I’m not sure if I’m more excited that the election will be over tomorrow or that it’s my birthday tomorrow…
Hypothetical Dystopia
“Your silence will not protect you.” - Audre Lorde
Please vote tomorrow!
Judge clears path for Pennsylvania voter ID law to take effect
Opponents will try to further appeal Gov. Tom Corbett’s law, saying it discourages minorities from voting.
By EMILY DERUY
A judge refused on Wednesday to halt Pennsylvania’s voter identification law, paving the way for its implementation in advance of the upcoming presidential election.
It’s Simple Math: There have been 10 cases of voter fraud since 2000. That averages out to 3.33 fraudulent votes per election. So if these Voter ID laws make it harder for 3 or more people to vote, than they’re doing MORE harm than good… Right? Ok. Well. One study found that the Pennsylvania’s ID law could disenfranchise 785,000 voters. That’s a lot more than 3. Like, A LOT more. And that’s just Pennsylvania… There are 7 other states enacting laws like this.
785,000 > 3.33
View Larger “ATTENTION STUDENTS, people who know students, or anyone who has contact with STUDY ABROAD programs. We here at Democrats Abroad France, along with a huge amount of help from our friends in Democrats Abroad Germany, have created a major outreach campaign to help American students register to vote and request their absentee ballots while studying abroad this fall.
We’ll have direct contact with close to 3000 students in France alone.
Won’t you please SHARE this information with anyone and everyone who might be able to join us (for further details, contact us). Let students know that “Your First Time Matters.”
THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID
(or he said)
But seriously, VOTE!!!
![theatlantic:
The Startling Urban Dynamic in Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Law
Something big is happening in Philadelphia ahead of this fall’s presidential election – the first in the state since a stringent new Voter ID law was passed earlier this year – although people there concerned about it are having a maddeningly hard time putting their finger on the precise size of the problem. The city has just over 1 million registered voters. About 800,000 of them are considered “active.” […]
The Pennsylvania Department of State recently released two lists of the Pennsylvania residents whose state IDs have expired since last November (and thus can’t be used to verify their identity at the polls this fall), as well as a list of the active voters whose names don’t match up with the PennDOT database as currently having an ID. This second list is terribly sloppy (one database spells names like McCormack as “Mc Cormack,” and there’s all kinds of chaos with hyphens and apostrophes). But nonetheless, the best official data available suggests that as many as 280,000 voters in Philadelphia may need to get an ID between now and November to have their votes counted.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8jmvjqy7u1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
View Larger The Startling Urban Dynamic in Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Law
Something big is happening in Philadelphia ahead of this fall’s presidential election – the first in the state since a stringent new Voter ID law was passed earlier this year – although people there concerned about it are having a maddeningly hard time putting their finger on the precise size of the problem. The city has just over 1 million registered voters. About 800,000 of them are considered “active.” […]
The Pennsylvania Department of State recently released two lists of the Pennsylvania residents whose state IDs have expired since last November (and thus can’t be used to verify their identity at the polls this fall), as well as a list of the active voters whose names don’t match up with the PennDOT database as currently having an ID. This second list is terribly sloppy (one database spells names like McCormack as “Mc Cormack,” and there’s all kinds of chaos with hyphens and apostrophes). But nonetheless, the best official data available suggests that as many as 280,000 voters in Philadelphia may need to get an ID between now and November to have their votes counted.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
Four years ago, Ohio had three days of early voting, which is obviously convenient for Ohioans who wish to exercise the franchise but have inflexible work schedules or limited child care or other life inconveniences. Republicans passed a law eliminating this early voting period for everybody but active-duty members of the military. The Obama campaign is suing to restore early voting for everybody. Mitt Romney is naturally framing this as an attempt to limit voting by soldiers.
— Romney’s Military-Vote-Suppression Smear (via ryking)
(Source: diadoumenos)
Comparisons of the United States to other major democratic countries show clearly that Americans are far less likely to vote than citizens in other countries. This is problematic, since one major symptom of a poorly functioning democracy is when a large percentage of citizens chooses to not vote.
