The only thing surprising about Republicans plotting to suppress the vote in Florida is that some of their own are willing to admit the truth. And we know the same thing happened in Ohio where diminished early voting hours caused long lines. Luckily in both Florida and Ohio, the sheer numbers of voters who turned out to vote for Obama defeated their evil schemes. But this should never happen again! As President Obama said, we need to "fix that."
Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.
“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.
“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”
Greer is now under indictment, accused of stealing $200,000 from the party through a phony campaign fundraising operation. He, in turn, has sued the party, saying GOP leaders knew what he was doing and voiced no objection.
. . . Wayne Bertsch, who handles local and legislative races for Republicans, said he knew targeting Democrats was the goal.
“In the races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines. And in 2008, it didn’t have the impact that we were afraid of. It got close, but it wasn’t the impact that they had this election cycle,” Bertsch said, referring to the fact that Democrats picked up seven legislative seats in Florida in 2012 despite the early voting limitations.
This confirms what ex-Governor Charlie Crist had said earlier:
"The only thing that makes any sense as to why this is happening and being done is voter suppression," he said.
Crist added, "People have fought and died for our right to vote, and unfortunately our legislature and this governor have decided they want to make early voting less available to Floridians rather than more available ... It's hard for me as an American to comprehend why you don't make democracy as easy as possible to exercise for the people of our state. It's frankly unconscionable."
Good Grief - hundreds of thousands of votes are still uncounted in Arizona, which could affect all the election results including that of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the crazy birther. Reason: Most of the uncounted votes are from Latino voters who were the target of voter suppression techniques, such as forcing them to vote with provisional ballots that have to be checked individually. The ACLU is on the scene, and Harry Reid has chimed in on the situation. Stay tuned because this is far from over.
Nearly a third of votes cast in Arizona remained uncounted the day after the election. Most of them were probably cast by Latinos, organized and newly registered by multiple civil rights groups in the state to combat candidates like the notorious Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio.
On Thursday, the Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, announced the figures: 631,274 early and provisional ballots remained uncounted out of a total of 1.8 million votes. At least 350,000 of them are from Maricopa County (Phoenix metropolitan area), where Joe Arpaio has already claimed victory. Activist Randy Parraz, president of Citizens for a Better Arizona, told the Huffington Post, “We’re not conceding anything until every vote is counted. They’re just going to act like, ‘Oh, the election’s over, Arpaio wins.’ Hell no.”
Three Congressional races also remain in limbo. Although Democrat Rich Carmona originally conceded the Senate seat to Jeff Flake on election night, he changed his mind after hearing the unprecedented number of uncounted votes. On Friday, he sent this message to supporters: “We will take every necessary step to make sure all of our supporters’ ballots are counted.” Two U.S. House races are also too close to call until the remainder of the votes are tallied.
Protestors from a coalition of rights groups are maintaining a continuous presence outside of the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center. In a letter to the county recorder, Helen Purcell, the American Civil Liberties wrote that the “public confidence in the voting process” was at risk.
The situation has attracted attention all across the nation. Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid weighed in, issuing a statement of his concern: “All of the votes in Arizona must be counted promptly, accurately and equally. The uncounted votes in Maricopa County alone represent a major portion of the total votes cast in Arizona on Tuesday.” He also pointed out that this problem occurs just as the Supreme Court is ready to consider whether the voter protections in 1965′s Voter Rights Act should be scaled back. Specifically, the justices are being asked to rule that the part that prevents states from disenfranchising minorities is no longer relevant.
A Green Party candidate for one of Ohio’s 16 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives lost a bid for a court order blocking the use of electronic voting machines that he said might be tampered with.
U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost in Columbus today denied the request by Robert J. Fitrakis, who’s running in a district covering parts of that city, the state capital.
Fitrakis alleged in court papers filed yesterday that electronic voting machine software contain a “back door” through which vote tallies from today’s elections could be manipulated.
“Fitrakis has not provided actual evidence that demonstrates how this harm is a realistic possibility, much less how it is actual and imminent,” Frost said in a 10-page ruling after a hearing.
In an interview with TIME on Monday afternoon, Husted shrugged off the criticism. “My job is to deliver an election that runs smoothly and well,” he said. He says some of the attacks are politically motivated. “People are going to attack you to obtain political advantage,” Husted said, “The goal of the other side is to make me look bad.” And indeed some Democrats are comparing Husted to Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State of Florida during the disastrous recount in 2000.
