I am glad to see the NYT devoting space to this issue. If we do not break through the taboo issue of how secure our elections are, and how many people are allowed to vote without onerous circumstances, our country will dissolve as the mistrust grows and grows.
14
Surely there must be a way to make vote suppression illegal going forward if Democrats take power back. The republicans have exposed the weaknesses in our constitution, laws and democracy and are exploiting them all over the place to marginalize people. We need more precise laws on the books that cannot be overrun and harsh penalties for those who try to suppress citizens from voting. It's outrageous that they've been getting away with this for so long.
18
It is worth remembering that Jeb stole Florida, and the national election, for his brother in 2000. The butterfly ballot would have done it, but the larger scam was disqualifying thousands of "felons", most of whom were not felons, but were black. This is all well documented. Disenfranchisement cost Gore at least 4000 votes. Until Trump, Dubya was the worst president the U.S. has ever had--Harrison gets a bad rap, nobody could have stopped the Civil War--and we will be living with the damage he did for the rest of my life. Voter suppression matters.
24
Disenfranchised. An interesting term. In our Republic, voting is essential for an effective democracy to operate. Yet when laws are put in place to safeguard that sanctity of the voting booth, it is labeled disenfranchising voters. Who has the right to vote? US Citizens, plain and simple. If a voter moves from one state to another, there is nothing in place to remove that voter from the previous rolls. Purging non-participating voters is one way. History has shown us that ballot stuffing, a normal process for most Chicago elections in the past, damages the process. Voters, deceased or incapacitated, having their vote used by another, again damages the process. Our immigration process, which has lead to over 15 million in our country illegally, has put suspicion on the process. Requiring ID does not disenfranchise anyone. Bring out that voter, the one with no form of government ID, and provided him/her with one. In this modern era, there is no one who is here legally that lacks some form of government issued ID. Clean up the rolls, clean up the voting process and allow all political parties to engage in ensuring that those who have the legal right to vote, do so, but legally.
7
Gerrymandering is impossible in New Zealand where the composition of Parliament is determined by the proportion of the popular vote received by each political party.
Voter registration and electorate boundaries are managed by a statutory national body called the Electoral Commission which is independent of the political parties.
You can register to vote the day before the Election Day which is on a Saturday so voting does not impact work for many people.
You can choose to cast your vote during the two weeks prior to the election at a reduced number of voting places which are still very accessible.
The Electoral Commission uses schools as the most common voting places because these are by definition accessible to most people and is required to make arrangements to make it easy for people to cast their votes.
There is a single national voter registration database.
Once registered, the Electoral Commission stays in touch with you in the run up to the election to confirm your details are current and runs extensive advertising campaigns to ensure people who have moved know how to update their details and to remind new adult citizens how to register to vote.
Voter fraud is extremely rare.
From the perspective of an individual, the entire process is simple, friendly and absolutely professionally managed to the very highest of standards.
Gold standard democracy.
It’s something to be proud of and to be defended.
By contrast America seems to be so incredibly corrupt.
25
Let's face it, we live in a racist country and one party supports it and is perpetuating it.
Pundits worry we don't want to be around each other and are self-segregating. It's pretty difficult to socialize with racism enablers, even the ones who claim they don't understand the fuss and are certainly not racists. They feign shock there is such a thing as racism and insist anyone can fill out a form without a tiny error or misspelling or have a valid ID, therefore they are not racists by supporting this stuff.
For Shame.
9
The only voter fraud in the United States comes at the hands of Republicans blocking the vote. It's the only way they can win elections going forward.
16
The GOP has realized due to changing demographics the only way they can stay in power is to cheat and lie . Republican politicians in states they hold are active in voter suppression and led by voter fraud spin master in chief of deception President Trump. Democrats need to at least get control of some states as the GOP now controls all levers of power including now the Supreme Court. The GOP will use these levers of power and with FOX/STATE TV allies try in impose GOP control as long as they can. Undoing the New Deal , Social Security ,Medicare while promoting endless tax cuts for the rich and powerful until the Government is powerless vs huge corporations. An oligarchy with Trump as our version of Putin protecting his class while pretending to be for the little guy . A war could solidify Trump as our dictator allowing for Martial Law and internment camps for dissidents.
11
Superb, well researched, comprehensive assessment of “democracy in america” !
6
At least 3.5 million more people are on U.S. election rolls than are eligible to vote. Add in 22 million illegal immigrants, some with fake IDs. But just keep saying there is no fraud.
5
And yet documented voter fraud is extraordinarily rare, despite Kobach et al’s effort to uncover it. But disenfranchising millions to protect against an imaginary threat serves your political agenda and you will never let actual data intrude into your alternative reality.
19
Maybe it should be a part of school curriculum to teach students the importance of voting and how to fill out a voting form correctly. Make a law that says it is compulsory to teach this basic action in schools. Knowledge is power.
7
The Georgia Secretary of States office has said that provisional ballots will be given to people who find their registration was purged in error. There are procedures in place to handle this.
There are rules, they're being followed. I'm hoping the idea that proper registration includes using your current address and name gets understood better in the future.
3
I have been involved in voter registration campaigns since 1971 and "have seen it all".
In rural Florida I knew black farm workers who were fired and lost their homes because their employers were told that they registered.
In pre-Harold Washington Chicago, you had to go all the way downtown to register or change your address on alternate Tuesday afternoons unless you were registered by your precinct captain/patronage employee.
In other parts of the Country, I saw polling places switched at the last minute and other dirty tricks.
The way to fight voter suppression is to ORGANIZE. The Democratic party should stop throwing away millions of dollars on television ads and put more money into field operations to register voters and do get-out -the-vote campaigns that develop community leaders and future candidates.
Purging of voter rolls and voter I.D. should be attacked not by whining and spending money on lawyers, but by using the suppression as an organizing tool.
What better argument is there for voting than that "the politicians are trying to stop you from voting."
Also, we need to stop making excuses: voting is a right, it is also a responsibility.
17
@Hugh Tague Voting is an absolute responsibility of every citizen, but every citizen's vote is not counted when ballots are thrown out. Most of these purges are done secretly. The voter does not even know about it. I always check to see if my vote has been tallied, but not everyone can do that. Also, you do not know if your vote has been changed, as the candidate you chose is not usually recorded, and, yes, that DOES occur.
8
Conclusive proof that the Supreme Court is a full partner in the Republican takeover of the nation. The Roberts court will be remembered as one engaged in thoroughly partisan warfare against the Republic.
18
Between the 2013 Supreme Court ruling he wrote that gutted the Voting Rights Act, the Citizen's United case, and gerrymandering, our electoral process is subject to voter disenfranchisement and corruption. Due to the stealing of a Supreme Court nomination from President Obama by Mitch McConnell, the Supreme Court is stacked to prevent these problems from being corrected short of a Constitutional amendment, which would be highly unlikely to pass. In short, the Republican party has rigged the system in their favor and its unlikely the system can be fixed in the foreseeable future. Our once beautiful system of government envisioned by our founding fathers is now a shadow of its previous promise. Our only hope is to vote the party responsible out of office, but they sure have made that hard to do.
23
Unfortunately, and that is not a strong enough word, no matter which side wins the election will be deemed illegitimate. Dems will see that their vote has been suppressed, or Republicans will contend voter fraud. It is imperative that confidence in our elections be restored.
4
@Jerry Ligon Except that there is voter suppression and there is no voter fraud. Reality should play some role in our democracy.
8
@Jerry Ligon
Yes. "Nice work if you can get it--won't you tell me how?" as the old song put it.
1
Why are the republicans so afraid of losing that they will remove people from voting lists, from transportation to polling places, freeze voter registrations (months before elections), refuse to mail out ballots for one reason or another? Why is it that the states with the biggest problems with voter suppression are republican run states? What happened to the clean, fair, honest campaigns & elections of the past (60's & 70's)? Now we are expected to vote without hearing the candidates' positions on policy & citizens concerns (rights & freedoms) but to choose between who has the least dirty laundry/criminal past. Where are the truly honest concerned candidates who will not stoop to the muckraking & trashing with false stories & lies? SAD, SAD country the US has become. Vote intelligently or enjoy the dictatorship that is developing right now around you.
13
@Nostradamus Said So Why? Because Republicans are a minority party. Cheating, along with racism and demagoguery, is how they win.
3
I agree that voter suppression is a serious problem. But it is not clear what to do about it because there are reasonable arguments on both sides.
I am truly disturbed that we deny ex-felons the right to vote. This is added to the very high rate of incarceration in the US. The per capita rate of incarceration is 14 times that of Japan. This means that over 2 million Americans are in prison at present, with maybe triple that number who are in prison, on probation of on parole.
We have created a vast underclass of ex-felons. There are some who are falsely convicted, others who are mentally ill, yet others who are addicted to drugs. It is always politically popular to make punishments more Draconian.
I am less sympathetic to those who cannot or will not fill out reasonable registration forms. But I could be wrong. This is an issue that should be debated.
But what disturbs me more than voter suppression is the suppression of free speech by the media, which have become increasingly partisan in the last few years.
The NY Times for example has become increasingly partisan. Journalists at the NY Times would most likely argue that they have been forced into partisanship by a president who has baited the media, has in fact told lies in order to get the media, like the NY Times, to become more extreme in their reporting.
But the NY Times does not need to descend to Trump's level. In a sense excessive partisanship hands Trump the victory he clearly desires.
1
@Jake Wagner The media does SEEM to be biased if you have no clue what is going on in this country, but it is simply pointing out the truth. While no one is perfect, trump and company have brought the lie to an art form and have started and keep the hate ball rolling. Do you think the press should report only on the positive? If so, we need to see a lot more positive behavior coming from the White House. You need to look at the reporting on Democratc candidates. The press is rough on them, too, when they commit sins, and always has been.
