• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

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

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We still have time to mess this up!

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Archives for Kay

Kay wrote at Balloon Juice from 2010-15.

Since then Kay has been sharing her thoughts in the comments rather than on the front page.

Kay

All together now

by Kay|  July 6, 20142:26 pm| 67 Comments

This post is in: Election 2014, Election 2016, Enhanced Protest Techniques, Daydream Believers, Get off my grass you damned kids, OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUDS

This week:

Civil rights groups have spent a decade fighting requirements that voters show photo identification, arguing that this discriminates against African-Americans, Hispanics and the poor. This week in a North Carolina courtroom, another group will make its case that such laws are discriminatory: college students.

Joining a challenge to a state law alongside the N.A.A.C.P., the American Civil Liberties Union and the Justice Department, lawyers for seven college students and three voter-registration advocates are making the novel constitutional argument that the law violates the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 from 21. The amendment also declares that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.”
There has never been a case like it, and if the students succeed, it will open another front in what has become a highly partisan battle over voting rights.

You guys knew about this already because we covered it here in 2013.

Here is the complaint. (pdf)

One thing I did not know but learned from the complaint is that North Carolina had one of the lowest voter participation rates in the nation until 1991 when they changed their election laws to allow more convenient access to the ballot. Big success! Well, if your goal is to increase access it was a big success. If your goal is to shut it down not so fabulous. I don’t know that the students will succeed but my general approach is anything that increases public awareness of new voting restrictions is good for voting enthusiasts.

I also think we have to recognize the Moral Monday folks for their role in keeping voting rights front and center in North Carolina:

Led by the North Carolina NAACP and its charismatic president, William Barber, Moral Mondays has brought thousands of people to weekly rallies against the state legislature’s Tea Party agenda, and over 60,000 (some said 80,000) one cold Saturday in February. A representative mix of black and white, old and young and in-between, has called out the legislature for its attacks on voting rights and abortion rights, its rejection of Medicaid and expanded unemployment benefits, and its embrace of fracking.
The energy and vision of Moral Mondays have rotated around a remarkable blend of rhetoric: religious, constitutional, and moral, focused on the familiar idea that a society shows itself in the way it treats the most vulnerable. There is something almost liturgical in participating, a reaffirming of community through shared language.

All together nowPost + Comments (67)

A win on voting rights

by Kay|  June 11, 20145:24 pm| 20 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Election 2012, Election 2014, Election 2016, Meth Laboratories of Democracy

Good work:

In May, the Democratic National Committee and Ohio Democratic Party asked the U.S. Southern District Court to make permanent a 2012 ruling that county boards of election must allow early, in-person voting on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before Election Day.
The summary judgment issued Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Peter C. Economus orders Husted to set business hours for the three days prior to Election Day “to preserve the right of all Ohio voters to cast his or her vote with said hours to be uniform throughout the State and suitable to the needs of the particular election in question.”
The Obama Campaign sued Husted and the state of Ohio in 2012, alleging the change violated Ohioans rights to participate equally in elections. The courts sided with the plaintiffs, concluding it was wrong to treat some voters (non-military) different than others (military). The Ohio Supreme Court rejected a request for an emergency stay, and Husted released new hours including the weekend voting days.
The 2012 case remained open and Wednesday’s summary judgment makes the ruling permanent.

You all remember Judge Economus from the 2012 election. He doesn’t fool around:

A federal judge ordered Secretary of State Jon Husted on Wednesday to personally appear next week at a hearing about his reluctance to restore early voting the weekend before the Nov. 6 election.

Mr. Husted was reluctant. It just didn’t feel right to him to follow that order in 2012. He did, eventually, comply with the order and today makes that 2012 order permanent – unless Republicans change the voting laws again which they probably will.

Early voting is convenient and people really like it and it makes for better election administration because it takes some of the crush off election day. That’s also why Republicans oppose it.

A win on voting rightsPost + Comments (20)

Justice Scalia’s decision “logically extended” to Wisconsin

by Kay|  June 7, 20143:51 pm| 64 Comments

This post is in: Gay Rights are Human Rights, Open Threads, OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUDS

Maybe some weddings coming up in Wisconsin!

Justice Scalia’s decision “logically extended” to WisconsinPost + Comments (64)

Note the name of this group: the VOTER integrity project. These particular voters lack integrity

by Kay|  June 7, 201412:15 pm| 89 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

It goes without saying that none of us are under any duty to respond to demands from self-appointed inspection agents, right?