. . . Husted defends his handling of the expansion of early voting, and his efforts to block voting the weekend before the election. “We have the most liberal voting opportunities of any state in our area and I settled that issue fairly, uniformly and consistently across every county,” he says.
He also says he’s ready for possible court battles after the Tuesday’s vote if there is a recount that challenges some of his recent rule making. He says many of the attacks against him are preparing the ground for such court battles. “That’s absolutely the case, and I don’t lament that, it’s just life being Secretary of State in the most important swing state in the country,” he says. “People are going to sue and create controversy to prepare the environment for post-election contests.”
..A judge in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania has issued an order to “halt electioneering outside a polling location in Homestead.” “Individuals outside the polls are prohibited from questioning, obstructing, interrogating or asking about any form of identification and/demanding any form of identification from any prospective voter,” the order says. Republicans had been asking people outside the polls to show identification. Under the current law, voters will still be asked to present IDs at the polls, but an ID is not required to vote
All but one (Scott Rupert, an independent for U.S. Senate) of the six candidates whose names appeared on the original form had withdrawn permission to use their signatures prior to the submission of today’s forms. During the BOE meeting Candidate Terri Jamison spoke up to say her name was “forged” on the latest round of forms.
The form for appointing observers reads ‘election falsification is a 5th degree felony’. Election officials have confirmed that there will be a post-election investigation of True the Vote.
The forms have been rejected unanimously by all members (Rs and Ds) on the board. True the Vote observers will not be allowed in Franklin County polling locations tomorrow. Poll monitoring organizations expect they may still be stationed outside of polling locations.
Board member Zachary Manifold told us he was ”amazed that a group that goes to such extreme lengths to claim voting fraud in Ohio would knowingly forge or misuse signatures to try to gain access to Franklin County polling locations.”
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is going to keep trying to suppress the vote until the very last minute. This guy has no shame and no sense of fair play. He just wants Romney to win and will do anything to fix the vote in Ohio. Outrageous and scary that one man can have this much power over millions of voters in a state that often swings the election.
We could have legal problems on Wednesday thanks to this one unethical bureaucrat. Shades of Katherine Harris in Florida when she refused to certify the vote during the 2000 election that gave George W. Bush the Presidency instead of Al Gore.
Once again Husted is playing the voter suppression card, this time at the eleventh hour, in a controversial new directive concerning provisional ballots. In an order to election officials on Friday night, Husted shifted the burden of correctly filling out a provisional ballot from the poll worker to the voter, specifically pertaining to the recording of a voter’s form of ID, which was previously the poll worker’s responsibility. Any provisional ballot with incorrect information will not be counted, Husted maintains. This seemingly innocuous change has the potential to impact the counting of thousands of votes in Ohio and could swing the election in this closely contested battleground.
“Our secretary of state has created a situation, here in Ohio, where he will invalidate thousands and thousands of people’s votes,” Brian Rothenberg, executive director of ProgessOhio, said during a press conference at the board of elections in Cuyahoga County yesterday in downtown Cleveland. Added State Senator Nina Turner: “‘SoS’ used to stand for ‘secretary of state.’ But under the leadership of Jon Husted, ‘SoS’ stands for ‘secretary of suppression.’ ”
In 2008, 40,000 of the 207,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio were rejected. The majority of the state’s provisional ballots were cast in Ohio’s five largest counties, which are strongly Democratic. Moreover, provisional ballots are more likely to be cast by poorer and more transient residents of the state, who are also less likely to vote Republican.
The number of discarded provisional ballots could rise significantly due to Husted’s directive. It’s also very likely that more provisional ballots will be cast in 2012 than in 2008, thanks to a wave of new voting restrictions in Ohio and nationwide. The Associated Press reported that 31 percent of the 2.1 million provisional ballots cast nationwide in 2008 were not counted, and called provisional ballots the “hanging chads of 2012."
Pundits on Sunday Talk shows attacked Romney ads being shown in Ohio that imply that car companies that took bail-out money are now shipping jobs overseas. It was a bad day to be a Romney surrogate:
Saturday was the last day for early voting in Florida, where polls showed Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney running neck-and-neck.
But Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles reopened the polls at one site, a library in the Orlando suburb of Winter Park, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
The library was evacuated and voting there was suspended for four hours on Saturday because suspicious items were found on the grounds. A bomb squad safely detonated both - a cooler containing small electronics and what investigators described as a bag of miscellaneous garbage.
