Good news from Georgia
Georgia's new voter-identification bill -- which had required citizens to pay $20 or more for a special ID card to vote if they didn't have a driver's licensce -- hit a little snag in court yesterday.
In a damning 123-page decision, U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy struck down the bill that had been pushed through by Republican lawmakers earlier this year, noting its uncanny similarity to Jim Crow laws. Here's an excerpt from his decision:
In a damning 123-page decision, U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy struck down the bill that had been pushed through by Republican lawmakers earlier this year, noting its uncanny similarity to Jim Crow laws. Here's an excerpt from his decision:
The photo ID requirement unduly burdens the right of many properly registered Georgia voters to vote, is a poll tax, and has the likely effect of causing many of those voters to forego voting or of precluding those voters from voting at the polls. Because the right to vote is a fundamental right, removing the undue burdens on that right imposed by the photo ID requirement serves the public interest. This factor therefore counsels in favor of granting plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction."The plaintiffs included the NAACP, which pointed out in a press release some of the flaws in the bill, such as the fact that there was not a single office where the ID cards were for sale in the entire city of Atlanta:
Recent census data shows that African Americans in Georgia are nearly five times less likely than whites to have access to a motor vehicle, thus would be less likely to have a photo ID. Moreover, there are only 56 locations in Georgia that issue the primary identification required by the new law. Many of Georgia's citizens in rural areas who do not have accessible transportation may need to travel through two counties to reach a Department of Motor Vehicle Services (DMVS) office.UPDATE: For those doubting whether Supreme Court nominations are important, GOP state senator Don Balfour drives the issue home:
Georgia recently eliminated the only two DMVS locations inside the City of Atlanta, the state capital where a substantial number of African Americans live. A person living Atlanta must now travel 10-15 miles to access a DMVS office.
"We'll appeal it until the Supreme Court makes a decision. Hopefully by then the president will have a good conservative court up there that understands the will of the people."
57 Comments:
I have always said I would not mind the photo ID requirement if they were free and easily acquired, meaning lots of locations open during the evenings and weekends, so that all who needed the ID could get it easily and not have to take time off from work, and not have to spend a penny on it. But, the GOP ain't going to let that happen.
No locations inside Atlanta. HA, HA!
We have a similar bill pending in Massachusetts, and it was opposed by the Sec. of State for the reasons the Court named - it constituted a fee to vote.
The obvious solution is to provide voter ID cards at no cost.
But you still have to have an issued ID to board a plane, buy beer, open a checking account, buy a gun. That's not just. These restrictions need to be overturned too.
You have to have an ID to buy beer. Again, tell me why voting is less serious than that?
"The obvious solution is to provide voter ID cards at no cost."
There is always a cost and someone will always have to pay (a fact sometimes forgotten by our friends on the left). That's not to say I would oppose funding such an enterprise from tax dollars, but I'd be hard-pressed to justify yet another extra tax for this purpose.
Actually, if you look at the law, the state would provide a photo ID free of charge.
Once again the Left strikes down something, not because it isn't a good idea, but simply because the way it is being done might not be good enough.
Tell you what, why dooesn't the Left make its own ID bill that makes the IDs free? Hell, even establish a new voting ID card! Set up offices within each school district where you can get your free voting ID card.
Why doesn't the Left actually come up with this sort of thing instead of just sniping everything the GOP comes up with?
Oh, I forgot, they get lots of votes from people who shouldn't be voting... You know, like illegal immigrants, non-citizens, and so on........
Ideally they should set up facilities for issuing such IDs at the actual polling places some X number of days before the elections. And as to the $20 requirement--I'm sorry, but $20 these days is virtually nothing even to the poorest citizens. And if you don't think your right to vote is worth $20 to you, you probably shouldn't be voting anyway.
And what about the absentee ballot procedures? Are they illegal because they require the voters to come up with 37 cents for a stamp?
I'm a native Georgian now living in Florida - here we have a DMV office every few miles.
Georgia, however, is the largest state east of the Mississippi. It has 159 counties. Drivers licenses and photo ID cards are issued at State Patrol stations - there are only 56 in the entire state. As the primary responsibility of the State Patrol is to patrol the state highways, the State Patrol stations are outside the smaller cities in the state.
If you have a car, you can drive to the Station - if you don't have a car, as most of the folks needing a photo ID don't, it's almost impossible to get to one of these places. It's not as though a bus runs from Jones County to the State Patrol station in Milledgeville.
As usual, the Georgia General Assembly took a good idea and totally screwed it up. Photo ID is a good idea - where the legislature failed was in figuring out how to make them available to people.
Yea, Seixon, those damn liberal judges in the Northern District of Georgia.
Another blow struck for the voting rights of felons and the dead - hooray!
