Showing posts with label civil rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civil rights. Show all posts

Friday, December 6, 2013

RIP Nelson Mandela - "He Belongs to the Ages"

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Previous Related Post:
Obama in Africa: Cape Town to Tanzania











Must-See Video of Mandela Dancing:








President Obama's Full Statement on the Death of Nelson Mandela:

5:25 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: At his trial in 1964, Nelson Mandela closed his statement from the dock saying, “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

And Nelson Mandela lived for that ideal, and he made it real. He achieved more than could be expected of any man. Today, he has gone home. And we have lost one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us -- he belongs to the ages.

Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa -- and moved all of us. His journey from a prisoner to a President embodied the promise that human beings -- and countries -- can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives. And the fact that he did it all with grace and good humor, and an ability to acknowledge his own imperfections, only makes the man that much more remarkable. As he once said, “I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life. My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid. I studied his words and his writings. The day that he was released from prison gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they’re guided by their hopes and not by their fears. And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set, and so long as I live I will do what I can to learn from him.

To Graça Machel and his family, Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathy and gratitude for sharing this extraordinary man with us. His life’s work meant long days away from those who loved him the most. And I only hope that the time spent with him these last few weeks brought peace and comfort to his family.

To the people of South Africa, we draw strength from the example of renewal, and reconciliation, and resilience that you made real. A free South Africa at peace with itself -- that’s an example to the world, and that’s Madiba’s legacy to the nation he loved.

We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love; to never discount the difference that one person can make; to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.

For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived -- a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice. May God Bless his memory and keep him in peace.

END
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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Inspirational ~ The March on Washington 50 Years Ago and Today: Martin Luther King and Barack Obama

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Pic via National Archives Tumblr
The Original Speech by Martin Luther King in Washington, August 28, 1963



Scenes from the Original March, via National Archives:



President Obama, August 28, 2013








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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Marching for Trayvon Martin ~ Change the Stand Your Ground Laws

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source: @urbansoldier33 in Savannah, GA

This weekend, thousands of people in 100 cities are marching or rallying in memory of Trayvon Martin. And on Friday, President Obama made an impromptu, historic and heartfelt speech about race relations in America.












































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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Stand With Women ~ Scenes from the Struggle

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From Texas, to North Carolina, to Ohio, to Wisconsin women must stand and fight back against the Republican attempt to control women's bodies and freedom. Sneaky Governors and Legislators are conspiring to pass draconian bills that hurt poor women and take away legal choices that are rights in this country. This isn't about being "pro-abortion" but protecting the right of women to control their own bodies. This is about the right of doctors and women to be free to discuss healthcare issues in a private way uncontrolled by the state. This is about the GOP closing down clinics for poor women and children in the name of being "Pro-life" whatever that means.

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Thanks to gerrymandering and spineless state officials we can't win every battle, but if we keep it up, we WILL win the war . . . again. This is a struggle going back to the Suffragettes and the Women's Liberation movement in the 70s, and we can't forget those who fought before and made great strides in equality. Whatever nonsense the GOP comes up with next, there will be no surrender. But we all have to vote and work and text and tweet and network and make signs and stand up for ourselves and our daughters.

Edward Snowden can call himself a patriot, but he ran away on his own to be a man without a country. Meanwhile, real men and Women are standing and fighting for their states and their lives, willing to go to jail for what they believe. That is REAL civil disobedience as it was lived by Thoreau, Gandhi, and Mandela.









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Saturday, October 20, 2012

The War on Women is Real

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I see many people on Twitter and elsewhere pretending the War on Women is a joke made up by "hysterical" Dems. But there are real things going on in government that are aimed at controlling and limiting women for years to come. No one should close their eyes. No one should think these guys (and some women) in the GOP are kidding around or that they "don't really mean it." They do. This is not a joke.Other politicians take them at their word and we should too.

This is not a game and we Democrats are not "hysterical" if we fight back every way we can.

Need a reminder of what the War on Women is all about?



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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Ohio's Secretary Husted Fires Democratic Officials

Ohio-Voter

Earlier today, I wrote about Jon Husted and his connections to Tea Party group "True the Vote":
True the Vote Poll Watchers are Dangerous Vigilantes

And now comes the news that Husted has decided to fire the two Democratic officials from Montgomery County who stood up to him and extended early voting on the weekends.

But Husted has lots of other irons in the fire to contend with, and we can only hope some legal action eventually will stop this one-man-band who is misusing his power as Secretary of State.