. . . In Miami, the Florida Democratic Party filed suit in U.S. District Court on Sunday asking for an extension of early voting opportunities in densely populated Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, where some voters waited six and seven hours to cast ballots on Saturday.
The lawsuit said the lines in the Democratic-leaning region were longer than in other areas, deterring or preventing people from voting.
. . . Election supervisors' offices were also opened in several other densely populated counties on Sunday for in-person absentee balloting. Republican Governor Rick Scott refused on Thursday to extend early voting statewide despite the long lines.
UPDATE 2:50 p.m.: The Miami-Dade Elections office is facing a backlash Sunday evening after the lone voting location was quickly overrun by would-be voters, and because the location is far from neighborhoods where Democrats are most likely to live. From the Miami Herald:
The department had opened its Doral headquarters from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. as a work-around to an early-voting crackdown law.
But by 2 p.m., around 180 voters had showed up, and department spokeswoman Christina White said the office would not be able to accommodate any more voters who showed up. Additional voters would be turned away, she said.
“We had the best of intentions to provide this service today,” she said. “We just can’t accommodate it to the degree that we would like to.”
Shortly after, however, the department locked its doors and shut down the operation without explanation. The people in line did not get to vote.
“Let us vote!” they shouted.
The department had only one ballot-printing machine, five voting booths and two staffers to assist voters Sunday.
Karen Andre, who heads the Florida office for Obama’s Organizing for America field campaign, called the situation “unacceptable,” and said the organization’s attorneys would be “monitoring the situation.”
Fantastic News for Ohio and for the Dems in Ohio!!!
And really everybody in Ohio wins because they will get to vote during the last weekend before the election.
However, I think you should "bank" your votes now, in case there are shenanigans on election day, or bad weather, or illness, or whatever. Vote Now!!!!!!
The only loser is Ohio Sec. of State Jon Husted who is a jerk for trying to help his party leaders suppress the vote in an important swing state. It's good to see the Supremes smack down a jerk for a change, instead of being jerks themselves.
And Husted has already issued an order for early voting to go forward:Link Here
DIRECTIVE 2012-50
October 16, 2012
To: All County Boards of Elections
Directors, Deputy Directors, and Board Members
Re: Uniform Days and Hours for In-Person Absentee Voting from November 3, 2012 through November 5, 2012
I hereby set uniform days and hours for in-person absentee voting, for UOCAVA and non-UOCAVA voters alike, as follows: Saturday, November 3, 2012 – 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 4, 2012 – 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Monday, November 5, 2012 – 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
This Directive expands the uniform days and hours for in-person absentee voting established by Directive 2012-35, which remains in effect. As such, Boards are reminded that any voter in line when that day’s hours for in-person absentee voting ends, may remain in line to apply for and receive an absentee ballot in person.
If you have any questions regarding this Directive, please contact the Secretary of State’s elections attorney assigned to your county by calling (614) 466-2585.
Sincerely,
Jon
Without noted dissent, the Supreme Court at midday Tuesday turned aside a plea by state officials in Ohio to allow them to close down voting opportunities on the final three days before election day on November 6. The ruling was a significant victory for President Obama and for Democrats, especially since they claimed that the shuttering of voting offices on the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday before election day would be likely to affect low-income and minority voters — many of whom may be expected to vote Democratic.
The Court acted in a one-sentence order that contained no explanation. The action, though, left intact a lower-court order that required voting officials in the crucial electoral state to open the polls on that final weekend to all voters, if they open them to any voters. Ohio officials wanted to allow voting then only by members of the military and their families, on the theory that they might be called away suddenly on military duty. While it is up to each county’s election officials to decide whether to be open for voting on those days, many if not most — and, crucially, major cities — are expected to do so rather than shut out military voters altogether. Under the lower-court order, all voters must be treated the same for early voting.
I guess there are no lengths this guy Jon Husted won't go to in order to stop Ohio voters from casting a ballot for Obama. Secretary of State Husted was ordered last week to set up voting for the last three days before November 6, which is the way they have traditionally voted in Ohio. Instead, he is appealing the Circuit Court decision to the Supreme Court of the U.S.
COLUMBUS – Secretary of State Jon Husted today announced that he will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to make the final determination on whether the General Assembly of the State of Ohio or the federal courts should set Ohio election laws. Husted will be appealing the Friday decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Obama v. Husted. Regarding this decision, all of the following may be attributed to Secretary Husted: “This is an unprecedented intrusion by the federal courts into how states run elections and because of its impact on all 50 states as to who and how elections will be run in America we are asking the Supreme Court to step in and allow Ohioans to run Ohio elections.