Our forebears fought a war for independance over taxation without representation, yet hardly anyone today seems to have a problem with represention without taxation.
But you still have to have an issued ID to board a plane, buy beer, open a checking account, buy a gun. That's not just. These restrictions need to be overturned too.
Why not just modify that Brady Bill data base system to run background checks on voters at the polls.
For decades, the Left has been telling us that these background checks don't violate our rights, so they'd be hypocrites to object.
Steven:
You do understand that this is a Federal District court? And the judge was appointed by Wm Clinton? Still want to make fun of what he said?
I wonder what a plain old driver's license costs in Georgia.
If you want to get on the voter registration list you should have to prove citizenship.
Once you're on the list, to vote you should have to prove identity.
When you vote you should get the Iraqi-style 48-hour indelible ink treatment.
In Canada, voter registration lists are generated from scratch for every election, and it might not be a bad idea to renew our lists here in the States at least every four-year presidential cycle.
Might just prevent dead voters from keeping dead wood in Congress.
Why is it that "progressives" are always so dead-set against cleaning up the voting system? Is there something about one-CITIZEN-one-vote that mortally offends them...
... or does it just frighten them?
People always say that many people do not have driver's licenses in the city but what about other forms of photo ID? Most (if not all) states already have a photo ID card available.
How do you cash your paycheck (or government check) without an ID? The only way I could see getting buy without an ID at all is if you were homeless, living on the street, and not collecting government benefits so you never receive any kind of check.
The only way I could see getting buy without an ID at all is if you were homeless, living on the street, and not collecting government benefits so you never receive any kind of check.
So homeless people living on the street should not be allowed to vote either?
Seriously, you guys crack me up. One would think that voting rights are something both sides of the aisle are interested in protecting for everybody. Guess not. And save me the B.S. about voter fraud, lest we have to dredge up Florida 2000.
Also, could someone point me to the part of the Constitution that guarantees everyone the right to buy beer? I think I missed that.
Gimme a break...
"Also, could someone point me to the part of the Constitution that guarantees everyone the right to buy beer? I think I missed that."
Actually, ever hear of the 9th Amendment? Or the 21st?
It is allowed - so is its regulation.
Why voting should not be well regulated too is beyond me.
In the Georgia case the left could have sued the state to provide greater access (against the backdrop of the new law) so people could comply with the law AND exercise their civil rights.
Instead they went after the ID requirment itself.
That shows their real purpose.
R. Neal, the part of the Constitution that guarantees everyone the right to to vote is located right next to the part of the Constitution that guarantees everyone the right to buy beer.
And dredge up Florida all you want. Your man lost there, fair and square. Perhaps if the democrats hadn't nominated a man with the personality and political abilities of petrified driftwood, you wouldn't be having to issue ominous (read: really humorous) threats to "dredge up Florida".
Loser.
strip the fee and the photo id law is fine.
since you need an id for so many things the idea that this is jim crow is just bull. Tip O'Neil got a lot of heat for getting teeth in laws against repeat voters too because it prevented fraud.
The Poll Tax arguement however is a good one. Strip that part and/or give the poor the option to skip a fee and it works for me.
We wouldn't want to disenfranchise the dead felon voters now would we? After all, they're the Democrats' largest voter bloc.
How dare those evil Rethuglicans try to stop me from voting 3 or 4 times for the Democratic candidate?!
Y'all are funny. You don't even have to go back to 2000. In August of 2004, a Republican state legislator from Michigan said "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."
But let's go back to 2000, because these are the things those on the left and the right should be trying to prevent...
Technical Problems: There is overwhelming evidence of problems and irregularities with the voting in Florida. Anyone who cannot or will not acknowledge this is delusional. Here are just some of the basic "technical problems".
- Illegal (disputed as to legality depending on interpretation) and confusing (no dispute) ballots caused thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate. Example: Pat Buchanan winning elderly Jewish precincts (even Pat Buchanan conceded they were not his votes).
- Technical problems with voting equipment. Example: A "programming error" in Volusia county gave the Socialist Party candidate nearly 10,000 votes. He received about 500 votes in the entire rest of the state. The initial count also had Gore with minus 16,000 votes.
- A company was hired by Katherine Harris to scrub the voter registration databases and bump them against convicted felon databases from other states. Due to "bad programming and design" which resulted in "errors", thousands of legitimate, law-abiding, non-felons were denied the right to vote. Subsequent investigations revealed that a disproportionate number of these people were minorities.
- In four of the counties in the state with the largest black populations (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Duval) some 100,000 spoiled punch-card ballots were discarded, more than half the discards in the state. Eighteen out of the nineteen precincts in the state with the highest rate of discards were majority-black precincts.