From the Toledo Blade
— A new federal court ruling preventing the state from enforcing a law that disqualifies provisional ballots, the ballots of last resort, when a voter shows up at the right multi-precinct polling place but casts his vote at the wrong precinct table due to poll worker error. Mr. Husted is expected to appeal the decision.

—A pending decision in a lawsuit filed by President Obama’s re-election campaign seeking to reopen the final days before the election to early in-person voting by all voters, not just military members and their families. That three-day window was closed under a law passed last year.

—A lawsuit filed last week by backers of a voter referendum on a GOP-enacted state elections law overhaul that Republicans have since repealed. The suit seeks to force the referendum on the Nov. 6 ballot and to kill Mr. Husted’s early voting directive in the meantime as an illegal reenactment of a portion of that now defunct law.

Unfortunately, conservatives think he isn't doing enough, and are demanding he purge the voter rolls so even more suppression can happen. I bet he goes along with this one - just a hunch.

— The promise of a new lawsuit by a group calling itself Judicial Watch to force Mr. Husted to purge voter registration rolls to reflect what it characterizes as discrepancies with U.S. Postal Service records. It has already filed similar suits in other states.

Sign the Petition asking Husted to Reinstate Early Voting Hours in Ohio

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"True the Vote" Poll Watchers are Dangerous Vigilantes

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cartoon by Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury


Most ordinary people think of election observers as people who come into third world countries to view elections to make sure the process is fair to all - like Jimmy Carter's UN group. In this country, the history of "Poll Watching" is much more dark, and was originally allowed by states that wanted to suppress the African American vote during the Jim Crow years after Reconstruction.

This year and true to form, the Republican Party wants to use Poll Watchers to intimidate voters in states like Ohio, where Secretary of State Husted is helping the cause by cutting out early voting on weeknights and weekends, prohibiting many minority voters from participating.

Rachel Maddow has done several great reports on "True the Vote," a group formed to allegedly combate "voter fraud" by placing watchers at polling places where they could signal officials if they saw something they thought was a "gotcha" moment.

To give you an idea of what True the Vote is all about, you have to see Their Official Website. It has nothing to do with wanting to make the process fair. It has everything to do with blocking voters from the polls.

Under "Latest News" here is just one article about Pennsylvania Voter ID filled with a sense of palpable disappointment that voters might actually get help in carrying out their right to vote:
The anti-ID crowd continues to have the wind taken out of its sails.
First, Pennsylvania plaintiff Viviette Applewhite gets a photo ID the day after the ACLU’s Voter ID challenge is shot down in court on grounds that the law disenfranchises no one. Now, PennDOT is rolling out its program to provide free voter identification cards to all Pennsylvania voters who can’t otherwise get a state photo ID

Yeah, that's a real bummer. It's too bad the State of Pennsylvania is helping more voters have a chance to vote. That spoils all the fun.

Here's the leader of True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht, speaking to her followers. She loves her some Voter ID Laws!!! Basically she is a vigilante bully who believes there is fraud where none actually exists, and she wants to make the process more difficult for everyone. She is an alarmist, and how dare she talk about "civil rights leaders" when some of them would roll in their graves at the thought of an all-white posse looking over an election. Her call for "Election Integrity" is a big dog whistle to the Tea Party because her goal is to favor the white vote over the minority vote.

True the Vote 2012 Summit - Catherine Engelbrecht from True the Vote on Vimeo.

But of course, there is still Ohio, with Tea Party sympathizer Jon Husted, the Secretary of State who is trying his best to do the one-man election body-block. Last week I posted this impassioned speech by State Senator Nina Turner on The Ed Show, expressing the outrage many feel towards Husted as he tries to rig the system against elderly and minority voters.

And Husted has also been busy threatening to fire two Democrats who stood up to him over the new voting schedule.

In a 15-page decision filed Aug. 27, Jonathan Allison concluded that Husted has the authority to remove Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie Sr. from their posts.
“Furthermore, I believe the facts warrant removal and recommend that the secretary take such action,” Allison wrote.“It’s not justice when you already know the outcome of being put on trial,” he said. “A hearing examiner appointed by SOS Husted has agreed with his boss. This is not news.”
Husted spokesman Matt McClellan said the state’s chief elections official will make a decision Aug. 28 on whether to remove the two board members.