To Jay DeLancy, North Carolina is fraught with voter fraud and the state is doing nothing about it.
So the former Air Force veteran has taken matters into his own hands and vows, as he sees it, to save the system from eroding honest elections.
DeLancy launched the Voter Integrity Project more than three years ago, leading a band of volunteers in scouring public records and knocking on doors to root out irregularities in voter rolls.
Some call his efforts “sloppy” and question whether he’s addressing a serious shortcoming or whether he’s become — intended or not — illustrative of the tough Republican-driven voter identification law that critics contend intimidates and disenfranchises minority voters.
Sarah Zambon, president of Asheville League of Women Voters, said VIP targets minority and Democratic leaning districts, leading to voter disenfranchisement and voter intimidation.
She said that of the 80 precincts in Buncombe County, all of VIP’s challenges came from 11 precincts, most of them low income or minority — communities that are more likely to have more people living under one roof.
“It has an intimidation effect,” Zambon said, detailing the story of one African American woman who said she didn’t feel comfortable when people showed up at her door and wanted to know where her sons lived.
But still, the state enacted one of the most stringent voter ID laws in the country, requiring one of a limited number of forms of identification at the poll starting in 2016.
The law also gives voter vigilantes more power, enabling citizens to challenge another person’s vote anywhere in the state.

After three years of work and countless volunteer hours, DeLancy has no cases of fraud to show.
He cites, however, that the board of elections has made five “referrals” of prosecution to local district attorneys.

The ID laws they push get more and more restrictive and yet they ratchet this stuff up every election. Is there a Republican lawmaker or media personality who has pushed this voter impersonation fraud lie to make a buck or rile up their base who can tell us exactly what security measures it would take before “integrity has been restored”? Where’s the line the Republican Party and conservatives draw? Is there one?

If you ever needed an argument for why we need federal civil rights protections, if you still need convincing, the activist base of the Republican Party at the state level are making a great one. This is what their “vision” looks like.

Note the name of this group: the VOTER integrity project. These particular voters lack integrityPost + Comments (89)

“Two competing schemes”

by Kay|  May 31, 20141:09 pm| 106 Comments

This post is in: Election 2014, Election 2016, Post-racial America, Meth Laboratories of Democracy, Midnight Confessions, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Political Establishment

Alabama has come up with a “vouching” proposal where voters who lack the newly required ID are supposed to get two (mostly white) election officials to “vouch” for them in order to vote a regular ballot. “Vouching” has a long and sordid history in this country so the NAACP is fighting the provision.

Wanted to highlight one part of the NAACP lawyer-letter to the Secretary of State in Alabama, because for one thing it’s clever lawyering but perhaps more importantly it goes to the fact that in some states “Democrat” is just proxy for “black voters.” The NAACP wanted to bring out the racial animus behind this law. Here, they do that by quoting from a federal judge in an unrelated Alabama corruption case. Scroll down to # 5 in the NAACP letter if you want to see the cite.

It’s a crazy story. Briefly, several Alabama lawmakers were brought up on federal corruption charges. It was alleged that gambling lobbyists were buying the lawmakers because gambling lobbyists wanted a referendum on electronic bingo on the ballot in Alabama.

Some other Alabama lawmakers wore a wire for the FBI to record the corrupt pro-gambling lawmakers. However, the lawmakers who were wired to nail the corrupt lawmakers inadvertently captured their own conversations regarding how they needed to keep the AA vote down in the 2010 elections to retain a GOP majority.

The supposed anti-corruption lawmakers wore the wire not because they wanted to help the FBI catch corrupt lawmakers, but because they did not want the pro-gambling imitative on the ballot because they believed black people would come out for a referendum on electronic bingo, that would drive AA turnout in 2010, and those black voters might retain or elect more black lawmakers who also happen to be Democrats.

Here’s the section of the opinion on the corruption case.The judge is trying to determine whether the racist Alabama lawmakers are credible to act as witnesses against the corrupt Alabama lawmakers:

As a preliminary matter, the court finds that Beason and Lewis lack the credibility that the government sought to establish. The evidence introduced at trial contradicts the self-serving portrait of Beason and Lewis as untouchable opponents of corruption. In reality, Beason and Lewis had ulterior motives rooted in naked political ambition and pure racial bias.