8
Ex-felons have been denied the right to vote since colonial times.
1
Perhaps every editorial column need not be about the horrors of the Trump presidency. These pages rightly criticize the paranoia and fear expressed so loudly by the right to promote their ideology but then counter it with liberal paranoia and fear about how wrong things must be when politics fail to go their way.
3
The Republican Party needs to cheat to win. They are not the majority party in the country. In 2016 more people voted against Donald Trump than for him. Democrats and third party candidates numbered close to 10 million more votes than Trump received. In judicial appointments, the Senate had to subvert, then change the rules to fill the last two Supreme Court vacancies. For Kavanaugh Republicans needed a toothless background check to allow a vote to take place. In state after state, Republican incumbents are declaring they will not take away pre-existing healthcare guarantees when those same candidates have voted dozens of times to repeal Obamacare. Republican candidates tout middle income tax relief when they voted for a tax bill that gave a huge boon to big business and the wealthiest Americans. Republicans have boomed the national debt.And now that corporations and people of means pay less into the federal coffers, there will HAVE to be cuts somewhere. “Entitlements”, of course. People who need to pay less for healthcare, who need more money in old age because their resources do not go as far as they expected them to will have to pay for Republican values that define entitlement. I define Republican “entitlement” as expecting the middle class to pave the way for wealthy people to pay as little in taxes as they can, in order to hoarde their riches and then pass that money on to their heirs so they can do the same. Yes, Republicans can only win by cheating.
25
If there are any questions about the heart and soul of the Republican party it should be quite evident there is neither. Their only goal in life is to win. There are no rules. They have manipulated the outcome of national elections to put people like John Roberts in a place to dismantle the civil rights of African Americans in the south, make sure money has a voice in the public discourse and to insure that state legislatures that are run by Republicans get the laws needed to keep them in power. I dare say that their argument about interpreting the Constitution based on the intention of the founding fathers is nothing but a hoax. The problem is that fear of losing power and prestige within the nation is causing whites to vote Republican. While many are afraid to admit it, they know it's true. I live in Georgia. I've seen it first hand. This past week a campaign worker came to my door with door hangers for Brian Kemp. He took one look at me through the glass and shook his head from side to side in the negative; he knew I wasn't white and there was no need to leave a hanger or have a conversation. I shook my head in the affirmative; he was correct in his assessment. If an everyday citizen can figure out that elections in Georgia are about race, why couldn't the five justices who helped dismantle the civil rights laws preventing gerrymandering from happening figure it out? The answer is they could and they did. Don't expect people to respect laws that disrespect their rights.
7
Maybe all Democrats should change their registration to Republican. It may confuse the republicans enough to sabotage their voter suppression agenda!
7
Voter suppression is an atrocity and a severe problem. But only in the closest of elections will it matter statistically - which could indeed occur in the Abrams-Kemp race. By far the biggest danger is the hacking of unaccountable electronic voting which has the potential to make a mockery of the entire system. And that is where the Democratic Party should be devoting resources to keep it from happening.
4
I wonder if Chief Justice Roberts getting a full picture and scope of his gutting of the voting rights, now understands , no, we have not"changed."
The heart of deceitful men always look for the ways of graft and greed.
This has to be challenged and brought back to the Supreme Court again and again. Roberts opened the flood gates and we all can clearly and evidentially see he was a wrong.
Voted yesterday. 9 days to go to curtain time folks. We need to shine bright.
5
@Sa Ha Roberts and the other right wing "justices" are very well aware that there is still a problem with voting. They are just as crooked as all those using voter suppression techniques. It is amazing how many ways they have done it. In North Carolina they have used them all, including making it harder for college students to vote. That's one you don't hear too much about. I put justices in quotes as it is a complete misnomer for those criminals.
1
Why don’t the Republicans reach out to minorities and try to find common ground with them instead of trying to suppress their votes. I’m in Georgia and voter suppression is a real thing. It’s not just the voter ID laws, it’s preventing a bus load of black senior citizens from voting (not illegal to arrive at the polls in a bus), it’s arresting a black person for taking somebody else’s absentee ballot to the mailbox (also not ellegsl), it’s throwing out absentee ballots because the signature doesn’t look exactly the same as what’s on file to some election official (I registered to vote in Georgia 23 years ago, I’m surer my signature has changed since then), it’s rejecting voter registrations because of insignificant things like a hyphen.
Not to mention that Georgia’s voter data was openly available to hackers for an extended period of time, even after the problem was reported to the State by a security expert.
There has been zero evidence of voter fraud in Georgia and it’s extremely rare in the US in general. Voter fraud is a made up problem to justify voter suppression.
6
Georgia's voter data is public record and lists can be purchased.
1
@KR
KR, this is a truly chilling report. May Georgia find a way to fairness and even-handed treatment of the voter's rights.
1
The real question is whether Americans can make democracy work. Yes, who gets the right to vote is an important issue. I believe that ex-felons should have the right to vote. I am less sympathetic to extending the vote to people who cannot fill our reasonable registration forms without making mistakes.
But these are issues that should be discussed and decided upon. More worrisome to me is the fact that whether we vote or not, democracy seems to be fading in the US.
Some would blame Trump, but others see Trump as a symptom. Americans are too quick to judge members of the other party as not just having wrong beliefs, but as worthy of hate.
Can Americans make democracy work? Democracy is especially an American endeavor. It is the US which has the Constitution which we hold up to the world as an ideal, including the Bill of Rights, which we argue should be extended to other countries.
But other countries have a different heritage. China for example looks back to an autocracy that lasted for over 2000 year, starting with Qin Shi Huang, who reigned 220-210 BC.
Although there were many bad emperors there were also those who are highly regarded among the Chinese. In the 20th century the Empire was replaced with a communist autocracy.
More and more it is China that the US will need to compete with in the world economy. And third world nations will look to the US and China for alternate models of governance.
We should be working harder to get our act together.
2
So GOP hackers won't have to bleed off votes from city districts like they did in 2004. Now, it's all done legally. I've always replied to lawyers who say that the law has nothing to do with justice: "Then, what is purpose of lawyers, judges, and laws?" To make the rich and powerful immune to morality.
2
Can't the Democrats make election reform more of an issue at the national level? I understand that most voting regulations are at the state level, but these voter suppression efforts seem to be shameless, ever-changing, and unending! You'd think it could be part of a broader reform message including money in politics, etc. I know that much of this is already in the Democratic 'platform' but I don't see candidates discussing this much. I think it would be a winner and it would be very hard for Republicans to argue against it.
2
Republicans' success at gerrymandering is the result of winning most of the relatively small, local elections for state representatives and state senators. Thousands of these local elections are 'off the radar' because they take place in sparsly populated rural communities.
Republicans have out-messaged Democrats and Independents in these races by focussing on emotional issues like guns, religion, abortion and gay marriage.
Democrats need to motivate folks in these communities with a positive vision of affordable health care, strengthening the social safety net and strong family values.
5
I am a Georgia voter. As in Kansas, the same Secretary of State who instituted and promoted years of voter suppression efforts is this year on the ballot running for governor. That has not ended voter suppression. One week it might be the 40 elderly black voters removed from the bus taking them to early voting. Another week, it is the attempted closing of the majority of polling places in a county that is predominately black. It is the 53,000 voter registration forms in limbo, the absentee ballots tossed, and it goes on.
The judicial system has mixed results in this era after the Roberts Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
• A judge decided it was too close to the midterm election to introduce paper ballots (after Kemp and the GOP state legislation delayed all attempts to switch).
• An election board stopped the closing of most of the polling places in Randolph County. A three judge federal panel acknowledged "compelling evidence" that the Georgia General Assembly had racially gerrymandered two Atlanta districts between censuses and admitted that it wasn't "fair" to the voters.
• A judge has blocked Georgia's current throwing away of absentee ballots due to the new "exact match" laws where even a hyphen can disqualify a vote.
Georgia is where Martin Luther King Jr. was born and grew up, where he and his father and his grandfather preached.
MLK condemned "the denial of this sacred right" to vote.
Shame on the GOP.
9
This comment is self-defeating.
Things were attempted in certain counties (at the county level) and were stopped. Repeat: stopped.
This means the system is working.
What would be interesting is the follow-up on voters in those counties actually throwing out the county-level officials who tried things that would have made it hard for them to vote.
I really am troubled by the divisiveness present in today's political climate. I would like to see some truth in reporting and an end to the rhetoric on both sides. One person here is outraged at the millions of votes for 4 PEOPLE caught, but fails to understand the HUNDREDS of fraudulent votes these 4 cast. On purpose or just not thinking? We had people bragging in 2008 about voting dozens of times for Obama traveling from one voting location to another since ID was not required. Another has it their head that GOP can't win without 'lie, cheat, steal' yet it was proven that LBJ was elected to Congress by fraud and we did nothing about it. Audits have shown thousands of dead people still on voter rolls, with some of them having cast votes. Most Democrats would never be elected if their true agenda was known yet the hatred for the 'other' party is alive and well, particularly now. I have never witnessed so much vile hatred in my lifetime, harassment, intimidation and even killing - all done by those on the left of center, yet all the news focuses on keeping the right in the cross hairs. I want fairness, I want some way to insure there is no fraud on either side. How about the thumb in the ink like Iran? No ID, no precincts, no early voting. Everybody votes on election day ANYWHERE there is a poll and dips their thumb in ink so they can't vote more than once.
2
Election Day ballots are for more than broad federal posts. How would a worker from Smithtown commuting to Manhattan, for instance, vote at a polling place on First Ave?
@George I doubt it. It seems rather unlikely you can register at more than one place. Think a little bit here. Is the Texas Secretary of State really that stupid and ineffective? Is he/she a Republican? Please list of few of the left wing murders that you say are ignored.