Lieberman and Ritchie were called to Columbus a week ago for a hearing in Husted’s office after they backed a motion to open Montgomery County’s early polls on weekends in the weeks before the Nov. 6 election, just days after Husted issued a directive ordering boards to adopt uniform weekday in-person early voting hours, with no Saturdays or Sundays.

. . . “We do not want to return to the long lines, the hours upon hours of waiting that took place in 2004 when J. Kenneth Blackwell was in Secretary Husted’s job,” Lieberman said. “Secretary Husted needs to follow Jennifer Brunner’s model in 2008 that led to a historic voter turnout and abandon Blackwell’s 2004 model that was a disaster and made Ohio a poster child for voter suppression.”

It turns out we have proof that Husted is all in cahoots with True the Vote - he was listed as a "featured speaker" for their Ohio State Summit Meeting, but after Rachel Maddow announced that on her show, he withdrew, to be replaced by Ohio State Senator Bill Seitz.

As Maddow reported, when True the Vote started in Harris County, Texas, the mainly white watchers showed up in African American precincts and intimidated registered voters. The group understood that they were intimidating people - but they seem to think that's okay. Hello Jim Crow!

Talking Points Memo, 2010
Harris County, the biggest county in the state, is where a Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots launched an anti-voter fraud initiative called “True the Vote,” which recruited poll watchers and amped up fears over groups like the community organizing group ACORN.

Chad Dunn, a lawyer who is representing the Texas Democratic Party, told TPMMuckraker a number of witnesses have been interviewed by Civil Rights Division lawyers already. “We’ve gotten a number of reports — quite a few out of the Houston area — that poll watchers, King Street Patriot training poll watchers, are following a voter after they’ve checked them out and stand right behind them,” Dunn said. There’s at least a dozen reports that they could confirm with witnesses, he said. “Interestingly, it’s all in the polling places in Hispanic and African-American areas,” he added.

Terry O’Rourke, the first assistant in the Harris County Attorney’s office, told TPMMuckraker that there have been allegations of poll watchers talking to voters, which they are not allowed to do, as well as hovering over voters as they are waiting to vote. He said the complaints came from Kashmere Gardens, Moody Park, Sunnyside and other predominantly minority neighborhoods of the county.

The action group Colorlines posted an in-depth story on True the Vote:
Catherine Engelbrecht is the founder of both the King Street Patriots and True the Vote, in that order, and only months apart. Name and IRS status appear to be all that differentiates the two groups. The former, a 501c4, is a Tea Party group that lobbies for conservative issues, chiefly election reform; the latter is a 501c3 that takes a hands-on approach to making sure election reform is implemented—Dr. Jekyl and Dr. Jekyler.

The 2008 ACORN “scandal,” where ACORN was found with thousands of falsified voter registration forms, is partially what inspired Engelbrecht to form the King Street Patriots. Even though no fraudulent votes were cast, Engelbrecht’s King Street Patriots lionized the ACORN tale and used it as a mobilizing tool to recruit hundreds of volunteers for 2009 Election Day poll watching, mostly in black and Latino districts. . . .
. . . Only a handful of fraud cases were tried after the election, and none led to full convictions. Still, the King Street Patriots spun off as “True the Vote” and came out again for the 2010 elections—bulkier with more recruits, again at black and Latino polling places. A local Houston newscast noticed the bulge in poll observers and reported, “As the number of poll watchers have increased, so have the number of complaints.” A video True the Vote circulated at the time contained doctored photos of black people falsely pictured as advocating for voter fraud.

True the Vote’s lawyer Kelly Shackelford, of the Christian rightwing organization Liberty Institute, explained away the intimidation complaints this way: “Poll watchers show up for the first time and [the poll watchers are] a different color than them and they just don’t like that.”
 

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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Todd Akin Vows to Stay in the Race

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Akin told Mike Huckabee that he was going to stay in the race today, even though everyone in Washington was begging him to drop out. He must have taken some "going rogue" lessons from Sarah Palin, eh?

His statements today are almost as incredible as what he said on Sunday. Almost.

From the Washington Post:
“I’ve had a chance now to have run through a primary, and the party people said when you win the primary then we’ll be with you. Well, they were with us. Then I said one word and one sentence on one day, and everything changed,” Akin told Huckabee, an early supporter. “I haven’t done anything morally or ethically wrong. It does seem like a little bit of an overreaction.”

