SCOTUS To Hear Case That May Redefine ‘One Person, One Vote’ — UPDATED

Tierney Sneed at TPM:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday opted to hear arguments in a case that could redefine "one person, one vote" -- one of the bedrock principles of modern voting rights law. The case could change how electoral districts are drawn across the country, revamping who comprises electoral districts and reshaping the idea of who is ultimately "represented" by elected officials.

The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, originated in Texas and is being spearheaded by a conservative legal group. Legal experts tell TPM that the impact of the case could be far-reaching, especially for Latinos and residents of urban districts.

...

I do not understand how the conservative Justices on SCOTUS, operating in response to politically conservative legal entities like the self-proclaimed "Project on Fair Representation" (yeah, right), believe they can get away with this bullshit indefinitely without provoking a rebellion by people defending the Guarantee Clause of Article IV of the US Constitution. Please read about the Guarantee Clause, then read the above linked article about what the PoFR is appealing to SCOTUS to have imposed on all the states, a procedure that would change the redistricting rules in most of the states and render the phrase "One Person, One Vote" practically meaningless, in a fashion that might guarantee each state, not a (small-r) republican form of government as assumed for at least 50 years based on several prior Court rulings, but in fact a (cap-R) Republican form of government, which is clearly the goal of PoFR.

People who are poor, or Black or Hispanic, or are forcibly redistricted in ways that geographically concentrate their cohort so as to dilute the power of their votes, already have a hard enough time exercising any actual power by casting their votes. These days, most of the people affected by tweaking redistricting are those who tend to vote for Democrats. If the Court rules in this case in favor of the PoFR position, those poor/Black/Hispanic/etc. people are going to be fucked at the polls even worse than they already are, and thus so will be the Democratic Party.

And the Roberts Cadre, the Gang of Five, will have another weapon to join with Citizens United etc. to assure that elections can be bent to their own political liking.

Kuffner

Seriously: how long will it be before the actual majority of Americans, who are mostly not racially white, not male, not young and not wealthy, tire of having their expressed political will deliberately thwarted, and take to the streets? Do the Supremes really think they have enough police lined up to enforce a Republican [sic] government forcibly installed against the will of the popular majority?

Time will tell. Not a very pleasant time, and probably a rather painful tell...

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UPDATE: a bit more detail from Kuffner, who is arguably, and certainly IMHO, the definitive Texas blogger.

Judge Posner Condemns His Own Opinion On Voter ID

Posner

Well-known federal Judge Richard A. Posner, 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Reagan appointee and arguably signature conservative jurist in the nation (apart from those on the Supreme Court), author of the 7th Circuit's 2008 opinion in Crawford v. Marion County (wiki), the case affirming the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID law, thus opening the floodgates of voter ID laws enacted by other states, has changed his mind about voter ID laws in general. And he's not shy about it. "Dartagnan" at Daily Kos says this:

Posner, joined by four Judges on the Seventh Circuit, authored the opinion requesting a rehearing en banc by the entire Seventh Circuit Court of appeals in Frank v Scott Walker et al, the recent case assessing the validity of the Wisconsin "Voter ID" statute.  A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit had already cleared the way for the Wisconsin law to go into effect prior to next month's elections. Posner's request for rehearing split the Judges of that Circuit 5-5, and thus no rehearing was granted. Posner's opinion, which eviscerates every rationale promoted in support of these suppression laws, was relegated to a "dissent." ...

In short, if Posner were not Posner, his request for a rehearing would sink beneath the waves, and we would have draconian voter ID laws for as long as our nation lasts. But Posner is indeed Posner, and even conservatives listen to him. If we assume that we haven't heard the last in court of the GOP's skulduggery perpetrated by voter ID laws, it is reasonable also to assume that judges in further federal cases will pay heed to Posner, even all but the most extreme Supreme Court Justices.

One can hope. It's that, or cede our representative democracy to a band of thieves with an elephant as their emblem...

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UPDATE: I am not the best at reading legal documents, but this one from the Supreme Court site appears to indicate that the Supremes (with Alito, Scalia and Thomas dissenting) have vacated the 7th Circuit's permanent injunction pending a timely petition for, and issuance of, a writ of certiorari by the Supreme Court. So there's more to come on this whole nightmare. I suppose we all know how Alito, Scalia and Thomas will vote, inveterate partisans that they are, but the rest of the Court may be more inclined to hear the appeal.

