It goes without saying that none of us are under any duty to respond to demands from self-appointed inspection agents, right?
To Jay DeLancy, North Carolina is fraught with voter fraud and the state is doing nothing about it.
So the former Air Force veteran has taken matters into his own hands and vows, as he sees it, to save the system from eroding honest elections.
DeLancy launched the Voter Integrity Project more than three years ago, leading a band of volunteers in scouring public records and knocking on doors to root out irregularities in voter rolls.
Some call his efforts “sloppy” and question whether he’s addressing a serious shortcoming or whether he’s become — intended or not — illustrative of the tough Republican-driven voter identification law that critics contend intimidates and disenfranchises minority voters.
Sarah Zambon, president of Asheville League of Women Voters, said VIP targets minority and Democratic leaning districts, leading to voter disenfranchisement and voter intimidation.
She said that of the 80 precincts in Buncombe County, all of VIP’s challenges came from 11 precincts, most of them low income or minority — communities that are more likely to have more people living under one roof.
“It has an intimidation effect,” Zambon said, detailing the story of one African American woman who said she didn’t feel comfortable when people showed up at her door and wanted to know where her sons lived.
But still, the state enacted one of the most stringent voter ID laws in the country, requiring one of a limited number of forms of identification at the poll starting in 2016.
The law also gives voter vigilantes more power, enabling citizens to challenge another person’s vote anywhere in the state.
After three years of work and countless volunteer hours, DeLancy has no cases of fraud to show.
He cites, however, that the board of elections has made five “referrals” of prosecution to local district attorneys.
The ID laws they push get more and more restrictive and yet they ratchet this stuff up every election. Is there a Republican lawmaker or media personality who has pushed this voter impersonation fraud lie to make a buck or rile up their base who can tell us exactly what security measures it would take before “integrity has been restored”? Where’s the line the Republican Party and conservatives draw? Is there one?
If you ever needed an argument for why we need federal civil rights protections, if you still need convincing, the activist base of the Republican Party at the state level are making a great one. This is what their “vision” looks like.
Chris T.
Someone should “accidentally” slip this guy a list of all the high-powered judges, lawmakers, etc., in North Carolina as “potential fraud voters”.
Botsplainer
Jesus will forgive them for their lies made in pursuit of temporal power. Why can’t you forgive them, too?
You must be a bad, unchristian person.
Yutsano
@Botsplainer: Or unserious. Possibly a hippie, even.
@JGabriel: Sigh. With that attitude you will NEVER get invited to one of Sally’s soirees.
JGabriel
I think it’s incumbent upon Democratic voters, especially in the South, to investigate voters for white collar crime convcitions, and possible charges of income tax evasion or fraud, in order to ensure that the vote isn’t corrupted by criminals who aren’t allowed to vote. Corruption of the American vote by white collar criminals is a serious problem and must be looked into!
James E. Powell
Where’s the line the Republican Party and conservatives draw? Is there one?
It’s there. Right over the horizon.
NotMax
If they’d just pass a law making it illegal to put anyone other than lily-white, revanchist Republicans on the ballot, the poor guy could take a vacation.
/snarkus maximus
Hunter Gathers
@Chris T.:
Why? All of the ‘potential fraud voters’ you listed are probably 95% caucasian. White people don’t commit voter fraud. Only minority voters commit voter fraud. So sayeth Vote Integrity Jesus.
Villago Delenda Est
“Any election in which a Democrat wins is obviously laced with fraud”.
This is what VIP and True the Vote are all about. The only way Democrats can win is if they bus in thousands of illegal aliens (with brown skin!) to vote for them.
Scum like DeLancy should be stripped of their citizenship.
Kay
@James E. Powell:
You know, I get it. It was a good way to rile up the base, do some grifting and dog-whistling, and it’s obviously effective as a tactic. Now that it’s completely out of control, though, is there anyone besides the DOJ and federal judges who will step in on behalf of the targeted voters?
This is a great history lesson, really, for people who are too stupid to get it the first time. It’s why we rejected their “vision” last time around, and had a civil war.
