Congress, Constitutional Law, Courts, International, Justice, Military, Politics, Things That Tick Me Off

Georgia On My Mind

Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger

With apologies to the writers of the famous song by the same title, I came across a small news item that didn’t make the big headlines this past week.  Our friends in Georgia just don’t seem to get the idea that their citizen soldiers deserve the same right to vote that on military members enjoy.  In the upcoming primary elections and general election cycle, Georgia has violated the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) by not providing military members the minimum amount of time between elections in order to assure that their absentee ballots arrive in time to actually be counted in the respective elections.  At least the Justice Department thinks Georgia does not have the military on its mind!

“The Justice Department has filed suit in federal court against the state of Georgia, alleging that service members, their family members and overseas civilian voters won’t have time to vote by absentee ballot in run-off elections, if they are required.  Georgia will hold a federal primary election for its delegation to the House of Representatives on July 31. If a run-off election is required because a candidate fails to receive a majority of votes, Georgia will hold it 21 days later on Aug. 21.  By law, under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, states must transmit all validly requested ballots to UOCAVA voters at least 45 days before an election, unless a hardship exemption is obtained. According to the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Georgia did not seek a hardship exemption for the Aug. 21 run-off election.”  MarineCorps Times

It is amazing to me that in the year 2012 that a State Government would violate a Federal law that is designed to make sure that all of its citizens have an equal chance to vote in all of their statewide elections.  Of course, the Georgia Secretary of State complains that the Feds are trying to enjoin or stop the allegedly discriminatory and anti-military actions during the actual elections cycle.  “Responding to the lawsuit, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp said: ‘ “The lawsuit seeks an immediate injunction while Georgia is literally in the middle of the 2012 primary. … The DOJ attempted to twist the state’s arm into agreeing to a consent decree, the terms of which would place unnecessary stresses on the elections administration process, before even filing the lawsuit.” ‘ MarineCorps Times

What the Georgia Secretary of State is not telling you is that the reason the Justice Department wanted a consent decree was that Georgia election law violated the UOCAVA legislation that was designed to protect members of the military from losing their right to vote.  The question that should be asked is why would the State of Georgia not correct state legislation that impairs or prevents military members who are currently overseas from voting in their home state’s elections?  Especially when that legislation is in violation of current Federal legislation to the contrary?

When our military members are deployed overseas. their hardships are great enough without putting up artificial barriers to their right to vote.  Could these actions in Georgia be an attempt to prevent the military members and non-military Georgia citizens who are overseas from voting for political reasons?  Why wouldn’t a Secretary of State want all of his/her deployed military and overseas citizens to have the ability to get their absentee ballots counted in every election?  Why would the Secretary of State be surprised when the Justice Department comes calling when Georgia won’t reasonably attempt to follow a law designed only to allow all citizens the right to vote in every election?

I see the right to vote as a non-partisan issue that should concern all citizens, no matter what your political leanings are.  In fact, the Heritage Foundation, a prominent Conservative think tank, held a military voting rights conference in July, 2011 to study whether the UOCAVA has been effective in reducing disenfranchisement of military voters.  The Preamble to the Agenda for that conference stated the following purpose for the conference:  “Overseas members of the military and their families are guaranteed the right to vote by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. However, the difficulties of obtaining ballots in remote and dangerous areas of the world and returning them in time have led to shockingly high rates of disenfranchisement. The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE Act) of 2009 required changes by 2010 intended to provide military voters greater opportunities to vote. Was the MOVE Act effective or are additional changes necessary to protect the franchise of service members and their families?”  Heritage.org

I guess Georgia did not get the message that the laws preventing military members from getting their ballots and votes in on time needed to be changed by 2010.  Are laws such as the Georgia ones mentioned above designed to intentionally prevent people from voting or is it just sheer governmental ignorance that causes a State to make it more difficult for some of its citizens to vote in all of its elections?  Did Georgia do everything that they could have to reasonably attempt to honor the deployed military member’s right to vote?

Do these measures in Georgia have anything to do with the attempts in many states to require allegedly restrictive Voter ID steps to be taken by voters?  As you can see,  I have a lot of questions, but not a lot of answers.  That’s why you, the reader are vitally important to this discussion.  What are your answers and how do you see it? What questions have I not asked?

Additional reference:  UOCAVA

 

56 thoughts on “Georgia On My Mind”

  1. Georgia is obviously a state of mind shared with many others, including my own.

    OS says his 20 year old granddaughter (how ancient does that make him?) loves Canada.

    How is the “minority” situation there? Detroit and Chicaco are no better than many southern cities, I’ve heard.

    How IS it?