State Voter ID Laws Begin To Fall, One By One

In January, it was Pennsylvania. In April, it was Wisconsin. Why? The NYT says of the Pennsylvania case:

Opponents contend that such fraud is rare — in Pennsylvania’s case, the state could not point to a single incident — and that the laws were intended to suppress Democratic turnout, since those who do not possess a state-approved photo ID are more likely to be in groups that tend to vote Democratic.

In Wisconsin, says the AP via TPM,

... [Judge] Adelman sided with opponents, who said it disproportionately excluded poor and minority voters because they're less likely to have photo IDs or the documents needed to get them.

I have to agree with those who say voter ID laws are all about voter fraud: specifically, the GOP's attempt to render whole elections fraudulent by fraudulently eliminating voters who favor their opponents.

These rulings are a good beginning. Now if the courts would just get around to ruling on Texas...

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.

...

(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!

Ohio SoS Jon Husted Sued For Issuing Instruction Defying Judges' Orders Re: Provisional Ballots

I know, I know; in real life, "SoS" stands for "shit on a stick," and that's what it should mean regarding Jon Husted. But Husted is the Republican Secretary of State of the great State of Ohio, and in direct defiance of multiple court orders, Husted issued last-minute instructions to election officials not to fill out one required section of provisional ballots verifying what form of ID was provided by the voter, thereby leaving the information to be filled in by the voter... or not. If the field remains blank, the provisional ballot is automatically disqualified. If voters forced to use provisional ballots are not properly instructed in filling out this field, there is no telling how many will have their otherwise legitimate ballots discarded.

Husted has until Monday to respond to the order in court, which has said it will decide by Nov. 17, which is when provisional ballots are to be counted.

As if that were not enough, poll workers dealing with provisional ballots will be trained by the "Voter Integrity Project" of "True the Vote," a Tea Party org which trains them "beyond" what the SoS instructs. Right. (How can that possibly be legal?)

You know, this is the third presidential election since 2000, the one in which Florida SoS Katherine Harris arranged the theft of the state's vote for GeeDubya Bush, largely as a means of self-promotion. It worked. Bush took office (I'm sure as hell not going to say he was elected, because he wasn't in any meaningful sense) and ended up as de facto president for eight years. Republicans noted the ease with which this was accomplished, and never looked back: election theft has become the primary means of Republican office-taking ever since. Ohio in 2012, like Florida in 2000, is liable to be a critical state for either candidate. Late yesterday, one of the poll-averaging sites reported an average Obama state poll lead in Ohio of about 3 points. If Rmoney, with an assist from Husted, takes the state, we could well end up with another illegitimate president.

Ideally, the judge should order Husted held for contempt of court, in custody without bond and without outside contact until the election is over, and moreover, no Voter Integrity Project member should be permitted to serve as a pollworker. In short, no special Republican instructions should be in force regarding any procedural aspect of voting.

Failing that, if the GOPers steal another presidential election, I'll renounce my commitment to nonviolence. This has got to stop. NOW. We want our democracy back!

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...

Who Watches The Watchers... And Who Watches Them

Jeebus! It has come to this. Via Christian Dem in NC at Kos, we are directed to an article by Alexander Bolton at The Hill:

International monitors at US polling spots draw criticism from voter fraud groups
By Alexander Bolton - 10/20/12 12:00 PM ET

United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week. The intervention has drawn criticism from a prominent conservative-leaning group combating election fraud.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers from its human rights office around the country on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, ...

Liberal-leaning civil rights groups met with representatives from the OSCE this week to raise their fears about what they say are systematic efforts to suppress minority voters likely to vote for President Obama.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, among other groups, warned this month in a letter to Daan Everts, a senior official with OSCE, of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”

...

Astonishing. What's astonishing? First off, to me, the fact that The Hill labels the ACLU and the NAACP "[l]iberal-leaning civil rights groups": really? Is it "liberal" to defend the Bill of Rights and a couple of other amendments? Second Amendment nut-jobs would be surprised to hear themselves categorized as "liberal-leaning." And what, specifically, is "liberal" (or "conservative") about protecting the civil rights of people of color? But The Hill is what the Hill is; one can hardly expect anything else of them. At least they carried the story.

Equally astonishing, again to me, is that anyone thinks True the Vote (no link from here!), King Street Patriots, etc. are a good idea. Most polling place officials are willing to work with these groups as long as they do not repeatedly get in the way of the orderly flow of the voting process. But that is of course their very raison d'être: to interfere with the voting process at polls in neighborhoods likely to contain lots of Democrats... predominantly African-American neighborhoods among them. They're out there to prevent the n[BLEEP]s from voting, however much they may deny it.