Higgs Boson's Mate
What else would you have Republicans do? They’re incapable of admitting that they can’t sell their agenda to more than 27% of the public, they can’t run on the basis of good governance, sound foreign policy, or of advancing the interests of 99.9% of Americans. This is all they have.
Botsplainer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Actually, they should be met at a door with a racked shotgun, and some of those triggers should be accidentally pulled.
You know, those unavoidable, inexplicable, tragic accidents which arise from time to time that nobody gets prosecuted for.
Same thing with their chubby, red cheeked poll challengers.
I want these fuckers to be physically assaulted and have to work for it. Hell, I want some of them to die for their efforts. Make it less appealing for up and comers.
aimai
@JGabriel: I’d like to see what would happen (not) if a black person showed up at the private home of an upper class white person and demanded to see their bonafides, their list of people residing with them, the whereabouts of their children.
Botsplainer
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I’ve never seen a solid number, but how much of the German electorate identified with Hitler’s right populists when he got named Chancellor?
Kay
Hey, what ever happened to Eric Cantor’s passionate commitment to voting rights?
He got huge wet kisses from media for mumbling something inane about voting rights after the Republican Party engineered the gutting of the VRA..Where’s the follow-thru? They gave him his campaign commercial, and gave the GOP “bipartisan” cover after the ruling. When do they ask him what happened? Is he unavailable for comment after the photo ops they obediently recorded and displayed?
Mnemosyne
Quick reminder: VoteRiders is helping people get the necessary voter ID and is accepting donations.
Botsplainer
@aimai:
With or without Skittles?
kindness
C’mon. At the heart of any and every Republican freak out is a grifter.
The Iraq War? Grifters big time.
Afghanistan going on 12 years +? Military Industrial grifters.
The 2008 economic collapse. Wall Street grifters.
And those pushing Obama’s citizenship, Benghazi, IRS and now POW swaps….well, grifters but on a smaller level. Hey, not everyone can be a dubya & Darth level grifter. But grift is all they got so that’s where they go.
Bobbo
“Voter integrity” + open carry = terrorism
Comrade Dread
When we get back to the Constitution that Jesus handed Tom Jefferson and only white male land owners can vote.
Frankensteinbeck
Because there are more and more colored voters every election. They know they’re losing very, very slowly, and they know they’ve reached a precipice.
EDIT – I wouldn’t have much faith in the whole demographic timer thing, except Republicans have chained themselves to racism. They’ve made their platform white people vs. everyone else, and are getting ever more fanatic about that conflict.
shirt
How about some billboards in conservative districts showing elderly white people being vigilanteed at a polling place by black or Hispanic looking “ruffians” wearing “Poll Police” armbands or T-Shirt. The caption: “If you don’t tell them where you live, you can’t vote”.
Use their fracking fears and prejudices against them!
MoeLarryAndJesus
More like Jay DeKlancy
AndyG
Repealing the 13th and 14th amendments?
pseudonymous in nc
Certain people in certain parts of America, especially the south, aren’t comfortable with free and fair elections.
Somehow I don’t think there are people knocking on the doors of rich white people with multiple homes in gated communities in multiple states, probably because they can’t get past the gate.
James E. Powell
@Kay:
The question I have is, where is the Democrats’ line? How far do the Republicans have to go before the Democrats, and I mean all of them, start fighting back? This needs to be very public and very loud. How ’bout some D-Day footage – “They died for our freedom, why are Republicans trying to take it away?”
Sure, you can give me examples of a Democrat here, a Democrat there, doing something. You can cite a few lines in a few of Obama’s speeches. But why is there not a sustained campaign to match the Republicans’ campaign? Why have Democrats of consequence pretty much been sitting on their hands since the Republicans stole the White House in 2000?
ETA – In your comment at 12:43, who is “they” and why would “they” do anything to help?
shelley
Well, since this so-called voter fraud is based on ‘feelings’ rather than actual facts, they can keep pushing it forever.
Kay
@pseudonymous in nc:
He’s aligned with True the Vote and True the Vote have a history:
It’s weird how all the voters who lack “integrity” are in majority minority precincts, huh? Subject to supervision and monitoring by GOP activists.