“This ruling not only doesn’t make legal sense, it doesn’t make practical sense. The court is saying that all voters must be treated the same way under Ohio law, but also grants Ohio’s 88 elections boards the authority to establish 88 different sets of rules. That means that one county may close down voting for the final weekend while a neighboring county may remain open. How any court could consider this a remedy to an equal protection problem is stunning.
This is profoundly sad, and it's a shame that Ohio's Republican Governor won't man up and tell this guy to allow the election to proceed. I guess people will have to march in the streets for justice to be done. Let's hope the Supreme Court rules that this is a state's rights issue and lets the lower court verdict stand.
But then again, they might want to fix another election since it's been several years since 2000. Ugh.
A Judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that the complete Voter ID law will not be implemented for the November 6th election!!! While poll workers may still ask to see ID, they can't force anyone to use a provisional ballot or tell someone to leave the voting precinct. They have to let people vote, so yay!
I hope Democrats in that state are preparing for poll-watching to make sure no one is intimidated at the polls. I can see ways this may still be a problem, but as long as the news gets around that people can vote without the ID in this particular election, then all should be well. What this means is that the large urban centers of PA won't be singled out for voter suppression, thank God!
Tuesday's decision is a sharp contrast to Simpson's ruling in August when he refused to issue an injunction and upheld the law. In that opinion, Simpson said the law "is a reasonable, non-discriminatory, non-severe burden when viewed in the broader context of the widespread use of photo ID in daily life."
He also said that opponents of the voter ID law "did an excellent job of 'putting a face' to those burdened by this new requirement," but he did not "have the luxury of deciding this issue based on my sympathy for the witnesses."
Opponents appealed his decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. After hearing arguments from both sides, the Supreme Court returned the case to Simpson and ordered him to "reassess" his ruling based on the availability of ID cards and in light of "expedited" efforts put forth by the Pennsylvania government.
Simpson's decision may not be the final word on this case. It can be appealed back to the state Supreme Court, which is next scheduled to meet Oct. 15 in Pittsburgh.
Because of a shady consulting firm now under investigation in Florida, Republicans have stopped registering voters in five swing states. This is almost too good to be true - Rachel Maddow called it "the reverse of an October surprise" because it is such a gift to the Democrats.
Rachel Maddow made the point that usually each party would remain in a state until the deadlines, which you can see from the graphic below are a week away in some cases. So this is premature, uh, pull out . . . ahem . . . for the Repubs.
Out of 304 Republican voter registration forms recently dropped off by a Strategic Allied employee at a small "satellite office" of the Palm Beach elections office, 106 were flagged as potentially fraudulent-- including "a lot" with "similar looking" signatures and others with apparently phony addresses, Susan Bucher, the Palm Beach elections supervisor, said in an interview.
Among the suspect home addresses were those that matched a gas station in Miami, a medical building in Boca Raton and a Land Rover automotive dealership in Palm Beach County, she told NBC News. Bucher said she called in the political director for the Palm Beach Republican Party and the GOP official agreed that the registration forms were a problem. She then took the forms to the Palm Beach County State's Attorney's office on Monday and requested the investigation.
In a statement issued Tuesday night, Mike Grissom, executive director of the Florida Republican Party, said: "When we learned today about the instances of potential voter registration fraud that occurred in Palm Beach County, we immediately informed the Republican National Committee that we were terminating the contract with the voter registration vendor we hired at their request because there is no place for voter registration fraud in Florida."
From the first video below, the discussion between Chuck Todd and Michael Isikoff:
Chuck Todd: Mike, you can't help but sit there, Republican Party has been pushing this line, Acorn, all of this, and the only evidence this year comes from their side.
Michael Isikoff: Exactly. I should say I spoke last night to Nathan Sproul, he says he is the victim. He says he has strict quality control measures. . . . He is furious at the Florida Republican Party for suggesting his firm was involved in voter fraud. You could see lawsuits here which would make it even messier.
Homer Votes in the this hilarious clip from The Simpsons. :)
Why do we have to choose our leaders? Isn't that what we have the Supreme Court for?
Polling Guy: If you're gonna vote, we need some photo I.D.
Homer: But I lived here all my life!
Guy: Stoppin' all Americans from voting is for the protection of all Americans.