So groups like NAACP and ACLU and six others join forces to "watch the watchers," as the old saying has it. After sElection 2000, I recall some leaders of African nations offering America assistance in monitoring elections. But they were joking. We are not. We need the help. Dammit!

If America has reached the point at which it cannot run fair elections with clean polling and counting processes, we may be done for. I'm not ready to quit yet. But if we can't answer the simple question "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" we are in sad shape indeed.

Bring in the international monitors. Fuck the self-appointed "voter fraud" detectives. If anyone tries to deny my vote, I swear I'll modify their dental work!

Texans: You Can VOTE Starting TODAY!

This is it. In some states it's already been underway; in Texas, early voting starts today. If you need details, start with my early voting information post. If you vote today, expect a crowd, bring a book or magazine and wear comfortable shoes (heh... as if I have comfortable shoes). I am probably voting tomorrow instead.

Sweaters? jackets?
Not in Houston!

And remember to take your list along with your voter registration and, just in case (though it's not officially required), a government-issued photo ID which has your address on it, typically a driver's license. The self-appointed voter patrols (e.g., King Street "Patriots") are supposed to be out, checking up on everybody and making trouble. If someone hovers behind your polling station either to observe how you vote or to "advise" you, turn around and offer them instant dental work: you have an intrinsic right to a secret ballot, but that right is ill-protected in law. The bastards are probably just hungry anyway: offering to feed them a knuckle sandwich will likely make them go away.

If your poll has an e-voting system, in Texas, chances are good it's a Hart InterCivic eSlate. If you're inclined to vote straight-'D', remember that any subsequent selection of a candidate's name after you select the straight-party item de-selects that candidate.

May you be blessed with nothing worse than crowds interfering with your voting!

Texas: It's Almost Time To Vote Early

Basic info and necessary links for Harris County residents are available in my earlier post here. Early voting starts Monday, Oct. 22, and ends Nov. 2. The romance of Election Day voting (Nov. 6) is pretty much gone, superseded by wholly negative practical considerations... long lines, possible voting system failures and "failures," possible voter ID challenges at the polls by Republicans who do not like your skin color, etc. The short version: vote early.

Even if you overcome those obstacles, your vote may or may not be counted. In Texas, more than 200 counties including Harris now use DRE (direct recording electronic) voting machines and systems made by Hart InterCivic, systems not without their problems over the years since their introduction after the 2000 debacle. Even at best, the systems generate no paper trail, and individual votes are aggregated by the polling-place-level system. Your individual vote disappears into the ocean the moment you press "Cast Ballot". But it's too late to request an absentee ballot, and those are fraught with problems of their own.

While not a catalog of the horrors of voting by DRE systems, this NYT article from 2008 has an assortment of examples. The history is not encouraging. Not only is stealing elections made easier than ever, but accidental loss of votes, sometimes whole precincts of them, is a possibility in ways it never was before.

How common is trouble with all sorts of voting systems in America? VerifiedVoting.org has a map of the status of voting systems in all 50 states; only five have the status "good." Expect problems, maybe in your state.

And Republican attempts to steal the election are already underway. Recently, for example, in Virginia, a Pennsylvania man working for a contracting firm in the employ of the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested after being seen tossing completed Virginia voter registrations (presumably by likely Democratic voters) in a dumpster. (The man's name is Colin Small; make of that what you will.) And this happened months after Myth Rmoney sent a letter to the Virginia attorney general asking for an investigation of alleged voter registration fraud by Democratic organizations. What GOPers do themselves is what they accuse their opponents of... isn't there a name for that phenomenon? other than "strategy," I mean...

When the CEO of Diebold, Wally O'Dell, told Republicans in a fundraising letter before the 2004 elections that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year," he gave a warning that all Democrats should heed. Heads up, Democrats (indeed any non-Republicans): your vote is in danger, more than ever before.

(I don't know about you, but I resent like hell having even to think about this. It just isn't right.)

Avedon Carol And Stuart Zechman: Vote To Make A Statement, Knowing The New Deal Is Going Down No Matter How You Vote

Please read. Ms. Carol (interleaving quite a bit of Mr. Zechman's prose) has contemplated the same bone-chilling possibilities I foresee, whoever is elected. She comes to a different conclusion on whom to vote for, but only by a hair. You'd better start thinking about what life will be like without the crux of the New Deal to civilize the jungle that is America today, because neither major party candidate will keep it safe, and no minor party candidate has a chance in Hell. Go vote, and Dog preserve you all from the worst possible results.