Litlebritdifrnt
I get the “pleasure” of listening to this dickwad on my local RWNJ radio station on a regular basis. Listening to his victory lap after the legislature passed the new voter id law almost made me want to vomit in my car. He was telling the host that recently they found “hundreds” of people living in America that had the same first and last names and the same dates of birth and they voted! Lockwood the host almost had to head to the fainting couch. Fuckers.
Anoniminous
@Botsplainer:
37.27% in the July 1932 election. 33.09% in the November elections. Hitler was named Chancellor in January 1933.
pseudonymous in nc
@Kay:
Weird too how some white folks like to sign up for activities that involve knocking on non-white folks’ doors and claiming quasi-official authority.
This is the broad scope of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s argument: while the specific implementations of discrimination change, the motivations remain constant.
karen
And Asheville is supposedly one of the more liberal areas…
I wonder what happens when someone opens the door with a shotgun and threatens the voter integrity guy to get off their property.
Anoniminous
@pseudonymous in nc:
The South was settled by WASPs and that ethnic group has never been comfortable with pluralism, going back to the days of the Know Nothing Party.
Kay
@James E. Powell:
I don’t think that’s true. I think many of us who are unaffected by the laws did not and do not watch this as closely as minority groups and voting rights advocates do. “We” watch it MORE closely now, but that just really broke thru in 2012.
The DOJ sues a lot. I can’t think of an administration in my adult life who have done more for voting rights. Democrats in Ohio in 2005 put up a very good fight on voter ID and got real safeguards.
The issue, in my view, was “siloed”. It was incredibly hot among AA’s and voting rights advocates, and so that’s who Democrats were talking to in places like Ohio or Illinois or Wisconsin – places with a clear AA vote and some AA institutional power in the Democratic Party. It depends where in the country you are, to some extent. Demographic make-up, AA institutional clout within the Democratic Party (electeds or state Party people who are AA), the particular state law, etc.
Anyway, it “broke thru” in 2012. Obviously, you followed it prior to that but that was not true of the (white) grassroots of the Democratic Party. As late as 2008 I was getting “what’s the big deal?” I felt it tip in 2012, where Democrats here were coming up to me and asking me what was going on.
To say that Obama or Sherrod Brown or Dick Durbin don’t pay attention to this is just not correct. They really do. Bill Clinton has even joined in, here lately.
Anoniminous
@karen:
Only in comparison to the rest of western North Carolina. My in-laws retired there to a town outside of Asheville. It was during one of my all to many visits that I developed my Virulent Stupidity Gene theory.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
Central to the Reagan Revolution was selling whites as a whole that racism was close enough to dead that nobody had to worry about it anymore – that, in fact, it was the most unfair and insulting thing you could do to accuse someone of racism. That part of Reagan’s legacy is dying, killed by the bugfuck lunacy that sprang up when Obama was elected. As uninvolved whites are forced to admit that racism is a big problem, they have to face that voter fraud laws are actually voter suppression laws. I’ve gotten to watch this change in person.
James E. Powell
@Kay:
To say that Obama or Sherrod Brown or Dick Durbin don’t pay attention to this is just not correct. They really do.
Just nowhere near as much as the Republicans do.
Anoniminous
@Kay
@Frankensteinbeck
Good. If Democrats cannot get 2014 voter turnout above 42% we’re facing two more years of the same GOP nonsense and gridlock. Look at the last Virginia elections. Look at the pre-election polling. Look at the actual numbers. Democrats as a whole didn’t vote. The winning margin was provided by AA women who were being targeted by the GOP two different ways: as women, as blacks. So they voted in record numbers.
We need to get the same sense of urgency in the rest of the Democratic Party coalition
Kay
@James E. Powell:
The fight precedes Bush v Gore. The motor voter act was a compromise between Democrats who wanted to expand and Republicans who saw some GOP advantage to registering voters at motor vehicles. Their voters have drivers licenses, because they’re rural. Democrats got the broad expansion and Republicans got more registered voters in rural areas.
