-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Although Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) does not believe “there is any particular evidence of polls barring African Americans from voting,” there is plenty of evidence that States are making it more difficult for African Americans to vote. Paul is using a strawman argument to recast the voting issue to one in which African Americans are prohibited from voting. Preventing African Americans from voting is the intended result of Republican efforts in numerous states. Using analysis of voting habits, Republicans have passed laws that intentionally create voting difficulties for groups that traditionally vote Democratic. Jim Crow has been dressed up a little, to become James Crow, Esq., but statistically speaking, the results are the same.
In Florida, minority voters waited to vote nearly double the time of white voters, as shown by this graph. 
Statistical analysis of voting patterns showed that 61.2 percent of all early voting ballots were cast by Democrats, compared with 18.7 percent by Republicans. The Republican solution: delete six days of early voting and extend voting hours to accommodate those voters who have jobs. A GOP consultant noted that “cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day was one of their targets only because that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves.” Although not directly targeting African Americans, the intention is to reduce African American voter turnout.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker closed down DMV offices in predominately Democratic areas after passing a voter ID law. In Ohio, Republicans curtailed early voting from thirty-five to eleven days, including the Sunday before the election when African-American churches historically rally their congregants to go to the polls.
In North Carolina, voter suppression has been taken to new levels. Among the new measures are:
- The end of pre-registration for 16 & 17 year olds
- A ban on paid voter registration drives
- Elimination of same day voter registration
- A provision allowing voters to be challenged by any registered voter of the county in which they vote rather than just their precinct
- A week sliced off Early Voting
- Elimination of straight party ticket voting
- Authorization of vigilante poll observers, lots of them, with expanded range of interference
- An expansion of the scope of who may examine registration records and challenge voters
- A repeal of out-of-precinct voting
- A repeal of the current mandate for high-school registration drives
- Elimination of flexibility in opening early voting sites at different hours within a county
North Carolina now has the strictest voter ID law in the country. US military ID cards will be accepted, but IDs from students at state colleges will not be accepted. In the election of 2012, 1.4 million voters voted straight-ticket Democrat, while just 1.1 million voted straight ticket Republican, so that feature is gone. During the first seven days of early voting in the 2012 election, now eliminated, 458,258 Democrats used in-person early voting, while just 240,146 Republicans did so. Although not directly targeting African Americans, the intention is the same.
There doesn’t appear to be any help from the Constitution which states:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
In a 2007, the Brennan Center for Justice reported (pdf) that “by any measure, voter fraud is extraordinarily rare.” If Republicans can’t win by getting more votes than Democrats, they’ll lessen the number of Democratic voters and achieve an identical result.
As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965 regarding the right to vote:
Every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny this right.
H/T: Tom Anstrom, Dara Kam and John Lantigua, Ian Millhiser, Washington Post, Associated Press, Charles P. Pierce.
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter 1, August 17, 2013 at 6:36 pm
@dredd: Yes, I watched your vid. I was not impressed.
…
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Good.
It was a psyche test to see if you were repressed.
Yes, you are … people of the human variety are impressed with it in all cases.
So, let’s get back to the spelling shall we?
This one is about spelling Jim Crow:
Elaine M: “Squeeky’s word of the week: race-baiting.”
****
Yes, but she, Bruce, Bill O’Rilley and Talkingpointsmemo use it incorrectly.
“Whether my butt is getting handed to me or not is difficult to judge.”
No. It’s not. And you should be ashamed of your weak performance.
Nice analogy, LK.
BarkinDog, your posting regarding the Southern strategy was useful in explaining why the Republicans must turn to ever more repressive tactics in order to win elections. I have been thinking about the Southern Strategy a lot lately and may (probably) have misread the entire situation but I think it has peaked. The Republican party as well as much of the rest of the people in America are horrified at where the party, controlled by new base, wants to take the country.
The broad coalition of bigots, ignorant, xenophobic, far right Christians and ageing white folks that now forms the heart of the party has revealed itself by its victories over the last 10 years. Their success at the state level is now bearing fruit and that fruit is poisonous to anyone, including Republicans, that isn’t committed to the destruction of the government and the social compact.
I watch the news showing the baggers treat their own Republicans like they treated Democrats a couple of years ago and my inner, schadenfreude-driven demon feasts at the sight. The Southern Strategy is going to destroy the Republican party utterly.