How Does Mitt Lie To Thee? Let Me Count The Ways...

I'm running into bandwidth problems viewing my own blog on this ancient computer, so I don't want to post yet another video right away. But when I refer you to this YouTube video of Mitt Rmoney's lies (H/T TPM) from last Wednesday's debate, thirty (30) of them laid end to end (apologies to Dorothy Parker), I hope you take it as seriously as if I had posted it right here. Seeing all of Rmoney's lies debunked in one place is no shocker, of course; it must have been a systematic if tedious effort by the debunkers. But seeing that virtually every significant statement Rmoney made that entire night long was a lie, including all his manifestly false accusations against Obama, surely gives us insight into Rmoney's character. Why would anyone consider voting for this con man?

Hart InterCivic eSlate/ePoll Voting Machines Owned By Company That Shares 11 Directors With BAIN CAPITAL

That's right. My county's voting machine, a Hart InterCivic eSlate, the one on which I shall attempt to cast a ballot for Barack Obama, is owned indirectly by HIG Capital, whose directors... 11 of them in common with Mitt Rmoney's old company, Bain Capital... bought into the voting machine manufacturer in 2011... just in time for the 2012 elections. And HIG's directors? Several of them are big-dollar bundlers of contributions for the Rmoney campaign. Here's a segment from the David Pakman show (YouTube... H/T ellroon and oranges and lemons at Kos):



(Apologies for the godawful but sometimes amusing automated speech-to-text transcription in the video.)

As Pakman and friend point out, this is not the first time a voting machine vendor has promised to help deliver the presidential election to a Republican... remember 2004, and Diebold Corp.'s CEO who said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president [Bush] next year"?

Many psychologically disturbed people tend to attribute flaws to others which they silently perceive in themselves. You know the howl going up from the GOPers about vote fraud this year? Could this be the source?

One is supposed to be properly sympathetic to the plight of mentally deranged people. But in this case I am not: I WANT TO MURDER SOMEONE...

No. What I really want to do is hold a Houston Voting Machine Party, sending all those Hart InterCivic machines to the bottom of the Houston Ship Channel before the election. A return to paper ballots, with a strict chain of custody supervised by representatives of all interested parties, is minimally essential to a restoration of representative democracy in America. As long as we have e-voting systems, we will have large-scale, mostly invisible election theft, a fraud committed not (as alleged) by individual Democratic voters but rather by malevolent Republican IT personnel. What cannot be stolen vote-by-illegal-vote can be stolen en masse by a few taps and clicks.

Pennsylvania Voter ID Law... Once More, And With Feeling!

upyernoz of Rubber Hose, who is an attorney, explains his own confusion about the meaning of the judge's ruling. (See previous post.) The crux of the question is whether a voter lacking suitable ID is given a regular ballot or a provisional ballot. If you remember past elections, when individuals were forced to vote on provisional ballots, those ballots often ended up not being counted. So it's possible the judge ruled as a Republican instead of as a fiduciary of the tradition of law that one might expect a judge to be.

If even attorneys are confused by the ruling, the judge should issue a clarification RIGHT NOW. And the substance of the clarification had better be that everyone gets to vote on a regular ballot. Anything less is unacceptable. Anything less is evidence that the GOP is trying to turn Pennsylvania 2012 into Florida 2000.

Pennsylvania Judge Blocks Parts Of Voter ID Law

Pennsylvania Judge Robert Simpson, a Commonwealth (i.e., state) judge to whom the case was remanded by the state Supreme Court with instructions to rethink his earlier ruling in light of potential burdens on duly qualified voters obtaining ID in time, has blocked the Photo ID law from enforcement on Election Day.

Some sites reported earlier today that Judge Simpson permitted poll workers to request ID but not to prevent anyone from voting based on lack of ID. This is no longer the case. Voters may cast regular ballots without ID, based on the judge's ruling that such IDs are, in practical fact, still too difficult to obtain. Judge Simpson stated in his decision that he was "still not convinced" that no legitimate voters would be disenfranchised if the ID law were implemented on Nov. 6.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R, space cadet?) was said to be leaning against appealing the ruling.

Simpson, also a Republican, did not make the decision from whole cloth, but rather based it on guidelines provided by the state Supreme Court on remand. A trial on the merits will follow sometime after the election.

