Stacy Abrams, a hero for our times, as reported by Marin Cogan in NYMag:
Last month, the woman behind a massive effort to transform Georgia from a GOP stronghold to a potential swing state this year got news she wasn’t expecting — her wildly successful voter-registration effort was being investigated for fraud. Now, two weeks before the election, she’s locked in a fight with the state’s election officials to make sure the people she registered are able to turn out on Election Day. Whether they’re able to cast ballots could have major implications for the election. Both Michelle Nunn, the Democratic Senate candidate, and Jason Carter, the candidate for governor, are in extremely close races. The voter registration effort sought out mostly minority voters, and those voters tend to pick Democrats. In a close contest, their participation could determine whether the Democrats win.
Stacey Abrams, the engineer of the effort, is a star in Georgia politics: In 2006, at the age of 32, she ran for Georgia’s House of Representatives; four years later, she became the chamber’s Minority Leader, making her the first African-American to lead the House and the first woman to lead a party in either chamber…
Georgia’s legislature is part-time; one of Abrams’s many other hats is running a nonprofit that acts as a consulting firm for small, charitable organizations. That work positioned her to see the massive change in demographics taking place in Georgia — the population of the state has increased by 18 percent over the last decade, and many of those new residents are young people and minorities. At the same time, Georgia had a huge number of people — 700,000 to 800,000 African American, Hispanic, and Asian residents — who weren’t even registered to vote. Abrams decided to start the New Georgia Project, an offshoot of her nonprofit, which aimed to work with other voter-registration groups and sign up 100,000 new voters before the October 6 registration deadline…
Abrams knew before she began that the stakes would be high, and that if they were successful, opponents of the effort would likely try to complain about the registration forms, so she says she called the Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp in June to tell him about their effort, and Kemp assigned them an investigator. Abrams said they worked with the secretary of state’s office to make sure their processes were compliant. “I had a very good working relationship with the secretary of state. As the minority leader, I’ve worked very close with him at the capital and always had [a] very cordial relationship with him.” In September, a few weeks before the registration deadline, Kemp’s office announced it was subpoenaing the New Georgia Project for an investigation into suspected voter-registration fraud. The investigation was based on 25 voter-registration forms that were suspected to be fraudulent…
But that isn’t New Georgia Project’s only concern: They’re also raising flags about 50,000 voter-registration forms they say haven’t been processed. On Friday, the national legal group Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights announced it would sue the secretary of state and five counties because the voters they registered had not turned up on the voter rolls or the list of pending voters who needed to verify their information with the state…
Kemp’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the missing forms, but in a fact sheet released about both the investigation and the missing forms, said, “At no time in history has it been easier to register to vote in Georgia than it is right now,” and claimed that both complaints about fraudulent forms and responsibility for processing registration applications fell to the county level. “Any backlog would need to be addressed by county election officials,” the fact sheet says.
But Kemp was also recorded earlier this year saying, “Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.” …
Baud
Yes we can.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Harrumph!
/Blazing Saddles
Mike E
I’m working hard on the phone to GOTV and our early voting begins tomorrow! 10 calling days to go until election day. Courage.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
Same old story…just “losing” the forms.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: They probably are. Holder has been very good about things like this. It is one reason he is hated.
Bokonon
Oh yeah. The backlog of 50,000 unprocessed voter registration forms that would TOTALLY need to be resolved by county election officials. Who can then take a very long time and do a very bad job because … hey, that’s the way things go!
Sometime many months after the election.
feebog
AS I understand it, the voter registration information was entered onto spread sheets so the NGP could do exactly what they have been doing, checking the registrations against the individual county rolls. I have heard anywhere from 42K to over 50K are still unaccounted for. If so, this would represent one of the most egregious instances of voter suppression in decades.
burnspbesq
The irony here is that the Republicans are in something reminiscent of the four-corners delay offense, and the inventor of the four corners was about as liberal as they came in North Carolina.
Mike J
@Bokonon:
And if anybody tries to vote after registering months ago and still not being processed? VOTER FRAUD! VOTER FRAUD! VOTER FRAUD!
Guess they’ll have to crack down and make registration much tougher and more thorough. Shouldn’t take more than 15-20 years to get somebody registered.
burnspbesq
@efgoldman:
It’s a lot easier to fashion and enforce an injunction that orders somebody to refrain from doing something, than it is to fashion a remedy when somebody is not doing what they are supposed to be doing. What’s a judge supposed to do, bring in the FBI or the National Guard to do the processing?
Xantar
In a world where Virginia is purple, Republicans have little chance at the Presidency.
In a world where Georgia is purple, Republicans have no chance at all.
dance around in your bones
OK, I know this is not an ‘open thread’, but I just had to leave this story where someone might read it tonight.
My sister, who lives in Texas and has a doctor husband, said the hospital across from their medical office had a woman come in to the ER saying she thought she had Ebola because she had contact with a Liberian man. Once she got into the examination room she announced that she needed a shot of morphine or whatever her drug of choice was…..and about 12 of those Hazmat suits had already been donned….my sister doesn’t know what happened after that, but the lady definitely did NOT have Ebola. Sister says the lady should go to jail – it’s like shouting “fire” in a crowded theater these days.