It’s a carefully constructed and nurtured parasite feeding in the body politic of the Republican party and this time (and in ’16) around it’s poised to break out and just kill the party. I’m enjoying the show. They spent 40 years playing a long game that is analogous to nothing so much as the gestation period of a chest-burster.
@dredd: Yes, I watched your vid. I was not impressed. Once again, fraud is being measured by the number of arrests. According to my link, there were 358 prostitution arrests in Wisconsin in 2010. Does that number provide any meaningful information??? Even a lazy hooker could do that in two months, or less.
Second, exactly what prevents people without identification from getting it??? Old people, and poor people, and young black people drive cars. Is it inhumane to ask them to get a license before they drive??? And, if they don’t drive, and are just old, don’t they get social security? There is surely some way to insure they can get help registering if they need it.
Most states have state issued picture IDs, and people have to have them to get medical care and other benefits. Was anybody crying and wailing about that??? Nope, people just went out and got ’em. Same here. A small price to pay to insure the voting system is honest.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I’ve not read all the comments, so apologies if someone else has mentioned it…
Nick, I don’t think there are any “free” voter IDs. Those IDs require supporting documents. Getting those documents cost money – most notably a birth certificate. My experience with an elderly father was that his birth certificate was archived by a private company. Charge was $60 to get a copy. Just think of all the elderly that get screwed that way.
In GOP voter registration fraud case, echoes of ACORN, but differences, too
Michael Van Sickler, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Thursday, October 4, 2012
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/in-gop-voter-registration-fraud-case-echoes-of-acorn-but-differences-too/1254881
Excerpt:
TALLAHASSEE — As criminal investigators sift through hundreds of questionable voter registration forms filed by the Republican Party of Florida, it’s hard not to see parallels with a case four years ago that made election fraud the campaign issue it is today.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — ACORN — became conservative shorthand for systemic voter fraud and threatened to undermine confidence in elections throughout the nation. Sen. John McCain said as much during his final debate with Barack Obama in 2008, declaring that ACORN was “destroying the fabric of democracy.”
The offense — filling out hundreds of fraudulent voter registration forms — is strikingly similar to what a vendor hired by Republicans is accused of in what is now a criminal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
But in the only statewide ACORN investigation that led to arrests, the group blew the whistle on itself.
In June 2008, ACORN’s Florida organizer alerted Miami-Dade County law enforcement that 1,400 registration forms that hadn’t been turned in appeared to be problematic. Of that total, 888 were found to be fraudulent, in some cases registering the likes of actor Paul Newman and singer James Taylor.
“To their credit, they brought the forms to us,” said Joseph Centorino, who successfully prosecuted that case against 11 ACORN workers in Miami-Dade County. “They turned over a whole box of forms that they thought had been done fraudulently. As far as I know, these forms were never filed at the elections offices.”
That level of cooperation hasn’t been exhibited by Strategic Allied Consulting, the vendor hired by the Republican Party of Florida in July. No company official alerted state elections workers about problematic forms until they were already detected by elections workers. On Sept. 17, an elections worker in Palm Beach County flagged questionable forms after spotting obvious irregularities.
Elaine M. 1, August 17, 2013 at 6:21 pm
Squeeky’s word of the week: race-baiting.
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Which, as far as I am concerned, only a race fish or one of the doods on the Red-Green Show would understand.
I certainly don’t understand the “word.”
Squeeky’s word of the week: race-baiting.
Squeeky,
Since it’s the Republicans/GOP who are doing their best to suppress the voting of certain groups of citizens in this country, your comment made no sense.
@GeneH:
Whether my butt is getting handed to me or not is difficult to judge. The Race-Baiting Lobby will give me a thumbs down for sure. The people who are fed up with Race-Baiting may not choose to waste their time on this, realizing how unlikely it is that all the chest-thumping will ever stop.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Emending the words of the girl reporter who’s pseudonomically a Manson girl,
to yield their real meaning
“Whether my butt is getting handed to me or not is difficult to judge (since I don’t give a damn as long as I can spread the propaganda my parents taught me so I won’t be sad later in life by trying to think for myself). The Race-Baiting Lobby (those people against bigots like me) will give me a thumbs down for sure. The people who are fed up with Race-Baiting (bigots and haters like me) may not choose to waste their time on this (having no factual basis to cover their bigotry), realizing how unlikely it is that all the chest-thumping (truth telling) will ever stop.”