Procedural Problems: Sure, these could all just be unrelated, coincidental "mistakes". Nobody's perfect. As evidenced by some of the "procedural problems":
- Hundreds of voters in Broward County were unable to vote because the Supervisor of Elections did not have enough staff to verify changes of address.
- Many polling places with predominantly black or student precincts ran out of ballots, closed early, or refused to allow people in line at closing time to vote.
- The Duval County Supervisor of Elections issued a sample ballot that was different from the official ballot in violation of state election laws.
- Unknown numbers, possibly thousands, of "motor voter" registrations were "lost" or not processed. The problem seemed particularly prevalent with first time black voters, prompting an NAACP lawsuit. The problems were known eighteen months prior to the election, but nothing was done to fix them. Evidence of a systematic problem can be seen in the statistics. In heavily Democratic Broward County the numbers of motor-voter registrations fell off dramatically as compared to the 1996 election, in many cases by more than half.
- Bags containing hundreds of uncounted Volusia County ballots (where the Socialist Party candidate got 10,000 votes and Gore got minus 16,000) were found in a poll worker's trunk days after the election. Two days after that, several other bags of uncounted ballots were found in a county vault without their "tamper proof" seals.
- A law clerk in Pensacola requested an absentee ballot but never received it. He complained to his father, a U.S. District Judge. An investigation revealed that this ballot was received by a third party, filled out with a forged signature, and then sent in. The Assistant State Attorney was asked if it was possible that other absentee ballots were intercepted. He said, "I agree there may well be many more than just this one."
- Students at a predominantly black college in Leon County participated in a massive voter registration effort. Large numbers of students had problems voting, including one student who had two voter registration cards with two different precincts (personallly, I have three with three different precincts, one moved without notice), some students who received no voter registration cards, switching of precincts without prior notification, missing information at precincts, and students who had attempted to register numerous times and never received registration cards and were never entered into the system.
- A 75-year-old Cuban American woman, went to vote at the same precinct in Miami-Dade County where she had always voted since becoming a citizen in 1966. When she showed her registration card she was told that her name was not on the roll. It took a long time for the poll worker to reach the supervisor of elections because the phone line was busy. When they finally got through, she was told that according to their records, she had called in 1998 and "erased herself" from the voter’s list. She insisted that she had not called and showed the poll worker her registration card, but the poll worker refused to allow her to vote.
- A black woman and former poll worker had changed her address prior to the election. Based on her familiarity with election procedures, she went to vote and completed a change of address affidavit. When a poll worker tried to call the office of the supervisor of elections to verify her registration status, she was unable to get through. The phone lines remained busy for three and one-half hours. Ultimately, the poll workers refused to allow her to vote because they could not verify her voter status.
- A poll worker in Broward County observed mostly black and Hispanic voters being turned away because their names did not appear on the roll. The precinct clerk at her site was not able to get through to the central election office to give affidavits to those voters whose names did not appear. According to the poll worker, the clerk did not communicate with the voters and did nothing to encourage them to vote. In fact, she noticed later that afternoon that the sign informing voters where they should call if they experienced problems had never been posted. She brought this to the attention of the precinct clerk, who explained, "I didn’t have time to put it up." The poll worker recalled that in past elections, only about ten minutes were required to reach the elections supervisor, but in this election she turned away approximately 40 or 50 people because she could not reach the supervisor of elections.
- A black woman and first-time voter went to her polling place to vote, She was told by a white poll worker standing outside that the poll was closed. As she turned to leave, the poll worker allowed a white man to walk in and get in line to vote.
- Polling places were closed or moved without notice. One voter went to four different places looking for her place to vote. The polling place at the high school where she had voted in the primary had been closed and there was no notice.
- Charles Kane, a former CIA agent, was caught altering absentee ballot applications in Martin County. Without the alterations, the applications would not have been legal or acceptable. He testified to this in open court and said there was nothing wrong with what he did because he was simply correcting a printing error. He also testified that he was given unsupervised access to the applications and computerized voter registration databases contrary to election laws. His operatives also testified that they were allowed to remove applications from the election office and take them to GOP headquarters to be "fixed" (as I recall because they had a better database there or something).
- In Seminole county, a "technical problem" resulted in thousands of absentee ballot applications being sent out without the required voter registration number printed on them. The Republican county election commissioner in this heavily Republican county (I lived there for eighteen years and am familiar with heavy-handed GOP tactics there) noticed this when the applications started coming in and put the incorrect Republican applications in a separate box. She then invited GOP officials to "fix" the applications. They, too, were given unsupervised access and use of office space (and possibly computer databases, although this is disputed) to "fix" the applications. Some of the applications were incorrectly "fixed" with the wrong voter registration IDs. The election supervisor ordered her staff to accept the applications without verifying them. She did not notify local Democrats this was occurring. Incorrect Democrat applications were simply discarded.