The court finds that Beason and Lewis lack credibility for two reasons. First, their motive for cooperating with F.B.I. investigators was not to clean up corruption but to increase Republican political fortunes by reducing African-American voter turnout. Second, they lack credibility because the record establishes their purposeful, racist intent.
One of the government’s recordings captured Beason and Lewis discussing political strategy with other influential Republican legislative allies. A confederate warned: “Just keep in mind if [a pro-gambling] bill passes and we have a referendum in November, every black in this state will be bused to the polls. And that ain’t gonna help.” The participants predicted: “Every black, every illiterate” would be “bused on HUD financed buses.” Beason agreed: “That’s right. This will be busing extra. . . . Because you gotta have somebody to pay for those buses.” One participant replied that casinos would provide “free food” and gambling certificates to get black voters to the polls. In a separate conversation, during which Lewis asked whether the predominantly black residents of Greene County were “y’all’s Indians?,” Beason responded by derisively referring to blacks as “Aborigines.”

The court finds that Beason and Lewis cooperated with the F.B.I. in order to secure political advantage. The evidence at trial showed that black communities in Alabama tend to support electronic bingo. The evidence further demonstrated that black voters tend to be Democrats. Indeed, Beason’s and Lewis’s scheme was predicated on their belief that blacks supported electronic bingo and Democratic candidates.

By preventing SB380 from appearing on the 2010 ballot, Beason and Lewis believed that black voters would stay home on election day, thereby increasing Republican chances to take control of the state legislature.
The evidence indicates that Beason and Lewis sought to inculpate the defendants primarily to neutralize a potential political threat. Beason’s and Lewis’s political objective undercuts the anti-corruption motive they advanced at trial.
The racially discriminatory purpose expressed in the recordings further undermines Beason’s and Lewis’s credibility. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that politicians have political motives to disrupt and defeat legislation advanced by opponents. But Beason, Lewis, and other influential Republican politicians did not target Democrats generally in their opposition to SB380; they plainly singled out African-Americans for mockery and racist abuse.
Beason’s and Lewis’s statements demonstrate a deep-seated racial animus and a desire to suppress black votes by manipulating what issues appeared on the 2010 ballot

The Beason and Lewis recordings represent compelling evidence that political exclusion through racism remains a real and enduring problem in this State.

Furthermore, Beason’s and Lewis’s wrongful motivations are relevant to the political corruption at the heart of this trial. As detailed below, the government has proven the existence of an illegal vote-buying conspiracy by a preponderance of the evidence. The government rightly seeks to prosecute illicit bribery in the guise of campaign contributions.
At the same time, the discriminatory intent expressed by Beason, Lewis, and their influential legislative friends represents another form of corruption infecting the political system.
The purpose of their competing scheme was to maintain and strengthen white control of the political system. This form of race discrimination is as profoundly damaging to the fabric of democracy as is the bribery scheme the government seeks to punish.

“Two competing schemes”Post + Comments (106)

You can’t base a restrictive law on an imaginary fear

by Kay|  May 29, 201411:53 am| 106 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Election 2014, Election 2016, The Brown Enemy Within, Daydream Believers, Meth Laboratories of Democracy, Very Serious People

Good piece about the work behind the latest win on voting rights:

The debate over state voter-ID laws in the lead-up to November’s elections may have gained a national audience, but the legal action has played out largely in Midwest and Southern courtrooms to this point. That’s not to say Seattle hasn’t been well-represented. University of Washington political science professor Matt Barreto has been in the middle of most of it. Or at least his research has.
The 37-year-old professor has lately been a man in demand. The research he and his colleague, New Mexico professor Gabriel Sanchez, are becoming known for has become part of the standard playbook for lawyers challenging voter-ID laws. Using statistically sound large-swath surveys on a state-by-state basis, Barreto’s findings have demonstrated that not only are blacks, Latinos, and minorities less likely to possess valid photo ID, they’re also less likely to have the documents necessary to obtain such ID.
These laws have proliferated in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder, in which the court, by a controversial 5-4 vote, struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring states to obtain federal preclearance before changing voting regulations or practices. With the federal preclearance hurdle removed, states that pass voter-ID laws can move quickly to implement them—and have, to the dismay of many, including the national legal arm of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Last month the effort logged its biggest victory to date when a Federal court struck down a Wisconsin law, signed by Republican Governor Scott Walker in 2011, requiring voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot.
“[Judge Adelman] just systematically dismantled the voter-fraud myth in a way that went beyond any other court decision that I have seen,” Young continues. “He said, correctly, that when it comes to election integrity, the perpetrator of the voter-fraud myth are the ones that are undermining voter confidence in the electoral process, not actual voter fraud . . . He said you can’t pass a restrictive law based on an imaginary fear.”

Who knows what will happen when it gets to the US Supreme Court, but the truth is the laws have gotten more and more restrictive. We’ve gone from “voter ID” when I first started following this to “photo ID” and now we’re accepting only certain forms of photo ID.