. . . Akin said that his supporters and “good friends, closer than brothers,” had asked him to stick it out. He added that he has received “continuing calls from other congressman” expressing their support. (He did not name any of these congressman.)

He compared his race to the GOP primary, when he was outraised by rivals and lacked institutional backing. And he referred to the potential to attract more independent voters. “I realize that there are now a lot of other bravehearts that don’t fit into the political parties exactly,” he said. “I believe there is a cause here, and there is a part of the message that’s missing, and a lot of the people feel left out of the parties.

“What we’re seeing right now is a tremendous outpouring of support from just regular small people,” he said. “They’re not the big party people.”

No, but you can bet the "Big Party People" are furious right now because having Akin in this race will keep the topics of abortion and "personhood" in the center of controversy until November. And that road leads right back to his good buddy, Paul Ryan. Ha!

All my Liveblog Posts about Akin from Snark Amendment:
Todd's Countdown to Destiny
Todd Akin Under the Bus
Akins Empty Chair Appears on CNN
Akin Breakin' in Missouri - Should he Stay or Go?
Todd Akin (R-MO) Needs Legitimate Sex Education
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Ryan and Akin, Akin and Ryan

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Ryan and Akin.
Akin and Ryan.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Two sides of the same coin.
Cut from the same cloth.
Thick as Thieves.

MoveOn.org has a new graphic you can share.
Click the link to share on Facebook or Twitter.

Excellent.

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The Republican Gender Gap of Doom

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Fantastic segment tonight from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC discussing the history and major players in the anti-abortion movement which led to the strange view held by Todd Akins that there is never any pregnancy from rape. It's shocking that most of the guys are white men, shocking that they have molded public policy and law based on this anti-scientific idea, and shocking that nearly every Republican candidate in the primaries seemed to share this belief (or said they did to placate the Tea Party).

Most shocking of all: Paul Ryan is one of them and has always been proud of it, until now, when he has to move towards the center with Mitt Romney. Of course, now that Akins has turned the light of day onto this subject, chances have gone way up that Ryan will be asked some difficult questions about his past beliefs. Does he think there are different types of rape? Does he think women can't conceive from rape? What about incest? He thought this was never going to come up in the debates or anywhere, but now he will have to face the music.

Why would the Republican women ever put up with this Cro-Magnon attitude towards rape? I've known plenty of conservative women who are nurses and teachers and smart ladies. They know how the human body works, and certainly how a woman's body works. I guess for them, the "sacred life of the fetus" is more important that the soul of a woman who is put through the mill after a rape with no one to believe her or help her. They muster empathy for the cells in the womb, but no empathy for the people already born. Note: I don't consider myself to be "pro-abortion," but the lack of empathy for women in difficult situations or in fear for their lives is sickening to me.

It reminds me of Sarah Palin when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, refusing to let the town pay for rape kits for victims.

It's true: USA Today: In 2000, Palin's Town Billed Rape Victims
In 2000, Alaska lawmakers learned that rural police agencies had been billing rape victims or their insurance companies $500 to $1,200 for the costs of the forensic medical examinations used to gather evidence. They quickly passed a law prohibiting the practice.
According to the sponsor, Democrat Eric Croft, the law was aimed in part at Wasilla, where now-Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor
. . . It is not known how many rape victims in Wasilla were required to pay for some or all of the medical exams, but a legislative staffer who worked on the bill for Croft said it happened. "It was more than a couple of cases, and it was standard practice in Wasilla," Peggy Wilcox said, who now works for the Alaska Public Employees Association. "If you were raped in Wasilla, this was going to happen to you."
. . . In 2000, there were 497 rapes reported in Alaska, FBI statistics show. That's a rate of 79.3 per 100,000 residents, the highest in the nation.
. . . Congress in 2005 passed a law requiring states to provide rape exams free of charge or reimburse victims for the costs, says Knecht, whose group supported the provision.
"The reason we passed the legislation was that we saw it was prevalent enough to be a pretty considerable problem," Knecht says. "There are no other victims of crime that end up being billed for evidence collection."

No. Words.

Here's the main idea these Teapublicans believe : if you get pregnant, you must have wanted to have sex after all, and cooperated so the "juices would flow" and insemination occured, and therefore - no rape! How they justify this in terms of incest, I have no idea, except that it is cruel and unusual. Why we are having to discuss this on a national level in the 21st century is almost too scary to contemplate.