Homer: But I'm a 40-year-old white guy who didn't go to college and gets all his news from monitors at gas stations.
Guy: In you go! (points to voting booth)
Barack Obama - "He promised me Death Panels and Grandpa is still alive!"
Mitt Romney - "I hear he wears magic underpants. I expect the leader of the free world to go commando! Plus his horse totally choked at the Olympics."
This is great news for the Obama Administration, who filed the lawsuit against Ohio and Secretary of State Jon Husted. Judge Peter Economus ruled that the state had no good reason for closing the polls that last weekend before the election. Yay!
Judge Economus and his father, who immigrated to America in 1916, were featured in a segment of "Gasoline Alley," a nationally syndicated comic strip. The theme of the comic emphasized the spirit of America and the naturalization process that we all hold dear. Judge Economus and his wife, Marie, have three daughters and three granddaughters.
How nice that he is playing a role in making the vote more accessible, too!
Ohio, a prized swing state in the November6 presidential election between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, allows voting in person to begin on October 2. But the state cut off early balloting on the Friday before Election Day, except for members of the military, saying that would prevent fraud and give election boards time to prepare for voting.
In granting a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Peter Economus wrote that lawyers for Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted failed to "articulate a precise compelling interest" in establishing a Friday deadline for non-military voters.
"On balance, the right of Ohio voters to vote in person during the last three days prior to Election Day -- a right previously conferred to all voters by the state -- outweighs the state's interest in setting a 6 p.m. deadline," Economus wrote.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said in a statement that he would appeal the ruling.
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.
— 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.”
"This is nothing more than uniform voter suppression, make no mistake about it. Ohio and four other states, Ed, have extremely cut early voting hours. And get this - in Ohio and Florida, they cut Sundays. We know exactly who their targets are. And again, in Cuyahoga County, African Americans make up 26% of the registered voters. But during 2008, early in-person voting, they made up 56% of the vote."
"How dare we forget how we got over in this country. How African Americans had to dodge the barks and bites of dogs, how they had to leap over grandfather clauses, and literacy tests, and poll taxes. And here we are in the 21st century with the elections officer who is supposed to adhere morally and legally to expanding the vote, but here he is suppressing the vote."
"And I'm going to tell you something, Ed, if you are poor, working class, middle class, elderly, African American, Hispanic, or a woman, you are SOL (sh** out of luck) when it comes to Republicans. They are making it very clear that they don't care - they are here to oppress, suppress, and they don't care how they steal the vote."
. . . [Governor Kasich] is MIA (missing-in-action) when it comes to this voting issue, and it's a shame.
. . . "If you extrapolate out the date from 2008, with the hours that have been eliminated unilaterally by the Sec. of State, about 200,000 Ohioans will be impacted by that. And if we remember, Governor Kasich beat Governor Strickland by about a 2% margin. Every vote counts and no one should suppress the vote.
And as far as I'm concerned, I don't care if people carry the title of Secretary of State or not - if you are a policy maker in the State of Ohio, if you are someone who cares about fairness and justice, it is all of our responsibility to stand up and tell the truth. And the truth of the matter is, it is Republicans who are suppressing the vote. And oh, by the way, over 180 bills were introduced in states across this country by GOP-led Legislatures. And I wonder why.
Could it be because President Barack Obama is an African American? I wonder.
(Unless you are African American and Want to Vote)
What is going on with Republicans this weekend? Are they finally losing all their marbles over the fact that they are going to lose in November? We have Paul Ryan yesterday saying his foreign policy cred is all about voting for war, Todd Akin from Missouri discussing "legitimate" rape, and now this guy from Ohio admitting that the powers that be don't want black people to vote, period, and are doing everything they can to stop it.
I hope this is a trend . . . It can only be good for Obama & the Dems. :)
A member of the Ohio Board of Elections, Doug Preisse, who just voted to ban weekend voting for everyone, now says he did it to stop the "African-American-Voter-Turnout-Machine." Hmm, I didn't know Ohio had one of those, thanks for demanding that they quote you, LOL.
I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”
He called claims of unfairness by Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern and others “bullshit. Quote me!”
By tonight, Preisse was backtracking somewhat and probably wishing he hadn't sent that email to the newspaper. But these guys just aren't too smart, so he told BuzzFeed several times that the African-American voters are a "political operation." He makes it sound as if Ohio has declared war on black voters, and we all have a right to be ticked off and fighting mad about such talk. :(
In an interview with BuzzFeed, Franklin County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse, a close ally of Governor John Kasich, said his comment — which provoked Democratic outrage — was simply straight talk.
