They’re purging voters again in Florida, as I’m sure you’ve heard:
Nearly 200,000 Florida residents may be disenfranchised by their state government, with officials in Gov. Rick Scott’s administration seeking to “scrub” names from the voter rolls in time for the November election.
A broad coalition of voting rights groups are pleading with Gov. Scott and the Florida secretary of state — in charge of the state’s elections — to halt the mass purge of names from lists of eligible voters until more research can be done to determine the extent of non-citizens that the state is claiming to be illegally registered to vote in the Sunshine State.
Voting rights activists are alleging that not only is Florida’s efforts to purge the rolls so close to a general election against federal law, but that the state’s program is strictly targeting Hispanic residents who may inherently have a hard time proving their citizenship. Groups call the purge “unfair” and pure “discrimination.”
I’ve resisted writing about this, because as someone who works with records all the time (like millions of other people) I am out of patience with the two branches of the conservative movement who “believe” state records are presumptively invalid and fraudulent unless personally examined by one or another paid conservative political operative. You got your birthers, and you got your voter impersonation fraud conspiracy theorists, and the two groups have a lot in common:
Why would Florida launch a botched witchhunt to combat a problem that is virtually nonexistent? Florida’s former secretary of state, who resigned shortly after the purge effort was initiated, has fingered Gov. Rick Scott for personally ordering the state investigation into vague rumors — mostly stemming from conservative “Tea Party” activists – of non-citizens being registered to vote. When Scott faced pushback on the merits of his proposal, the governor insisted that “people lie” and that the purge would go on as planned.
Vague rumors and “people lie” Birthers and vote fraudsters. Maybe Scott got a lot of emails from the Tea Party. What was he supposed to do?
This is one of the victims of the voter impersonation fraud conspiracy theory, in Florida:
To document the flaws in Florida’s increasingly infamous purge list, Seminole County supervisor of elections Michael Ertel posted a photo of himself on Twitter posing with a “non-citizen” holding his United States passport.
He’s maybe now allowed to vote, pending an investigation by Donald Trump into the authenticity of that passport, I guess. Teach the controversy, opinions differ, you know the drill. He doesn’t know why he was targeted and purged by Governor Scott and I don’t know either, but here we are. Vague rumors and people lie. Real victims. So glad media saw fit to celebrate and promote that adorable rascal James O’Keefe. Ha, ha, ha. It’s all fun and games until 200,000 people can’t vote, right?
Villago Delenda Est
Well, the guy has brown skin. You have to be certain. People with brown skin cannot be verified as citizens at a glance, you know.
Jeff Spender
I know from the experience of being a Taco-American that these people barely see us as human.
That they’re trying make this guilty until proven innocent is no surprise to me.
slag
I’m pretty sure it’s even more fun and games after 200,000 people can’t vote.
gene108
If they’re naturalized U.S. Citizens, like myself, they’ll have a citizenship certificate/document.
Also, too when did a valid U.S. passport stop being proof of citizenship?
The international ramifications of that attitude are staggering.
David Hunt
He ought to know…
rikyrah
um, passports are not allowed in many of these VOTER ID BILLS because they don’t have addresses on them. they ‘prove’ that you’re a citizen, but I’m willing to bet that passports aren’t ‘valid’ proof, just like military ids aren’t in a lot of these states.
different-church-lady
Not that I want to hijack this thread, but WTF is an “iReport”?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
By then, it’s a GLORIOUS VICTORY!
……..blugh.
@gene108:
When the GOP decided Dem voters were inherently suspect and pushed public opinion to consider voting a privilege, not a right.
Jeff Spender
@gene108:
I’d be worried for someone like my grandfather, who was born in a barn in Eagle Pass, Texas, and didn’t get a birth certificate until he was 3–so I have no idea if they’d even believe he was born here.
It’s a big complicated story that goes like this: My great-grandpa was here on a work visa in the 1930s, and then voluntarily joined the U.S. Army during World War 2 to fight in Italy. There, he was injured in an attempt to save his fellow soldier’s lives and received many awards. It was there, in Italy, that he got his U.S. Citizenship.