It’s portrayed now as bipartisan kumbaya, but it was a deal between two groups who have fundamentally different views of “the right to vote”. They spar constantly. Daily. There’s whole legal theories. In 2007-8, in Ohio, Democrats had a case in federal courts and Republicans had a case in state courts, on the single issue of provisional ballots. It was really quite the epic battle. It went to the Ohio Supreme Court, who went GOP way, but then eventually the federal court trumped.
Kay
@James E. Powell:
Right, but what I’m trying to say is it was centered in places like Cleveland or Chicago or Milwaukee because that was the places where the AA portion of the Democratic base were very alarmed.
In Ohio, a lot of it is driven by AA religious leaders. That’s the history of voting rights. I, as a rural white person, was not privy to all that was going on to fight this until I started really plugging into voting rights. If you go to a voting rights event in Ohio (outside a presidential election year, so not ‘campaign people’, but ‘issue people’ ) it will be 70% black Democrats in the room.
I’m saying because we didn’t know about it doesn’t mean it wasn’t going on. There isn’t a whole lot of “diversity” sometimes on these issues, even within the Democratic Party.
Botsplainer
@Anoniminous:
I thought it was something like that, but wasn’t positive.
That’s a concerning number, because here in the US, that nasty 27% has a supplement nearly as large again that reflexively votes GOP because libruls (that, and some husbands either demand it or have brainwashed it as a necessity for continued family prosperity). That 27% isn’t a full on genocide policy cohort, but is statistically larger than the Bolsheviks, wields great power historically, and is reckless and violent about implementation.
One angle I’ve not seen attempted is a campaign to talk about the consent of the governed and taxation and representation as the primary goals of the American Revolution, something denied to Aboriginal Americans and people of color for centuries. Denial of voting rights is a fundamental failure of the first goal of the American Revolution.
The thing wasn’t about limited government, tax cuts and gun rights – it was about having a voice in the system of government, and conservatives have fucked up every single time.
Botsplainer
@Anoniminous:
I thought it was something like that, but wasn’t positive.
That’s a concerning number, because here in the US, that nasty 27% has a supplement nearly as large again that reflexively votes GOP because libruls (that, and some husbands either demand it or have brainwashed it as a necessity for continued family prosperity). That 27% isn’t a full on genocide policy cohort, but is statistically larger than the Bolsheviks, wields great power historically, and is reckless and violent about implementation.
One angle I’ve not seen attempted is a campaign to talk about the consent of the governed and taxation and representation as the primary goals of the American Revolution, something denied to Aboriginal Americans and people of color for centuries. Denial of voting rights is a fundamental failure of the first goal of the American Revolution.
The thing wasn’t about limited government, tax cuts and gun rights – it was about having a voice in the system of government, and conservatives have fucked up every single time.
jze
Can the new black panthers show up with open carry long guns and be vigilante about his neighbors votes please
pseudonymous in nc
@Kay:
I’m a stuck record on this, but I think it’s important to look at those states where there’s an established civic history of relatively unproblematic elections. There honestly aren’t many of them, but they do exist. They’re also mostly whiter states, so they don’t have the same history of institutional exclusion.
How do you get from, say, North Carolina to Minnesota? California managed to upend a dysfunctional system of apportionment and incumbency, but there aren’t many models of states with soiled election practices getting better without carrots and sticks from the federal government.
This is why I’m always interested in OSCE election reports, and the reactions from various state governors to their presence, because they don’t treat the US as a special snowflake: they have a set of standards that they apply to everyone. And many parts of the US are more like countries struggling with the transition to democracy than ones that have been holding free and fair elections for decades.
Just look at the shenanigans in that Mississippi courthouse on Tuesday night when the local sheriff was all “move along, nothing to see”: that’s something you’d expect from a country that really hasn’t committed itself to free and fair elections.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Villago Delenda Est:
The bus is the first clue, of course. Legitimate voters arrive by limousine.
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
What’s interesting to watch is the shift to Latino voters. That has become more and more obvious. True the Vote didn’t start in Alabama or Ohio. It started in Texas. I think the laws on proving citizenship that all came out of Kansas are a direct response to a larger Latino population.
