Vote!

Early voting in the 2016 primary starts this Tuesday. Here's the Harris County, TX early voting schedule:

Early Voting Hours of Operation:
February 16 - February 19: 8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
February 20: 7:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
February 21: 1:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. 
February 22 - February 26: 7:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Choose your early voting location at this page (.pdf). Any registered voter in Harris County can vote at any early voting location shown on that map. Be sure to bring an approved photo ID (e.g., your Texas driver license or a concealed-carry license). For good measure, if you have your voter certificate, bring that, too, but it is not sufficient; you must have an approved photo ID.

Later today I'll post additional info, but there is no official word on Election Day poll locations yet (goddamn Republicans anyway). Also, there will be a bit of doggerel on this post...

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ADDENDUM: Doggerel as promised, a parody with apologies to the late great Nat King Cole... sing this to the tune of his song "Smile":

Vote, though your brain is aching;
Vote, though bad news is breaking.
When their attack is a weight on your back,
If you vote, yes, despite your terror,
Vote, you can face your mirror;
You'll find your life ain't worth a groat,
If you... don't... vote!

        - SB after NKC

VOTE TODAY!

With Republicans like the ones we have today, it may be your last chance.

Early Voting Is In Progress!

I voted today. Have you voted?

Have You Voted Yet?

No, we haven't. Stella works full-time, but other obstacles came up yesterday. Stella is hobbling around on a walker, one leg in an extremely uncomfortable brace, but that would not have prevented us. Her computer's monitor quit; that in itself would not have prevented us. But the lawn guys' mower threw a rock and shattered our glass "screen" door into a pile of shards on our porch and (slightly) into our living room. So as the stay-at-home partner, I'm pinned to the house this morning until they obtain either a new door or a pane for the existing one and someone to install it; that will likely take all morning. Sigh!

Don't forget to vote when you're able; see the links to basic info here. For us, it will probably be Saturday.

Texas Early Voting Starts Today

Early voting runs from today through 10/31. Election Day is 11/4. See here for days and hours if you live in one of the six largest counties, or here if you live in Harris County and want to find your early voting locations or your Election Day polling place.

Early voting poll hours in Harris County:

October 20-October 24:    8:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
October 25:               7:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
October 26:               1:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
October 27-October 31:    7:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.

BRING AN ID (e.g., a driver's license or a gun permit) AND YOUR VOTER CERTIFICATE... note that a college student ID is not good enough.

VOTE, OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!

(NOTE: in these days of deceit by the GOP, you may vote and still suffer the consequences...)

Democratic Primary Runoff

It's underway right now. Early voting today (5/22) and tomorrow (5/23); Election Day is 5/27. Harris County residents, schedules and early voting locations can be found here. Personal voting info is available at harrisvotes.org, including your Election Day polling place. NOTE: as of this morning, the search for my voter registration info by address failed... searching by voter certificate number shows I am registered. BE SURE TO BRING YOUR GODDAM VOTER ID MATERIAL (e.g., a Texas driver license) to the polls! And please vote for David Alameel, because his opponent is a Larouche "Democrat," i.e., a right-wing nutjob who among other things wants to impeach Obama.

Elections In Miami-Dade Are A Real Pisser

Hunter at Daily Kos explains the messy details, in the post "Miami-Dade blocks voters standing in line from using the bathroom". As the lines in Miami-Dade  sometimes require six hours standing to vote, this effectively disqualifies many people from voting even if they have a voter certificate, an ID and anything else the Florida GOP may see fit to require in a given year.

Not my 2012 polling place, but similar

I remember the 2012 primaries. I voted early, choosing the Fiesta Mart at Kirby and Main, where I also frequently shop. The place was packed. At the time, I was first beginning to notice the problem that would ultimately cost me my foot. The queue of voters snaked through every aisle from the International section to the side of the store nearest Main... between 10 and 15 times across the store, front-to-back. After I voted, I could scarcely walk at all, or even stand, for about three days. I'm sorry, but in a representative democracy that is serious about representing the whole of "we the people," a cripple should not have to cripple him- or herself further just to be able to vote.

People who have to use the bathroom more frequently are similarly disabled. In some cases, medications can induce the problem as they solve a more serious problem; I know this because on the advice of my doctor I just started taking such a medication. It's no fun, but it beats croaking. Republicans, ask yourself: just how much do you hate disabled people? That much? Well, f^<k you too!