From Rachel Maddow:
"This is a moment of instability in Republican politics. They're going to have to figure out which way to go on this. The Republican Party let this strand of strange politics grow within its midst. They let it become mainstream Republicanism. And now the Republican Party is witnessing the country recoiling from what the Party has become."


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Monday, August 20, 2012

Obama Responds to the Todd Akin Fiasco

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Obama gets it exactly right.

Via Huff Post
"The views expressed were offensive," said Obama. "Rape is rape. And the idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we are talking about doesn't make sense to the American people and certainly doesn't make sense to me. So what I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn't have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women."

. . . "Although these particular comments have led Governor Romney and other Republicans to distance themselves, I think the underlying notion that we should be making decisions on behalf of women for their health care decisions, or qualifying forcible rape versus non-forcible rape, I think those are broader issues," Obama said. "And that is a significant difference in approach between me and the other party."



Great discussion on Hardball: "Defending the Caveman"

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David Axelrod Says Romney/Ryan Views are "In Line" with Todd Akin

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Today Mitt Romney tried to distance himself once again from crazy Todd Akin, the Missouri congressman running for Senate who spoke yesterday about "legitimate" rape and some other strange views about women's bodily functions.

Huffington Post Story
"Congressman’s Akin comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong," (Romney) told National Review Online. “Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive."
He added that his view was "entirely different" and that Akin's statement was "entirely without merit and and he should correct it."
He did not call on Akin to bow out of the race.

Note from Me: Romney always uses a qualifier before any opinion. "Frankly wrong" is much weaker than saying "Just Plain Wrong" or simply "Wrong." To me, whenever he starts a sentence with "Honestly," "Frankly," "Truthfully," or "Seriously," it makes him less believable, and more like a con artist. He talks like a used care salesman and reminds me often of Mr. Lindegard from the movie "Fargo."

Akin was on Mike Huckabee's radio show today, and vowed that he isn't dropping out before tomorrow's deadline.
St. Louis Dispatch
"I'm not a quitter," Akin said. "We all make mistakes. . . The many people who supported me know that when you make a mistake what you need to do is say you're sorry."
Akin said no party leaders have called him and asked for him to drop out.
"This was a very very serious error," Akin said.
Akin, who is running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Claire McCaskill, has until Tuesday at 5 p.m. to withdraw, according to Missouri election law. That law allows candidates to leave the ballot 11 weeks before election day, otherwise he would need a court order. The Republican state committee would have two weeks to name a replacement, under the law.

Yeah, okay - Akins knows he is in hot water now, but we also know that plenty of Republicans share his belief in magical body fluids that protect against pregnancy during rape. The conservatives are split down the middle - half calling for him to quit, others supporting his views.
Comments from the Far-Right on Snark Amendment

Paul Ryan has worked with Akin on "redefining" rape, so that women who are victims of statutory rape won't be given the morning after pill or an abortion.
From The Liberal OC Blog:
In 2011, Congressmen Ryan and Akin co-sponsored the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act, which would redefine a ban on federal funding for abortions to exempt only “forcible rape” and not “rape” generally. According to the Washington Post, the Act would make a version of the Hyde Amendment permanent. The Hyde Amendment, which had been renewed every year since 1976, prevented some federally-funded health care programs from covering abortions, with exceptions in cases of rape and incest, and when the life of the woman is threatened. However, under the language proposed by the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act, rape becomes “forcible rape.” The Washington Post reported that the bill’s critics believed “the modifier could distinguish it from other kinds of sexual assault that are typically recognized as rape, including statutory rape and attacks that occur because of drugs or verbal threats.” [HR 3 Co-Sponsors, 112th Congress; Washington Post, 2/1/11]

We have come too far in this country to let men like Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Todd Akin drag our country back to the stone-age. Their radical and extremist views are a recipe for disaster and the imposition of radical Christian-Biblical Law on our nation. These guys would have us believe that a woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape, wanted it.

Ya know - statutory rape is still rape. Underage children are not considered old enough to "give consent" because often they are too innocent to know what it is they are doing. People who make these distinctions probably don't believe in date or marital rape either, and they can use it as a rationalization for why Jerry Sandusky can go free. The only reason this didn't come up was because Jerry targeted underage boys who couldn't get pregnant.