It’s when the anti-immigration faction merges with the voter fraud faction that you really get something new and horrible.
Botsplainer
@pseudonymous in nc:
As fucked up as Kentucky can be, we’ve not had this kind of trouble.
? Martin
CNN photo story on central California.
If it looks like Oklahoma or Alabama, that’s because in a few ways it kind of is. This region had two economies: agriculture and oil. During the dust bowl, this is where the Okies migrated to. They had their own wildcatters and all that as well.
But over the last half century, oil production has both become more automated and much less because the fields are tapping out (some parts of the valley have subsided 30 feet from the removal of oil) and the price of natural gas (these are very productive gas fields) has bottomed out. We don’t have enough cheap water to do fracking on the scale of the rest of the country.
Agriculture jobs have more suffered from automation and consolidation to industrial from family farms, and from immigration. If you think of how discouraged african americans can feel about the struggles of getting ahead, I’d say that applies pretty equally to everyone in this part of the country. They’re fighting for scraps. My BIL lives there and work in the oil industry, and he’s doing okay, but his job isn’t particularly secure, and he knows there’s no plan B for him.
Kay
@pseudonymous in nc:
Absolutely, and voting administration is tied to voting rights, because without good process the right doesn’t matter, but voting rights advocates get a little yelly and frantic when it’s taken down to a process argument because that skims over what is targeted suppression based on race.
They want both argued, protected, and I agree with that. The right to vote has to be paramount, and then we can get to incompetent administration. I’ll listen to Republicans on election reform in Mexico (they revamped their whole election system) as I did at an Ohio voting rights summit, but I won’t cede the rights issue and let them dodge that. That has to be addressed. We’re not doing the Justice Roberts glide over the rights issue, where, for example, they fix the long lines in Florida but still “scrub” voter lists 6 weeks prior to an election. They have to answer for both.
Botsplainer
@Kay:
Wondering if somebody could ratfuck from inside the GOP and the voting integrity operations while making coin by sponsoring an initiative to get (in particular) voting ID for older, home-born rural black folks.
Splinter the coalition.
Xenos
@Botsplainer: chubby cheeked poll challengers should have their jaws broken. The fuckers have no skin in the game. Let them feel some fear before pulling that shit.
This is personnel. Does all civil disobedience have to be non-violent?
OzarkHillbilly
If there is a Dog, these people will come to MO and knock on my door. Please Dog, pretty please?….
? Martin
@Kay:
Implementation often matters more than policy. Even in this case, voter id would be acceptable to me if the implementation of ID was handled well. Give everyone a free government ID, make it sufficiently convenient for everyone to get (no driving 3 counties away to get to an office), etc. But of course, none of that can stand because freedom or big government or whatever.
But a big problem with reconciling the policy is that if absentee voting is tolerated, than in-person voting shouldn’t be more onerous. There’s just no point to that, so the motivations of people that want to make in-person harder than absentee should certainly be questioned.
John N
There’s no line, as I suspect you already know, because the position isn’t one based on any kind of intellectual reasoning. There is a group of people who wants to keep Democrats from voting, and they decided that minority groups were more likely to vote Democrat, so they want to stop them from voting. But we all know this.
What we have to come to terms with is this: the Republican party, as it is currently constituted, is a mind control cult. FOX News/talk radio is sophisticated brainwashing. Conservatives are hypnotized by endless, repetitive drivel, common phrases which they all chant repeatedly. Read about Scientology “Training Routines” and all of a sudden, this ALL starts to make a lot more sense. People can be manipulated, and are especially suggestive when their active thinking is bypassed, i.e. when they’re watching TV and zoning out, or when they’re driving, listening to the radio, and zoning out. How did so many good people get caught up in something so monstrously wrong? This is how.
We will NEVER be able to get past this scary time until we realize this. The cult controls their mind. It has bypassed logical reasoning, and it has bypassed human dignity. It can’t be argued away.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Xenos: John Brown didn’t think so.