1
Here's the summary of the article: for years, Republicans have been amassing power at all levels and now control everything by hook or by crook, mostly "crook." And now we are supposed to be surprised that they are using all that power to keep it and to amass more.
How do we combat this insanity? Vote for Democrats, all Democrats. Anyone left of far right, anyone sick of being fearful, anyone and everyone who still has a shred of hope remaining for America must turn out en masse and overwhelm the system. Vote as though it's the last time in your life you'll actually have a genuine chance for your voice to be heard. It took five months for the Third Reich to establish its power; it's taking the Trumpists two years, but in both cases the groundwork was laid long before. It may be too late, but it also may not; are you willing to take that chance? I'm not. Vote Democratic November 6th. It's your right and obligation as true American. Then maybe we can prosecute the political bad actors, re-educate their followers and start to reclaim our country. Maybe.
3
Just yesterday, Republicans on the New Hampshire state Supreme Court disenfranchised the college students who swung the state to Clinton, who would tend to vote Democratic in the midterms.
We have watched Kansas, Florida and we have even watched the dramatization of Jim Crow voter denial--it goes beyond "suppression"--depicted in the movie "The Free State of Jones" where, after painstaking efforts at voter registration, in the end, the votes of former slaves are discounted. Watching this with my New Hampshire neighbors, we shook our heads and simmered with disdain at those smug, despicable Mississippi low life types who kept power by naked election rigging.
Now we look at ourselves and say, "It's happened here."
1
Keep up the good work. No felons or those who cannot identify themselves at the polls, thanks.
4
Of course voter suppression will swing the midterms and it will favor the Republicans who have decided they cannot win fair and square.They have decided to disenfranchise any group who is not guaranteed to vote for them, American Indians, African Americans and Mexican American.They do not accept that we are all Americans with inalienable rights.They seek to weed out people who do not traditionally vote for Republicans.This stripping people of their voting rights shows that the the Republicans are bigoted and ignore the American Constitution.
1
Republicans rule by fixing elections. Ever since Bush V Gore got fixed by Scalia, they have worked to keep vulnerable voting machines where they could use them, suppressed Democrat leaning minority and student voters by many means, colluded with foreign powers to shape the vote to fit the RNCs needs.
How they came to hate American democracy is no secret. Its demise permits unbridled corruption and class advantage.
2
What a shame in a country so proud to have a 'democracy', starting with the vote to elect representatives, that we are witnessing the republicans trying to suppress it not only with gerrimandering but with many other dirty tricks in their stinking bag. And we having even mentioned the officials in charge, attempting to disenfranchise voters on lame excuses, an awful conflict of interest. If they win, it will be another stolen election 'a la Trump'.
3
It infantilizes minorities to suggest they are unable to figure out how to get an ID. There's no such thing as voter suppression.
2
Ex-felons should not be allowed to vote in FL or anywhere.
Too bad Dems continually make the argument that blacks and other so called minorities are not even capable of getting a government issue ID.
3
The Dems have repeatedly brought up important issues only to make horrible choices of their poster child to represent their point.
The minority rules.
2
Texas allows felons to vote after they served time and finished probation. Texas is mostly Republican at least out of the major cities. Are you saying the new demograph the Democrats should pursue? Can't win without them?
Political shenanigans have been around since before our revolution. George Washington lubricated the voter with rum punch and chocolate to get a Virginia seat in the Continental Congress.
Beto O'Rourke can learn something good old George. There's are many whose vote can be bought with a jug of liqour and bag of Halloween candy. Like myself. To be honest it would be the only way I could vote for him. Drunk.
What hypocrites! While Republicans lie about widespread voter fraud, including by illegal aliens, they perpetuate the real and widespread fraud of disenfranchising voters from their rights.
1
The Republicans responsible for limiting people's access to voting are not even trying to hide what their doing. What country is this? What country have we become?
Where and when will justice appear.
People I know say they have tearfully woken up in the morning to what seems like a never ending list of atrocities perpetrated on the American people by this administration. Aided and abetted by congressional enablers.
I wrote a comment to these pages recently and used the words "a country in dispair". In the last few days we have seen Repiblican voter suppression tactics across the county, politically motivated pipe-bomb attacts, and now murder at a Jewish synagogue by a trump supporter.
Where and when will justice will appear?
1
The Republicans responsible for limiting people's access to voting are not even trying to hide what their doing. What country is this? What country have we become?
Where and when will justice appear.
People I know say they have tearfully woken up in the morning to what seems like a never ending list of atrocities perpetrated on the American people by this administration. Aided and abetted by congressional enablers.
I wrote a comment to these pages recently and used the words "a country in dispair". In the last few days we have seen Repiblican voter suppression tactics across the county, politically motivated pipe-bomb attacts, and now murder at a Jewish synagogue by a trump supporter.
Where and when will justice will appear
?
1
Silly me. I thought voting was a Right. Not determined by a governor, secretary of state, on and on. This a pitiful form of democracy that we avow to here in the US. Pitiful.
Vote folks. Our lives depend on it.
1
It isn't a right. It's a responsibility.
How hypocritical and disingenuous it is for Republicans to proudly trumpet the freedom and democracy afforded by this country while they work feverishly to suppress those same rights.
6
Once again, no mention that the Democratic state of New York does not allow early voting or vote by mail. It is not a Republican thing but keeping incumbents in power thing. It is hypocritical of the Times to publish this when they aren’t doing a thing to get what those of us in Republican states have.
1
Chief Justice John Roberts, in the 2013 Supreme Court ruling he wrote that gutted the Voting Rights Act, ............wrote, “Our country has changed.”
Either Justice Roberts is the partisan conservatives have conspired for decades to put on the court, or he is incredibly ignorant of American history and recent Republican manipulation of voting laws.
Either way, America loses!
6
Another NYT article explaining that despite years and years and hundreds of elections where Americans choose Republicans instead of Democrats, it can’t be that Americans don’t want to abolish our borders; don’t want to recognize 23 different genders; don’t want to pay more in taxes to reward others for not working; don’t want to discriminate based on race, gender or sexual orientation; and don’t see white males and traditional American values as vile and evil.
It can’t possibly be Democrats’ bankrupt identity politics doesn’t sell to rational people - except it is.
2
This is directly from the online Texas site on voter registration;
"Register To Vote
To vote in Texas, you must be registered. Simply pick up a voter registration application, fill it out, and mail it at least 30 days before the election date. Get your application here.
You are eligible to register to vote if:
You are a United States citizen;
You are a resident of the county where you submit the application;
You are at least 17 years and 10 months old, and you are 18 years of age on Election Day.
You are not a convicted felon (you may be eligible to vote if you have completed your sentence, probation, and parole); and You have not been declared by a court exercising probate jurisdiction to be either totally mentally incapacitated or partially mentally incapacitated without the right to vote."
Wow that seems tough.
1
Too bad the NY Times has been ignoring this for so long. Having absurd articles saying polls are wrong, articles saying democrats didn't come to the polls. Pundits opining on why voters preferred Trump (even though Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million.)
Gray Lady, you are a little late to the party. Thanks loads. Two weeks before the election you are noticing what's going on. Your readers have been posting comments about Greg Palast for a long time.
2
The Handmaid’s Tale, but now it’s real life. When you have no policy, just cheat or lie.
Vote!
Black turnout did not plunge in Wisconsin in 2016 because of voter ID laws; it plunged because a black man was no longer on the ballot.
2
The only way the utterly corrupt GOP can win is to cheat. They are devoted to bigotry and anti-intellectualism, and spit in the face of the Christ so many of them claim to love with their cruelty towards their fellow humans. They rape the environment. The GOP, with Trump at the helm, is rotting from the inside.
9
How can it be wrong to ask for proof of citizenship to register???
3
There's direct suppression and an indirect effect where many just give up their rights, knowing that Republicans (almost exclusively) have rigged elections. Ironically, media reporting on suppression likely worsens the impact of the cynical politicians and jurists that actively practice it.
2
I might need surgery around Election Day. So on October 15th, I went to our City Hall and said I wanted to vote absentee. They had me fill out a form that would be “mailed to my home”. When it arrived and I filled out the ballot, they said, I needed to have a “witness” sign it and then send it back in.
On October 21st the form still had not arrived to my home. (The population of our town is around 9,000)
On October 22nd I went to City Hall (on crutches) and said the mail ballot had not arrived and I wanted to vote there as voting then had begun in person, absentee. The woman who was in charge asked another coworker to look and see if my ballot had gone out in the mail. It had, she said, so they were not going to let me vote in person. After all, she’s said, I had already been “issued a ballot” even though a week had gone by and I didn’t have it.
I insisted on voting in person. I questioned perhaps the ballot had been lost or whatever. Her answer “I’m not responsible for the Post Office.”
Again I insisted, pointing out the note on the office window said voting there absentee began Oct 22nd. She said she’d have to “ask” - went to some back office, came back pouty, and said “ok” but I would have to return the mailed ballot when “it came”.
So I voted then in person.
The mail ballot came that day. My husband ran it down,unused, to City Hall. He asked if my vote from that morning then had been counted. “Oh, the woman on crutches? YES!”
**Why people may not vote.
18
@MIMA,
When I worked the Kerry campaign in 2004 we drilled people on their rights. Always demand a provisional ballot. Always demand a paper copy, if it is available. These are your right, at least for now, until some republican can find a way to strip it away from you.
1
So was your vote suppressed? What are you doing to follow up to see if this couldn't be corrected in the future? This anecdote isn't proving anything except maybe misguided/untrained office staff?
Any attempt to shape the eligible electorate is simultaneously an attempt to determine the electoral outcome.