Obama's Strategist David Axelrod told Huffington Post today that Romney and Ryan are not really fooling anyone with their constantly shifting positions which contradict previously "firm" opinions on abortion or "personhood" of a fetus.
"When you look at who Akin's partner was on all the anti-choice legislation, it was Paul Ryan," said Axelrod. "When you look at the legislation that would limit a women's right to choose, even for victims of rape and incest, that is the Akin-Ryan position. And frankly, by endorsing personhood amendments ... Romney has gone there too. This is the prevailing position of the Republican Party."

"I think they find Todd Akin's comment terribly inconvenient," Axelrod said. "It is very inopportune. But they are certainly not inconsistent, when Ryan joined with him and tried to limit the definition of rape to forcible rape. What does that mean? They are trying to run away from what has been their own position and yet, while Akin's proposition was particularly egregious and outrageous, on the underlining principle of whether you are going to limit a woman's right to choose, and how rape victims are dealt with and how they would approach this issue, they are very much in line with him."

Romney's campaign said he and Ryan addressed the issue during an interview with WNUR in New Hampshire on Monday. . . . Romney briefly drew fire for seemingly endorsing a fetal personhood amendment in Mississippi, which would have established that a fertilized egg as a person under the law. But both he and his campaign have insisted that he never back the measure and was simply stating his belief that life began at the point of conception.

Romney has said that life begins at conception, and Ryan believes that the embryo has constitutional rights. I shudder to think what they would do to a young woman who had a miscarriage, which can happen to anyone for no apparent reason. And what about her doctor - does he or she have to report every late menstrual period? Where do we draw the line? One thing we know - the Republicans are really confused over women's rights when it comes to their own bodies. What about the "personhood" of women?
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Pennsylvania's Voter ID Law: "A Solution in Search of a Problem"


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Pennsylvania has a problem with their voter ID laws, but it's not because of rampant voter fraud as the Republicans want us to believe. In fact, as in most states, everyone agrees that voter fraud is almost non-existent. Yet state legislatures keeping passing laws forcing everyone to get a picture ID or lose their right to vote in the Presidential election this year. This will put the burden mainly on urban dwellers who use public transportation and therefore do not have a driver's license, as well as the elderly who have been voting for years, thank you very much, without a picture ID.

Unlike Florida and Texas, Pennsylvania is not a state covered by Section 5 of the Voters Rights Act which requires preclearance from the Justice Department before voting laws can be changed. Only states that had low voter turnout under 50% in the early 60s were required to follow the preclearance rule. So Pennsylvania will be a test state, and possibly ground-breaking for other "swing" states that might try to suppress the African American vote using Voter ID Laws.

The ACLU is taking the State of Pennsylvania to court, while the Feds are looking into whether the law will impede voting.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Voter ID Fight Heads to Court
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and other groups will spend the next week in Commonwealth Court trying to persuade a judge to grant a swift and immediate injunction. The Republican-controlled legislature passed the law four months ago with the stated purpose of discouraging election fraud.

*snip*

The ACLU is suing on behalf of 10 Pennsylvanians who do not have driver's licenses and who contend that the photo-ID requirement violates the state constitution, depriving them of their right to vote.

In legal papers filed last week, the civil liberties group says that those 10 are the tip of a human iceberg, that as many as a million or more Pennsylvania voters lack the types of photo ID that the law requires.

The ACLU included in its filing a surprising concession from state officials: a written stipulation that the state cannot pinpoint any instance of the kind of voter-impersonation fraud the new law aims to prevent.


The state stipulated that it is "not aware of any incidents of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania," and has "no direct knowledge of in-person voter fraud elsewhere." State officials also said they would offer no evidence that "in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the photo ID law."

Talking Points Memo: DOJ Investigates ID Law

In a three-page letter sent to Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele on Monday, DOJ requested state data on registered voters as well as the state’s list of individuals with driver’s licenses and ID cards.

Additionally, DOJ requested information on the state’s efforts to educate voters about the new law as well as documents and records supporting a March 14 statement from the office of Gov. Tom Corbett (R) which claimed “99 percent of Pennsylvania’s already have acceptable photo IDs.” (The state’s own data did not support that figure.) Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez requested Pennsylvania send the information to federal authorities within 30 days.

Pennsylvania has said that over 750,000 voters lack an adequate form of voter ID, a number greater than President Obama’s margin of victory in the state in 2008. One top Republican even said the voter ID law would help Mitt Romney win the state. As TPM reported, the public relations firm contracted to educate the public about the new voter ID law is stacked with Republicans.

Good discussion of this story on Hardball yesterday:


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