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter 1, August 17, 2013 at 6:00 pm
…
As far as Dredd, I think he has finally cried himself to sleep. Sooo, we should let him get his nap out.
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Thanks for not spelling me out there Voodoo Chile of Charley.
The girl he liked to squeek.
Did you see the vid I put up in my comment up-thread … the one about Squeeky Voter Id Laws Prevent People Fromm Voting?
You are very far away Fromm reality Squeeky Squeaky.
Just cry me a river … stop the hate filled flowing lava.
And I was making an allusion to George Orwell and a direct comment about you getting your propagandists ass fed to you. Your tactics are transparent and amateurish. You’re like a thousand other shills who’ve flown through here only to get their lies and distortions riddled with the flak of reason and empirical fact before crashing and burning.
Your hope is not required.
@elaine: You mentioned that Australia had compulsory voting, and I said I think that would be good here in the U.S. I also mused about what the Democratic response would be to such a proposal. My GUESS is, they would be against it.
@lottakatz: I presented that link to show the lack “horribleness” of having to present ID for a drivers license, and even more ID to get the little “star” thing for the higher level of Federal ID.
As to whether or not the GOP ever acts to “suppress” the vote, I merely note that the actions themselves are not overtly racist, which fact,the author also notes when he says: “Although not directly targeting African Americans, the intention is to reduce African American voter turnout.”
I think the author has “presumed” the “intention” and then makes an unwarranted conclusion and goes hieing off in that tangent. Such activity is what got all the Trayvonazi stuff started – the lefties presumed to know what happened, and elevated the simple act of self-defense and shooting an attacking mugger into the horstwessellian drama that it is today.
@Gene H: Oh, sometimes I think you are hopeless sometimes. I was making a literary allusion to a guy named Ambrose Bierce, and his book, The Devil’s Dictionary, which you can probably find for free online.
As far as Dredd, I think he has finally cried himself to sleep. Sooo, we should let him get his nap out.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
the more you whine about race the more people you push away. You are being counter productive.
Here is a tip, most Americans are sick of hearing about race.
Squeeky, C’mon, at least make it take more than 60 seconds and one click from the same page. The heart of the matter isn’t the new program, it’s what is needed to actually get the licence as well as the other requirements that limit the ability to vote which are making it difficult or impossible for people that could vote previously, to vote in the future. Go here for that second page and don’t stop reading at the first block of requirements, go on to the second:
http://www.ct.gov/dmv/lib/dmv/selectct/selectid_accpt_docs3.pdf
My state changed the requirements for proving one is eligible for a driver’s licence and it cost me15 bucks for a State issued birth cert because my hospital copy isn’t accepted.
I saw a more or less elderly woman (about 70) turned away from getting an licence renewal because she did not have a social security card. She had her citizenship records (naturalized) and a bank statement but had never gotten a SS card: she stayed home, took care of the kids, had an old fashioned marriage, moved to Missouri to live with one of her kids after the husband died, she explained to the clerk. I got to listen to the whole story while waiting in line behind her. Sorry, out of luck. No driving or voting for her until she gets a ss card or letter from the ss folks stating one wasn’t ever issued.
The simple fact is that Republicans can’t win nationally on their programs so they want to suppress the vote.
From Squeeky:
“And then the horrible mean hateful RACIST white people in Connecticut have done gone and:
http://www.ct.gov/dmv/cwp/view.asp?a=4078&q=477742
“
I don’t know what language you speak – possibly some form of doublespeak – but in English words have actual meanings and not ones that Girl Frauds make up. To wit:
distract /dɪˈstrakt/
verb
[with object]
prevent (someone) from concentrating on something:
Origin:
late Middle English (also in the sense ‘pull in different directions’): from Latin distract- ‘drawn apart’, from the verb distrahere, from dis- ‘apart’ + trahere ‘to draw, drag’
The etymology is ironic considering you’re defending a propaganda and political tactic designed to divide.
That funny taste in your mouth?
Is your own butt being served to you, Sqweakly Fromm, Girl Propagandist.
Squeeky,
Your last comment makes no sense.