Kay
@? Martin:
Martin, voter ID was working perfectly fine in Ohio and they’re now moving to make it more restrictive. They went from “voter ID” in 2004-5-6 to “photo ID” in 2012, and now they’re listing photo ID’s – hunting license? Yes! How did I know “hunting license” would make the list?
You can’t solve this problem with a rational solution because it isn’t a rational fear. Better administration is a great good government goal, but we have a problem and it isn’t “voting”.
Our position is “there’s a right to vote and you’re trying to stop certain people from voting”. I no longer think some of these people are just really concerned about “ballot security” and if we just make it “safe” enough they’ll cut this shit out. They won’t. It isn’t about ballot security.
Kay
@Botsplainer:
Or, build from the pro-voting side rather than splinter their side.
This is the list of groups who supported the VRA re: the SCOTUS. It’s AA, but it’s also Asian groups and Latino groups and Native American groups.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@? Martin: Voter ID is not designed to be a fix to a voter fraud problem. That problem does not exist.Voter ID is designed to be a method of vote suppression. Once you realize that, you can understand why they need to keep changing it and making it tougher – no matter what they do they are still getting too many voters for their taste. Fundamentally, voter ID advocates don’t really believe in democracy.
pseudonymous in nc
@? Martin:
This has the makings of a philosophical debate, so my response to Kay is that I’m thinking in terms of “culture of free elections”, which is defined by the relationship between rights and policy and implementation. So it’s not exactly a process argument: it’s asking the deeper question of whether states actually value free and fair elections.
Things like True The Vote and VIP are cancerous: they masquerade as a concern with fair elections when they perpetuate a tradition of voter suppression that goes back through poll taxes and literacy tests and straight-up intimidation and violence on election day.
Anoniminous
@Botsplainer:
It may not have been attempted because analysis shows it isn’t effective?
The neuroscience is clear: people do not make decisions using “pure” Cognition. They make decisions Emotionally – remove the Limbic Lobe and all that is seen is dithering. Each individual’s Cognitive/Emotive balance runs along a Fuzzy Logic scale. Fortunately, if I correctly understand the sociologists who study this, individuals ‘clump’ into messaging and narrative reactive groups meaning we don’t have to go door to door, person to person, to persuade.
What, exact, “messaging and narrative” to what, exact, persuadable ‘clump’ is beyond my pay grade.
mclaren
Voting irregularities = voting Democratic.
MomSense
This just kills me. Anywhere the right to vote is attacked is terrible but I feel a special connection to NC having spent time there registering people to vote in 2008. One Stop Early Vote was fantastic because you could register and vote at your polling place and other places like the library or city/town hall so they didn’t have to travel far or take time off of work or scramble to find transportation.
I went door-to-door but if someone had moved the point was to help them to vote. This sounds like they are doing voter caging.
Kay
@pseudonymous in nc:
For rme, you just have to watch the trajectory. We went from “ID” to “photo ID” and now we’re striking voters from rolls. There’s this idea that not taking people off voter rolls when they died was purely incompetence, but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to verify and err on the side of NOT disenfranchising. I get complaints all the time, “I called and told them my mother was dead and I still get a precinct card!” Do we want that? Can I just call and take you off the voter rolls?
They’re changing the whole focus. They’re turning this from a right into a privilege. That’s not a mystery. They don’t believe it’s a right.
The guy at the top of the page wants to disenfranchise homeless because, I don’t know, they don’t have a home. This is not a “rights” discussion they’re having. Ask them. They’ll tell you it’s not in the constitution, by which they mean the first ten amendments.
Ruckus
@Kay:
When I lived in OH I went to register at the appropriate agency, Franklin county, this in the mid 90s. I had to demand that the woman behind the counter do her job, almost make a big stink about it, just to get registered. And I’m white and was then middle aged. But I registered as a Dem and had a beard. If I had had a go along with it attitude I don’t think I would have gotten registered. I’d never had anything like that in CA. Now had I been someone who was not vocal, pushy and white, I wonder if I would have been registered at all. And of course one wouldn’t know until it was too late.