Ohio’s original ID law contained some protections for voters who could not jump through the hoops; utility bills, “government documents” – there was a genuine effort to recognize and address the problems that real people run into. But that wasn’t enough, the compromise wasn’t acceptable to the GOP base and looking back I don’t think it was ever going to be enough. Because, what’s “enough”? Voter impersonation fraud is imaginary. We’ll never be able to prove we fixed voter impersonation fraud with Ohio’s less restrictive ID law because that problem never existed to begin with.

This is the Texas law. We’ll never know if this one fixed the imaginary problem either:

Here is a list of the acceptable forms of photo ID:
• Texas driver license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
• Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS
• Texas personal identification card issued by DPS
• Texas concealed handgun license issued by DPS
• United States military identification card containing the person’s photograph
• United States citizenship certificate containing the person’s photograph
• United States passport

The voter fraud fraudsters have all but given up on arguing voter fraud. Now they argue that the ID laws are intended to promote public trust in the election process. That’s a dilemma for voting rights enthusiasts, too, because as the judge in the Wisconsin decision pointed out voter fraud fraudsters created the lack of confidence they’re now “fixing”:

“He said, correctly, that when it comes to election integrity, the perpetrator of the voter-fraud myth are the ones that are undermining voter confidence in the electoral process, not actual voter fraud . . .

I guess they’ll have to tell us when voter impersonation fraud is solved and thus their confidence is restored since this entire issue now rests completely on their “feelings.”

You can’t base a restrictive law on an imaginary fearPost + Comments (106)

VoteRiders

by Kay|  May 17, 20147:15 pm| 102 Comments

This post is in: Election 2014, Election 2016, Post-racial America, Daydream Believers, Meth Laboratories of Democracy

If there’s an upside to restrictive voting laws, it’s the organizing that’s going on around voter protection:

Here’s a challenge for all who insist that voter ID will pose no special hardship for certain voters in Texas. How about you help make sure that is as true as you think it is? VoteRiders is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that will focus on helping those voters in Harris County without photo IDs to get them.
Helping folks get these IDs will mean helping a whole lot of them get the documents needed to get those “free” state IDs, called Election Identification Certificates in Texas. I’ve put quote marks around “free” because the documents to get them are decidedly not.
Those are a lot of ifs and a lot of effort involved, which is the point — folks sitting out elections. No one should. This is why VoteRiders exist.
California attorney Kathleen Unger formed the organization because she saw state after state rolling out voter ID and recognized what a whole lot of folks did. People who were voting, suddenly wouldn’t. And folks without the proper ID might never.
VoterRiders has hired a Texas coordinator, Marianela Acuña Arreaza, lately involved in the Texas Civic Engagement Table’s “Got ID, Texas” campaign.

Here’s VoteRiders:

VoteRiders is focused on making sure that no eligible citizen is denied his or her right to vote for lack of ID.

Here’s an interview with VoteRiders founder Kathleen Unger.

And here’s a Cleveland effort focused on Latino voters:

The “Es Nuestro Turno, It’s Our Turn” outreach project is a continuation of efforts to register Spanish-speaking Latino voters and encourage them to head to the polls. The initiative includes a follow-up effort to see if those voters actually cast ballots in order to measure its success.
The outreach project is a collaborative effort between the board of elections bilingual coordinator, other elections agency staff, volunteers from Latino community groups, and faith-based leaders who work within the Hispanic community.
The Spanish Language Advisory Board of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is spearheading the effort. The Latino community has had a long-standing problem of very low turn-out in all elections. As a result, Latinos have minimized their influence in choosing their elected officials, especially among the Spanish-speaking community.

VoteRidersPost + Comments (102)

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to page 5
  • Go to page 6
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 115
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

2023 Pet Calendars

Pet Calendar Preview: A
Pet Calendar Preview: B

*Calendars can not be ordered until Cafe Press gets their calendar paper in.

Recent Comments

  • Cameron on It’s 2023, not 2020 (Feb 7, 2023 @ 1:56pm)
  • Mike in NC on It’s 2023, not 2020 (Feb 7, 2023 @ 1:56pm)
  • Jackie on It’s 2023, not 2020 (Feb 7, 2023 @ 1:56pm)
  • Scott on It’s 2023, not 2020 (Feb 7, 2023 @ 1:54pm)
  • Ksmiami on It’s 2023, not 2020 (Feb 7, 2023 @ 1:54pm)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Favorite Dogs & Cats
Classified Documents: A Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Front-pager Twitter

John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
ActualCitizensUnited

Shop Amazon via this link to support Balloon Juice   

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc