Commenter eemom sent me The Map Of Shame and I like it a lot.
This alone is exciting news:
The Map of Shame is now interactive!
It’s a national map with all the (pending and enacted) voter suppression laws collected in one place.
If you click on your state, there’s specific information on voting. For those of us who live in “shame” states, it’s information on how to jump through the hoops and vote a first-class (rather than “provisional”, or second-class) ballot.
I like the states with the big, black V. Those are the states where the governor vetoed voter suppression legislation: Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and North Carolina.
gbear
That map is better than football (at least in MN). So glad that Mark Dayton vetoed the voter suppression bill passed by the newly-republican legistature.
Kay
@gbear:
I just edited and added you. I forgot Minnesota!
PurpleGirl
Kay and eemon: Thank you for this post. A preliminary look at NYS showed pending legislation in original committee. Voter suppression movements are unconscionable.
I have to go out for a while, but later I will reread the NYS entry and then write my state legislators about it.
kay
@PurpleGirl:
You really can have an effect. The original Ohio voter suppression bill was an absolute disaster.
Opponents made so much noise Republicans had to revise it, particularly when our GOP SoS admitted it was a disaster, and would suppress voting.
Then we collected 318,000 signatures to put the (revised, more liberal) law on the ballot and delay it :)
You really can play hardball on these things, and win, or at least NOT LOSE.
Davis X. Machina
Maine’s got a citizens-veto initiative on the ballot this fall to undo that nonsense.
38 years of first-, second-, or third-in-the-nation turnout, and enough actual fraud cases to count on the finger of one elbow. Pissed away because ALEC said ‘Jump’ and Governor 38% LePage said “How high?”
“It’s to save the town clerks work.” No it isn’t. Their own association lobbied against the law.
“It’s the damn college kids!” Symm v. U.S. 439 U.S. 1105 (1979) is still good law, fuckheads.
I’m so mad I could spit. This used to be, mostly, a sane and civilized state, full of live-and-let-live. Even here, the poison….
kay
@Davis X. Machina:
This is pollyana-ish (guilty as charged!) but I’m so pleased that people in Maine got off their ass and put it on the ballot.
Conservatives have controlled this entire debate for years, and I’ve only be following it since Ohio put the first law in, in 2005 (we’re now on number two).
They had the advantage of individual acts in scattered states. It hadn’t reached what I think of as “critical mass”.
We needed a tipping point. States like yours were that tipping point.
This was never a national issue, until conservatives made it one :)
uptown
WA is a vote by mail state (like OR), so any Photo ID legislation is going nowhere. Right now ballots must be postmarked by election day. The usual suspects would like to change that so that ballots have to arrive by election day, like OR which has ballot drop boxes conveniently located. Here in WA, the usual suspects say that would speed up counting (it may sound correct, but the data doesn’t agree). More likely it would allow them to suppress voting by limiting drop boxes in certain areas if they got the chance.
59.59% of voters in CA used an absentee ballot in 2010.
Davis X. Machina
@kay:
I was a small-town poll warden and I saw Norman-Rockwell-America right before my very eyes. The walk-up table was where we all wanted to work.
Kids walking down from the high school en bloc, after play practice, past the white Congregational church on the green, past the Civil War memorial — three dead from Col. Chamberlain’s 20th Maine among them — through the dead leaves, to go and vote. For the first time.
And these fuckheads want to stop that. I’ve got to go find the beta-blockers.
schrodinger's cat
@Davis X. Machina: I used to know a lot of Maine Republicans, when I lived there, they were not this crazy from what I remember. I wonder what changed.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: Damned if I know. Probably happened around the time all the Confederate battle flag paraphernalia started to appear. This in a state where one man in ten did not come back from the Civil War.
Villago Delenda Est
@uptown:
In Oregon, the rule is that the ballot MUST arrive at the election office by 8PM on election day. The media is very good about telling everyone that they have to have their ballots in the mail by such and such a day to be assured it will be delivered to meet that deadline.
Furthermore, you can drop your ballot off at your local election office right up to the deadline day and time, if you forgot to drop it in the mail in time.
These rules were in effect for absentee balloting long before vote by mail became the rule. I know because I voted by mail from Germany and Korea when I was in the Army. I was told how long before election day I had to be assured of having my vote counted. I was my unit voting officer in my first assignment, and I helped every soldier who asked how to figure all this out, to make sure their voice was heard.
Which is why I was fairly astonished at the way the rules were changed, on the spot, in 2000 because some Republicans thought that it would help the deserting coward in the recount there. The rules are the rules…you can’t vote absentee in Germany on the day of the election and expect the postal service to get it back to Florida by 8PM EST (or whatever the poll closing time is). You just can’t. You plan ahead to make sure you meet the legal requirements. It’s really rather simple…
asiangrrlMN
9,000 freaking votes stood between us now and us becoming West Wisconsin. Mark Dayton, FTW!
schrodinger's cat
@Davis X. Machina: Really? I don’t remember seeing any Confederate flags in Maine, ever. In New England I have seen them in NH but never in Maine.