So–it was very confusing for the rest of the family back then.
Kay
@gene108:
I think the national ramifications of not accepting a birth record are staggering, too. If the conservative state officials who are caving to the Tea Party applied these nut-job standards across the board, the whole country would grind to a halt. But of course they don’t. Because they know it’s complete bullshit. But they’re too cowardly to resist.
Chris T.
Oops, we “accidentally” purged everyone except those 200,000.
eric
This is one of those things that could give rise to the law of unintended consequences. These actions make it paramount that the Obama gang do unprecedented GOTV efforts which could increase turnout in favor of the dems. Someone better than I can look at the numbers and see what gain you get per GOTV dollar and what Obama has to do to offset vote losses from disenfranchisement
SamR
Sadly, it continues to be fun and games for the right after 200k voters can’t vote.
Its not a bug, its a feature.
Ash Can
All this vote suppression stuff is making me wonder what’s going to happen on Election Day. Are thousands of people going to be unpleasantly surprised when they get to their polling places and are not allowed to vote? What will ensue? Chaos, shouting matches, the occasional fat lip? How many people are going to be blindsided, and what will they do?
Southern Beale
Oh well check out what just happened in Memphis! We thought it was just 500 voters, which is bad enough but now it looks like as many as 40,000 voters have had their histories erased by the election commission, which is the first step toward purging them from the rolls altogether.
Meanwhile let’s slam Obama for daring to open his yap on Memorial Day because whenever Obama does it, it’s “politicizing” …
tamied
@Ash Can: I know what I would do. I would make the biggest stink I possibly could. If that included the chaos, shouting and fat lips, so be it.
schrodigner's cat
@Ash Can: Are we going to need election monitors from other countries like some banana republic?
Egg Berry
Kay, I wonder if you’ve ever heard of this Greg Palast report from 2004 on voter caging? It discusses Ohio and Florida.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
During the Arizona kerfuffle, I was so tempted to make up business I would have in Arizona that would require me to produce a birth certificate so I could call the SoS’s office and make them tell me what “additional documentation” they now require above and beyond a birth certificate.
I kind of suspect that the SoS in Arizona backed down in part because of the panicked screaming from the rest of the state bureaucracy pointing out what would happen to, say, the issuing of drivers’ licenses if the state decided that an out-of-state birth certificate is not sufficient proof of identity and some additional but unspecified documentation is required.
Southern Beale
@schrodigner’s cat:
What do you mean “going to”? IIRC we had Jimmy Carter’s group monitoring the 2004 election in Florida.
Mnemosyne
@schrodigner’s cat:
I think Fidel Castro offered to send some in 2000 — maybe the offer is still open.
Southern Beale
This is what Democrats need to understand. It’s EVERY district in EVERY state. They don’t know where it will matter, they just know that any close election is close enough to steal. So they pull this shit in EVERY district in EVERY state.
Every district. Every state.
Between that and the Voter ID laws and the other stuff, a close election can be stolen. The only way Democrats can win elections these days is in a landslide.
redshirt
I’m convinced this a new tactic by the right, dubbed “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”.
1. Gain power
2. Claim endemic corruption of some sort, by the other guys, that you’re trying to fix. Whether this is voting roles, the state welfare system, unions, whatever. Don’t matter. Also, you don’t need proof.
3. Stoke media storm
4. When no proof is forthcoming/charges are greatly trumped up, move on to the next topic and repeat.
After a while, the truth of these stories will not matter. What will matter is many folks remembering hearing “something” about how corrupt those OTHER folks are.
Nellcote
I hope there are election monitors to assure that goopers are required to “show their papers” too.
Betsy
Real Americans don’t need passports. What kind of patriot wants to visit some other country? They must have some suspicious ties to non-Americans, or maybe they are cultural relativists, or frog-eaters or something.
Foregone Conclusion
This is utterly, utterly bizarre to me.
