"There is no such thing as a bad conservative. 'Conservative' is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals."
While the right bleats about ACORN over voter registrations that ultimately don't matter, we have the Republicans in Michigan admitting that they wanted to prevent voters from casting ballots in an illegal scheme to purge rolls of names of people caught up in the mortgage meltdown. Marcy at FDL: Democrats and Republicans have settled the suit seeking to prevent Michigan Republicans from using foreclosure lists to challenge voters. The MDP statement on the settlement says:An agreement announced today by Obama for America, the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, the Michigan Republican Party, the Michigan Democratic Party, the Macomb County Republican Party, the Macomb County Democratic Party, and plaintiffs Duane Maletski, Sharon Lopez, and Frances M. Zick protects the voting rights of foreclosure victims. The settlement acknowledges the existence of an illegal scheme by the Republicans to use mortgage foreclosure lists to deny foreclosure victims their right to vote. This settlement has the force of law behind it and ensures that Republicans cannot disenfranchise families facing foreclosure. [my emphasis]Here's Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer on the settlement: Today's settlement protects the voting rights of all Michigan citizens and guarantees that Republicans cannot use foreclosure lists to deny or challenge anyone's right to vote. It is no surprise the Republicans back pedaled when their illegal scheme was revealed, and their surrender today ensures that Republicans cannot take advantage of the economic crisis to deny anyone's voting rights. The agreement is a win for Michigan families ready to vote for change, and we will continue to aggressively protect everyone's right to vote. [my emphasis}
Of course, as Kagro X has pointed out, Mukasey can blow off Conyers (as he has Conyers' request for more urgency on voter protection) precisely because we didn't get the evidence from Miers and Turdblossom to make this case legally before we got back into election fever.
Like Alberto Gonzales, Mukasey seems to have lost all shame about allowing the GOP to play these games.So here we are, with the subpoenas still unenforced in the case that was supposed to crack the "administration's" engineering of bogus "voter fraud" allegations against Democrats immediately preceding critical elections wide open, and now witnessing... the "administration" engineering bogus "voter fraud" allegations against Democrats immediately preceding a critical election.
Voting a straight ticket is anything but straight in this country.
In North Carolina, if you're voting a straight-party ticket, you must vote separately for the president. If you don't, you risk your vote for president not being counted.
In Texas, Alabama and South Carolina, voting a straight-party ticket includes the president. Email rumors, of course, say otherwise.
We need to have some serious mythos mojo on the sujbect of voter suppression ourselves. This should be a major centerpiece of the next Congress, with hearings out the wazoo, not just in Washington DC where the Versailles media will try its best to ignore it, but in field hearings around the country as well.
And after the hearings, there should be legislation. Legislation to put the right to vote into the Constitution. Legislation to mandate the highest level of state responisibility to register people to vote. Legislation to ensure that voter ID laws come with strict provisions to ensure that the IDs are readily available at no charge. Legislation to mandate the highest possible level of transparency in the administration of voter registration and elections.
In short, there should be a major voting rights and election reform bill passed to address the full range of shenanigans and shortcomings that have come to light since the 2000 election. And it should be carried out in a manner that does everything possible to revive and reinforce the mythos of the civil rights movement.
Recently, 20/20 aired a program odiously questioning whether young people should vote. After cherry-picking responses to maximize the appearance of youth ignorance, John Stossel in his infinite determined that young adults are just too dumb to vote and should stay home.
Note to John Stossel: it might be best not to go there, lest ye be PWND:
Stossel should be sentenced to weeks of having to watch that one on a loop.
Remember all of those right-wing 527s that were going overwhelm the political landscape? As it happens, the conservative financiers have lost a lot of money lately.
"After the [GOP] convention, things looked good," said Phil Musser, a Republican fundraising consultant. "Major donors interested in issue advocacy were tuned in, political juices were flowing, polling looked good, and then, blammo! Most donors lost 20 or 30 percent of their net worth in eight days. With few exceptions, that pretty well shut down the money discussion for a lot of folks."MORE
Four years ago, groups operating outside the party structure invested more than $130 million in television commercials, often carrying the kind of negative messages that the candidates themselves wished to avoid. This year, total spending by such groups is at about $17 million so far, with no single organization playing a dominant role, according to Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group.
The campaign has given supporters lists with hours and locations of early voting sites, and collected the names, e-mail address and cell phone number of each attendee at the Fayetteville rally Sunday afternoon. (There were a few thousand who had to listen to his speech from the parking lot after the coliseum hit about 10,000 capacity.)
An organizer at the rally rattled off the addresses of early vote sites nearby that would be open after the event.
Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.
Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.
As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word "terrorist." They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.MORE
STATE OF THE VOTE: 17 DAYS TO GO
A Round-up of Problems Facing Voters NationwideVoter registration application backlogs.
In Colorado: election officials are struggling to verify thousands of voter registration forms before October 20 when early voting opens. In Georgia: a week ago, in DeKalb County about 30,000 registrations were sitting in boxes waiting to be entered. In New York, in Dutchess County, officials are telling voters that if their backlogged registrations aren't processed in time, they should request a court order to vote. In Alabama, a controversy is raging over who can be registered, contributing to the backlog of requests.MORE
The unprecedented registration and get-out-the-vote efforts by both parties, along with the historic nature of this election, promise to elicit a record number of voters on Election Day. Mountains of new voter registrations are causing backlogs in voter data entry - which partisans are using as reasons to keep these applicants from making it onto the rolls, as we've just seen in Ohio. Backlogs often force local election offices to send out verification and polling place information late or not at all.
( One in nine Democrats have been kicked off the voting rolls in New Mexico )
Since 2003, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications to register rejected. In addition, at least 1.6 million votes were never counted in the 2004 election — and the commission's own data suggests that the real number could be twice as high. To purge registration rolls and discard ballots, partisan election officials used a wide range of pretexts, from "unreadability" to changes in a voter's signature. And this year, thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher.
( Read more... )
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