Democrats "are trying to say that I had somehow consciously constrained hours for that purpose," Preisse said. "No, I am saying the opposite, that I am asking the question, and I am indeed questioning how far this process of democratic, small ‘d’, democratic voting process should be contorted to favor a political operation. I don’t think we should go overboard in doing that."
. . . Preisse scoffed at the criticism, telling BuzzFeed of a disputed voting plan put forth by Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, "I believe it should be easy to vote, and I believe that under this plan it is.
"I believe that Republicans and Democrats of good will can have a difference of opinion, an honest difference of opinion here, but I also believe that there is no question that the forces of Obama and the other side of the aisle would love to just throw the barn doors open and have 24-hour voting and just go too far in the other direction," Preisse said. "It seems to me we can have a reasonable discussion about this."
Of Democrats' early voting efforts, he said, "How far should the taxpayers be asked to go to accommodate that political operation? That’s where we’re having a difference of opinion."
This story keeps getting worse. I'm losing sleep over it because the whole thing is diabolical and shouldn't be happening in the United States.
The Voter ID Law was upheld yesterday by a Republican judge who saw no harm in disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters. The next thing to do is appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which is deadlocked 3-3, Dem against Republicans. Time is of the essence, but there just seems to be no answer.
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania Judge Robert Simpson issued an order on Wednesday saying there was no constitutional reason to stop the law from taking effect. In his opinion, however, he wrote that he had "sympathy" for the witnesses.
The coalition, however, seeks to appeal the law in the State Supreme Court, requesting that the court hear the case on an expedited basis because the election is less than three months away.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, the Advancement Project and the law firm of Arnold & Porter filed the appeal jointly.
"The fight in this case could go on after the election. Judge Simpson's ruling was on the request for a preliminary injunction. There could still be a hearing for a final injunction," said the ACLU of Pennsylvania in a statement.
On the same day as that ruling - no coincide - the State of Penn decided to drop a plan to allow online absentee voter registration.
A spokesman for the Department of State said county elections officials told the agency that implementing the new online initiatives as well as voter ID requirements was too much to handle less than three months before the election.
*sigh* I've lived half a century and I just can't believe this is happening in every presidential election.
Even before Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr. released his decision, lawyers on both sides of the case had pledged to appeal the ruling.
A petition to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is expected within days, if not hours. More legal briefs and courtroom arguments are expected. Others have been eyeing a parallel challenge in federal court.
Simpson denied a request for a preliminary injunction blocking the state from implementing the law, which requires voters to show state-issued identification before casting ballots.
Opponents complained the new law will unfairly bar as many as 1 million Pennsylvanians from the polls. Supporters say it was necessary to cut down on election fraud.
Voting rights advocates plan to appeal the case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which will likely issue its own ruling before the November election. There is currently an even 3-3 split between Democrats and Republicans on the Court; the 7th Justice, Republican Joan Orie Melvin, is under suspension because of an unrelated corruption scandal.
Since Simpson ruled to uphold the law, Democrats will need one crossover vote to win a majority and strike down the law. Chief Justice Ronald Castille, a moderate Republican from Philadelphia, is most likely to side with the Democrats.
The federal Justice Department is also looking into whether Pennsylvania’s voter ID complies with federal law.
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.
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."
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:
Under the law passed in Texas, Holder said that "many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them – and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them."
"We call those poll taxes," Holder added spontaneously, drawing applause as he moved away from the original text of his speech with a reference to a fee used in some Southern states after slavery's abolition to disenfranchise black people.
The 24th amendment to the constitution made that type of tax illegal.
Holder spoke a day after a trial started in federal court in Washington over the 2011 law passed by Texas' GOP-dominated Legislature that requires voters to show photo identification when they get to the polls.
Under Texas' law, Holder noted, a concealed handgun license would serve as acceptable ID to vote, but a student ID would not. He went on to say that while only 8 percent of white people do not have government-issued photo IDs, about 25 percent of black people lack such identification.
In the United States, the poll tax has been connected with voting rights. Poll taxes enacted in Southern states between 1889 and 1910 had the effect of disenfranchising many blacks as well as poor whites, because payment of the tax was a prerequisite for voting. By the 1940s some of these taxes had been abolished, and in 1964 the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution disallowed the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting in federal elections. In 1966 this prohibition was extended to all elections by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that such a tax violated the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