What I’m trying to say is that process is important, possibly as important as being able to assert the right in the first place.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Kay:
This, this, and all this. Any conversation or fight over voting rights must be conducted with this in mind. If we agree to something and worked to implement it fairly, try to get everyone the proper ID, and include exceptions for the weird situations, they will just move the dam goalposts.
TG Chicago
Hi, Kay:
Speaking of voter fraud, did you see this study written up in WaPo (which I saw via digby’s blog):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/03/study-finds-strong-evidence-for-discriminatory-intent-behind-voter-id-laws/
I think you can imagine how this played out, but you can click over for the full story. Great work done by USC. These results need to be spread far and wide.
Svensker
This guy — and a lot of Tea Party types — truly do believe that somehow, some way, the “wrong” voters (i.e., blacks, mostly) are voting multiple times and stealing elections. (See his statement at the end of the linked story.)
I’ve had a couple of conversations with T.P.ers that end in them hysterically calling me a naive dupe for not understanding how the vote is being stolen by blacks voting more than once. It’s kind of astonishing. But then, endless propaganda will do that to folks.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Saying “it’s not in the constitution” to me means one only recognizes the divine right of white males to vote. I notice which amendments didn’t make the cut there. “Really? So just the parts of the constitution that mention you are applicable, then?”
I hate the “sacred right” language, too, that Eric Cantor uses. That’s okay, Eric. I’ll just rely on this statute here. “Right” is fine. Let’s not leave this up to God, because then we’re off to the races.
Chris T.
@Hunter Gathers: Yes, I know. But it would annoy them (the white people thus targeted). The idea is to get the attention of the politically powerful, so as to stop this particular tactic. (It’s just one battle in an eternal war, of course.)
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
I wonder sometimes if this is a cultural hangover from the days when the Irish or Italian-dominated urban political “machines” were accused of doing the same thing. See the opening scene of Preston Sturges’ The Great McGinty, where the title character first comes to the attention of his state’s corrupt politicians because of his enormous success at voting multiple times.
In some ways, it’s an urban legend of long standing that’s just been shifted over to African-Americans and Latinos rather than those scary Irish and Italians. That’s one of the reasons people “know” it happens — the allegations and rumors have been around since well before the Civil Rights Movement.
ETA: This may be the scene, though I can’t get YouTube to load at the moment.
D58826
@Kay: Seems there is an open primary coming up in Va. next week. Good old boy Eric has a tea party challenger. Maybe all the D’s in his district should vote for the tea partier and send Eric back to the obscurity that he so richly deserves
Mnemosyne
@Chris T.:
I would almost be tempted to get a bus/carpool of people together to go over to the guy’s house to show their credentials. You know, that way he won’t be inconvenienced by having to leave his house. They’ll just come to his house, one by one, standing in line at his door waiting for him to check each person’s credentials. Preferably right before dinnertime, or when he’s trying to leave for work.
D58826
@Mnemosyne: On election day my motto is vote early and often :-)
Kay
@D58826:
That’s the other part of this. The Tea Party really latched onto the fake voter fraud issue in a way the rank and file did not, prior. It was always places like the WSJ and Fox News; pundits and operatives. The Tea Party really grabbed it and made it mainstream GOP voter.
That would be a fun thing to do to Cantor. “he’s soft on BALLOT SECURITY”
patrick II
@Kay:
Voter fraud will never be preventable enough, the border will never be secure enough, and zygotes will never be safe enough. These are not reasons but excuses made by the oligarchy to be fed to gullible people to vote for the party that works against their best interest.
J R in WV
What we need is a federal law spelling out:
1) how polling places are to be distributed (evenly)
2) how early voting and absentee voting is to be timed and policed,
3) what ID is to be required (voters registration card) and
4) how late polling is to continue if voters are still waiting to vote (until everyone has voted).
5) how polling places are to be staffed (reps of all parties, designated neutral employees, etc plus NO unregistered volunteers allowed)
other fairness rules as decided
6) no additions necessary by cities, counties, or state legislatures.
Because we can’t trust local authorities not to cheat on the rules, locations or polling places, number of voting machines/staff, etc.