In the UK, getting someone taken off the voting roll is very difficult. I don’t know the procedure, but there’d have to be some pretty damning prima facie evidence. Hell, they’re getting their knickers in the twist over proposals to shift from having the head of household compulsarily register the whole of household. The idea of hundreds of thousands of people being taken off the voting record without even being told is utterly alien. I know Republicans are bad, but still, surely they have to maintain a veneer of decency.
Is there fraud in the UK? Sure, but not much, and it’s mostly related to postal voting (which now anyone can do – big mistake, although I take advantage of it myself) and personation. Apart from that, pretty much zilch. Utterly ridiculous.
gelfling545
Even here in NY where things are fairly same (well, in comparison to some places) the id issue can be crazy. My daughter’s drivers license expired while she was recovering from being hit by a car & she just didn’t think of it. Afterwards she had to apply for a new license but couldn’t use the expired one as proof of identity. She had to go and get a birth certificate, using her expired license as id, then use the bc obtained with the expires license to get a new license. I’m sure this prevented fraud somehow.
Roger Moore
But never the people making the accusations. Their motives are pure as the driven snow./snark
dmsilev
Speaking of bizarre conspiracy theories, the ferret that lives on top of Trump’s head had this to say to Wolf Blitzer’s beard:
Impressive. Barack Obama placed ads announcing his own birth. One assumes that this took the form of a star shining low in the sky over Mauna Kea, as William Ayers, Saul Alinsky, and Malcolm X arrived bearing gifts.
Also, too, ‘so-called born’? Is Barack Obama not man of woman born, and will the election be decided when Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against Romney?
Foregone Conclusion
And as for the Memphis case – that’s Jim Crow. No ifs and buts – that’s just the kind of thing George Wallace would have done. I hope the Justice Department rips thems to shreds.
redshirt
@dmsilev: Sprung fully formed from Kenyan’s head, dontchyaknow?
4tehlulz
@dmsilev: He’s cornering Romney; Mittens has no choice but to dive headlong into the abyss now.
Or announce that he’s doesn’t give a fuck if it costs him the election and tells the birthers to eat the Bag of Dicks, but since Mitt and integrity are mutually exclusive concepts, he’s going with Option 1.
PurpleGirl
@schrodigner’s cat: I believe we’ve already had them in a number of states. (Don’t have time to Google it but I have vague recollection of stories on the election monitors from other countries.)
Redshift
@Foregone Conclusion:
Nope. They insist that everyone else has to, but their people talking about how they taking up arms are just concerned patriots.
There has never been any shred of evidence for voter fraud here, either. The people at the top know that, probably. They stir up their bigoted supporters, who they’ve repeatedly told that there is a clear conservative majority in the country, so the only possible reason they could lose is cheating. Then they “have no choice” but to crack down on it, because there are concerned citizens demanding it (not because it’s good for them, of course.)
Remember, the Bush Administration conducted a mass firing of US Attorneys, many of them Republican appointees, solely because they wanted them to find and prosecute “voter fraud,” and didn’t like it when the answer came back that there wasn’t any.
No decency at all, not for a long time now.
FlipYrWhig
Well, as Andrea Mitchell says in her MSNBC promo, it’s outrageous when “political parties” are trying to keep people from voting. You know, among the many political parties out there. We wouldn’t want to paint with too broad a brush.
Woodrowfan
I attended the Election officer class here in northern VA recently and there was some tea-bigot asking a ton of questions all based on the assumption that hoards of illegible voters were voting in our county. We were using an electronic copy of the 2010 database for the class exercises and he was all bent out of shape insisting that dead people would be voting. The county officials had to explain to him multiple times (and slowly) that this database was just for class. That the one we’d be using on election day would be updated the Sunday before the election.
You know, we really really need more Democrats to sign up as election officials. Right now it’s overwhelmingly elderly Faux viewers who will be scrutinizing your ID to see if you’ll be allowed to vote.
Maude
@dmsilev:
Trump needs to give up. He made a fool of himself and then Obama made a fool of him. He seems not to know that he is a fool.
