Right, this is how they get a stalemate on election security while trying to make Dems look bad instead of the other way around. As I’ve been saying for a long time, Democrats needed to offer them voter ID with automatic registration at 18, election day as a federal holiday, anti-gerrymandering legislation, and anti voter-suppression legislation. Make them oppose that. Democrats are too stupid/complicit to have done that, and now Republicans are running the same play on them.
Now Republicans are offering the paper trail on elections, but only if Dems give them voter ID. “Let us win through rampant suppression of minorities, or we’ll let Russia hack our election systems. Choose how you want to lose!”
All that needs to happen is the reinstatement of the Voting Rights Act. In case you’re unfamiliar with its major impact, bad actors from the Civil Rights Era (basically every Southern state) were not allowed to change any state election laws without federal approval first. Roberts overturned it under the idea that racism was dead cuz Obama, and said the states wouldn’t do what the plaintiffs argued they would (everything they could to suppress the vote).
The moment that was overturned, the bad actors resumed being bad actors (we had to seriously fade Voter ID in 2012 as the major example). The only response to anyone about Voter ID is that it’s a Poll Tax and voting is free.
If you want to provide the Voter IDs by going to each house taking a picture and handing them a free ID with their CORRECT voting address on it that is tied to their voter registration, you may have standing (this would be harder to do than the Census and far more expensive). But that is absolutely not anything any GOP person wants or will ever do. Therefore, it’s a Poll Tax and intended as a racist (institutional) suppression of the votes of any person who is poor and/or not adequately mobile.
Poll Taxes and literacy tests were the kinds of things the bad actors employed prior to the Voting Rights Act that absolutely had to be gotten rid of. It just needs to be reinstated, just like Citizens United needs to be overturned. Both of those sociology experiments failed, and it was quite obvious they would. With the data there is now about what happened on each, neither would probably get by even this court today.
Right, I’m familiar with the VRA, Shelby v. Holder and the results of the ruling.
I agree with most of what you wrote. I disagree with “Both of those sociology experiments failed.”
They worked exactly as intended - and I am pretty sure you agree with that. The GOP wanted this outcome.
As for the poll tax aspect and voter ID, I’m obviously not FOR voter ID on the merits or morally. But I am for using it as a political sledgehammer to paint the GOP as full of shit and to try to expand the vote rather than suppressing it. In other words, giving Voter ID for free to high school kids the year they turn 18 and automatically registering them to vote would expand the vote rather than suppressing it. Finding a way to give everyone voter ID and registering them without costing them money would be great.
Of course the GOP would never go for this because it’s not what they want to use voter ID to do, but that’s kind of the point of proposing it. They know it’s a “solution” without a problem, and their goal is to suppress the vote. So offer to help them completely get rid of voter fraud while also expanding the American electorate, and they’ll be painted into a corner on that bill.
And of course when you say that fixing this stuff is as simple as reinstating the VRA or overturning Citizens United, well, sure, but that’s as “simple” as getting a SCOTUS majority.
Free for Voter ID is the key to it being used, and as you said, it will never be free.
I know what the GOP thought in the sociology experiments, and I know what Roberts thought would happen in the sociology experiments. But their fake reasoning for overturning those was that it would be the other side of the sociology experiments. They can’t say that with a straight face now, or they would have just rammed through the Citizenship question. They know exactly what that was for, and knew specious reasoning wouldn’t fly like on those other two. You can easily say ‘let’s give the bad actors a chance to do right’, and ‘let’s prove politics won’t be overrun by money’ even if you know the outcome. You can’t do that on the Citizenship question, because there is no ‘other side’ reason for it.
Overturning the SCOTUS majority is way easier than overturning either of those decisions. Think about why, and neither are likely to happen unless things get really really bad in this country.
I’m torn on this California tax return requirement. On one hand, requiring tax returns from presidential candidates is obviously a good thing. On the other hand, this gives the GOP yet another reason to act in bad faith and cry foul and delegitimize election results. I guess they’d do that anyways, but ugh I can already hear the whining.
Correct they will act in bad faith anyway and just make up some bullshit to whine about so who cares. Everyone who still thinks, I wonder what conservative shitbags will think about this, needs to get those thoughts out of their head.
I was (am) against the CA tax bill and called my local state senator (Portantino) to urge him to vote against. He supported it. But, I just saw an interview with him and am reasonably sure that when I called his office he answered the phone, which kind of amuses me.
Current count is 112 from what I’ve seen. I’d like to know who the magical 113th is. I started a thread that is a good place for stuff like this even though it’s probably worth cross posting.
The Act Blue list is alphabetical, which is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. It gives no context for history of when people got on board.
The two missing names on the CNN link are Karen Bass (CA) and Frank Pallone (NJ). Both voted Nay on tabling Al Green’s impeachment resolution and are not a surprise.
I think just keeping one list, and then having the others as ones that are probably on the record is the best way to do it. It only means something if the people not listed were on the Yay list for tabling the Al Green impeachment resolution.
I’m sure we will get there. It’s hilarious that if Trump would just keep his mouth shut, Barr and the GOP could have made this all go away. They still might but Trump’s too stupid to keep quiet.