth certificate and marriage certificate and get a favor from a friend to drive you to the county office 30 miles away, open from 9am-11:30 on every fifth Tuesday of the month (with a brunch break from 10-11), then it isn’t free or easy.
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
No. And even the “free” part is often fake free. Alabama had a free ID program – handled through *one single van* for the entire state.
MisterForkbeard
@J R in WV: When I was in high school, Sherman didn’t get a lot of attention in my AP U.S. History class. He got some, but in general the textbooks didn’t want to talk about the civil war, because they couldn’t speak honestly about the causes of the war without pissing off Texas’ school board.
Texas: Fucking things up for the rest of us since time immemorial.
Old School
@Brachiator:
The subsidiary costs are definitely not free, but I’d be surprised if any state that requires a voter ID doesn’t at least offer the ID card for free as that would come too close to a poll tax.
As has been pointed out, getting the cards and having the proper documentation to obtain them then becomes the challenge for the voters.
hitchhiker
Can anybody help me understand why more citizens don’t scream for an all-mail/dropbox vote?
It’s so simple. Register (using valid ID), and your signature and address are in the system. Every single election, from local school board to the presidency, you get a ballot in the mail a few weeks before the official “election day.”
Sit down at your kitchen table, fill it out, sign the envelope, and drop it off.
The end. No lines, no ID questions, no polling place hours, no “early voting” … I can’t understand how this is not the goal for everybody.
Soprano2
I just had the fastest jury duty ever; I showed up, went through the metal detector, and was dismissed because they already had enough people. I was kind of disappointed, I think it would be interesting to serve on a jury. My husband has done it 3 times – once for a 2nd degree murder trial that ended in a hung jury, once for a local civil trial and once for a federal civil trial.
HRA
A strange happening occurred when I once worked for the state labor Dept. Unemployment division. A supervisor and I went to empty out old claimant records from filing cabinets in the basement. Two claimants had the same Social Security number. It was a process to get this straightened out and it was made easier by having the Federal Building close to our building. It still took a lot of work for we also found out these two men were owed money they had never received. One of them also went to college under the then TRA schooling option. This does not mean I disagree with Kay.
Baud
LGM
Gretchen
@germy: McCain is saying that Swallwell slept with the Chinese spy. That has never been part of the story – she just made that up. The spy got her picture taken with him at political events, fundraiser for him, and he cut ties the minute he found out about her. Infuriating that she can just lie about someone.
sdhays
I haven’t read the thread yet, but this right here should result in prison time for someone(s), especially if it happens regularly. It shouldn’t happen, and if it is happening because of something truly unforeseeable like power going out at the facility, the state should be required to be ready to respond quickly to make things go faster.
Any “election” where this happens in “certain” locations, especially regularly, isn’t a real election, and the Secretary of State needs to be on the hook for dereliction of duty charges and potentially triggering an invalidation of the entire election.
germy
@Baud:
Something weird is going on over there with pop-ups.
They’re working on the problem, but I’ll stay away until the issue is resolved. I don’t know if they were hacked or what.
germy
@Gretchen:
She always has her prepared talking points.
From the Federalist?
germy
For decades, every time I voted, they’d open a big book and I’d sign my name with a regular pen. My signature always looked just like my signature from two years, four years before…
Last year they switched to “electronic” signing. And the last presidential election we were in the depths of the pandemic. I was anxious to get in and out. My electronic signature became basically a scribble. I expressed concern, but the poll lady said not to worry about it.
I don’t know, though…
Brachiator
@germy:
Yep. Same here. Although I think in recent years I wrote my signature more hurriedly.
Yep. And I don’t have to sign my name to anything as often as I used to, so I think my signature has changed significantly. I might fail a system that required that I sign a mail-in ballot that would compare my signature to what was on some old voter roll.
I have been able to early vote, so don’t use a mail ballot. California makes it relatively easy to use a number of options.
I also think hat election day should be a national holiday.
MisterForkbeard
@Gretchen: I think she knows that she’s safe almost regardless of what she does. “The View” relies on having a conservative asshole there to maintain ratings. Her job is to be a “family friendly asshole”. There’s no penalty for getting things wrong or lying – she’s done it before.
James E Powell
@hitchhiker:
Welcome to these United States.
Seriously, though. The convenience of mail voting hasn’t been sold hard enough. 2020 should have given enough people the experience of it that they might like to make it permanent.
Old School
@germy:
The post is predominantly part of this article at Vox.
Benw
@germy: are you in NYS? We just switched to electronic “poll pads” for voter check-in.
ETA: switched in 2020, I mean. Guess I can’t wait to forget that year.
Subsole
@Cathie from Canada:
Forget suppression, call it what it is : vote-stealing.
These people are vote-stealers.
Treat them like the goddamned pickpockets in suits that they are.
Uncle Cosmo
My father was born at home in a small community in SW PA at a time when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was still alive. Family legend says he was a very sickly baby and was not expected to survive. After surviving his first month, he was taken to church to be baptized – and many years later, when he finally obtained a birth certificate (for the usual official purposes), the family backdated the date of baptism by a month and gave this as his DOB. By the time I was sentient, no one could (or would) swear to that being the actual date – and for many years, some people sent him birthday wishes on the baptism date, as the only one anyone was sure of.