If Pennsylvania counts the votes of all its participating voters, it is likely that Obama will win the state's 20 electoral votes (yes, the state lost one electoral vote in this census). Given that Mr. Obama's major opponent is a Republican, one cannot bet on seeing all the votes cast and counted. I sincerely hope the NAACP stations people at polling places to prevent self-appointed Republican zealots from stopping the votes of African Americans. The R's wouldn't do that? Like hell they wouldn't; remember Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004.

Ryan J. Reilly of TPM, in an otherwise exasperatingly sketchy article, notes that "the state admitted it had no evidence of in-person voter fraud, the type of fraud that voter ID laws would prevent." That is effectively the same as admitting that the law has exclusively partisan and/or racist purposes.

Shame on the whole God-damned Republican Party! How can those bastards sleep nights, having disenfranchised people in at least three presidential elections so far, and showing no signs of backing off their skulduggery in this election? But these Republicans, these "conservatives without conscience" (to use John Dean's phrase and book title), have no intention of letting something as unimportant as an actual electoral majority get in the way of their ascent to power.

The nation cannot continue this way, not only with both parties advocating for the very wealthy, but with one party willing to sink democracy to the bottom of the ocean in its pursuit of raw power and unbounded wealth. Something must change. I hope it can change peacefully, but one way or another, something must change.

'Screw The Vote'

The Atlantic offers an article on organizations such as "True the Vote" a Tea-Party-based right-wing voter intimidation squad, and King Street Patriots, a poll-obstructing group that wreaked considerable havoc in Houston in 2010 in its highly dubious attempt to "prevent voter fraud," i.e., to prevent minorities from voting.

Poll tax receipt, Harris County, TX 1960

Some things never change. As Michael Moore suggests on his front page (there's no permanent link to an individual item on that page), this kind of Republican bullshit has been going on at least since the poll tax and literacy tests in the 1920s, continuing through caging and similar abuses, and its primary purpose today is the same as it has always been: to prevent people of color from voting.

If I were African American, I might take along some insurance on my trip to the polls. A driver's license would be good (though 21 million Americans don't have them). A passport? how likely is that in poverty-stricken Black communities, though it may be more common in Hispanic neighborhoods.? A military ID? no good, if it doesn't have your current physical address on it.

A gun? would that help prevent the TPers from stopping people from voting? I remember an incident some years ago in which a local Black militant brought an organized Black paramilitary unit, complete with rifles on their shoulders, to march outside selected polling places in Houston. No violence resulted. I do not know if the effort was successful in protecting the vote, but it certainly got the attention of the media.

Seriously, what will it take to assure democracy for every eligible voter, independent of race, ethnicity, color, and wealth?

Too Good To Pass Up (Probably NSFW)

(H/T 'noz.)

Mother Jones Publishes Secret Video Allegedly Of Rmoney At High‑Dollar Fundraiser - UPDATED 2x

Via Paul Krugman, we have David Corn at Mother Jones providing videos, text transcripts and of course Corn's commentary on Rmoney's remarks at what appears to be a secret fundraiser for "a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" (Paul Simon). Paul Krugman expresses some minor doubt that that really is Rmoney speaking (as whoever it is, is off‑camera), but I have watched (heard) all the videos all the way through, and I am persuaded that no actor could imitate Rmoney's speech that well, nor could anyone else write a script with the unconscionable depth of mean‑spiritedness on display in the segments of the speech.

If this is indeed Rmoney, he holds at least half of Americans in raw, unmitigated, unjustifiable contempt. He maligns the poor in almost every way possible; I kept expecting him to say that they... we... don't wash under our arms. Yes, it was that vile.

Rmoney correctly assesses that the election turns on as-yet-undecided independents, many of whom voted for Obama in 2008. But two things are clear: those indy voters are not stupid and are unlikely to be played as a group, and many of those same voters now find themselves in dire economic circumstances more like Rmoney's much-maligned lower-income and zero-income people. Perhaps some of the independents will indeed blame Obama (who, for all his faults in matters of human rights and civil liberties, is by and large not to blame for our nation's economic failures). But many of us can see through the smokescreen, and will at a minimum not vote for Rmoney. (I will in fact vote for Obama, with regret even as I push the button, but I will do it.)

And now that some of us have seen (heard) those videos, I suspect a few soft Rmoney supporters will be driven by outrage to vote for Obama. Maybe I am overestimating the common sense of the American people, or underestimating the effect of the next month and a half of false and vituperative Rmoney campaign ads, or failing to credit the effectiveness of the GOP's voter suppression program. But the revelation of these videos can only have a positive effect from our viewpoint.