Any polling place that ever had a line needs more staff and equipment the very next day.
I’m even in favor of requiring people to vote, as in Australia. Multi-day voting would be OK too, say from Friday noon til sunset Tuesday?
Something like that. I’m sure that as naive as I am about vote cheating I’m missing things here, but that’s what lawyers are for – to seal things up so any cheating will be obvious because there are no loopholes…
Nothing makes me more angry than people fucking about with voting rights – to me that betrays the fundamental and founding principles of the country – right beside treason as a betrayal of our nation.
Hang ’em high says I. Arrrghh.!i!
rikyrah
Thanks Kay for the info on this crook.
Last time I checked the 15h Amendment was part of the Constitution.
So, the RIGHT TO VOTE is in the United States Constitution.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Oh, it’s not in the important, legal part!
It’s in the “constitution in exile” part, over THERE with “Senators elected directly” and “federal income taxes”
Woodrowfan
@Anoniminous: Hendersonville? Bat Cave? My mom retired down there. I think she’s the only Democratic voter in her nursing home (aside from the staff)
J.D. Rhoades
@rikyrah:
I’ve actually had wingnuts tell me that there is no “right to vote” in the same breath that they tell me to “read the Constitution.”
waspuppet
Note to CNN, Politico, et al: Never, EVER, use the word “tough” to describe these people or anything they do. They listen to what their “betters” tell them, and they go out and endeavor to make the least powerful, most miserable people amongst us less powerful and more miserable.
They’re scared little people who couldn’t cut it in the “real world” they keep talking about, so they stack the deck against someone else so they have someone to feel superior to.
I know some actual tough people. There is nothing tough about this.
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
In Hoboken, NJ, in the 80s one of the mob guys running for office had a whole bunch of dead folks voting for him. It was uncovered before the election was finalized though. :)
J.D. Rhoades
When Republicans win, integrity has been restored. When Democrats win, it’s clearly the result of fraud.
JoyfulA
Delancey said voter participation is up; a higher percentage of eligible voters voting is his proof of voter fraud.
James E. Powell
@Kay:
The Tea Party really latched onto the fake voter fraud issue in a way the rank and file did not, prior.
The Tea Party was and is an hysterical reaction to the election of a
sheriffpresident that’s blacker than any Indian.Turned out to be real handy for the ruling class. They were able to channel all that anger against the one person who had the potential to threaten everything they gained since Reagan. It worked.
EthylEster
Why isn’t vote by mail the answer?
Someone, please explain.
pseudonymous in nc
@EthylEster:
Oregonians tend to say “vote by mail” a lot, but they’re confusing the mechanics of elections with the culture towards elections. Postal voting is more susceptible to coercion and tampering — it’s a lot more problematic than the non-factor of in-person impersonation. What Oregon has is a very strong civic culture and a willingness to prosecute and punish people who interfere with the election process.
So, imagine vote-by-mail implemented in, say, Mississippi. Imagine situations where the teabagger paterfamilias sits down the family with a bunch of pre-filled ballots and tells them to sign on the dotted line. Or where mail-in ballots curiously get stolen from mailboxes in certain communities. And appreciate one reason why African-Americans stand in line for hours on election day: it’s to be sure that nothing happens to their votes.
gene108
@rikyrah:
So are the 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments.
Expanding voting rights have been addressed more by Constitutional Amendment than any other matter of public policy.
Patricia Kayden
@James E. Powell: Thank you! I was wondering the same thing. So when do Dems grow a spine and stand up for their dang selves?! My old boss once derided Democrats for acting like cats terrified of dogs. Stories like these prove my old boss right. Please start fighting back.
cmorenc
Even if the “poll challengers” in demographically dem-leaning precincts are unsuccessful in attacking the bona fides of more than a tiny handful of voters, a HUGE part of the intended effect is simply to slow down and jam up the progress of the voter line – make the line long enough and slow enough to discourage many would-be voters from enduring the lengthy wait to get their ballot. Substantially more voters will be effectively disenfranchised this way than through the number of actual successful challenges.