‘... They're Taking My Rights Away’ — Laura Troth, 80‑Year‑Old Texan, Denied Voter ID

Via karoli at Crooks and Liars, we have Lisa Falkenberg at the Houston Chronicle (damned subscription required) writing about 80-year-old Texan Laura Troth. Here's karoli quoting Falkenberg:

I wonder what Cathy Engelbrecht from True the Vote would say to this 80-year old woman who just wants to cast her vote the way she has in every election before the last one.

Both times she tried, she was told there was something else, another document, another piece of proof she needed to convince the clerks that she's the woman pictured in her expired Texas driver's license.

"I just don't understand why they're trying to keep me from voting," says Troth, a former licensed vocational nurse who considers herself an independent. "To me, they're taking my rights away."

The feisty mother of seven - grandmother and great-grandmother to many more - doesn't take kindly to such things. Her ordeal started last year, when Troth says she was turned away from her voting precinct because she had only her voter registration card, not a photo ID.

Determined to vote, Troth says she had a friend of the family drive her to the DPS office that day to get a Texas ID. She presented the woman at the front desk with various forms of identification - her old driver license, her Social Security and Medicare cards - but was told she needed her birth certificate.

[...]

Troth says the same "rude" woman was at the front desk and, this time, the woman told her the birth certificate wasn't good enough because the name on it differed from her married name.

"I told them I didn't get married out of the womb," Troth says.

The elderly widow was instructed to come back with her marriage license. And not only that. Because she lives with her other daughter, Alana Troth, that daughter would have to come in person to verify her mother's residency.

Goddamned Republicans have a lot to answer for...

Texans: Tuesday Is Election Day — Vote!

Raise your Voice - Vote!

Texans... Tuesday Nov. 5 is Election Day. If you're a Houstonian, it's your chance to shape City Council. Wherever you are in Texas, it's your one rock to throw at the State Board of Education. Don't waste the opportunity... vote!

Be sure to bring your voter registration AND your driver's license, to appease the goddamned Governor and the goddamned GOP. If your names don't match on those two documents, you may be able to vote by signing an affidavit, which the election judge at the poll should provide you (though you may have to harass a GOP election judge to get yours). Do NOT be intimidated! If you are registered to vote, you have a right to vote!

(This post will float to the top through Tuesday. Newer posts may appear below.)

Gallup Poll: Hispanics Overwhelmingly Prefer Democrats

The GOP will have to engage in a lot of gerrymandering, voter suppression and other forms of election theft to overcome this result: per Gallup, both U.S.-born Hispanics and Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. lean strongly to the Democratic Party. Hispanic Americans whose parents were both born in the U.S., by a margin of 64% to 30%, prefer Democrats over Republicans; Hispanic Americans with both parents born outside the U.S. prefer Democrats over Republicans by 57% to 25%.

Look for the Supreme Court to stretch very far to overcome the overwhelming Democratic advantage in rulings involving this large and rapidly growing immigrant population. I suspect the Supremes' tweaking of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was just a beginning of an assault on voting rights in many states, e.g., Texas and Florida. No battle for rights ever stays won, and for all the recent failings of the Democratic Party, Republicans are still the champion deniers of rights and liberties. Get ready for a battle...

The Right To Rule — DOGGEREL!

The Supreme Court eviscerates the Voting Rights Act of 1965...
(See previous post.)

The Right to Rule

The GOP proclaims it sport
To take advantage of the Court,
That what the Court (they knock on wood)
Could do, no legislation could.
The GOPers' silent prayer: "How great,
If only Courts could legislate!"

Since Marshall's time, the fact has been,
They can! No matter how obscene
Their transformation of a law...
What once was cabbage, now is slaw.
Five Justices one law can shred...
What once was law, is lately dead.

And so today, Scalia, who
(Alito, Roberts, Thomas too)
Was joined by Kennedy ("the swing")
To rule a sorry, damnéd thing:
The franchise is the right they smote...
"No universal right to vote!"

Thus states and counties pick and choose
Who has the right to vote, and whose
Intent to vote... surprise, surprise...
Was leaning toward those other guys,
And therefore, they must block. You see?
Dem "voters" ... they cannot ID!