West of the Cascades
@Villago Delenda Est: I learned last year that, as long as the ballot envelope is sealed and signed by the voter, anyone can drop it off on behalf of the voter at the election office by 8:00 pm. I canvassed for Gov. Kitzhaber on election day, and campaign volunteers are allowed to collect sealed/signed ballots and deliver them for the voters. We brought them back to campaign headquarters and they were delivered in a big batch just before 8:00 pm.
A nice feature that encourages good get-out-the-vote groundwork on election day and maximizes voting rather than suppressing it (and fraud has never been an issue in the 10+ years Oregon has voted by mail).
comrade scott's agenda of rage
As shitty a weak Dem as Gov Jay Nixon is, he’s the only thing standing between Misery and the rest of the Confederacy. This state has gotten virulently red in the 15 years I’ve lived here.
No prospect of that trend reversing itself anytime soon short of a mass Republican Extinction Event.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: North of the Turnpike, away from salt water, they’re out there. Truck decorations, mostly.
It’s not the Confederate Battle Flag, this far north, in the whitest state in the Union, so much as the universal ‘Fuck the Liberals’ signal flag — but it still rankles. I’ve stood on Cemetery Ridge, and Little Round Top. I know why the National Guard Armory in Auburn is named after the same guy — O.O. Howard — as Howard University.
Villago Delenda Est
@West of the Cascades:
This is absolute truth, although it didn’t stop the right wing rag The American Spectator from inventing, out of whole cloth, a “fraud scandal” that no one in Oregon had ever heard of..and they were stupid enough to get specific enough so it could be refuted by a handful of phone calls to election officials. To my knowledge this outright fabrication has never been retracted by the rag.
That vile rag continues, to this day, to outright lie about alleged “voting fraud” all around the country. Apparently, and you’ll be absolutely shocked to hear this, it’s all a plot by George Soros.
schrodinger's cat
@Davis X. Machina: I haven’t been to Maine since 2009 and haven’t lived there since 2004. I don’t remember seeing confederate paraphernalia even in Western ME. This seems like a new development. Has Obama’s election brought out their inner racist? I honestly don’t understand what they are worried about, what is the minority population in ME like, less than 1%?
jron
@schrodinger’s cat: If in fact they’re actually there, they’re probably worried about losing their unspoken privilege or being left behind, just like the tea partiers in the rest of the country.
jron
I’m just gonna post off topic here and ask you all to look at the herman cain facts. I just finished updating it and think it’s looking good. (Plus I need some submissions from juicers)
Svensker
@jron:
Do the words “clinging to their guns and religion” ring a bell?
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: Walk through any HS parking lot…or the parking lot of select bars, and you’re about equally likely to see a Confederate flag decal as an (unlicensed) peeing Calvin decal. I’d put the growth spurt back to 9/11 and the start of the Iraq war. Like I said, it’s only racist-at-one-remove. It’s hippie-bashing.
Litlebritdifrnt2
FSM Bless Bev Purdue with his noodly appendage, she has been flashing that veto pen as much as she can but alas on some issues the Senate has just enough votes to override the veto.
B W Smith
The 2006 Georgia law was not that onerous. I took several of my mothers elderly friends that had no license to get a picture ID for voting and it was fairly easy. The ease varies greatly across the state though. Some DDS stations are pickier than others about documentation. I really think it depends in some areas on whether they want to make it burdensome.
Their whole theory of voter fraud falls apart because they do not attack absentee balloting. There is no ID requirement. If you have voted for the years prior to the changes, you can still get issued an absentee ballot by mail, no ID required. Seeing through the hoax is pretty easy for those who wish to see it.
BGinCHI
OK, off topic, but I couldn’t stand it.
So, I get a daily email from Publishers Marketplace that has deals and other info. Here’s one from today’s offering:
Some questions.
1. Do you actually tell people you’re the “Truman Capote fellow”? Wouldn’t you have to at least dress up or talk like him?
2. Moving and laugh-out-loud funny. Sure it is.
3. A novel in which “a man in San Francisco who helps turn his deceased father’s journals into a sentient computer while sifting through the rubble of his past relationships and moving towards a hopeful, previously elusive kind of love…” YES! Finally! And I was wasting my time on historical fiction and reading and teaching the classics. What the fuck was I thinking??
4. “a hopeful, previously elusive kind of love…” As opposed to the other kinds of love?
5. And ladies and gentlemen, this stinking piece of shit was purchased by Penguin at auction and agented by one of the biggest in the biz, even if he was a former gigantic crackhead.