What do y’all think? It was inevitable that some nutballs would take advantage of the Ebola fear/craze, doncha think?
Omnes Omnibus
@dance around in your bones: If she had any remote reason to believe that she had the disease, she walks. ITOH, I tend to be very pro-defense. What if the news reports made her be terrified? Should we punish her?
PsiFighter37
Read this earlier. If the margin comes down to less than 50k in GA against us…well, you already know who to blame.
Another side effect of Bush v. Gore = heavy politicization of the SoS position.
dance around in your bones
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, the request for a shot of morphine right off the bat makes it rather suspect.
Sure – if she REALLY thought she was exposed….no hay problema!
I just wondered what y’all thought – most of the above was a direct quote from my sister.
beth
@dance around in your bones: Well if her name was Emily Litella and she’d recently been to the library…never mind.
Seriously, these things are going to happen especially now that flu season is gearing up. Who knows what’s going to set someone off?
Violet
@dance around in your bones:
No “was” about it. The nutballs in the media have been taking advantage of it for awhile now. Ratings.
As for people who want narcotics–ask any ER worker and they’ll tell you many stories about the yarns patients spin as they try to get those medications.
Omnes Omnibus
@dance around in your bones: Like I said, I am a defense oriented guy. If she says “Jebus, I think I have Ebola and I am freaking out. Please give me narcotics, ” she can win.
dance around in your bones
@beth:
I loved Emily Latella – nowadays I rarely run across someone who gets the reference when I say “Oh, never mind”.
@Violet: I know – I have been in an email exchange with a friend who tells me not to minimize the Ebola threat – he’s a smart guy, too – but when I tell him the facts about Ebola transmission (i.e. usually it’s a caregiver or family member handling the bodily fluids of the infected person…well, you know all this) he just brings up The Plague and Spanish Flu and AIDS! – like I don’t know about all that history.
I told him the thing I most object to is the media playing this for all it’s worth for viewers – ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ doncha know.
And yes, I have several doctors in my family and I know all about the drug-seeking behavior in the ER’s. Shit, they should just open up drug stores (like pot shops) and let those so inclined to get what they want legally. Fuck Nixon and his “War on Drugs”. There is a certain percentage of people who just want to alter their consciences.
I know, how very Libertarian of me. Ha!
dance around in your bones
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m glad you’re a defense oriented guy – we need more of those :)
burnspbesq
Just because I feel like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B41O6Xa4Pgg
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s not how it works in the ER. If she’s disruptive and needs to be restrained somehow due to potential highly contagious disease then they’ll find a way to isolate her (or they should) and possibly give her a sedative to keep her quiet. Morphine is not a sedative.
The fact that she came into the ER with a story and then asked for a narcotic is a red flag to any ER medical staff. Addicts will do many things to get their fix and any ER worker can tell you tons of stories they’ve had used on them by patients trying to get narcotics. Ebola is probably just the latest version of the same old story.
dww44
I’m out canvassing for Nunn and Carter and other Dem candidates every other day, telling people to vote and to early vote, which runs for another 8 days. Also telling them we have to get Nunn, and Carter too for that matter, 50% plus 2 of votes;otherwise we’ve a runoff on Jan 06 that will favor the GOP, given who votes for them. Seniors like me.
Let it be noted, though, that the Perdue forces are coming out strong now as they are seeing Nunn’s GOTV efforts. This is a tough and very tight race.
Ruckus
@dance around in your bones:
I have a friend who has sickle cell anemia who will only go to a certain hospital which is across town when she has an episode because they have her records. She tells me that most ERs will not believe a person has sickle cell but are instead looking for drugs. So I can well imagine someone trying this. Really stupid but I can see someone giving it a shot(pun intended).
Another Holocene Human
@feebog: Didn’t the state “investigation” seize all of NGP’s shit?
Did they have backups?
How much can they prove?
Also, Stacey Adams is amazing and the GOP in GA are beneath contempt.
Ruckus
@dance around in your bones:
I believe a few of those horrible European countries have tried making drugs available for those so inclined at not just partaking but partaking hard and have had pretty good success. Controlling the few with empathy and compassion has got to be a lot easier and better than trying to control everyone, including all those not so inclined.
Another Holocene Human
@Ruckus: Huh, you know there is all sorts of data out there about how African-Americans are prescribed for less pain-killing drugs and ask for less from their doctors.
Aside from occupational issues that were not discussed in the write-ups of the research I saw (maybe in one of the full papers they did), that is to say, AA workers more likely to be in jobs where use of narcotic painkillers is incompatible with continued employment than whites, this could be true but I am just spitballing, it seems like the researchers really need to focus more closely on healthcare professionals and the systemic, pervasive unconscious bias of everyone from nurse practitioners to pharmacy techs who are stigmatizing African American patients as drug seekers.
Another Holocene Human
oh crap I said a forbidden word
dance around in your bones
@Ruckus:
Yes, I have heard about the trouble people with sickle cell anemia have at ER’s. I’m, glad your friend found a place that believes her, for fuck’s sake!