- On Wednesday morning after election day, the Governor of Florida said the margin of victory was less than one half of one percent, and as prescribed by state law in such situations, the Florida Secretary of State had ordered a state wide machine tabulation recount as mandated by state law. She set a deadline of end of business Thursday. In the wee hours of Friday morning (way past the Thursday end of business deadline), Republican dominated Seminole County Florida submitted a manual recount, which was not requested by any candidate yet gave Bush 98 additional votes. These results were accepted and certified by Katherine Harris.
- The Florida Secretary of State requested court intervention to stop the manual counting prescribed by Florida law, and refused to extend any deadlines to permit filing of these manual counts prescribed by state law, claiming no discretion. (Florida statute 102.112 clearly gives discretion, as later decided by various courts). Ironically, she had previously allowed manual recounts to be included after the deadline for a machine recount she had ordered when the manual recounts resulted in an additional 98 votes for Bush.
- The Florida State Legislature resolved to convene a special session to "protect" the appointment of Bush electors from Democratic court challenges by arbitrarily naming electors for Bush without awaiting the outcome of recounts or court cases. Florida Statute 103.011 (2), says that electors shall be appointed by a statewide election on a certain date, and that the Department of State shall (not "may") "certify as elected the electors of the candidates for President and Vice President who receive the highest number of votes". State law clearly does not provide for the State Legislature to arbitrarily appoint whatever electors they want.
Voter Intimidation: Sure, things like this go on all the time in every election. There are always going to be "mistakes" and instances "poor judgment". But then there's voter intimidation:
- The Director of the Florida Highway Patrol testified that the FHP established a "checkpoint" on a road leading to a Leon County polling place with several predominantly black precincts. Approximately 150 vehicles were stopped at the checkpoint. FHP received notice of a complaint to the Attorney General’s office that FHP troopers had hindered people of color from arriving at polling places at the checkpoint. FHP conceded that "policy violations" had occurred and "disciplinary action" was taken.
- Unoccupied FHP vehicles were parked at a number of predominantly black polling places in violation of FHP policy.
- There were other reports of roadblocks and police presence at minority precincts, and even outright police intimidation of minority voters in Duval County.
- There were reports that carpools of black voters were being stopped by police, who demanded they produce "taxi licenses".
- Some minority voters said they were turned away because they did not have photo identification, even though Florida law provides that registered voters without photo IDs may cast "affidavit ballots". Reports indicate that in some counties, minority voters were asked for a photo ID while white voters were not.
- Some minority voters told of being sent from polling place to polling place, with no real effort to determine where they actually would be permitted to vote. Some claimed to have been turned away from not just one, but three or four polling places.
The REAL Problems: Are we starting to see a pattern yet? And we haven't even gotten to the recounts, court challenges, Supreme Court, etc. etc. etc. But that's not really necessary, because that part of the election has been rehashed over and over in the media.
But see, that, too, was part of the strategy. That made it all seem fair, above board, and legitimate, while directing attention away from the systematic, comprehensive, and coordinated operation that covered all the bases to ensure Bush got Florida's electoral votes.
Even the so-called "media coalition" recount played along. Using various court interpretations and counting only the counties requested by the Gore campaign, recounts showed Bush won by a very narrow margin. If they recounted the entire state, however, according to strict interpretation of state law with regard to "hanging chads", overvotes, undervotes, etc. (which they did), Gore would have won (and he did, but that part of the report is consistently ignored by the GOP and the "liberal" media).
That was Gore's biggest mistake, by the way (other than not winning his own state). Being the nice guy that he is, in trying to be reasonable he focused only on the counties where serious problems had been reported. Many of the other irregularities were not being reported or were being ignored. If he had requested a state-wide recount, which would have been his right under Florida state law, he would have won the election.
Anyway, to put the recounts into perspective, Bush won Florida by 537 popular votes out of nearly six million. By any standard that is statistically even and would trigger an automatic run-off in just about any local election. And the GOP continues to ridicule Democrats by claiming that Gore wanted to keep counting until it came out his way. I would challenge anyone to count a truckload of six million apples and oranges and come up with the same count twice in a row. Especially with busloads of GOP operatives and "Team Leaders" harassing and intimidating you and screaming at you to "shut it down".
Regardless, the recount controversy is irrelevant. The real issue is the systematic and coordinated plan to rig the election in Florida. There was a reason exit polls showed Gore winning in Florida, and why every major network called Florida for Gore. Gore was winning, at least according to the people who voted but didn't know their votes weren't being counted. What the media didn't know about were all the irregularities that would affect the final outcome.