- SB the YDD

Astonishing (To Me, At Least): Supreme Court Eviscerates Voting Rights Act Of 1965

You no longer have a right to vote... unless your state says you do. And your county. And your municipality. The right to vote is now enforced in about 13,000 voting districts around the country. Not since 1964 (and earlier) has "separate and unequal" done more damage to participatory democracy. But it's just too bad, say the five conservative Supreme Court Justices in Shelby County v. Holder... you have no constitutional right to vote. So say Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy. All those people who won't get to vote now? Too bad, so sad... the august body of conservatives on the Supreme Court hath spoken, democracy be damned. Democracy has been damned.

Needless to say, constitutional amendments are being proposed like wildfire. Stay tuned.

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What Bill said. Oh, and... those who did this? fuck 'em with a corkscrew.

UPDATE: here is a bit more on Justice Ginsburg's scathing dissent. "Do not go gentle..."

UPDATE: Attorney General Eric Holder, denouncing the decision:

“This is not a partisan issue. This is an American issue,” Holder said, declaring that “the best way to defend a right is to go out and exercise it.”

I can only shake my head and palm my face. You cannot defend the right to vote by going out and voting, if in fact you are not permitted to vote...

America, Election 2012: For The First Time, Blacks Voted At A Higher Rate Than Whites... But It's Not That Simple

Here's Hope Yen of AP at TPM:

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home.

Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press.

...

This has been coming for a long time. No doubt having a Black at the top of the Democratic ticket brought out a lot more Black voters than in earlier presidential election years, and it's not clear to me whether this is repeatable, but it has now happened once, and an African American has now been elected president twice.

Why do I doubt the reproducibility of the result? because Blacks constitute only 13.1 percent of America's population. If that figure is believable, that's a steep hill to climb. Unless another African American heads the Democratic ticket (or the Republican ticket? gimme a break...) in 2016, this level of turnout seems unlikely to me.

But that African American at the head of the ticket is actually a person of mixed race. Growing numbers of Americans are of mixed race. Some of those are emphatic in their desire not to be pigeonholed in one race. Even those who are not may identify variously among individuals of the same mixture. A friend of mine, filling out a form, was confronted with a checkbox labeled "Person with Hispanic surname." WTF? Her surname is as Anglo as my own, her ethnicity is indisputably Hispanic, her parents are Colombian by birth, and her citizenship is American by birth. At some point, the whole classification scheme itself becomes a vehicle for misrepresentation of ethnicity.

State governments may nonetheless be in for some real changes. Texas, for example, has been "majority minority" (I do hate that phrase, but it's the standard term now) for some years, and if federal courts including the Supremes are ever of a composition to reverse the rampant gerrymander that Republicans in power here have perpetrated over at least the last two decades, we Texans may lose our status as the laughingstock of the nation.

Old white guys like me (actually, old white guys NOT like me) might want to start adjusting their mindsets right now...

Will SCOTUS Kill Voting Rights Act Section 5?

What is Section 5? Sahil Kapur of TPM tells us:

Section 5 requires states and municipalities with a history of racial discrimination (read: mostly in the south) to seek preclearance from the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes to their voting laws. The law was upheld in 1966 by a Supreme Court that deemed it valid to correct the “insidious and pervasive evil” of racism. The law was most recently reauthorized in 2006 by a nearly unanimous Congress, with Section 5 intact.

For over 47 years, then, the Voting Rights Act, including Section 5, has stood as the law of the land. And it makes sense: people who are or were, or whose ancestors were, victims of racial injustice that prevented them from voting deserve extra protection from likely present-day attempts to do the same thing to them. You don't think it happens? Really? Are you seeing a solid brown field of view? C'mon, pull it out; look at the real world. Look at Election 2012, and tell me the Voter ID laws in a lot of states weren't in fact an attempt to prevent Blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, First Peoples, etc. from voting. We need the Voting Rights Act... all of it... as much as we did in 1965 when President Johnson signed it on my birthday.

One would think it just makes sense. But not necessarily to this Supreme Court. Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito are almost certain to vote to strike down Section 5, leaving Justice Kennedy in his usual position as swing voter.

It is not right that one man in a position of great power should be able to endanger the right to vote of millions of people with almost no power except their vote. But it may well happen.

Florida GOP Indeed Passed Voter Law With Explicit Purpose Of Suppressing Democratic Vote

Via Mustang Bobby, we have the news from the Palm Beach Post:

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.

Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.

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(Read much of the rest at Bobby's place. There are no major surprises.)

So: after the great GOP election theft attempt failed, intraparty recriminations are proving to be their undoing.

GOOD! Damn them all to a Hell of their own making!

Will AZ County Stop The Count? Shades Of Florida 2000!

People have been saying really bad things against Texas lately, mostly regarding our good-haired governor and his buddies spewing all the loose talk about secession. But at least we didn't have any of this shit:

One of the few unresolved congressional races in the nation could come down to whether voters in a heavily Latino precinct in Arizona get their ballots counted this week.

Backed by two high-powered lawyers, a supporter of Republican congressional candidate Martha McSally filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to get election authorities to halt counting of provisional ballots from a heavily Latino area of the state’s Cochise County.

The suit could be pivotal as McSally is trying to unseat Rep. Ron Barber (D) in southern Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. At last count, McSally was trailing Barber by just 512 votes, but the lead had changed hands multiple times since election night.

Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Weekly reported that Barber campaign manager Jessica Floyd called the lawsuit an “active attempt by Martha McSally’s attorneys to disenfranchise voters in Cochise County.

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Clearly Arizona GOPers want to enforce what I've always called the Republican Right to Rule: no matter the actual vote count, Republicans win. If they don't win at the ballot box, they win in the courts, but they always win, democracy be damned. Eternal vigilance lawyering is the price of liberty making sure your your vote is counted!

Touch-Screen Machine Poll-utes Votes In PA

Via l'Enfant de la Haute Mer in comments, in Pennsylvania, as Pam Spaulding tells us, a touch-screen voting machine reproducibly highlighted Romney when a voter selected Obama. Being a software developer, he experimented, tapping the buttons in small vertical increments, and found out that the entire area of the Romney button, plus the entire area of the Obama button, again reproducibly selected Romney. Only one small sliver between the two buttons actually caused Obama to be selected. The voter took a cell phone video documenting the phenomenon.

It gets worse. The voter asked the voters on either side of him, and found they had no problems. He then called over a volunteer assistant, who hemmed and hawed, then said something like "Don't worry. Everything will be all right..." and walked away, declining to do more.

Later in the day, that particular machine was pulled from service. How many are there like it in the field? How many states, how many polls, how many votes, are poll‑uted by this kind of tampering?

Jeebus Christ on a crutch in a crap-heap! If the voting machines really are... right now, today... tampering with our votes as we speak, what is there left to call "democracy"?

Harris County's voting machines may still be rigged, but if so, they are more subtle about it. For one thing, they do not have touch screens, but rather fingertip dials that move the selection bar, with a sort of Enter key that selects the currently highlighted candidate. For another, the selection in a race is visible for the entire time that ballot page is visible, and is again displayed for you in a list of your votes in every race at the end of the ballot; at any point, you may go back to earlier pages and change or verify your votes. As I said, this is not total security; such machines are, for example, still vulnerable to the "man-in-the-middle" approach described earlier in the post about Ohio. But at least a few hacks are precluded.

Users of e-voting systems: did you vote for Obama? did you merely THINK you voted for Obama? You'll probably never know.

There should be a "Boston voting machine party" in which these machines are all sent straight to the bottom of the ocean, after which actual voting is returned to paper ballots with a strict chain of custody both before and after they are marked. Yes, there are still ways to cheat on paper ballots, but it can be made much harder than it is with e-voting equipment.

It's 4:09 PM CST... where is YOUR vote?

Vote!

• Because it may make a difference;
• Because if you don't, you may never get another chance;
• Because someone has to stave off the madness thrust upon us primarily by our political opponents;
• Because after Tuesday, there's no tomorrow; it's now or never;
• Because the Lesser Evil may still contain some evil, but the Greater Evil will contain far more and far worse evil;
• Because you can;
• Because you owe it to your forebears, who bought this land for you with their blood and with their genius;
• Because you owe it to your descendants, who will have to inhabit it as you leave it.

Those are only some of the many reasons every American citizen should vote. You know them all in your mind and in your heart; I don't have to tell them to you. But the knowing is no good at all without the voting. Don't wait around for perfect candidates. Just do it!