3
The only way republicans can keep the House (which I fear they will) is because of gerrymandering and voter suppression (and perhaps hacked voting machines). This is no exaggeration, though brainwashed FOX cultists will brush it off as sour grapes. But ask a right-winger how it's possible that in many many states, like N. Carolina, for example, more than 65% of the votes go to Democratic candidates, yet 75% of the districts are represented by a republican. They won't answer because they can't or they'll fall back on the "fake news" defense.
4
Chief Justice Roberts was mistaken--voter fraud is extraordinarily uncommon, voter suppression is not. Many of the efforts seen in the Jim Crow South are alive and well today: "“One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy,” by Carol Anderson, 2018 ( https://news.emory.edu/stories/2018/09/er_anderson_one_person_no_vote/ca... ).
4
@JSK,
Roberts isn't mistaken: he's corrupt. He, and the other conservatives on the court threw out ethics long ago. The Supreme Court has been in the pocket of the oligarchs since 2000 when they selected the president. Later, it was shown that the other candidate won the election.
2
Georgia has a long and infamous history of denying Blacks the right to vote, while on occasion miraculously raising dead White voters from the grave and getting them to line up at the polls and cast their ballots in alphabetical order.
As Faulkner said, "The past is not dead. It's not even past."
4
Can you say when the last vote by a dead person was cast? Recently?
If that's the case, wouldn't it be good to purge them off the voter registration lists?
The Supreme Court urgently needs to “take away the car keys away again from the drunken and prodigal ‘Junior’”! It was on the basis of “Junior’s” broken promises that the Voting Rights Law was gutted. This is being repeatedly demonstrated now in progress!
I think that federal law requires voter roll up dates. This is voter suppression?
2
The framers of the constitution never intended blacks to vote (or hold power), never intended women to vote (or hold power), and never intended anyone but the wealthy elites to vote. They intended only that they themselves, as a limited, topmost class, hold power...voting and democracy (a republic) was simply their own chosen vehicle. All the rhetoric, all the philosophy, all the democratic ideals drawing on the Greeks, etc., was always reserved for themselves as a class. This is a matter of history. It is one step, just one step, beyond Feudalism. This is the lesson of history and historical fact. It was not they who decided that "we too," the rest of the population, wanted to interpret for themselves that they should have those rights extended to them (the rest of us). To them, it's our misconception, for which they are not responsible.
Always remember that in this way, democracy itself does not have to be "democratic," that is, the most rights for the most members of a society. Return to this minority oligarchy as an actual operating fact is one of the primary principles of conservatism, which dominates the supreme court (and the legislature as a whole, which is dominated by the wealthy and those who seek to use office as their entry to wealth), by design of the right, who have essentially militarized the matter. The "party of Lincoln" is the party of ruling class and materialist class-ism. Watch what they do, not what they say.
8
Mr. Berman -- thank you for all of your excellent and important research and reporting.
4
This whole thing seems very strange to us here in Oz.
This is from the Australian Electoral Commission's website:
"It is compulsory by law for all eligible Australian citizens to enrol and vote in federal elections, by-elections and referendums".
To enrol you need:
-your driver's licence, or
-Australian passport number, or
- have someone who is enrolled confirm your identity.
"Being eligible" means:
- being an Australian citizen, or eligible British subject,
-aged 18 years and over, and
-have lived at your address for at least one month.
Simple.
And there are special provisons for people with no fixed address to enable them to vote (and they are the only group for whom it is not compulsory for them to vote and they will not be fined for not voting).
So easy compared with the U.S. system. And voter fraud here is rare (voting twice or more).
Prisoners on a sentence of less than 3 years can vote; others need to be released before being allowed to resume voting.
27
@Bruce Stafford
Voter fraud is also extraordinarily rare in the US as well. The reason we can't have Australia's terrific voting system has nothing to do with that and everything to do with efforts of evil people to steal voting rights from their fellow citizens.
People who, I might add, falsely paint themselves as Christians while breaking the Seventh Commandment.
3
This is America.
We need the UN to step in.
2
As a middle-age white democrat who moved to GA, I never showed up on voter rolls for three elections including 2016, despite going to the registrar three times. I suspect Cambridge Analytica or a similar service is used. A black voting site worker, first checking no one could hear, tried to help: "In Georgia you have to register as a republican - democrats have tried many times to register voters but it never works. We see it all the time. Register as a republican and you'll show up on the rolls." A federal investigation of the state attorney general-soon-to-be-governor is demanded and officials involved must be sent to prison.
6
Every day I am just stunned that this is even allowed and legal.
3
What I find curiously missing from the tilted voting process is a sense of shame. And I am not talking about those in power; the Republican "leadership" has clearly demonstrated time and again they lack that human capacity. I am talking on the part of the voters. I'd like to think that the supposedly shared values of this country would result in lowered voter turnout brought about by the feelings of guilt engendered by obviously anti-democratic policies. The party that pretends religious fervor displays little of its conscience.
3
Why is it that the press always waits until an election is upon us to bring up these issues?
That Republicans get away with their corruption every election tell you what a sad state we are in.
And beyond whimpering no one does a thing about it.
3
@The Iconoclast
Why wait? To manipulate the voter.
1
How it could sway an election? As the author alludes too, it already happened in 2016 in Wisconsin. It happened in Michigan, 175,000 taken off the rolls, and I'm sure other states. It happened in the Florida recount Bush / Gore. And it's not just Republicans, although they are specialists at it. In NYC there's problems right now with those notices that were sent out a week ago. Before the primary in 2016, Bernie vs Hillary, it's reported that over 100,000 were taken of the rolls in Brooklyn. Honestly when you really look at voting in this country, it's a joke. Jimmy Carter should monitor the elections here like he has in other 3rd world countries.
5
The urge by the GOP to reduce voting rolls of those citizens who are not voting for the Republicans is an egregious crime that deserves censure and criminal charges.
6
I believe voter suppression is a myth. Texas, Florida, and Georgia are in the top 10 states with the most illegal immigrants. In 2014, those 3 states combined had around 2.875 million illegal immigrants. By contrast, Oregon had around 130,000. The extra measures those states are taking are mainly intended to prevent illegal immigrants from registering to vote.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/interactives/unauthorized-immigrants/
1
Where is your evidence that illegal immigrants are registering to vote? Factual, documented evidence?
The author writes for an extreme left wing publication and cites evidence from a progressive public policy institute. He and Mother Jones only care about the voters that are alleged to be suppressed insofar as those voters support liberal candidates and causes as he has indicated in this piece. Had conservative voters been allegedly disenfranchised, i doubt he would have written this.
6
@Jay The cases of voter suppression he refers to are documented by many, many different news organizations, not just Mother Jones. I haven't seen any evidence of voter suppression against right wing voters anywhere; I don't think your presumption of bias here has any feet to stand on at all. Are you trying to say that the clear bias evident in actions in the states in these articles doesn't actually exist?
8
Voter suppression severely damages the constitutional rights of those communities who are targeted by it. But it's worse than this. The foul practice eats away at the heart of the democratic principles upon which this country as we know it exists.
Voter suppression is a form of home-grown treason made all the more Insidious because it is sourced from the people who are tasked with the ultimate protection of the country. How can the nation survive if the people we elect to power are determined to destroy it?
2
The state with the lowest minority turnout in the country is Massachusetts. When are Democrats going to do something about it?
Georgia has the highest level of voter registration in history.
Facts matter.
2
@ebmem Georgia has the highest documented evidence of voter suppression at the moment. Facts do matter. The one that you put forth isn't relevant to the one that I just mentioned. Do you have a single iota of evidence of voter suppression in Massachusetts? Yeah, I didn't think so.
2
You and I have somewhat different definitions of "evidence". Reports of improperly submitted voter registration from the Abrams campaign workers have been made - nobody needs to have multiple registrations or incomplete residential information.
When you have to keep trying to change the rules to get elected, it suggests that the majority of registered voters don't support your party, GOP.
4
Between 2000 and 2010, out of more than 1,000,000,000 votes cast in national, state, and local elections, 10 voters were arrested and convicted of in person voting fraud. That means in 2016, if the trend continued, as many as 3 voters out of more than 160,000,000 votes cast may have voted fraudulently in person.
Two weeks from now, if there is tremendous participation and the trend is the same, perhaps as many as 4 voters may vote in person fraudulently.
Republicans so love our country that they say we must inconvenience 20,000,000+ people every election to prevent those 4 fraudulent votes. Such patriotism.
https://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/
5
@BigGuy How on earth do you know if voting fraud has taken place if the voters don't have to supply some sort of ID?
remember those " hanging chads" during the gore - bush race ?
how much was said after that BY POLITICIANS ! that our election system I
needs fixing, etc. nothing was done to fix " the most sacred right of Americans in a democracy".
so little surprise we see what this article talks about.
not good at all. but GO VOTE ANYWAY !
1
Partisan SCOTUS will do everything it can to expand voter suppression. The GOP 1000 Year Reich is inevitable; and the act of voting itself will soon become an artifact of history, as will freedom of the press (notwithstanding the Constitution - which, like the bible, can be interpreted any way anybody wants).
3
These republicans will have to tread REALLY careful for their next moves. Because if the Democrats lose again come November after all this republican rigging of the system, things could get VERY ugly. Quote: “At some point, people will get so angry that they will either talk about secession or start engaging in more direct measures, whether it takes the form of rioting or violence”. Wise words, spoken by Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas Law School. For their sake, I hope the GOP was listening.
2
The image accompanying this Opinion is inappropriate and offensive.
A Noose?Burning a ballot?Cutting up a ballot?
None of these are occurring.
A voter ID can be obtained with minimal effort by anyone.
Portraying that African Americans are disadvantaged by voter ID restrictions is insulting to African Americans.
Portraying felons, those convicted of violating the laws, as victims is nonsense.
