digby: Are We About to See Another Stolen Presidential Election?

[babylonsister]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/gop-vote-suppression-election

Are We About to See Another Stolen Presidential Election?

—By Heather Digby Parton
| Fri Jun. 1, 2012 10:43 AM PDT


John Manoogian III/Flickr

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I have long wondered why the Democrats haven't seemed to take this seriously. It's been happening in slow motion, but it's been happening in plain sight. It wasn't just the 2000 election, although that should have been enough for the Democratic party to launch a full scale defense against this sort of connivance. And it carried on throughout the following decade in elections throughout the country. You'll recall that even the US Attorney firing scandal was largely about their failure to flout election laws in favor of Republicans. Better late than never, the Democrats seemed to wake up this week:

Attorney General Eric Holder told members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Conference of National Black Churches on Wednesday that the right to vote was threatened across the country. "The reality is that in jurisdictions across the country, both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common and have not yet been relegated to the pages of history," Holder told the audience, made up of black church and political leaders, during a faith leaders summit in Washington. He also reaffirmed the Justice Department's commitment to the Voting Rights Act, and in particular, the section of the law which prohibits certain states from making changes to their election laws without first getting federal approval, and which has been the focus of several recent court challenges.

And he followed through:

The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act, TPM has learned. DOJ also said that Florida's voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida's August 14 primary, meant May 16. Five of Florida's counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls.

It's not that I care so much that the Democrats win. But I really care that Americans are allowed to vote and have their votes counted and I expect that most people care about that too. In this regard there is a big difference between the two parties: the Republicans have organized around suppressing the vote while the Democrats have organized around expanding it. The problem, as usual, is that the Democrats haven't been nearly as good at it.

Republican state governments around the country have been working overtime to manipulate the electoral laws and shut down the Democrats' organizing institutions, from ACORN to unions, and wealthy plutocrats have put huge money behind the effort. With the exception of Wisconsin, the Democrats have been behaving like potted plants in response. One would have thought the 2000 election would have been enough to energize them to protect the franchise, but it clearly wasn't. Let's hope it doesn't take another stolen election to convince them.

[longship]

1. I thought that it was Rmoney who said he wasn't going to set his hair on fire.

Look! There is always voter fraud. But the one thing that the conspiracy theorists ignore is that it is a null sum game. Both sides do it. But every -- and I do mean every -- metric indicates that the fraud is tiny.

It can only influence a national election when a single state is thrust into the forefront by a confluence of events that cannot be foreseen. Hence, FL-2000.

There is little doubt that Al Gore should have taken FL, and the election. But the important thing to realize from those events is that close elections will always -- always -- give rise to such stories.

The only thing we can do is to realize that voter fraud is a small effect. It works both sides equally. There are poll watchers at many, if not all, polling places. (I often volunteer.)

Freaking Jimmie Carter was a volunteer during the recent Texas election!!!!

If you want to insure that elections are on the up and up, stop screaming about and do something. Volunteer as a poll watcher!

I am sick and tired of all this "They are going to steal the election" conspiracies when there is a suitable solution.

If you think that the Republicans will steal the election, volunteer to be a poll watcher. Don't just flap your gums. Put your money where your mouth (gums) is.

[babylonsister]

2. Wow. Pretty simplistic. This has EVERYTHING to do with

disenfranchising people who are Americans and pegged as liberals; blacks, hispanics, etc. States are passing laws to do that, so no amount of volunteerism will counter it.
I know you've been paying attention, so hope you know that.

[longship]

3. So, while you set your hair on fire,

there are so many others of us who will get down in the ditches and do the work to insure that elections are on the up and up.

Jimmie Carter volunteered in TX this past week. That is what it takes.

But by all means, do set your hair on fire if you want to. Don't expect those who are the poll observers to do the same.

[babylonsister]

4. Baloney. Your expression 'set your hair on fire' is bullshit.

I'm not disputing the people who get in the trenches and laud them, but if the system is rigged, and no one does anything about it legally, no amount of hands-on will fix it.
Maybe now it's happening: I can hope.

[yangzhen76]

5. Spam deleted by Violet_Crumble (MIR Team)