Preventing or correcting any one of the numerous voting irregularities could have given Gore the victory. And don't forget that Gore won the popular vote by 340,000 votes nationwide. If defendants could be identified there is enough circumstantial evidence that any jury in any court in the land would convict them. Election observers from South America would laugh at our process and the outcome.
And if you think it's crying over spilt milk and that us Democrat whiners should just shut up and move on, just remember that it could happen again 18 months from now. In fact, with "black box" electronic voting all the other shenanigans wouldn't even be necessary.
Any good American should be concerned, and would be derelict in not working to prevent rigged elections. Fair elections are the foundation of our freedom. If we are willing to ignore the problems (which still exist right here in my own county) and write them off along with the rest of our civil rights and liberties then we don't deserve freedom and democracy.
Or, as George W. Bush himself ironically put it, "Every registered voter deserves to have confidence that the system is fair and elections are honest, that every vote is recorded, and that the rules are consistently applied."
Anyway, it would seem that the GOP is not addressing these problems at all, and instead wants to put up more obstacles to voting, which you guys seem to feel is appropriate in a "democracy" that people are dying in Iraq to install.
Whatever.
I believe a person is required to have a government issued photo ID to register for state and federal relief programs (unemployment, foodstamps, WIC, etc.). So, who would be left that would not have a government issued photo ID?
Anonymous said...
I believe a person is required to have a government issued photo ID to register for state and federal relief programs (unemployment, foodstamps, WIC, etc.). So, who would be left that would not have a government issued photo ID?
Actually - my grandmother who lives in Thomasville, GA, who no longer drives (because my aunt lives next door and drives her where she needs to go), but who is still sharp as a tack mentally. My grandmother is a Daughter of the American Revolution and because she has decided to give up her responsibility to drive because she is nearly 90 and doesn't think its safe and live off the income from her farm, which isn't much, you want to deny her the right to vote?
R Neal, you're using 5 year old, debunked talking points. Virtually all of those "reports" and whatnot have been debunked as urban legends. In fact, the number of actual reports of "abuse" or "discrimination" that were actually reported on election day is something like 11, if I recall correctly.
The scrubbed voter roll problems occured precisely because they were NOT ALLOWED to consider race. Consequently, the voters IMPROPERLY disqualified were disproportionately white. I have no idea where you cam eup with your weird version of events.
Most of those things you discussed are leftist fantasies/conspiracy theories(<-- the two are often indistinguishable).
Like the other guy said, you lost... get over it.
Next thing you know, they'll want to make it illegal to vandalize RNC headquarters and slash the tires of "Get Out the Vote" vans.
Evil fascists!
gt7348b said... my grandmother...
So... take grandma to the DMV, get her photo taken, and pay for her ID card if it costs to get it. You can't do that? Or is it easier to claim that people want to strip from her the right to vote? What use is it to have grandchildren anyway, if they aren't willing to help out?
And now that we've limited the group of undocumented persons to those who don't have ID's and don't have any family, friends, or neighborhood political organizations to drive them and help them get one... who does an ID requirement disenfranchise?
In the past, people didn't want ID cards for voters because it made it easier to disenfranchise the African-American vote. Now Georgia wants every vote to count and this somehow disenfranchises minorities as well? It seems like people are more interested in their own power grabs and less interested in fairness of elections.
Why do people who insist that there hasn't been a fair election in these United States since 1996 fight the photo ID?
Anonymous said: R Neal, you're using 5 year old, debunked talking points. Virtually all of those "reports" and whatnot have been debunked as urban legends.
OK, then, My points were all from news reports, court transcripts, and congressional testimony.
Please provide the "debunking" and evidence of "urban ledgend". There should at least be some media retractions or indictments for perjury. Show us.
At any rate, what you and your pals here are really saying is that you don't want poor, minority, disenfranchised people to vote. Because you know it will be bad for your Corporate Church of State pals.
But really, tell me, will the right wing/neocon policies really help you? You have to be in a pretty high tax bracket. So tell us, are you? If so, your arguments are biased and without merit. If not, you need to pay closer attention and get on the right team.
OK, then.
Democrats just want to keep minorities dumb, drunk and happy. After all when it comes to acquiring liquor, every woman, man and child can produce a photo ID. And all of a sudden, purchasing enough of the aforementioned liquor, the Democrats can keep their constituents happy and dumb. Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership can "borrow" these drunk's electricity bills to vote for them if they hadn't taken the two minutes to vote for themselves. Somehow, the democratic process being created in Iraq by the blood and sweat of our Armed Forces is looking mighty attractive...
I think anybody should be able to vote. If they do so in an illegal manner put them in jail for 10 years minimum, 2nd offense life. An illegal vote is just as bad or worse than preventing a vote. It steals a legal vote from someone.
This returns the right to vote to felons, dead Democrats and gives the multiple vote back to the unions.