1
American conservatives have always attacked the right to vote since since Tories supported voter suppression from the Crown in 1767. We saw their contempt for democracy when the Eisenhower administration orchestrated coups that overthrew democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala in the early 1950s. His contempt for emancipation from colonial and corporate control of people became clear when he said the Vietnamese didn't have the right to national elections guaranteed under the French surrender because all of the Vietnamese would have voted Ho Chi Minh, anyway. Voter suppression is nothing new among conservatives who pander to oligarchs bribing their way into tyranny.
8
The only way the GOP can Win: Lie, Cheat and Steal. With an occasional assist from the Supreme Court. VOTE anyway, they can’t disenfranchise enough of US, if we get out OUR vote.
7
If the dems can't win the house with anti Trump sentiment at an all time high I will never again vote democratic. If I am going to be wasting my vote it might as well be to make a statement.
@Groovygeek No doubt the Republicans who monitor the NYT will be delighted at this proof that their nefarious efforts are achieving their goals. Vote anyway, as long as you can.
1
Delusional Democrats, what else is new. Had HRC lost the popular vote, but carried the electoral votes needed, the argument would have been in favor of keeping the electoral college. Both parties play the gerrymandering game. Voter registration rules are in place months before an election, one need only follow them. The Liberals should forgo the endless BMW antics and get back to their roots. They are incapable of motivating their constituents with the same old policies and blame Trump for everything. Give it a rest, the song does not play.
2
Whatever must be done to ensure republican victory is on the table, I support.
This should be front page news in all major newspapers. It should be a leading story on all the major networks every night. Voter suppression is a travesty and harkens back to the Jim Crow era.
Why is the media downplaying this. We are a country that selects its leaders at the ballot box. And strategies to take away an individuals right to vote negates our democracy.
We are now witnessing this travesty across the nation.
5
The Republican Party is a minority party that thinks it has a God-given right to be the majority. It is pursuing that goal by any means necessary: voter suppression, gerrymandering, lobbying to rescind portions of the Voting Rights Act, and attempting to halt immigration of people of color--all to have a whiter, older, more reactionary electorate. Republican congressmen have egregiously manipulated judicial appointments so that they can stack the courts with their appointees, right up to the Supreme Court. Why is the Republican Party not indicted as a joint criminal enterprise? It is fundamentally undermining the Constitution and the democratic basis of our country.
4
"Chief Justice John Roberts, in the 2013 Supreme Court ruling he wrote that gutted the Voting Rights Act, dismissed the idea that voting discrimination was still “flagrant” and “widespread.” Instead he wrote, “Our country has changed.”
Yes Justice Roberts, our country has changed, it is much, much worse. Just read the following.
"One evening in July 2017, computers at the Georgia Secretary of State’s office were set to a monumental task. Through the night, they would sift through a list of 6.6 million registered voters, seeking out those who didn’t belong.
By dawn, more than 500,000 people were registered no more"
That's where we're at today, thanks to you Justice Roberts. Yes you and those other so called conservative judges.
3
You failed to point out that that vote on North Dakota's ballot was cast by Justice Cavenaugh, who we are now stuck with for his lifetime. It was only Senator Murkowski who seemed to recognize the threat Cavenaugh posed to Native Americans and for that matter many rural Americans.
If having a street address were a requirement when our constitution was signed, I think you can count on one hand the signers that had one!
3
Voter suppression is an American disgrace.
Promoting all eligible voters to vote is a core principle of Democracy.
5
Don't forget the Federalist Society, whose claim to an 'originalist' interpretation of the US Constitution, and who has helped place the likes of Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, believe that only the white, male wealthy land owners should be allowed to vote.
The numerous amendments to the constitution changed that but now these reprobates want to rewrite the constitution. It is up to the D's, the I's, and the disillusioned R's to save us this election. Otherwise, we are back in the 18th century.
3
The condition of our democracy is grave. The entity primarily responsible is the Republican Party. It’s just that simple.
1
Justice Roberts ought to be disbarred for his decision on the Voring Rights Law. He is responsible for upholding the guarantee that we will NOT have free and fair elections.
Because of Roberts ruling there is proof that the Parties in each State can suppress our rights to a free and fair elections.
We cannot blame the Russians for this. It lies squarely at Roberts feet.
3
Comedian Trevor Noah has suggested that minority voters appear to have flipped to the "winning" side and register as Republicans so the states now using every trick to turn them away will welcome them. Once able to vote at last, they can express their real views. No use, of course, if the voting machines are programmed or hacked to flip Democratic votes to Republican no matter how many Democrats actually vote.
3
Let's do the most logical thing: registration at birth. Just as all newborns are issued a birth certificate, so should they all be registered to vote. The same agency can do both. The right would kick in at 18. We already issue Social Security cards to babies, even though they will not use them for years; so should be the case with voter registration. All babies born in the US are automatically citizens, and they ought to be granted likewise the most important right: registration to vote.
2
@Gary
When people vote, they vote in a specific precinct, associated with where they reside. They vote for the governor, Senators and House members, along with city council, mayors, county and parish sheriffs.
Is your federal government issuer of voter registration cards going to also track month by month where citizens live? Perhaps the federal government could mandate that every citizen be implanted with a chip that would transmit to cell towers their locations at all times, which would facilitate the police state Democrats seem to favor.
If after five decades of voter suppression, lost registrations, and other attempts to plain prevent democrats from voting - if the GOP can still pull this off without much other than whining from the democrats - then they have clearly established the following: (a) republicans will do anything to win, and (b) democrats will do anything to lose.
8
@Kalidan
How is it possible that Democrats are incapable of navigating voter registration and voting at such a higher degree than Republicans? It does somewhat make sense because Democrats have lower levels of educational achievement than Republicans, but somehow, even uneducated Republicans seem to be able to get to the polls.
Why is there an assumption that felons who have their voting rights restored are going to vote overwhelmingly Democrat, when in fact very few felons with restored voting rights even register to vote?
Democrats are positioning themselves to make excuses for the races they are going to lose.
2
@ebmem When evidence is there supporting arbitrary rejection of voter registration based on meaningless differentials, including subjective things like disqualification if the registrar doesn't think the signatures match exactly enough, we aren't talking about education levels, we are talking about actual efforts to suppress voters that might vote against the party in power, and investigations into this have supported the allegations. You can stonewall all you want, it isn't going to change the evidence, or suddenly create 3 million illegal voters in California last election, which is the Republican lie in an attempt to sidestep the issue.
@ebmem
The democratic party has for too long - disguised under the talk of plurality, tolerance, equality - tolerated the demagoguery of the untalented, the political correctness police, the unqualified, the non-meritorious who tend to lecture and bore the heck out of the country. We have become very dumb people as a collective when we let all discourse be shaped by people who think a meritocracy is suppression, and that they should be in charge for no other reason except that they think it is a rather good idea.
I can say this because it is the untalented, unqualified, those without merit who whine relentlessly - as do democrats. Smarter, better organized people would emerge with a strategic response other than "help, we need money" followed by "omigod isn't this terrible."
We cannot even get our self-indulgent, self-absorbed constituencies to come out to vote, or take care of their registrations. When Blacks begin to vote republican, because they say democrats are taking them for granted (as they have been saying for over 20 years), we should smell the beverage - but we don't.
The average republican voter today is energized, ready to save the republic from immigrants, Jews, deep state and other imagined foes. The average democrat today is confused, for s/he just does not know what to do - and is just uncomfortable with everything their democratic candidate is doing, and think s/he is not perfect enough to deserve their vote. Excuses or not - we are losing.
Republicans long ago discovered they can't win on an even playing field. So they do everything they can to make it uneven. I blame the courts for helping them.
8
@Christy. Indeed, the courts are to blame, in part. Why else would the Republican Senate have spent six years blocking each and every nomination for a federal judgeship put forward by Obama? Why are they now in a frenzied rush to appoint scores of extremely conservation judges to the federal bench? Why did they block Garland and speed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh into the SCOTUS? This nation is undergoing a slow-motion coup d'etat. And we are all watching it happen.
4
@Christy
Democrats have deluded themselves into believing they are in the majority. Face reality. You are in the minority, and will remain so until you come up with a viable platform and some electable candidates. Hillary did not lose the election because of voter fraud. She earned that loss.
@Christy, the Democrats have long played the gerrymandering game, blocked legislation, stacked appellate courts, changed the confirmation voting percentage, etc...... There never has been an even playing field. They’ve played the media card for decades. Don’t whine when it’s not going your way for a change.
Excellent article. One question... I wonder if there is a difference between not being able to exercise one's right, and taking the right away from a person. While subtle, this distinction let's us call these largely republican efforts for what they are--a crime. Like when someone steals my car, I still have ownership of the car, and when the thief is found, it can be returned to me, and the thief prosecuted.
11
It is simple. If registration is eased, the number of voters expands. If it is made harder, the number of voters shrinks.
4
We talk about voter suppression (which is a real threat) in the same breath as we do low turnout among young people and minorities. Democrats need to do a better job of communicating their agenda, making it relevant to these groups and then mounting a grassroots effort to get them involved and to the polls. If they can do that, voter suppression will be less of an issue.
2
@AlNewman
As education level, income level, age, and wisdom increase, the tendency to vote increases, as does the tendency to vote Republican increases. That is the reason Democrats have been unable to establish the permanent majority they desire and are only able to win elections occasionally. When they are in the majority, they act like bullies, which gets them losses in the next election.
Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option in 2013 to stuff the federal courts with seats that had been open since 2007 when he became Senate majority leader, only for Democrats to lose the Senate majority within 14 months. Obama's community organizer skills taught him how to speak to power, but did not give him any insight on how to be power. Instead of uniting the country, he ruled like an autocrat with his pen and cell phone.
