Went to a dinner last night, and one of the speakers was Subodh (rhymes with “abode”) Chandra (rhymes with “tundra”).
Chandra is a really busy lawyer in private practice who has 7-year-old triplets. He’s not a candidate. So why did he travel 3 hours on a Thursday night to speak to us? Because he was invited, but why else?
Jon Husted is the Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Ohio, that’s why, and Chandra has something to say about that.
Here’s Chandra, in 2009:
Republican candidate Jon Husted adopted the suppression techniques while House speaker. This included the Ohio law that other lawyers and I successfully challenged in federal court that permitted poll workers to demand that naturalized American citizens who have been voting for years produce their certificates of naturalization at the polls before voting. The plaintiffs included longtime citizens, former Ohio First Lady Dagmar Celeste and immigration lawyer Margaret Wong. The judge — a George W. Bush appointee — said, “There is no such thing as a second-class citizen or a second-class American. Frankly, without naturalized citizens, there would be no America. It is shameful to imagine that this statute is an example of how the State of Ohio says ‘thank you’ to those who helped build this country.”
Here’s what the Bush appointee actually wrote (pdf):
This Court harbors grave concerns about the ramifications of implementing amended R.C. § 3505.20. There is a very real possibility of “profiling” voters by poll workers or election judges exercising an unfettered ability to challenge on the basis of appearance, name, looks, accent or manner. The Ohio statute offers no clear standards to guide the inquiry into citizenship. It is offensive to single out a voter in the public polling place, thereby subjecting him or her to embarrassment or ridicule while attempting to exercise a citizenship privilege.
This Court has personally presided over numerous naturalization ceremonies and has witnessed firsthand the joy of these new Americans and their intense desire to participate in this nation’s democratic process. There is no such thing as a second-class citizen or a second class American. Frankly, without naturalized citizens, there would be no America. It is shameful to imagine that this statute is an example of how the State of Ohio says “thank you” to those who helped build this country.
The Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Ohio, the person who would be in charge of election process, promoted a law that was not only unconstitutional, but managed to personally offend the judge, who called it “shameful”.
He’s right. It is shameful. And Husted and the GOP should have to wear this law like a badge that says “unfit for this office”.
Instead, incredibly, Husted has been chosen by the GOP as their candidate to run a statewide election process. I can only assume they’re proud of it.
someguy
Wow. That puts him in the same league with the Administration, which is appealing its loss in the DADT case…
Napoleon
Wasn’t that guy a City of Cleveland law director?
Kryptik
Like I told Doug on an earlier post about the GOP’s demographic challenges in the future, this is how they’re going to get around those little…trifles about growing demos that might not be terribly fond of the GOP: Disenfranchisement.
Kay
@Napoleon:
Yeah, he was. He ran against Marc Dann in the primary for AG.
You know what happened after that. Ahem. The wrong person won. I was not personally responsible for any part of that result.
He’s over it, though. Moving on!
jurassicpork
We’re like some comic relief character in a 3 Stooges short, getting slapped in a circle and keep falling back on someone else who then slaps us into someone else. We never learn.
Anyway, some of you may have learned about the 5th Stryker Brigade that’s been murdering innocent Afghanis and the subsequent coverup. The Devil may wear Prada but Jekyll and Hyde wear olive drab.
Phlip
I highly recommend that if you get the chance, go see Chandra speak sometime. I saw him at a candidate forum in 2006 and was blown away.
mapaghimagsik
Amen. These people who are into voter suppression aren’t even trying to be Americans anymore.
They’d have a better leg to stand on with a form of national ID, but who’d trust these grifter morons with something like that?
cat48
Nothing makes me more angry than voter suppression. Kirk-IL just had a recording released where he talks about sending extra attys, etc. to “vulnerable areas” and all the areas mentioned were areas that have a high African American turnout. Needless to say, the AA’s in those areas are highly pissed about this. The news intv’s I saw were sorta of amusing because as one AA said, “Oh, we’ll be at the polls; and we WILL vote come Hell or highwater!”
The prez & Michelle have been doing a lot of black media outreach and washpo had a poll today which showed that 80% were as interested or more so than in 2008 election. At least 60% planned to do voter outreach in their community. Between outreach & the racist teapartiers, they are energized!