What is the small number of people without driver's licenses got their ID cards free.
Why is it ok to require an ID to buy liquor, but not to vote?
R. Neal said...
Whatever.
10/19/2005 8:28 PM
While your talking points (whether valid or not) deal with people whose votes were not counted and were not allowed to vote, you seem to be ignoring the other side of the coin.
A fraudulent or illegal vote for X disenfranchises a legitimate vote for Y.
Voter fraud is just as wrong as the (alleged) examples you cited.
I can't wait for the indictments of these crooks and scoundrels to come rolling in... Then we get to see how conservatives really feel about law and order (when it's applied to them).
Well, regardless of what happened in Florida, voter fraud is still a bad thing right? Or does the fact that you think there was a fraudulent vote in Florida mean that Georgia shouldn't have the right to prevent fraud? The good old "but he's doing it too!" argument.
"At any rate, what you and your pals here are really saying is that you don't want poor, minority, disenfranchised people to vote."
Please enlighten me as to why minorities are somehow less capable of presenting photo ids than whites. If I'm not mistaken, the law had a provision to allow people to obtain an id free of charge as well, and if it didn't then it should have. What reason what you invent for striking it down then? What we are really saying is that we don't want dead people and felons voting, but I guess you could consider them minorities.
"What reason what you invent for striking it down then? "
Doh! Replace the second "what" with "would."
"But really, tell me, will the right wing/neocon policies really help you? You have to be in a pretty high tax bracket. So tell us, are you? If so, your arguments are biased and without merit."
Ah, so you can't argue for a cause that benefits you? Well, that's ok since liberalism benefits everyone (right?) then nobody can argue in favor of liberal policies from this point on and expect to be taken seriously. I like the way you think. Because of the bias! And conservatism only benefits the corporate fatcats, right? Well, I'm not in the higher tax bracket, so no need to worry! No bias here! My motivations are purely altruistic.
I voted Republican so that Halliburton can finish installing its voter mind control booths and Karl Rove can resurrect Robot Hitler and Israel can finally deliver my ration of sweet, sweet Iraqi oil and [insert further liberal babble here].
Did I mention that George Bush hates black people?
I can't wait for the indictments of these crooks and scoundrels to come rolling in... Then we get to see how conservatives really feel about law and order (when it's applied to them).
Well, it's a good TV show, I particularly like SVU. Seriously though, those crooks and scoundrels (whomever they may be) should be punished appropriately. How's that?
I really applaud the volume of conservative argument here. Not the quality of the argument, mind you. Just the volume. Nothing like throwing some heat when some light is called for, right?
This isn't complicated and yet you still cannot accept the conclusion that fact and logic dictate.
1. $20 still goes a lot farther than apparently some here realize. People who make little should certainly not be forced to cough up any of it for a right enshrined in the Constitution. I don't need to drink to participate in my country's democracy, but I am disenfranchised if I cannot vote.
2. Georgia already has a law on the books requiring proof of ID to vote. It simply accepts many other forms of ID that non-driving voters are more likely to have, avoiding the need for an additional payment.
3. Then there's this bit:
Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox testified before her state's legislature this summer that there is zero evidence of voter fraud at the polling places that would have been prevented by a photo identification requirement.
4. Or this:
The law will have an undeniably disparate impact on voters. Among Georgians, blacks are nearly five times less likely than whites to have a driver's license. The only photo ID card deemed acceptable would be issued by the state, at a cost of $20, at only 58 different locations across a state with 159 counties (Perdue says the fee will be waived for those who sign an affidavit claiming poverty). If the state's intentions were pure, there would be many more sites to obtain a photo ID card - and the card would be free.
In fact, the articles I mentioned go on to point out that risk of fraud is much greater with absentee ballots and the rest of that law actually made those easier to cast.
So, which is it? Do all of you suffer from profound lack of intellect or is it profound lack of morals?
The scrubbed voter roll problems occured precisely because they were NOT ALLOWED to consider race
What an obtuse lying sack of shit this brave annoymous person is. Race was considered. They pulled all hispanics off the list. Why? Because Cubans vote Republican because of the Castro thing. Damn, this posting idiot is dumber than Bill Hobbs and Tom Nevins.
In Atlanta, there is no place to get the ID. None in Atlanta, the home to millions of Democrats. To get an ID, a person would need to get off work since the offices are only open business hours, and travel a grest ditance to stand in line for up to 4 hours to get this ID. The cost is not $20, which is still too high.
What ignorant idiots are spouting. Can't get by without an ID? Cashing checks? What complete and utter bullshit. I could easily live without an ID if I didn't drive. I have not seen a physical payckeck in a decade. My money is direct deposited, and all my bills are paid online. I use debit cards anywhere I go. By beer? Why? Not everybodfeels buying beer and acohol to be important. Evidently anonymous did during HS, which is why he seems to have missed most of his civics classes.