Legal as well as illegal aliens are not permitted to vote because they are not citizens. Democrats do not want the census to gather citizenship because their arguments that minority voter turnout is suppressed plumps up the "minority" counts by 50-60 million legal and illegal alien residents.
Roberts 2013 decision was the most blatant partisan act of the courts after citizens United. Pure conservative activist judges control the Supreme Court.
9
Instead of spending millions in complaining or filing law suits, why don't the Democrats or others, simply put that money into helping disadvantaged people obtain proper ID and educating them on legal requirements.
It is offensive to keep hearing the underlying message that somehow minorities (a vague term in many instances) are simply unable to obtain proper identification or fill out a registration form correctly. If poverty is the issue, it applies across racial lines.
We need valid ID in so many places today, yet somehow for one of the most important rights of citizenship a lot of Democrats think it's irrelevant. Stop complaining and simply help American citizens who may need such help to get a valid government ID.
10
@George S
If it is true that Native Americans living on reservations do not have physical addresses, it is a major failure of tribal governments. It is a far greater risk to their population that they have no way to summon emergency services than that they will not be able to vote. The reservations have a mechanism for identifying physical locations for purposes of emergency services and have known for years that the law required a physical location in order to vote.
If you are receiving your mail at a PO Box, there is nothing in the universe that prevents you from receiving mail that has been directed to your physical address. All you have to do is give the post office a permanent forwarding order for mail addressed to your physical address. It seems odd that every Democrat and tribal official was unable to figure that out but preferred to pretend the law is an attempt at voter suppression.
It’s a simple formula, really: Republicans win elections when most people don’t vote, and Democrats win when they do.
11
@Frink Flaven not true
Given the recent discussions of voter suppression by many Democratic candidates, I hope that, if a Democratic majority is elected next week, they will prioritize passing a new formula for Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act. The county is in need of a formula that accounts for the current state of the country, protecting the voting rights of minorities in both red and blue states.
12
@Adam
The portion of the law that was invalidated by SCOTUS was the portion that identified specific states and voting districts that were not permitted to make any changes to voting requirements and voting conditions without getting pre-approval from the Justice Department. The truly just solution would have been, if Democrats were sincere, to substitute a provision that all states and jurisdictions had to obtain pre-approval by the Justice Department.
Under the Obama administration, red and blue states not subject to pre-approval passed changes to their laws, including the requirement that voters present ID [which is a policy that is extremely popular with the overwhelming majority of Americans]. Voting rights activists sued, and SCOTUS generally ruled that the laws were constitutional.
When states subject to pre-approval by the Justice Department submitted identical laws to those that had already been blessed by SCOTUS, Holder, in his legal opinion superior to that of SCOTUS routinely denied even inconsequential minor changes. When a minor change made it to SCOTUS, they slapped down Holder for abuse of power. It was apparent that the Justice Department was disallowing changes just because they could, not because it was helpful or necessary.
"The issue of voter suppression has exploded in recent weeks, most notably in the Georgia governor’s race between Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, and Brian Kemp, a Republican. "
In recent weeks? Many people and experts have been screaming about this forever. The Democratic party has just started waking up to the reality of voter suppression, vote hacking and my personal favorite,Cross Check, that may have cost Hillary the Electoral College votes and the election in MI, WI and PA.
19
@Mark
There are more voters registered in Georgia than at any time in history since a policy instituted by the Republican Secretary of State after being passed by the Republican legislature.
Democrats are going to lose the governor's race in Georgia because their candidate is unpopular. They are positioning themselves to claim she lost because of misogyny, racism and voter suppression.
That is your story about Hillary. Despite spending four times as much money as Trump, she lost, fair and square.
The more education, more income, more age, more knowledge, more wisdom, the more likely citizens are to vote, and the more likely they are to vote Republican, the party of the educated.
The majority of voters with a college degree vote Republican and voted for Trump. the majority of voters who lack a high school diploma vote Democrat and voted for Hillary.
The majority of voter registrations that are rejected by election boards in all states are ones that are prepared by paid voter registration contractors hired by left leaning non-profits. The canvassers are frequently paid a bonus for high "productivity." So they "help" people who are already registered to vote, people who are not eligible to vote, non existent and formerly living individuals, and prepare registration forms with inaccurate data.
Their masters than complain that 20% of registrations that were bogus were rejected. And the people who were legitimately registered don't even show up to vote.
Worth repeating: The GOP specializes in amassing power and subverting the will of the majority of voters. People need to: fight gerrymandering and efforts to decertify legal voters that put them on "nonactive voter lists”; force Congress to hold public hearings about dark/foreign money from the Saudis, UAE, Russians—used to break our laws (NRA/Trump /2016 election); fight voter ID rules that disenfranchise the poor, elderly, minority voters; adequately fund districts to ensure enough polling sites, ballots, open hours, and working equipment (AZ, etc.); ensure by federal law that when people register or renew their drivers license they are automatically registered to vote; reverse laws that make it illegal to mail in sealed ballots (AZ); ensure every vote cast is counted as cast and there's a paper trail; prevent partisan Sec. of States from counting votes, dictating rules, forcing voters to use provisional ballots (AZ, KS, GA); mandate automatic recounts if vote tampering evidence is found (MI, FL); retire electronic voting systems and vote counting software made and controlled by private manufacturers, and use a nationwide paper ballot system---counted in public as other advanced countries do. We need a voting rights and integrity commission to oversee uniform administration of the law and fair voting and uniform paper ballot voting means used in every state across the country.
13
@Ann Bravo, Ann. You hit every stratagem Republicans have used to rig elections. Your points should be adopted and supported by every voter and every party. I'm with you.
@Ann
Mayor Di Blasio of NYC, a hard left Democrat, sent letters to thousands of Brooklyn registered voters informing them, erroneously, that their voter registrations were inactive, sowing confusion. He did this, despite it not being within his area of responsibility without consulting with the registrar of voters, which is how he managed to find voter lists that were incorrect.
California gives drivers licenses to illegal aliens. You want them automatically registered to vote? All states give drivers licenses to legal aliens. You want them automatically registered to vote despite the fact that they are not citizens?
Bill Clinton received $30 million per year in speaking and consulting fees from governments as well as billions in "donations" to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was in the Senate (eight years) and Secretary of State (four years).
The Hillary campaign and DNC paid Russian oligarchs through a British former intelligence agent through a DC lobbying firm to fabricate a dossier about Trump, and called it legal expenses, in violation of FEC reporting rules.
The DC lobbying firm employed the wife of a senior FBI official to help write the dossier and fed it to the FBI to "justify" spying on the Trump campaign.
You think Russian interference in the 2016 was directed by Trump while the Democrats were paying the Russians?
Millions of dollars are spent in election campaigns. Given the threat to democracy posed by gerrymandering and a partisan Court, it might be more cost effective to hire "facilitators" in high risk districts to encourage as many as possible to register, get the correct ID, and then vote. If only 50% of the population now votes, isn't it important to help as many as possible vote? Is a 90% participation rate a dream?
3
Democrats have known for years that Republicans control election results by gerrymandering and voter suppression. Little can be done about gerrymandering until Democrats take control of state legislatures and governorships. However, Republicans also control those eligible to vote by requiring voters to produce some type of identification which many voters often do not have or by purging people from voter rolls when their names on the voter rolls fail to match exactly their names on some other document. Democrats have fought many of these practices in the courts, but have actually made very little headway in solving these problems. Perhaps it would be helpful to have a comprehensive drive to make certain that people have the identification needed to vote. That would be a start. The best solution is to take control of state governments, but that may not happen anytime soon.
6
Voter suppression is a key to Republican victory in every state where they dominate. My evidence obvious. When was the last time you saw a Republican candidate run a public service, "Get out the vote" ad? Republicans don't want voters. Republicans want followers.
19
America is not an united or unified Country , it is a mixed salad with various components often in contrast among each other .
It would be the civic duty of every American to make sure their vote is granted and safe .
Every patriotic American citizen must have his/her/its voting papers in order all the times , demanding justice when these rights are denied .
There are plenty of associations to protect voting rights, that have to be addressed immediately not at the last minute .
America is a democracy , it’s citizens have rights , that have to be guarded and defended by the rapacious GOP who considers this Great Country a plutocracy.
2
@Inter nos-America should follow the enlightened voting practices used by 53 of the world's advanced democracies: same day voting by ballot, public transparency in counting, encouragement for all voters to vote.
2
Any candidate who loses an election, because of systematic disenfranchising of the type being openly practiced in Georgia -- should refuse to concede and call out the election as invalid.
States with validly elected governments should cut all economic, social and any administrative ties with such a state.
We don't recognize their laws, and our governors and other leaders must openly name their leaders as unelected tyrants.
13
Gerrymandering is unknown in Australia. Electoral district boundaries are decided by a commission independent of both State and Federal Governments. Combine that with compulsory voting and parties are forced toward the center to cater for most voters. The capacity for Governments to disqualify voters and define boundaries are some of the reasons why USA is one of the least democratic democracies in the world. As Trump should say 'sad'.
34
@R Australia has one tenth the population of America.
America is the only nation that does not have uniform voting rights laws. No other nation leaves it to political subdivisions to determine how people register to vote, the opening hours of polling places, the processes for early voting and so forth.
Why do we have this anomaly? Slavery. The slave states wanted to be able to eliminate any possibility that slaves or former slaves could vote. This lasted through the Jim Crow era. The destruction of the Voting Rights Act by SCOTUS is a shame. In the coming years there must be a movement towards nationally uniform voting laws.
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@Brad
When the country was formed, slavery was legal in all 13 of the colonies. It was technically illegal in Massachusetts, but that did not prevent Boston from being the primary import point for slaves that were rapidly "sold South." There must have been some fancy legal dancing on the part of Boston slave traders.
The 3/5 compromise had nothing to do with voting rights because in 1789 only landowners voted, because they were the only ones who paid taxes. The Boston slave traders did not want the slaves they sold South to increase the number of Congressional seats allocated to Georgia.
Red states are far more likely to have early voting and liberal absentee voting policies than blue states, making it easier to vote but requiring some additional controls to prevent multiple in person voting.
Our voting practices are the result of the United States being formed as a democratic republic of 13 sovereign governments that later expanded to 50 sovereign states. The processes were established to ensure that the minority was protected in the small population mercantile states relative to the high population agrarian states. So New Hampshire got two Senators and Pennsylvania got two Senators. And Hawaii and Alaska, later on, got two Senators each despite the fact that they were tiny in population relative to other states.
The Voting Rights Act is still in place. The only provision that was changed was hat which allowed DOJ to apply different rules to some states.
Actually surprisingly few states have strict photo ID laws. Only seven that I am aware of. The access rules, as one would expect since the mechanics of elections are local in nature, are all over the place, although with some evidence that Republican-controlled states are stricter and Democratic-leaning states more open. If a party has sufficient control within a state to modify election laws they will usually do it as a means of discouraging their opponents from voting or, conversely, making it easier for their supporters to get to the polls. Fraud is mostly a pretext. These are just political tactics to maintain control. In any case, requiring an ID nowadays hardly seems onerous since there's precious little else one can do without a state or federal photo card.
4
@Frunobulax, if you read the facts you will find that it is indeed onerous for enough people, that it can swing many state elections (and that includes Presidential elections since they are decided state-by-state).
14
What needs to be done is that when Democrats win the house, it passes a law to create a non-partisan "federal election commission" that overseers election throughout the country.
They question is that Democrats are too scared to take such bold steps.
17
@Deep Thought
BINGO -
That Mr. Kemp retains his Secretary of State oversight of elections while he is a candidate himself is not just a massive conflict of interest but corruption in and of itself, a component of the massive corruption that is our politics in general.
It reminds me of the 2004 election when Kenneth Blackwell was Secretary of State of Ohio. He was also the state campaign chair of the W campaign that year. Another inherent conflict of interest and quite corrupt. The corruption was key to Bush's win, too: For some greatly mysterious reason heavily Democratic precincts were greatly shorted voting machines - remember the eight-hour lines in Cleveland, with voters just giving up and leaving without having gotten to vote?. Meanwhile, heavily Republican precincts were flush with machines - no waits. Bush won Ohio and that was the margin of victory.
All's fair in war and love, and politics is war in America.
38
@Rocky-I remember it well: "In August 2003, Walden O'Dell, chief executive of voting machine maker Diebold, announced that he had been a top fund-raiser for President George W. Bush and had sent a get-out-the-funds letter to Ohio Republicans. In the letters he says he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Voting machines proven to be insecure are still in wide use and can mysteriously flip votes--as Texas voters who have gone to the polls have been reporting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Election_Solutions
How Hackers Broke Into U.S. Voting Machines ...
A must read about computerized voting insecurities
https://harpers.org/archive/2012/11/how-to-rig-an-election
How Much Faith Do You Have in the Vote Counting Process? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY6FCsVWGlM
"Stealing America Vote-by-Vote" documentary
7
The supreme court will have to be expanded to 11 justices when a democrat wins the White House in 2020. That's assuming a substantial majority of democrats have been elected to both houses in support of that president.
18
The United States needs a law making it a serious federal crime to deny or conspire to deny any American citizen's right to vote. It's certainly not going to happen under the Republicans, who are now demonstrating that they no longer believe they can win a fair election. It will take a combination of anger and tireless civil rights lawyers (in the face of stacked courts) in order to turn this around. Not easy, but there is no alternative other than someone writing, "The End of Democracy in America."
62
55 percent of votes cast for state legislative candidates in Wisconsin in 2016 went to Democrats. Yet somehow Republicans wound up with 60 percent of the seats. Not satisfied with blatant gerrymandering, they passed voter ID laws to disenfranchise minorities and college students and restricted early voting and registration drives. Apparently they’re afraid their legislative agenda is not popular enough to keep getting them elected.
55
@Richard-Ineed, outrageous. Republicans are willing to do everything and anything to suppress the vote. According to University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer between 12,000 and 23,000 registered voters in Madison and Milwaukee—and as many as 45,000 statewide—were deterred from voting by the State's onerous ID law that you cite. “We have hard evidence there were tens of thousands of people who were unable to vote because of the voter ID law,” he says. While polls showed Clinton winning Wisconsin decisively, she lost by 11,375 votes.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/voter-suppression-may-have-...
6
One has to challenge the intelligence or integrity, or both, of Chief Justice Roberts in rendering the decision in Shelby County. While a young lawyer he worked hard as a partisan to undo the Voting Rights Act. As Chief Justice, he wrote a highly questionable decision to accomplish what he could not accomplish as a young man. Our Supreme Court’s drift to extreme partisanship has eroded the confidence of many in the integrity of our democracy.
77
@William, he's intelligent. Draw your own conclusion.
8
Representative democracy can only work when those elected fairly represent everyone. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are direct efforts to thwart the will of the people. Those so engaged have no understanding of how democracy works or the principles on which our country was founded. They are in fact nothing less than traitors to America.
41
In ND, if you don't have the right ID, these will do the trick:
(1) A current utility bill;
(2) A current bank statement;
(3) A check issued by a federal, state, or local government;
(4) A paycheck; or
(5) A document issued by a federal, state, or local government.
And then there are another group of ways to to get to the voting booth if you are in a nursing home, etc.
Not quite the disenfranchisement that this piece portrays.
3
@William Powell, you haven't answered the question about street addresses.
13
@William Powell So for senior citizens or college students who live with family and/or aren't working, what are they to do? Not everyone has a bank account or a utility in their name. Those Republican legislators are making it awfully difficult for some people to vote. Shame on them!
3
@William Powell
Every single item you list will show the person's mailing address, not their actual residence. Which eliminates every single person who receives his or her mail at a PO box. THAT is the point you are so studiously missing.
4
The war of independence was fought so SOME people could have representation. Democracy is ALL people having representation. For millions of Americans the most important political cause is making sure SOME doesn’t become ALL. Now, the republicans have won, the USA won’t become a democracy in our lifetime.
19
I have little doubt that there will be far more votes cast for Democratic candidates for the House--and probably for Democratic Senate candidates as well (though the latter may not be distributed optimally).
What I worry about is whether such votes will be COUNTED as such.
Gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics aside, I worry that too many of the close races are in areas in which there are only electronic voting records and no back up paper trail, and in which the electronic recorders are vulnerable to hacking. And I have no doubt at this point that unscrupulous hackers will attempt to alter the vote counts if they can--the Republican reactionaries have already, as David Frum points out, rejected democracy in favor of power.
All I can say is that if you are a voter in one of those non-hard-copy areas, make your own copy of who you voted for and store it safely. Screen shots of the ballot, time and date stamped, are probably the quickest way to go. I don't know if that will help, but we have to try to ensure that there are accurate voting records somehow, as I expect there to be a lot of disputed results, and we may have to break out those personal records, compare notes, and protest very, VERY loudly in the streets if there are evident discrepancies.
86
@Glenn Ribotsky-Thank you for your post. I'm going to repeat the part about screen captures far and wide. Also add: people need to demand recounts in contested races.
7
@Glenn Ribotsky"...I have little doubt that there will be far more votes cast for Democratic candidates for the House--and probably for Democratic Senate candidates as well.."
Of course.
In the CA Senate race the 2 people on the ballot are Democrats. That guarantees a meaningless 'total' vote comparison.
Voting by those who don’t have the right has become the uncompelling rallying cry of the right. “Voter suppression” has become the uncompelling rallying cry of the left. There probably are very few people who vote illegally, and liberals regularly lose the argument on “Voter Suppression”, unless the exponents of Voter ID make it demonstrably obvious that their efforts are race-based, in which case federal courts have struck them down.
But the momentum certainly is with Republicans, so Democrats should be focusing on what might win, rather than on trying to convince Americans that Republicans are icky. Mr. Berman’s plaint gives the somewhat-off aroma of setting up an excuse for a leftish debacle on 6 November. That ain’t no way to win ANYTHING. Heck, Republicans will be HAPPY to take a win and to admit that Democrats find them icky.
What would you guys DO for America that is salable to a divided Congress and enough Americans? Where would you take us as a people and nation? What would be the costs we would need to pay?
We hear very little of that – other than “Medicare for all” and no idea of how to pay for it. Oh, and “Trump is icky and Republicans are a criminal class”.
In the end, you’re ALL a bunch of REAL ATTRACTIVE GUYS. You BELONG in New Jersey.
3
@Richard Luettgen...."other than “Medicare for all” and no idea of how to pay for it."....This is an issue that just blows my mind. How to pay for it - you have to be kidding. In every country where government run single-payer exists the cost of healthcare is dramatically LESS than in the U.S. Canadians pay 40% LESS for healthcare then we do. The thing that apparently is too hard for the public to grasp is that paying for healthcare isn't some sort of new expense. Medicare for all would just change which pocket the money is coming from, and would SAVE the country at least $300 to $400 billion dollars annually.
76
@W.A. Spitzer
Uh-huh. Is that an argument for Democrats' strategy to engage NO OTHER issue to win votes this time around?
As for "Medicare for all", others who have similar systems don't need to defend themselves or the free world, because we do it FOR them; and we'd need to resolve the issue of accepting its growth to whatever levels it organically grew to, or cap services provided -- as others do, as WE do for the Medicare we HAVE; and in any case to achieve those cost savings our providers would need to accept European standards of living for physicians. We'd also be giving government truly extraordinary power over an extremely important element of our lives. NONE of these things are slam-dunks in America.
And, please, before you continue on this attempt to sell "Medicare for all", please address the first question I posed in this response.