The Dangerman
@4tehlulz:
Hopefully, that dive won’t be muffed.
Woodrowfan
@Maude: that ship sailed a long time ago. Self-awareness left with his hairline…
Roger Moore
@Betsy:
The kind who wear military uniforms. Well, maybe they don’t want to go to other countries, but that’s what their orders say, so they go.
Flying Squirrel Girl
Any failure to report on voter fraud as anything other than the Huge Story It Is is proof that the problem indeed exists and is being ignored by the LSM. This is how they made the Ground Zero Mosque story go way beyond FOX news. IIRC, FOX news conflated the story and then took out full-page ads in major newspapers asking why the other networks weren’t covering such a huge story.
kay
@FlipYrWhig:
They’re such sniveling cowards. 200k ordinary voters or one enraged Tea Party emailer?
Andrea knows where she’s coming down! With the LOUD people!
Maude
@Woodrowfan:
Which, in a way, is good because he will continue to be a fool.
He is angry at Obama and is trying to get him back. Trump is about 2 years old.
Elizabelle
Paging Jimmy Carter.
I hope the Department of Justice and courts are watching the states and voting rights intensely.
We need election monitors.
Wish this story was as sexy as Puffy Combs’ kid or a Kardashian.
cckids
Gah, Romney is here in Vegas tonight, at Trump’s joke of a hotel, birthering away. I read that Gingrich will also be here, which may cause a black hole to develop from the sheer weight of ego in one spot.
BTW, if anyone needs any info to prove that Trump is not some business genius, his hotel in Vegas proves it. It is NOT on the Strip, it has no show or shopping, and no casino. If you want an EXTREMELY quiet, almost uninhabited place to spend too much $$ on a hotel room, while being in an inconvenient spot, the Trump is your place!! Asshat.
cckids
Oh hell, I used the C-word for which Las Vegas is famous. Moderation, bah.
Gah, Romney is here in Vegas tonight, at Trump’s joke of a hotel, birthering away. I read that Gingrich will also be here, which may cause a black hole to develop from the sheer weight of ego in one spot.
Pangloss
This is the way of doing it without having a referendum asking, “Should Brown people and people with funny names have to retain a lawyer in order to vote?”
Win-Win.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Amazing. Even more amazing because it isn’t true. When they asked the newspapers about it, they said they didn’t take birth announcements from parents. Instead, the papers got the information straight from the hospitals, presumably because it was easier to get it all from a single, well organized source than from all the individuals. So not only is Trump relying on a fairly wacky conspiracy angle about fake birth announcements, it’s a claim that’s already been specifically debunked.
Elizabelle
@FlipYrWhig:
Andrea Mitchell drives me crazy with that ad.
Somebody needs to pin her down on who the interfering “parties” are.
Is she separating one into “Republicans” and “Tea Partiers” so she can say that?
Ash Can
I’m loving how as soon as Romney makes his “I stand by Donald Trump” bed, Trump shits all over it. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving schmuck.
Mark K
No, its only “those people” who lie as far as Rick Scott is concerned.
and we all know who “those people” are and they usually don’t vote Republican (for good reason).
Keith G
The right to vote is perhaps the most consequential human right. It is a right that allows for the protection of other rights.
There are groups of people in this country who are successfully attacking and limiting and even denying this most basic of rights to other groups of citizens of the United States. These are attacks on our Constitution.
There is a guy who is currently the executive leader of this government and he is bound by oath to defend the Constitution. This is a fight he should relish, and even if he does not, it is his duty to join. It is his duty.
It is his duty.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Foregone Conclusion:
__
By US standards, this is maintaining a veneer of decency. The indecent version would involve burning crosses, firebombings, dynamite, and people being taken into custody by the police for no reason and then while in jail being beaten to within an inch of their lives while nobody was looking, at least officially.
Bubblegum Tate
This is why Romney’s going to win. Or rather, “win.” It’s got nothing to do with “firing up the base” or “swaying independents” or whatever–none of that matters when the people who would vote for you are prevented from voting.
SiubhanDuinne
@Foregone Conclusion:
Aww. You Brits are just adorably droll.
@dmsilev:
OMG, I am just watching the Wolf v. WolfPeltOnHead interview (I guess it’s a rerun) and am making myself sick with laughter. Who do you root for in that kind of conversation?
Felanius Kootea
@Bubblegum Tate: No he’s not going to win or “win.” The Dems aren’t asleep.
Clime Acts
What is really awesome is the way the Democratic Party has pushed back on this issue HARD and RELENTLESSLY, ever since the presidency was first stolen from them in 2000.
And then after it was stolen again in Ohio and Florida AGAIN in 2004, it was impressive the way the Democratic Party kept this issue in the news, wrote and pushed aggressively for corrective legislation in suspect states, and generally stood tall for disenfranchised voters where ever they live.
Oh wait…
ruemara
I just had an internet argument over this nonsense today. even after I explained why no ID is required at the polls, the nature of the difference between voting fraud and voting registration fraud, the moron in question insisted that in CA anyone illegal can vote. When I went to the CA gov’s website on registration to vote, she insisted that it did not say you needed ID to register and that’s why I was wrong. The capper was when she could not find where it said on the website in the first FUCKING paragraph what ID was required to register. Moral of this is: stupid is eternal when education requires changing your mind.
kay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I don’t think we’re maintaining a veneer of decency. Why is Wolf Blitzer, who is supposed to be a newsman, working to promote a conspiracy by lending Trump the legitimacy of a serious interview?
Is it because Trump is rich? Is it because Trump’s show is profitable? That’s indecent. It’s disgusting and venal.
LanceThruster
If only Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist was around to challenge their legitimacy.
Can he be dug up and dusted off?
Keith G
@Felanius Kootea:
You are right. They are awake. That is why this is so inexplicable as well as shameful.
Rita R.
If you systematically rob people of their legitimate right to vote, they will eventually find other ways to express their political views and demand their say, and don’t count on those ways being peaceful. These Tea Party politicians and their rabid base in the GOP who are spitting on democracy while claiming to be uber-patriots with their tricorner hats and Gadsen flags should remember that the all-holy Second Amendment applies to the left as well as the right.
As for Trump, you can’t fault a piece of rotten meat for stinking, but you can blame a restaurant for putting it on the menu. The most contempt has to be reserved for supposedly respectable news outlets like CNN and CNBC who keep giving a platform to this “bloviating ignoramus,” as George Will aptly called him in a brief moment of clarity. And Mitt Romney of course, whose favorite foreign policy trope is to call President Obama “feckless” when he can’t even stand up to an ego-bloated carnival barker like Trump.
El Cid
ACORN! NEW BLACK PANTHERS! MUST CREDIT!
5 term GOP incumbent looks to fail to qualify for own primary because basic signature collection filled with hundreds of repeats.
The people demand to see his GoP long form petition certificate.
danielx
NG – under the circumstances, you will never find a paid conservative political operative who would pronounce state records to be valid. More to the point, you’ve gotta remember that Democratic voters are not considered to be “real Americans” by the conservative movement. Even more to the point, these folks do not believe in the democratic process unless it produces the outcomes they want. The last Democratic president who was considered to be “legitimate” was Jimmy Carter. They impeached Bill Clinton over a blow job, and they’ve considered Obama to be an imposter from day one.
Considering how well Republicans were doing with the mighty Wurlitzer even before the Citizens United decision, I’ll be somewhat surprised (pleasantly) if there’s ever another non-Republican president. Of course there’s always the tendency of Republican presidents to fuck up by the numbers, but even that tends to get explained away as evil liberal conspiracies to blacken the name(s) of The Greatest Preznit Evar….