If Georgia wanted the ID bill to stick, all it needed to do was remedy the availability and cost issues. It chose not to do that.
The biggest fraud right now is electronic voting, until that is remedied with a verifiable paper voting trail, all this other crap is smoke screen.
The crooked, lying, cheating, and mostly indicted, GOP has been stealing elections openly since the SCOTUS installed the incompetent Bush as the president. For a Republican to even suggest they care about fairness is a crock of shit.
Conservatives are merely greedy crooks trying to rip off fellow citizens. They have no morals, and their ties to religious organizations are bought. Funny they should make fun of liberals.
" They have no morals, and their ties to religious organizations are bought."
Ah, yes thank you for reminding me. I forgot to mention "long live the Amerikkkan theocracy!"
Funny that I'm an Atheist though. Let me further dispel any other absurd caricatures you might wish to throw out there. I'm also pro-choice and I support gay marriage.
"The crooked, lying, cheating, and mostly indicted, GOP has been stealing elections openly since the SCOTUS installed the incompetent Bush as the president."
Blah, blah, blah. Well, you might not have notice the East St. Louis voter fraud scam. Or perhaps you forgot the tire slashing incident. Or perhaps you never saw this report from the American Center for Voting Rights? Here is a good excerpt:
[A] careful review of the facts shows that in 2004, paid Democrat operatives were far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression efforts than their Republican counterparts. Examples include:
* Paid Democrat operatives charged with slashing tires of 25 Republican get-out-the-vote vans in Milwaukee on the morning of Election Day.
* Misleading telephone calls made by Democrat operatives targeting Republican voters in Ohio with the wrong date for the election and faulty polling place information.
* Intimidating and deceiving mailings and telephone calls paid for by the DNC threatening Republican volunteers in Florida with legal action.
* Union-coordinated intimidation and violence campaign targeting Republican campaign offices and volunteers resulting in a broken arm for a GOP volunteer in Florida.
Vote fraud and voter registration fraud were significant problems in at least a dozen states around the county. Vote fraud is a reality in America that occurred not only in large battleground states like Wisconsin but in places like Alabama and Kentucky. The record indicates that in 2004, voter registration fraud was mainly the work of so-called “nonpartisan” groups such as Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and NAACP National Voter Fund. Examples include:
* Joint task force in Wisconsin found “clear evidence of fraud in the Nov. 2 election in Milwaukee,” including more than 200 felon voters, more than 100 double voters and thousands more ballots cast than voters recorded as having voted in the city.
* NAACP National Voter Fund worker in Ohio paid crack cocaine in exchange for a large number of fraudulent voter registration cards in names of Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins and other fictional characters.
* Former ACORN worker said there was “a lot of fraud committed” by group in Florida, as ACORN workers submitted thousands of fraudulent registrations in a dozen states across the country, resulting in a statewide investigation of the group in Florida and multiple indictments and convictions of ACORN/Project Vote workers for voter registration fraud in several states."
Pot meet kettle.
Let me reiterate this as plainly as possible so even the angriest of liberal cannot mistake what I'm saying:
I want rules such as this one to prevent fraud no matter who is conducting the fraud . It's not some evil plot to disenfranchise minorities (unless you count zombies and convicted felons as minorities).
Bill, you presented a good argument until you had to throw in the requisite angry liberal snark at the end. Your question is akin to "so do you still beat your wife?" But, let me answer it anyway. Neither. I hadn't researched this as much as you, because I don't live in Georgia so I had nothing to do with this law and vice-versa.
Oh please Jordan, a rightwing "fraud prevention" group founded after the election. They do not even address the hundreds of thousands of people from Ohio who were disenfranchised by the allocation of voting machines- much higher voting machines per voter in Republican leaning districts than in Democratic ditricts.
Please, quote Fox News or Newsmax next! We will believe them as well!
Lying conservatives!
The fact remains that every incident they cite actually occurred. And apparently your reading comprehension skills haven't improved so let me try to explain my point again.
You see, both parties are guilty of fraud. The fact that one party commits fraud does not give the other license to commit fraud. In fact, it would seem to make the necessity of fraud prevention even clearer. You seemed to agree with this assertion earlier, but now I'm not so sure.
Let me make this plain again . The law should have had a provision to allow citizens to obtain an ID free of charge (which it did) and it should have made it reasonably convenient to do so (which perhaps it didn't). If my analysis is correct, then I guess striking this down was the right thing to do, but our voting system is in great need of a major overhaul. So this was a clumsy step in the right direction.
Bookman of AJC nails it:
Murphy founded his analysis on a constitutional principle that all Americans no doubt embrace: Voting is the basic act of democracy, and if you're gonna make it harder for people to vote, you ought to have a good reason.