An AP article this wk said this could effect at least 20 house seats & some Senate/Gov seats. May the force be with them.
Hi Kay, I’m still worried abt Strickland. Hope they can help him.
Bella Q
Well, it’s really no surprise what kind of GOP candidate is put forth, given, ahem, 2004 under Blackwell (who was a D before he was R and either a Charterite in between or perhaps orignally).
kay
@cat48:
You should be worried about Strickland :)
Vote early, and tell whomever calls you that you did, unless you’re a “private ballot” person or whatever, which is FINE. It saves time for the GOTV people. They can check you off.
I’m going to the Obama’s-Strickland Columbus rally on Sunday. The Steelworkers from here are going, but my understanding is they set up tables outside these events, so I don’t know that they enter. I’ve never been to an Obama rally, but I think I need a road trip.
Roger Moore
Of course they’re proud of it. The Republican Party is essentially tribal, and their tribalism puts native born whites at the top of the heap. Immigrants and people of color are way down the status ladder and should be glad to receive whatever scraps their betters see fit to grant them.
Zifnab
@mapaghimagsik:
UN, black helicopters, Illuminati, Mark of the Beast, blah blah you’re taking away my freedoms!
At a certain point, I don’t understand the opposition to a single national ID. It’s not like maintaining so many different forms of state, national, and private identifications – SS card, driver’s license, credit card, email address, student ID, etc etc – doesn’t give the same level of exposure. They’re just so confusing they give you the illusion of privacy.
Mnemosyne
@someguy:
Oh, goody, now we’ve reached the Oppression Olympics segment where you argue that employment discrimination is totally worse than American citizens being denied their basic right to vote so we’re not allowed to complain about citizens being denied the right to vote as long as employment discrimination exists.
Of course, if those citizens were allowed to vote, it would probably help solve the DADT problem by electing Democrats, but who cares about actually solving the problem when you can whine about it instead?
Arclite
Well, winner take all, right? Nothing personal, just politics right? All’s fair in love and politics, right?
cat48
@kay:
I’ve never been either. I tried here in Charleston in 2008 but the crowd was so squished together & large & they were late so I ended up going back home. I’m sort of agoraphobic or something in my old age…..didn’t bother me when young. I have medicine for it but forgot to take it before I left. I really regret leaving now though when I think abt it. I hope you have a great experience & of course, blog abt it! : ) Also2 pictures.
There’s a rally in DE streaming live now at Cnn that Biden & O are attending. Coons is speaking now….I’m impressed w/his mind.
Duane
Subodh is the MAN….dude is some kind of awesome. I was so impressed with him in 2006 that I faced the wrath of the ODP by openly supporting Subodh in the primary, (I was on the ballot as well) it was a real shame when he lost. I ended up in the doghouse with ODP over it, but it was worth, given the chance I will always back a class act like Subodh. I will say I never thought Marc Dann would implode the way he did, I was really impressed with Subodh Chandra and well nuetral on Dann. Always great reading about Subodh.
kay
@cat48:
Frances Strickland is coming here Saturday night. She was a big hit here in 2006. She plays the guitar. I think she should play strident, martial, battle music but she’ll probably do some hippie thing, because she’s kind.
Southern Beale
The latest in religious book burnings. This pastor is going to burn anything that’s NOT the King James version because anything else is Satanic.
Also, they will serve fried chicken “and all the sides.” Because dammitall, what’s a Bible burning without the potato salad?
cat48
Kay, I hope he still has a voice Sun b/c he is very raspy today. Maybe he should see that Dr. that follows him around wherever he goes :)
Jim
This is OT, but has anyone else observed a rise in posts and comments referring to Obama as stupid or incompetent? E.g., “Lol @ Constitutional law expert-in-chief… when has Barry ever proved his intellect?” I’ve been seeing things of this flavor quite a bit lately. Very amusing.
artem1s
Husted scares the crap out of me. i can only assume we will be returning to the repugnant tricks of Ken Blackwell if he is elected.
in fairness, I disagree in theory with the ID issue for voting on the ground that it amounts to a voting fee. However, it does work better than the system that was routinely practiced in OH before the law.