AFTERTHOUGHT: even as recently as yesterday, there is still evidence that an attempt is being made to steal Ohio's election through untested, uncertified "patches" to software installed on voting systems in 39 counties. As I've said before, electronic voting systems have exactly one legitimate place: the bottom of the ocean. Ohio is forecast by most polls to go to Obama by a few percentage points. If it does not, maybe it's time for an Ohio voting machine party.

GOP Voter Registration Fraud In Virginia: The Scandal Spreads

Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog, posting on Oct. 25 on Salon, tells us as much as was known a week ago about the voter registration scandal that began with a simple case of a hired Republican voter registrar dumping completed Democratic voter registration forms in a dumpster... and has broadened to include reports of fraudulent voter registrations in Florida as well as reports of additional destroyed Democratic registrations in Colorado and Nevada. And that appears to be just the beginning. I expect to find follow-up information.

H/T Politics Plus
(click for TomCat's post)

A name that threads through all these allegations is Nathan Sproul. Through a series of shell organizations, Sproul set up a GOTV and voter registration organization for the benefit of the Republican Party, then was himself "fired" (but not really), leaving those GOTV/VR org's in place, doing dastardly deeds to voter registrations by prospective Democrats. Even in Texas you could go to jail for that kind of behavior. But apparently Sproul has been at it for years, and no door has clanged shut behind him.

I do not know what I shall do if I become convinced that a presidential election duly won by Obama was stolen by GOP voter registration fraud and GOP manipulation of the votes themselves. But unlike sElection 2000, I shall not take it lying down.

Toeing The Line

Stella and I voted early today at the Fiesta Mart on Kirby just north of Reliant Stadium, which you may recognize if you follow pro football. (We don't.) Fiesta Mart caps one end of a gigantic shopping center. Fiesta alone is about the size of a typical Wal-Mart (but fortunately has no other characteristics of Mall-Wart); the rest of the center contains several useful and/or enjoyable places including Dimassi's Mediterranean Buffet.

Anyway, back to voting. Today was the second day of early voting. As we often do, we waited out the first day to avoid the worst of the crowds. It didn't work. When we arrived sometime after 1:00 PM, the voting line began at the large main door of the store, but it did not go straight to the alcove containing the polling place. Oh, no, nothing so easy. It led about 100' to the right along the food court, turned toward the back of the store beside the international frozen foods (Fiesta's specialty, if it can be said to have one), ran straight toward the back of the store to the deli, angled further right past the bakery, and finally turned at last toward the front of the store and the large alcove containing the poll. All in all, the line ran several hundred feet, and only slightly fewer people than feet. Never in my life have I seen so many people voting at one place and time!

It took us about 1¼ hours to traverse the whole line and vote. By the end, there was very little left of either of us; indeed, everyone in line seemed in high spirits but... pooped! I was happy to note no shortage of cripples among the voters... we do vote; take us seriously! My booted foot ached. Stella felt, as my dear departed mother would have said, that "my tired hurts." But the deed was done.

There's a lot of good news here.

First, the racial and socioeconomic diversity of the voters today was vast. Part of that may have been the location of this particular poll at a multicultural grocery store: even on a normal Tuesday, thousands of people buy groceries there drawn from cultures including Mexican from various regions, African of several countries, various South American cuisines, British Isles specialities [sic], Indian and Pakistani fast food, several varieties of Middle Eastern food, and of course mainstream black and white American foods from several parts of the country. As a food store, Fiesta Mart is diverse beyond belief. One would expect that as a polling place it would draw Americans equally diverse in ethnicity and culture. From this I take it that just about every American is coming out to vote this year. That can't be a bad thing!

Second, the polls were run in an orderly and trouble-free manner. I saw none of the self-appointed poll vultures who said they would invade every poll in Houston to make sure no one committed (gasp!) voter fraud! I don't know if they were there yesterday, or there today but had been run off, or simply realized that with the sheer quantity and variety of Americans intent on exercising their right to vote, there was no real hope of creating a stir as they were said to have done two years ago. In any case, the absence of poll-wreckers was welcome indeed.

I suspect I'll have to rest my booted foot for several days to recover from this one. But damn, was it ever worth it! America was meant to be like this... and for at least a day, it was precisely what it was meant to be. May all of us see many more such days! Put off the fights over counting; they will come, and you will fight them as necessary. For now, it's YOUR turn, if you haven't voted yet...