@Richard Luettgen, you have the intellectual capacity and, I'm sure, the wide reading to find "voter suppression" both factual and compelling if you didn't wish to find it uncompelling. Try to imitate Mr. Darcy, who addresses this very issue of wishes vs. facts.
5
It is time to shift the focus of national concerns from election meddling by the Kremlin to voter suppression by the Republican Party. The domestic threats to our democracy are more insidious than those posed by all foreign agencies combined.
126
In Wisconsin, Todd Allbaugh, 46, a staff aide to a Republican state legislator, attributed his decision to quit his job in 2015 and leave the party to what he witnessed at a Republican caucus meeting. He wrote this on Facebook:
"I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American’s constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/some-republicans-acknowledge-lever...
In summary, Russian-Republicans can't stand democracy, voting rights, the majority of the people, representative government or America.
Russian-Republicans prefer to choose their voters and to choose their vote totals, just as Vladimir chooses his own vote totals in Russia's fake democracy and rigged elections.
These right-wing tyrants don't have an American bone in their bodies.
They would be much happier in Russia, where it's more readily accepted that a rotten, corrupt oligarchy and its Kremlin criminal are running the country into the ground.
D for democracy; R for Russian-Republican rot and oligarchy.
November 6 2018
Vote in historic numbers.
182
@Socrates, it's time to change "Russian-Republican" to "Republican-Russian", to put the prime culprits first.
12
@Socrates-Wisconsin is the Koch Brothers' incubator for ALEC-fed corrupt legislation and bought-and-paid-for politicians--including Paul Ryan who received a $500K bonus for getting the $1.5 trillion taxpayer giveaway to the rich passed. With the GOP gerrymandering tactics succeeding so successfully--even when the majority of voters selected Democrats, Republicans still gained more seats. About 45,000 Wisconsin voters were deterred from voting by the state's onerous ID law in 2016. Courts too have pitched in opting not to hear gerrymandering cases until AFTER the last election. Wisconsinites, deserve more than empty promises and minimum wage jobs.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/voter-suppression-may-have-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/us/politics/wisconsin-scott-walker-to...
http://realkochfacts.com/the-koch-brothers-and-americans-for-prosperity-...
22
All we heard for the last 2 years was about Russia Russia, Russia in regard to election interference from mainstream media. Why the consistent and historic voter suppression and voter intimidation by Southern states and Republican controlled states is not only reported but not stopped is the interference that should be plastered on repeatedly headlines? Real democracy is the biggest fear of the moneyed and ruling elite. People need to be arrested for this to stop. Greg Pallast has consistently documented this but he gets little coverage by the corporate news.
48
Yes you are correct. Greg Pallast has been carefully documenting voter suppression for years and gotten very little attention in the mainstream media. The same goes for Ari Berman, the author of this excellent Op-Ed piece. This issue should have been front and center for years, and it is a shame that it is just coming out with just a little over a week to go before the midterm elections. But better late than never. Let's hope this becomes a central focus now -- the biggest threat to our democracy is not some foreign adversary, but what we do to ourselves.
31
@Munda Squire Yes, I've been among those constantly commenting on Greg Palast in the comments, and just made a comment similar to yours. No thanks to the NY Times for helping us land us in this nightmare. First they kicked Bernie under the bus, and then they pretended there was no vote rigging by the republicans. Even before Greg Palast, Bev Harris of Black Box Voting has been talking about electronic hacking for probably a good 20 years. now.
2
Thank for this article.
If voters are disenfranchised and the courts do not correct these power hoarding maneuvers, the marginalized who are most at risk and most likely to be apathetic will stop voting. The only option they will have left is to take desperate steps - that will be bad for all of us.
19
I sure hope the DNC has an army of attorneys ready to pounce if there is widespread suppression. They can not allow the beneficiaries to find their way into office while the mess gets, presumably, sorted out.
25
@Aleutian Low-Exactly right. Democrats need to contest election results that don't pass the smell test. Recounts need to be transparent and done in pubic.
3
Voting is THE fundamental political right. Any state which systematicly denies any valid voter that right over trivial excuses such as ID or registration is engaging in voter supression. Period. Such states should at least lose proportional congressional representation per the Constitution's very clear language.
Provisional ballots are generally an option and should be available to ANY voter whose legitamacy is in question.
32
@Tom Jeff-While I agree with the first part, provisional ballots are not secure and voters have no way to validate that their votes will be counted. And counted as cast.
"Chief Justice John Roberts, in the 2013 Supreme Court ruling he wrote that gutted the Voting Rights Act, dismissed the idea that voting discrimination was still “flagrant” and “widespread.” Instead he wrote, “Our country has changed.”"
Sure it's changed! The Supreme Court built a conservative majority, and Republicans have gotten a lot more creative about cheating.
Because that's what voter suppression really is: cheating. Stacking the deck, rigging the system, counting the cards, so that an election winner won't represent the majority, just the minority of voters not affected by the hurdles Republicans set up to make people of color (and anyone actually likely to vote Democratic) jump over.
Bottom line: Republicans can't win without cheating, and Democrats can't win because Republicans always do.
Another word for voter suppression is stealing--robbing citizens of their constitutional franchise, any way they can, whatever it takes.
157
Unfortunately, we don't have a constitutional right to vote. An odd omission in a supposed democracy. we have to face it. We are not a democracy and should dispel with the illusion that we are one.
13
@ChristineMcM
In a real democracy, Voting rights would be upheld, not destroyed by a judge.
Judges unable to uphold voting rights (like Roberts and others) deserve impeachment for this offense alone.
96
@Munda Squire: I urge you to read the following article from The Atlantic, published in 2013 https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/what-does-the-const...
It's not quite true that we "don't have a constitutional right to vote." In fact, while the explicit rights to free speech, assembly, exercise one's religion, etc. are mentioned once, the right to vote is mentioned 5 times across various amendments, from 13 through 15.
What you might be thinking is that there is no "explicit" right to vote but that this right falls into the "inalienable" rights specifically accruing to individuals, namely women, African Americans, and other classes of voters that might be prevented from voting.
1
If the left wanted people to vote, voting would be as easy a making a purchase via Amazon, depositing a mobile check, filing an online tax return, or renewing a vehicle's registration. The fact that computer/smart phone users might statistically lean right precludes online voting as a likely legislative option in the near future. It does not matter that tens of millions of voters would welcome not driving to the poles, the leaders of the left would scream about potential fraud in the same way the right now insists on physical voter ID in old fashioned polling places.
Some day things will be different. Fingerprint and facial recognition software may render objections to online voting as antiquated. It might even start a wave of online democracy where every candidate has a right to email every voter 10 times during the 60 days before Election Day. All political emails would go to all registered voters at the address designated by the voter (or one supplied for free). This would serve as an inexpensive form of campaign finance without the ability to target a different message to one group. Everyone could vote early but the votes would be stored in the cloud until Election Day.
There are ways of minimising money and fake news in elections and expanding participation. Fo now, understand that voter suppression is a bi-partisan game.
2
@Eugene Patrick Devany Please cite examples of voter suppression by Democrats - what do they have to gain? Every demographic affected by voter suppression (blacks, Latinos, Native Americans) tends to vote Democrat by a majority amount. There are certainly many by Republicans, as this article (and others) demonstrates.
49
@Eugene Patrick Devany Can you present evidence of a single instance of voter suppression by Democrats? Not something that happened a century ago, something during our lifetimes? When you do it will be the first instance I've ever seen.
30
@Eugene Patrick Devany
If you carefully read Ari Berman's excellent article, you have to realize that the "left" as you term the Democrats, have been the victims of voter suppression, rather than the agents. Please reread.
2
There are multiple solutions to voter disenfranchisement.
One is the effort by states to pledge their Electoral College totals to the national popular election vote winner. States representing 172 Electoral votes have already passed legislation, requiring states with 98 more votes to join the pact. Its still an uphill effort but perhaps the most important change needed to overcome the pro-slavery origins of the Electoral College that allows rural states to decide elections, as with W Bush and Trump.
Another is to reduce egregious gerrymandering at the state level, either through court decisions or state legislatures, many of which were flipped with the rise of the Tea Party in the critical Census year of 2010, abetted by Democratic apathy. So far, redistricting in Pennsylvania and North Carolina has been successfully challenged in court and Michigan and Wisconsin appear more likely to fix theirs. But state legislatures and governors are far more important.
Then there is an effective media, which shines a national light on local voter suppression, as when a Georgia county thought they would close a bunch of polling places in black majority areas.
I see no hope for action from the Roberts Supreme Court.
But I do see hope in massive voter turnout in 2018 and 2020, that will help all of the above.
64
@Look Ahead This has to be done one state at a time. Virginia almost flipped its House of Delegates in 2017; literally one more vote in one race would have resulted in a Democratic majority. It's important to keep the pressure on in the off-year elections, keep up voter registration drives, create drives to help those without voter ID to obtain that ID.
18
@John-Virginia likely got Democrats elected because the state's Board of Elections decertified its most hackable voting machines scrapping insecure them prior to the election. Unfortunately, at least 14 states still use these machines and we're seeing the result in Texas, where voters are watching their votes magically flip before their eyes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/virginia-scraps-t...
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/08/virginia-dre-voting-machines-hack
bla bla.bla The dems lost in 2016, and are still whining about it. The law is the electoral college. Not popular vote. You wanna change it, change it through constitutional reforms. Who are the states who want this pledge? Those that voted for the terrible candidate, Clinton.
Clinton had no message, no ideas, she ran on a "it's my turn" platform, and just hid.
The Awful trump, and he is awful, understood what HRC and her teams of advisors didn't. The election was NOT decided by Russians, No one thought Trump would win, all the elite's abuse of trump voters did not help her.