Now, ALL voters have their ID’s checked. previously poll workers checked ID’s based on how the potential voter ‘looked’. I witnessed this first hand in 2006 when I was a precinct judge at a local city council election. The poll workers were overwhelmingly white, female, and had been working elections in those precincts since Jeebus was a baby.
In almost every case when a white person approached their table to vote the workers knew them personally and just found their name in the book to sign. If the voter was Hispanic looking they were almost always asked for an ID in order to find their name in the rolls. If the name wasn’t in the rolls the workers just handed them a provisional ballot without even checking with the board of elections whether they were at the correct polling place. Mind you the workers were required to help voters verify this but honestly they didn’t care.
as precinct judge I went by the rules and called the board office and helped them find their correct voting place and boy did I find a lot of people who had been voting in the wrong precinct! They had probably not had their votes counted for years and weren’t even aware of it.
I don’t even want to go into the Tomfoolery that went on in the ‘training’ sessions for the poll workers. the ‘instructor’ made numerous partisan remarks and in general acted like a total fuck toward any one who wasn’t Lilly white and suburbanite.
the voting experience changed dramatically once Blackwell was gone. seems to me the person in charge really affects the whole experience a lot more than the retrofuck laws that the GOP has pased to suppress voting. Even good procedures can be subverted to evil if the those in charge lose site of what is supposed to be going on. Blackwell was a master at using the most innocuous rules to keep people away from the polls, Jeebus I do NOT miss that asswipe.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Southern Beale:
Will there be any shrimp cocktail?
someguy
@Mnemosyne:
Elect Democrats, eh? How’s that working out with DADT and DOMA for you?
Oh, I know. I need to elect moooore Democrats, because a 60 member majority in the house, owning the Executive Branch and having 60+ in the Senate just isn’t enough.
Stop trying to act like Democrats are the solution. They aren’t. They’re just somewhat less of a problem.
mapaghimagsik
I’d vote for considerably less of a problem, though depending on your congresscritter, the milage may vary.
I don’t see repubs carrying either of those standards (doma, dadt) at all. If there links where repubs are ahead on these issues and actually have done something, that would be good to know.
At this point, my effort seems better spent on dems. But I live where those I support do support doma.
joe from Lowell
Republicans can read demographic studies, too. They know what’s happening with the voting population, and voter suppression through bogus “ballot security” measures is an essential part of their rear-guard action.
Chyron HR
@someguy:
Looks like we’re still on track to repeal it this year, given that the Republicans are clearly bluffing with their filibuster.
Well, at least in our dimension. I have no idea what Congress is like on Earth-714, where they have “60+ [Democrats] in the Senate.”
Mnemosyne
@someguy:
Considering that every Senate Democrat voted for the DADT repeal until it became obvious that Susan Collins is a lying liar, pretty well actually.
Huh? We don’t have 60+ in the Senate. We have 59, which gives the Republicans just enough votes to filibuster everything. That’s why nothing can get through. Our House majority is just fine, it’s the 400+ bill backup of House in the Senate that’s the problem.
Tell you what, why don’t we try actually having a 60+ majority in the Senate before you poo-pooh it?
debbie
And you thought they couldn’t top Ken Blackwell!
Just today, I got a campaign postcard, touting Husted’s fight against voter fraud. And speaking of fraud, did they ever settle the issue about all the money got from pretending to commute from Kettering? I thought not.
Southern Beale
DADT will be repealed after the election. I have no doubt.
Southern Beale
However I must say it’s bizarre to live in a world where we’ve been told to elect more Democrats if we want to see the desired changes, only to have THOSE Democrats tell us they need “bipartisanship.”
Conflicting messages, there. The reason we gave you such a substantial majority is so you wouldn’t NEED bipartisanship. So you could just do the shit you said you wanted to do. I mean, DUH.
mapaghimagsik
Well, there’s HIPPA, for one thing, and wonderful things like smart meter give the opportunity to eventually shut off someone’s power. There are lots of good examples where “one key to rule them all” makes the exploitation of identity *much* easier.