Murphy then asked two critical questions:
First, what obstacles does the photo ID requirement create to people wanting to vote? In some cases, he found, it can create a substantial obstacle. It's easy for those of us who already have a driver's license to dismiss that obstacle as meaningless, but think about it:
If you've ever had the pleasure of waiting in line for hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles just to get a driver's license, you know it's a pain. Now ask yourself a question: Would you be willing to put yourself through that all over again, just to be able to vote?
Murphy then asked himself the second question: Is the problem that's being addressed serious enough to justify discouraging people from voting?
That one was easy. Given that there's no evidence of a problem in the first place, the judge decided that the constitutional right to vote must be given precedence.
"The photo ID law . . . does nothing to address the voter fraud issues that conceivably exist in Georgia," Murphy concluded.
Second, pinhead said: "You see, both parties are guilty of fraud."
Bzzzt. Wrong. It was the Republicans in power who systematically used the government to supress voting of Democrats. Everything else you run your mouth about is anecdotal incidents, that the GOP and wingnuts shit for brains like you use as strawmen. The only statewide, party sponsored, voting illregularities were done by the republicans holding power in the government. Just because some pinhead slashes tire, does not prove it was a Democratic conspiracy. I would be more prone to think it was Young Republicans doing it so they could report it to the press and scream like little girls, just like you are doing.
And we do not know that these things occired. We know only that some GOP wingnuts put them on the interent, while not including actual events like voter supression in Ohio, which we have on video tape.
You have surpassed Bill Hobbs in stupidity! Congrats! I didn't think it could be done.
So- you need a photo ID to cash a check; to buy beer; to get on a plane, buy a ticket for a plane, etc., but trying to avoid massive voter fraud by requiring that a person prove he/she is who he/she claims to be is somehow akin to Jim Crow? Sorry, but any "progressive" should be in favor of ending fraud; allowing people to vote when they aren't eligible (i.e., vote fraud) is EXACTLY as bad as preventing eligible voters from voting, since either way the legitimate vote gets diluted. The only possible reason to be against ending blatant fraud is if you believe your side benefits from it - which, based upon the (regrettably, un-remarked upon) E. St. Louis scandal, appears to be the case.
As I said, your reading comprehension skills haven't improved. Hell, it doesn't look like they even exist. I was hoping you were reasonable, but I was clearly wrong. If you think somebody who is pro choice, pro gay marriage, etc is a wingnut then I think we have a pretty good read of where you stand politically. But then again, the constant stream of obscenities and abuse was a dead give away.
If you had actually bothered to read anything that I posted you would have seen that the Board Chairman of the American Center for Voting Rights served the DNC at the national level for over ten years. He's probably a Young Republican in disguise, right?
You also would have noticed that the report includes an extensive bibliography, so you could actually bother to do some research and check the primary sources if you don't trust the AC4VR. But, of course you won't.
You also would have noticed that the 5 tire slashers admitted to being Democratic campaign operatives, and other Democrat campaign workers testified against them. More Young Republican lies though, right?
Similarly, 16 Democrat election workers have been convicted of voter fraud and/or similar charges in East St. Louis. But they weren't really Democrats either, right? I'll list some more for you to blatantly ignore too:
- Court Issues Injunction Against Democratic National Committee Ordering It To Stop Distributing Intimidating Materials To Republican Volunteers In Florida
-Court Issues Injunction Against Democrat Operatives Targeting Ohio Voters With Phone Calls Providing Deceptive Information to Voters
All of this can be found at the links that I provided that you conveniently ignored and at the primary sources in the bibliography of the report. So ,yeah both parties are responsible, and all the profanity and hysterical "wingnut" insults in the world won't change that, but go ahead and ignore these anyway. I'm not going to argue anymore with someone so genuinely dishonest as you.
Again, idiot, we have video of massive, fucking massive, voter disenfranchisement by Republicans holding public office, and you want to get your little dick hard screaming about some guys slashing a few tires.
I have no faith in the site, since the GOP wingnuts frequently put together bullshit sites like that all the time. Quote Fox News for me.
In Georgia, if you would do any research, you would see that there has not been a person charged with voting twice. This is not a problem. The GOP is only trying, again, to suppress voting. The judge ruled because there a) was not problem and b) the solution to the "no problem" was going to cause a hardship.
How ignorant can you be? Take your little tin hat off and look at the law you are arguing for.
But please you lying sack of garbage, show me on the site all the GOP disenfranchisement. Show me all the banks of robocallers the GOP was using. Show me all the signs put up by the GOP telling people wo vote on Wednesday. That is a partisan site, and nothing more. Quick, tell me Zell Miller helps out!
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