  2. rafflaw 1, June 30, 2012 at 5:44 pm

    OS,
    You could be right. I like your term of involuntary reservations!
    ken1776,
    I am not suggesting that Georgia is anti-American. I am merely asking why they seem to not want deployed military to vote in thir elections.
    ==================================
    Didn’t you say that the military voted for Obama in ’08 ?

    I am wont to say ‘bingo.’

  3. Leejcarrol,

    Wouldn’t all the contractor employees vote R?
    Good pay, I understand. Lower danger factor, about even with pedestrians in New York City (joke).

  4. Am an ancient engineer, so these guesstimates may be wrong. Help from power plant designers is requested.

    Of the 100 per cent of the thermal effect of the fuel at best 60 percent is recoverable as electrical energy.

    The other 40 percent is heat which must be removed from the system. This in my ignorance (I am not a power major) I assumed was done by recyclng cooling water to atmospheric heat exchangers. Oh was I wrong apparently.

    So the Swedish cooling of nuclear plants by locating them near coasts and using salt water is a good idea.

    According to other items here we are paying the Russians to convert their missile HEU to LEU for presumably nuclear power fuel. Why don’t we purchase the LEU, put it in nuclear plants near coasts and save fresh water????

    Why does America let the oil propaganda vv nuke power effect their power choices. Time to leave the potable water to our use and stop using so much power.
    Three Mile Island was decades ago. As was the bad, by own admission, Russian one. The oceans are warming, in the meantime we must drink.

    But I do say that not having any comparison figures on energy consumption EU vs USA per capita. Any help?

    Wow, Dredd how did you start this OT trail? I just realized it now that it is.

    We still need a sandbox for random threadless posts on weekends, is my contention.

  5. BettyKath, my 20 y/o granddaughter is engaged to a Canadian. She loves Canada.

  8. raff,

    Guess I quit before the last paragraph where you did, indeed, mention voter id and other transgressions. Sorry about that. Maybe i was still disappointed at not being able to listen to Georgia on My Mind which was what i anticipated. : )

    I agree with oOteray that the repubs are working for total power. If I were a few years younger I would be looking to emigrate. With a bit of luck I’ll be gone before they fully succeed.

  10. Lee,
    There is also an argument that the deployed military might favor the current commander in chief. Just my theory.

  11. raff, I have no idea of the actual demographics of deployed Georgia military personnel, but my cynicism bump is itching.

    Could it have something to do with the high percentage of AA people in Georgia, many of whom would be likely to join the military due to lack of civilian job opportunities? Can’t have THOSE people voting in large numbers, now can we?

  12. Mike Spindell I was thinking somewhat the opposite: that they would be afraid our troops,esp in battle, or having been, would vote dem since this pres stopped Iraq war and is hopefully bringing down the war in Afghanistan. The repubs sent them in so they are the bad guys.

  13. OS,
    You could be right. I like your term of involuntary reservations!
    ken1776,
    I am not suggesting that Georgia is anti-American. I am merely asking why they seem to not want deployed military to vote in thir elections.

  15. The south makes more problems for itself, increasingly so since The Peak of Sanity.

    While these Georgians forget about their military voters while suppressing other voters, they are moving closer to disaster in the Southeast:

    Power plants are guzzling water across the United States and increasing the risk of blackouts in the Southeast, where the precious resource is drying up.

    “Burning Our Rivers,” a new report by the River Network, found that it takes about 40,000 gallons of water to meet the average American household’s energy needs, which is five times more than the amount of water used directly in that home.

    Of the various modes of power production, hydropower has the biggest water footprint. Each day, enough water evaporates from behind hydroelectric dam reservoirs to meet the demands of more than 50 million people.

    Coal-, nuclear- and natural gas- powered plants are also thirsty, in need of water to cool their generators. These energy facilities are the fastest-growing users of freshwater resources and already account for more than half of all fresh surface water withdrawals from rivers. That is more than any other economic sector, including agriculture, write the authors.

    (Scientific American). They can’t vote their way out of these problems, even by letting the military vote, because the military is the biggest user of fossil fuels.

  16. Georgia is traditionally an anti-American state. They’re stuck in 1865.

  17. raff, one does not make one’s own reservations. Those are made involuntarily for folks by an uncorruptable and aggressive prosecutor. We seem to have an abundance of the latter and dearth of the former.

  18. That should be Hotel.com not Hotes.com in my earlier response.
    Mike S.,
    I think the military actually voted for Obama in 2008. Someone can check my math, but I seem to recall that.

  19. Good catch Raff. What puzzles me with this is that military voters are usually Republican and conservative. I would think that the Georgia Republican establishment would want their votes. An assumption that Blacks in the military would vote overwhelmingly Democratic would seem sterotypical, but the we are talking about Georgia.

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