There are places where keys simply break, and there are no relationships, which is a good thing. Not being able to tie my work with this ID (vs casual to sophisticated corp attackers) make me happy.
I don’t think its unreasonable to be concerned with privacy issues and make them requirements for any kind of national I’d program.
Considering the theft of veteran’s data, I also don’t think its unreasonable to demand specific controls be put into place before we attempt national I’d – controls driven by law, and backed with teeth. Concerns about privacy is not all black helicopters. People’s privacy needs to be protected vigilantly.
cat48
We had 60 votes for 5 mos in total; rest of the time 58-59, depending whether Sen Byrd was sick or not.
cat48
@Jim:
Yes, I’ve noticed a higher amt of those type of posts. Everyone is angry abt something……the thing that bothers me is an increase in arrests of people who wish to kill him. There were 5 I read abt so far this wk.
Scott P.
Apart from number issues, there’s a reason the mantra is “more and better Democrats.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Southern Beale:
You’re looking at the Zeno’s paradox of progressive politics.
The problem is that not all Dems are particularly progressive. “We need bipartisanship” is what Blue Dogs Dems say when they want you to overlook something they are about to do which is a little too Blue Doggy for your taste. It is the political equivalent of “the devil made me do it”.
The paradox arises because the fastest path to getting 60+ in the Senate (and hence not needing any Republican votes) is to elect more Dems from marginal states, but those are precisely the Dems who are the most likely to be Blue Dogs. If the Dems had well over 60 votes (like they did under FDR) then the bipartisanship excuse would be exposed for the sham that it is, but we aren’t even close to that point.
The long term answer is that instead of obtaining short term tactical victories in purple and red states which merely act to put a few more Blue Dog Dems into the Senate, we need to work harder at changing the political culture in those states so truly progressive candidates can run and win in them.
This can be done – NM is a pretty good example of a state which used to be red/purple state with a split congressional delegation which was fairly conservative even on the Dem side of the aisle, but is now purple/blue state with a congressional delegation which is currently 100% Dem (although we will probably lose Harry Teague in the coming midterm) and is moderately progressive.
A combination of cultural and demographic changes can make this sort of thing happen, but they don’t happen very fast – which means they fall outside the scope of most political discussions, seeing as how the latter tend to be strongly oriented towards the here and now.
Mnemosyne
@Jim:
It’s weird, it’s like they’re recycling every slam against Bush and using it for Obama. The new one is “he had time to call the WNBA champions but not to work on DADT”/”he spends all his time watching ESPN.” Seriously, WTF is up with that?
Oh, and note the sly sexism there that Obama dared congratulate a lowly women’s sports team when he could have been doing important things instead. Pretty funny coming from people who are supposedly outraged at the discrimination of DADT.
Michael
@someguy:
Whiny fucking titty baby. See if I give a shit when the GOPers you’re enabling recriminalize homo-ness.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
Meh. I don’t take the cries for “bipartisanship” too seriously. The worst thing that could happen to the Ben Nelsons and Joe Liebermans is that the Democrats get 62+ in the Senate because suddenly they lose their leverage as swing votes. They would either have to stick with the party or vote consistently on the losing (Republican) side and then have to explain that to their voters.
Even with all of the Blue Dogs, if we had a big enough margin, we could remove the threat of them voting with the Republicans to filibuster and force them to actually negotiate.
joe from Lowell
@someguy:
UIh, it’s working great, thanks. DADT repeal was passed in the House and is about to pass in the Senate.
I wonder if the people married to the narrative of defeat and persecution are going to admit they were wrong when it passes?
joe from Lowell
@Mnemosyne:
The White House and Congressional leadership need to make the effort to look bipartisan so they can attract, not the votes of Republicans, but of conservative Democrats who need the cover of bipartisanship, or at least of the Republicans being seen to reject bipartisanship.
Comrade Kevin
Everyone who complains about the Obama Administration appealing that DADT case should watch this segment from yesterday’s Rachel Maddow Show.
H-Bob
@artem1s: If white voters’ IDs were being checked, how many were harassed because (1) wrong hair color (or current lack of hair) or (2)wrong weight (by 20 pounds or more) ?
Odie Hugh Manatee
No.