Life, apparently, is not fair.
Svensker
@BGinCHI:
Isn’t it Knopf or one of the other old-line serious houses that is now publishing Snooki? Oh, and the Kardashian “book” has just been re-issued with bling on the cover! Jen-yew-ine jools!
Don’t get me started.
piratedan
well a minor quibble, I would definitely categorize AZ SB1070 as voter suppression legislation, because it has effectively moved hispanics out of the state. It’s an all in one bigotry bonanza as we make people of color fear deportation much less show up at the polls and vote their consciousness, at least that’s the end result.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/california/1128901-ap-100-000-hispanics-left-arizona.html
soonergrunt
@piratedan: Well, voter supression is a secondary effect. Non-citizens can’t vote (and I’ve no idea if any undocumented aliens have in large enough numbers to matter but I doubt it) but their citizen children and spouses and other dependents/providers can. And those eligible voters will move with the non-citizen/undocumented persons out of the jurisdiction because keeping the family together is more important than voting.
Cris (without an H)
Yay Brian Schweitzer! Too bad he’s term limited.
piratedan
@soonergrunt: true, but of the 100k folks leaving, it appears that about 75% stayed in the US, how many were folks that were citizens that moved because they gave up on AZ is unknown, but as a whole, it weakened the possible impact of minority rights in AZ and we could damn sure use more of them because the angry old white guy caucus sucks imho.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
1. Maybe he does an excellent Truman Capote impression and gets to brag about it: “For he’s a jolly good fellow…”
2. Never trust the kind of review (or worse, salesman’s description). The characters in this one will annoy you and the humor will fall flat.
3. Hey, the main character has to have something to do in between the exquisitely-written navel-gazing sessions that will take up half the book.
3a. You should have been pandering to readers’ literary pretensions. It’s still not too late.
4. “… with a mysterious, ethereal woman haunted by a tragic secret”, I betcha.
5. I know you already know this. But the big boys get big on bestselling writers, not because they find literary giants.
I know. But what to do?
chrome agnomen
@Davis X. Machina:
chamberlain honored the defeated confederate soldiers, but would have had no truck with the current lot of low-information chairborne.
soonergrunt
@piratedan: Agree 100% And even if only 1/4 of that 100K were eligible to vote, that is more than enough to swing any statewide race.
Betsy
Forgive my OT post, but this seems to me like a Big Deal:
Edit: warning – there is some horrifying violence discussed in this article. Not for the faint of heart.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/domestic-workers-convention-may-be-landmark.html?hp
I just wrote both my senators the following:
Dear Senator —-,
I’m writing to urge you to ratify the convention on the rights of domestic workers passed by the International Labor Organization of the UN, referenced in this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/domestic-workers-convention-may-be-landmark.html?hp
These girls and women are some of the world’s most vulnerable, least visible workers, and they deserve our protection.
Thank you.
SBJules
Voter suppression was voted down in CA & Nevada, so why are they still “yellow”?
Delia
@BGinCHI:
Well, I’d say being in love with a sentient computer is pretty elusive. Given the context of this thread, I’m wondering if voter fraud laws apply to sentient computers. But they’re probably fairly lax about that sort of thing in San Francisco.
soonergrunt
@Delia: Hell, I’m sure that the wingers would be fine with it if it could be shown to have been programmed by a 3rd generation native-born white male.
Cat Lady
@Davis X. Machina:
Husband moved to Maine from Mass. to work all week and when he was looking for a place to stay during the week he was warned by an old woman Mainer about the “Samoolis”. They’re afraid of skinny poor Somalian immigrants competing with them for the gubmint handouts, is my take. Maine is still the whitest state in the country.
Sko Hayes
I live in the horrible state of Kansas, and our SoS is the even more horrible Kris Kobach, he of Arizona’s SB1070.
As a matter of fact, the KS SoS is currently defending a lawsuit against the town of Farmers Branch, Texas (yes, that’s right, our Secretary of State is down in Texas defending a town against a lawsuit for passing odious laws regarding illegal immigrants and rental housing:
http://giv.to/buVhd5
SiubhanDuinne
@Delia:
There, fixed.
jron
@Svensker:
yes. yes they do.
Joe Buck
They really need to take California off the map, as it’s ludicrous to pretend that a voter ID requirement could be enacted in California.
Yes, two voter-suppression bills were proposed, but the legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic (with nearly a 2/3 majority in both houses), and the bills went nowhere, suffering a committee defeat last April. See
http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_663/20112012/
In fact, two days ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation allowing for online voter registration. In California, it is getting easier, not harder, to vote.
See http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/10/jerry-brown-signs-bill-for-online-voter-registration-in-california.html
An attempt to put voter ID on the public ballot failed in 2010. See http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Photo_ID_to_Vote_Initiative_%282010%29