We have a nation to save from vile plutocracy. It has nothing to do with whether Obama is your favorite president, or person, or anything else. Rmoney and Ryan are worse human beings than GeeDubya and Cheney ever dreamed of being in their most villainous fantasies. We have a job to do, and these videos, once authenticated, will help us to do it.

UPDATE early Tuesday 9/18: video confirmed by Rmoney at a 10:00pm presser as indeed being him, confirming his point but (paraphrasing his own words) admitting it was not "elegantly" stated. Then he doubled down on the content, once again calling approximately half of Americans lazy bums who don't work and don't pay taxes. What a motherfucking jerk.

UPDATE 2  early Tuesday 9/18:  Jeebus! David Brooks... yes, that DAVID BROOKS... agrees that Rmoney fucked up bigtime! Brooks even makes some rare sensible, even sensitive observations. Read him quickly, before he changes his mind!

Rep. John Lewis On Voter Suppression And Voter ID: "Iʼve Lived This Before"

If you've ever read Walking With The Wind... the great Democrat from Georgia, Rep. John Lewis's memoir of the civil rights movement... you will know that Lewis is one of the toughest, most indefatigable and unbowed African Americans in our midst, a veritable icon of courage and steadfastness, repeatedly beaten and bloodied and fire-hosed but never subdued in spirit. I am fortunate to have found a used copy of the memoir many years ago; I turn to it when my own spirits need restoration. Lewis never fails to inspire me.

Thus Rep. Lewis is the perfect man to address the often politically untouchable issue of race in American politics. No one living... no one in this world... knows better than Lewis the heartbreaking, outraging consequences of racism once woven into the fabric of our nation's electoral process... and now being rewoven by Republicans today. As Lewis said,

I’ve seen this before. I’ve lived this before. Too many people struggled, suffered and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote.

The poor. The elderly. And yes, racial, ethnic and selected religious minorities. All those American citizens face deliberate, unrestrained, thinly (if at all) disguised suppression of their votes by today's Republican party, through draconian voter ID laws (e.g., Pennsylvania and Texas), drastic pruning of voter roll in defiance of federal court orders (Florida), direct voter challenges at the polls leading to "provisional" ballots (many states), reduction of hours polls are open (again many states including Ohio), and outright vote-counting fraud executed using electronic voting systems (Ohio among others). Lewis conveys the message in his straightforward, uncompromising style:

Today it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting. They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House even bragged that his state’s new voter ID law is ‘gonna allow Gov. Romney to win the state.’ That’s not right, that’s not fair and that is not just.

Do not let this courageous and highly respected American down. Do whatever you can to challenge Republican voter suppression in every state this November. Too much is at stake to let them get away with it. Do NOT permit the return of Jim Crow at the polls!

Federal Judge: Ohio Must Restore Early Voting Immediately Preceding Election

In a victory for Obama that is probably temporary, US District Judge Peter Economus granted a preliminary injunction in a suit by the Obama campaign against the state of Ohio:

...

[The judge] ruled that the “public interest is served by restoring in-person early voting to all Ohio voters.”

Earlier this month, the Romney campaign attacked the Obama campaign’s lawsuit, calling it an “outrage” and falsely accusing the president of trying to take away early voting rights for members of the military. In reality, the lawsuit was trying to ensure that most voters, including servicemen and women, had the chance to cast their ballots early.

U.S. District Judge Peter Economus ruled that restoring a voting window for the three days before the election “does not deprive [Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act] voters from early voting” but instead “places all Ohio voters on equal standing.”

...

“Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable injury if in-person early voting is not restored the last three days before Election Day, and there is no definitive evidence before the Court that elections boards will be tremendously burdened,” Economus wrote.

“Restoring in-person early voting to all Ohio voters through the Monday before Election Day returns to voters the same opportunity to vote as previously conferred under Ohio law,” he wrote.


...

Whatever happened to the days when "honest" judges, once bought, stayed bought?

Ohio's AG, a GOPer, has announced that he will appeal the ruling. Given the composition of the federal judiciary in this sad and sorry age, I assume it will be overturned by a court full of judges who remember who paid for their plates.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Google gave me the first laugh of the day by returning the following image from a search for "thumb on scales":

I don't know who the hand belongs to, but I can confirm from watching lutenists for decades that the thumb-and-index position is classic for Renaissance lute.