— Howard Steven Friedman: Enable Voting, Don’t Disable Voting (via sarahlee310)
13,000 Floridians are able to vote - but their Governor won't tell them →
Voting rights being ignored
Over 13,000 Floridians have had their right to vote restored but may not know it because the state hasn’t told them. The ACLU of Florida explains how people can discover if their rights have been restored. Check it out and share with anyone who might be impacted!
This week, we uncovered some troubling revelations about the suppression tactics employed by the legislature and Gov. Scott. Because of a public records request we sent last week, we discovered thousands of rights restoration notifications sitting in storage in Tallahassee having never reached their intended recipients.
As a result, there are over 13,000 Floridians who have regained the right to vote, but haven’t registered to vote because they may not know that they can.
Florida’s system of lifetime disfranchisement for former felons - worsened when Gov. Scott repealed the rights restoration reforms which the ACLU of Florida fought for in the Crist administration - is a key element in the ongoing saga of voter suppression in Florida.
This week’s revelations mean that not only did Gov. Scott roll back the reforms passed by his predecessor, but he won’t even help the Parole Commission inform citizens that their voting rights have been restored. There were no public announcements from the governor’s office to let people know these letters existed, and no effort to allocate enough resources to help the underfunded Parole Commission. These critical documents are simply gathering dust.
Learn more about the neglected letters and check your voting status
Hey Romney, when are you going to make a Facebook post about this?
Hans von Spakovsky, a Bush-era Justice Department appointee, claimed to have found an occurrence of impersonation fraud in a 1984 case in Brooklyn. But when Hasen finally managed to get a copy of the DA’s report (von Spakovsky refused to share it), it turned out that the fraud consisted almost entirely of insiders manipulating registration books and cards. What little impersonation fraud they found was possible only thanks to collusion with corrupt election officials. Von Spakovsky also brought up a 1997 case in Miami, but that turned out to be absentee ballot fraud. In a later op-ed, he pointed to a case in Kansas, but a court ruled that, in fact, no illegal votes had been cast.
— In-person voter fraud: still not a thing. (via motherjones)
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Doesn't Know What's in Voter ID Law →
At one point, when lawyers asked her about the details of the voter ID law, Aichele responded, “I don’t know what the law says.”
[…]
If a law is so confusing that the top official charged with implementing it can’t understand it, how does that bill get implemented? If the law is so confusing that lawyers can’t understand it, how does the average citizen of Pennsylvania figure it out to assure that their constitutional right to vote is protected?
When a bill is passed to solve a problem that State officials acknowledge doesn’t exist, it means the bill was passed for a different reason – one that officials don’t want to admit publicly. Since bills like this, by coincidence, tend to prevent people most likely to vote for the Democratic Party; the real reason for Pennsylvania’s law is pretty clear. It’s about suppressing voting – not suppressing voter fraud.
(Source: sarahlee310)
View Larger Elections inspector won’t join in coup.
Christopher Broach, a Democratic inspector of elections in Colwyn, Pa., says he won’t enforce Pennsylvania’s voter ID law.
“To ask me to enforce something that violates civil rights is ludicrous and absolutely something I am not willing to do,” Broach told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Though there’s the potential he could could face fines or prison Broach said his mind is made up.
“Rosa Parks made the same decision,” he told the paper.
“Pennsylvania’s statistics indicate that 43 percent of voters in Philadelphia lack a form of state-issued identification,” the report goes on. “The law is currently on trial in state court and the Justice Department is conducting a federal investigation into whether the law is discriminatory.”
When you try to turn legitimate voters away from the polls, you’re no patriot. Christopher Broach is a patriot.
43% of voters, y’all. In Philadelphia alone.
Are too many Democratic voters sleepwalking away from our democracy this election cycle, not nearly outraged enough about Big Money’s undue influence and Republican state legislatures changing the voting rules?
It seems so.
— Charles M. Blow in his column, Where’s the Outrage? - NYTimes.com (via bohemiansouth)