Also, I think that the programs they have tried in various European countries would be very beneficial here – have you ever read what Dr. Dean Edell says about various opiates and etc? He said little old ladies and others can function quite well on morphine and etc and not get addicted if they have long term pain management problems.
The way we freak out in the US of A about drugs is just nuts, in my opinion, Nixon did us a big NON-favor starting the War on Drugs because he was scared of the hippies. Well, too bad, you old crook (Nixon, I mean, not you Ruckus).
This country – so inclined to punish anyone who wants to feel pleasure.
Another Holocene Human
@dance around in your bones:
Yeah, seriously, let the drug seekers get their party on, who gives a motherfucking fuck, but let’s take all that money spent on narc cops and military gewgaws and spend it on mental health care, for mood disorders and trauma and for organic mental illness, and spend it on proper addiction care for people who have developped chemical dependency (for many it’s pretty much a genetic thing, Bobby and Sue both drank or took the same thing but Bobby is now addicted and Sue just goes about her business) which is EXPENSIVE but not as expensive as the criminal justice side. It involves the authoritarians giving up their toys so it will never happen but seriously …
this shit is ridic …
we started a “drug war” on the back of a simple law to ban MERCURY and cocaine from CHILDREN’S medicine over the counter
before all of that there was a British royal who was well known to abuse Laudanum (opium derivative, predates the creation of heroin) … sure it was considered bad … the way we pooh pooh today at people who engage in binge eating … it wasn’t illegal
Another Holocene Human
Let’s be real, the reason “drug seekers” show up at ERs looking for drugs is because ERs give them out … whatever’s wrong with you, fuck it, here’s a script for hydrocodones, now go away.
Another Holocene Human
Also, we as a people are kind of stupid about opiates. They are way fucking over-prescribed, which causes real harm to patients, and there’s also lousy followup, which is bad, because not stepping doses down properly causes real harm as well.
However, as a people, we really freak the fuck out about opiates and kind of blow off what might be going on with other drugs.
Okay, so I was prescribed codeine once. I really needed it but I did notice that taking it felt fantastic and I could definitely get used to it. I also thought, you know, I have other goals in my life besides blissing out on codeine so I threw out the pills I didn’t use and went on with my life.
Albuterol, OTOH, fucked with my head severely (I had a meltdown) and I didn’t even know it was happening.
Do you know in Canada you can just go to the pharmacist and get Tylenol-D? Hell, if you have a cold, people will encourage you to do so (well, if you’re white, sample of one). What they don’t want you doing is running down to the doc in the box for antibiotics, USA style.
I think the Conservatives are trying to stop that, like everything else sensible in Canada. Conservatism is a mental disease.
dance around in your bones
@Another Holocene Human:
When I was younger (in the late 60’s) you could still but laudanum over the counter in farmacies. It was sold as a babies toothing gel – to soothe the pain of their teething.
Well, of course, we used to buy the 1 oz bottles and have a party with them. My husband remembered when you could buy Robitussin with codeine across the counter, and the line would be around the block on weekends.
You used to be able to buy Whippets, which were nitrous oxide (laughing gas) in pellets? capsules? I don;t remember, but we used to have a lot of fun with those. And we never went out and shot anybody up with a gun or whatever. Never even have had a gun in my life.,
Shit – if people want to get fucked up on that stuff, why not? It’s not worth the amount of $$$ we spend on ‘drug eradication’ that has not been in any way effective. For lo, these many years.
That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it.
dance around in your bones
@Another Holocene Human:
Ok, I added an eta to my comment and it told me I was “undefined” Fuckers.
I know that you can buy Tylenol #1 in Canada over the counter because I have done it. I was hassled at the border coming back into the good ol USA and I told them “I bought this legally in Canada, so what’s the big deal?”
They let me go.
Ruckus
@dance around in your bones:
Was in the navy with a dude who was shooting heroin regularly. The only way any of us knew was that he got caught with a needle in his arm. Perfectly nice, quiet, intelligent guy who could and did control his habit, just not where he was able to partake. Probably like a high functioning drunk, of which there were more than several anywhere I went in the military. Mostly people in charge of stuff. The ones at the bottom of the ladder who were drunks were all quite young, it’s pretty amazing to see an alcoholic who is 17-18 yrs old.
dance around in your bones
@Ruckus: There are more high functioning drunks/addicts than we know about.
I think a lot of the problems are because people have to take criminal actions to get their fix.
I could be completely wrong, and I don’t think drug addiction is a good thing – but if someone is already addicted, why not give them their drug of choice, remove the stigma, and offer them rehab if they decide to do that?
Treat it like the medical problem that it is, and not some sort of moral failing.
“Just say no!” hahahahahaha
Barry
@burnspbesq: ” What’s a judge supposed to do, bring in the FBI or the National Guard to do the processing?”
Throw the Secretary of State and the appropriate county officials jail, and fine them heavily for each day of delay.
Barry
@burnspbesq: Oh, I forgot – you GOP lawyer.
Curtis
@Baud: If we can get minorities to vote, the Dems win. Hocus Pocus!!! 40,000 minority applications magically vanish.
Go figure.