(Just FTR, Dad’s tribe was I Siciliani.)
quakerinabasement
@Gretchen: Correct. McCain isn’t alone on that, either. It’s a common leap the shouters make when they try to slime Swalwell. You are exactly right: sex was never part of the story, at least not until the likes of Hannity got ahold of it. Then, a few sparks of insinuation were all it took to set the rumors blazing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: There is no reason for a compromise on voter ID. Voters must prove their ID and eligibility when they register. That should be enough. Voter ID is a solution to a nonexistent problem. Fin.
sdhays
@Uncle Cosmo: Your story reminds me of my grandmother’s story. When my grandfather retired, he and my grandmother decided to take some trips outside of these United States. When my grandmother went to get a copy of her birth certificate to apply for a passport, she found that the state didn’t have it. She tracked down the pastor of the church where she had been christened and he miraculously had a copy in his basement.
I say miraculously because the church had burned down, so my grandmother just happened to be lucky that her birth certificate had been saved.
This story taught me just how threadbare our “system” is at safeguarding fundamentally important documents. My grandmother is white, so this would never happen to her, but a requirement for documents could have left her essentially without citizenship if that birth certificate had gone up with the church or if the pastor had died and all of his belongings had been sent indiscriminately to the landfill.
sdhays
@MisterForkbeard: Is she really the last person on earth they could find to fill “Republican asshole” slot? I mean, couldn’t they at least find someone who came up through the wingnut welfare system like a regular person instead of Miss “Have you heard of My Daddy, JOHN MCCAIN??”?
It’s bad enough what she says and does, but the fact that she gets paid by a network to be John McCain’s daughter makes it all the more disgusting.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
No, of course not!
That would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise, wouldn’t it?
Come on, man~!!!~
J R in WV
@MisterForkbeard:
Texass, the only state to secede from two seperate nations over the right to hold people in slavery.
Be so proud of the Alamo, where Texans fought to the death to keep people in servile bondage.
I think not!
ETA tune it up a bit.
steve g
@hitchhiker: I’ve been voting by mail in Oregon so long I can’t remember ever voting in person. On top of everything else, it is a clever way to secure the election. They mail ballots to your registered address. If you’re not there, you won’t get it. Each voter has a bar coded entry in the database. Only one vote can be recorded per voter. There is a paper ballot record if a recount is needed.
steve g
The thing about that Georgia bill that isn’t getting near enough attention is the reassigning of oversight from local election boards to the legislature. The GOP legislature can now “overrule” any county’s election returns, and “make adjustments” to correct “errors in handling” – and to no one’s surprise, the GOP will win all the elections!
J R in WV
@steve g:
Yes, this!! Most of that abhorrent bill is just nasty bull shit — no water for old ladies, etc. But that new “rule” is the kingpin jackpot of all election rules:
Your vote only counts if WE like it.
Otherwise, it needs to be adjusted!!
Kathleen
@J R in WV: You speak nothing but truth. I think Vichy Times (Thank you, SC) should be “All The Fascists Fit To Fluff”.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I used to have a signature. I now have a scribble that sort of looks like a name. When I worked in pro sports I had to sign crap all the time and almost always quickly. And no one seemed to care what it looked like so scribble it is. Of course I’ve also gotten older and have some medical issues that make writing more difficult – so if I want someone, including me, to be able to read it I have to actually think about what I’m writing and t a k e m y t i m e.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
I find the easy way to tolerate people like JOHN MCCAIN’S DAUGHTER, is not to watch the show at all, same for all the rethuglican assholes on TV, especially faux news. It’s nice that now one can find out who sponsors assholes and let them know that their products and my wallet will never have any interaction whatsoever. If enough people did that there would be less crap out there.
SWMBO
@Old School: My son is disabled and cannot drive. He’s still required to have a photo id (to get into venues, attend school, etc). It still costs as much as a driver’s license. And is a much bigger pain in the ass to obtain. I have a guardianship over him. I have to prove, via paperwork, that he lives with me and cannot sign for or obtain a photo id on his own. I bring in a stack of papers every 8 years to do this. It takes getting an appointment about 6-8 weeks out, taking half a day to get in line for your appointment, and getting it done. I have to renew his guardianship every year which also costs time and money. There needs to be a free photo id for voting. If they can send out voter registration cards to tell you what your voting district is, they can send out voting id cards.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
We lost the voter ID battle, IMO because most people didn’t think it was a big deal.
That’s lost and it’s been lost for a decade. Move on and figure out ways to make it less onerous.
Kay
@James E Powell:
They genuinely didn’t think it was a problem. And it wasn’t a problem. For them.
Some of this is elitism- it really is. Have you ever read Justice Kennedy on voting? Jesus Christ. That man hasn’t had a normal life in 50 years. He lives in a bubble. How much of the voter ID analysis revolved around air travel! Lower income people don’t board airplanes every year. They just don’t. If your voter ID analysis involves an assumption that everyone in the country travels by air, you have to be removed from the debate.
No one has time to explain the entire socio-economic structure of the United States to these judges. We don’t have time to teach them. They have to work harder, get out ocassionally, read something.
Ken
“In summary, cancel your subscription.”
But the front page story before yours (David Anderson) refers to a NYtimes article. So does Balloon-Juice support the journalism from Times or not?
Johannes
@schrodingers_cat: Me too, after the normalization of the former guy in that rag in the run up to the 2016 election.