Quarks
Meanwhile, with the exceptions of presidential races in 1992 and 2008, voter participation levels in Florida continue to suck:
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/voting/voter-turnout.shtml
In 2006 fewer than half of the registered voters in Florida bothered to vote. The state hasn’t updated numbers for 2010. Those are the real scandals.
kay
@Rita R.:
We’d have to boycott CNN to force them to stop promoting Trump and the Obama is illegitimate theme.
It worked with ALEC and it would work again, because they aren’t going to stop until it threatens profits.
danielx
@Foregone Conclusion:
Trying to keep a straight face….giggle…snort…guffaw…okay, rolling on the floor. STOP! Yer killing me here!
Take a close look at the visage of that pigfucker Rush Limbaugh and listen to a few of his broadcasts, just for starters. Then you might want to revisit this whole concept of putting ‘Republicans’ and ‘veneer of decency’ in the same sentence, or even the same paragraph. They’re not interested in decency, they’re interested in power. They don’t want to govern, they want to rule.
Jennifer
What we need is law stating that no voter roll purges can occur within 180 days of a regularly scheduled federal election (presidential & mid-terms) that also requires voters who have been purged to be notified and given the opportunity to demonstrate why the purge is incorrect. In addition, the purge list would be required to be published. For any attempt to purge any individual voter AFTER the 180 day time limit has passed, such a purge could not be accomplished without documenting why the purge is believed to be necessary (for instance, someone is convicted of a felony after the 180 day time limit but before the election) and first communicating with the voter via street address, email, or phone.
That would stop most of this shit.
Another thing that would help stop it is a massive class action suit, or a bunch of them, hopefully resulting in jail time for certain responsible parties.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Well, the fact that it’s been debunked won’t stop the moron under the dead squirrel.
Villago Delenda Est
@kay:
Ratings. Infotainment ratings. Leslie Blitzer is not a serious newsman. More like a game show host.
Calouste
@Mnemosyne:
I think that offer was from Colonel Ghaddafi, and I am afraid it is no longer open.
The Other Chuck
This is half the problem right here. We shouldn’t be “pleading”. We should be threatening them with Pound Me In The Ass Federal Prison and have the fucking authority to back it up.
Chris T.
@El Cid: This is why Republicans see voter fraud everywhere: they keep attempting (though failing) to commit it.
Kilkee
@The Other Chuck: Yes. A thousand times yes.
RalfW
@The Other Chuck:
At the very least, they should be threatening him with whatever frickin’ lawsuits they can conjure up.
Pleading is pathetic (and I’m sure it’s also a journalist/hack’s lame-as-shit description of what’s actually happening).
Jado
What do Conservatives call 200,000 beaners and teens that can no longer vote?
A pretty good start…
Howd
@RalfW: I agree that I hate the fact that the Dems would be “pleading”, HOWEVER, my guess is that the descriptive word “pleading” is coming from some AP reporter just doing his “job”.
jim
Grifter’s Credo: A scam that pays off & doesn’t land you in prison is a scam well worth repeating.
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108:
@rikyrah: Most Voter ID laws have two components: proof of citizenship and proof of residence. A passport will satisfy proof of citizenship, but it will not show that you live in the district/state/ward/whatever. As a result something else, frequently a utility bill, lease, or property tax bill in the person’s name, is then required to satisfy the proof of residence prong. FTR I am not defending voter ID bills; I am just clarifying what they say.
brantl
@slag: That’s certainly what the Republican party is aiming for.
brantl
@schrodigner’s cat: After 2000 and 2004, we should have already had the voting monitors.
Interrobang
@redshirt: It’s not a new tactic. Joe McCarthy made an entire career out of “where there’s smoke there’s fire”-ing about imaginary communists. Back then, though, they’d pretty well ensured that nobody darker than a paper bag would be able to vote at all, so they had to go after different targets.
pseudonymous in nc
@Jennifer:
That’s the beauty of voter suppression: when it’s done by private parties, it’s very hard to prove in court (and the penalties are significantly lower than the barely-existent voter fraud) and when it’s done by the state, it’s very hard to stop them. The SCOTUS is also pretty reluctant to take up voter suppression cases after the fact.