There's voter suppression and there's duopoly voter suppression

With federal court rulings striking down voter ID laws in North Carolina and Texas, and putting some dings, at least, on voting laws in Ohio and Wisconsin, it's a good time to talk about voter suppression, right?

Liberal activist groups like People for the American Way certainly think it's a good time to talk about it as a fundraiser. My email inbox has been hit by it and others.

But, there's a dirty little secret.

PFAW may truly care about minority voters who can't vote Democrat.

But, it doesn't care at all about voters of any color who can't vote Green (or Libertarian).

But the likes of Black Agenda Report, discussing the Green vice presidential candidacy of Ajamu Baraka, has their number.

Do you have your proper Texas voter ID? #Snark alert

The federal lawsuit over Texas' draconian new voter identification laws is unlikely to be done before Election Day. Even if it were, the appeals process would start, meaning that the current law would stay in place, even if AG Greg Abbott continues his losing streak in federal court.

The Trib has an intro to the trial, which started yesterday. Of course, the GOP are only trying to filter out poor, brownish people, the kind that Lite Guv candidate Dan Patrick, aka The Stinking Anglo Formerly Known as Danny Goeb™, think smell up our voting process.

And, it's not just Danny Boy.

Our beloved gubernatorial candidate, AG Strangeabbbott, per fellow blogger P.Diddle, has a history of outright voter suppression. I agree with him; the News story is great and deserves a full read.

Of course, the GOP doesn't care about what we know is the No. 1 source of actual vote fraud — other people filling out absentee ballots by mail just to "help out" a senior citizen who's homebound or in a nursing home. Of course, those large white seniors, and even more the 80-plus "super seniors," are likely to tilt GOP. Allegedly. Since we're not even sure how much of this vote fraud exists, we don't even know their voting preferences for sure.

That is, if you're not a rich, white Republican.

This here photo shows you all the voter ID you need in that case. Just a nice donation to the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, or CPRIT.

Per an old TV commercial of my youth days: "CPRIT — too strong for a man running for governor? Made for a woman opposing him?" We shall see.

That said, I know that's John Sharp who's third from left in this photo. People who have read my blog for years may know what I think of him; people who aren't can click his tag below and find out. I deliberately picked this picture because he's in it.

I didn't have a lot of love for Sharp with the 2002 "Dream Team" flop. Various actions and stances of his since then have only decreased my fond regards.

Dear conservatives: You want to actually make government efficient?

Having spent some time recently at the Department of Public Safety, I have one Grade A suggestion. (And no, fellow Texan readers, I wasn't in the clink.)

Let's start with the driver's license office.

The DPS, or the Department of Motor Vehicles as a separate agency in many states, are the driver's license folks. And who can't and doesn't tell horror stories about them? Add to it that Texas' voter ID bill passed last year has extended its leprous spread to the driver's license portion of the DPS, like if you're a woman and got married since your last driver's license renewal, and the clusterfuckocity (my blog, I'll invent an occasional word when I want) has only increased here in the Pointy Abandoned Object State in general, and specifically for newly married women, if you want license renewals.

(Note to women: Don't change your "maiden" name. Period. Just don't do it. Or, if you're religious enough to think you have to as part of marital "submission," you know who to blame. Gov. Helmethair.)

Further bollixing things up, and leading to my point, is that the "great" (sorry, Wendy Davis, sit down) State of Texas has seen fit to close DPS driver's license shops in a number of smaller counties. Mine's one of them.

Well, in the last decade, banks have started keeping evening and Saturday hours at more branches, and even going so far as to, in bigger cities, opening branches inside groceries. (Of course, that's with hiring most employees on a PT basis, and paying them only a step or two above WallyWorld. No wonder some of said employees call themselves "money clerks" or similar.)

Anyway, why can't we do similar with DPS? (And non-Texans, ditto with the DMV or whatever in your states.)

At least in bigger cities, have a few office that stay open until 7 or so a night or two a week. Have a few others that have Saturday hours.

Oh, and hire the extra people to make this happen right, and to improve the current situation.

With people not having to spend 2-3 hours renewing licenses, or non-maidenly Texas women having to waste 10-12 hours or more, work in private sector jobs would be aided a bit, too.

Dear small Texas counties: Blame Abbott for your #VoterID bills

As I blogged yesterday, the state of Texas and its "sue Obama" attorney general, Greg Abbott, are now being sued BY Obama and the U.S. Department of Justice over both Texas new voter ID law and over redistricting.

Well, the local county clerk is complaining about the cost of running a legal notice for the details of the new voter ID law. It would cost, unless she can get the Secretary of State to let it be trimmed, about $250 to run bilingually.

Hey, I don't want to soak the county unnecessarily, but, if that's what the state says is needed, that's what's needed. (And, I don't know if it's a required posting, but I sure got that indication.)

Once again, Texas' money-waster in chief rears his head. And, with DOJ officially involved, the voter ID bill may at least face an injunction before this November's constitutional amendments election. If so, more money wasted.

Oh, and ain't it funny, or "funny," that the law does nothing to address vote fraud, actual as well as alleged, in voting by mail? Why? Because in the past, that's been the provenance of old, white, rural Republicans, in many cases, though that's probably changing.

(I'm waiting for the GOP to try to figure out how to "cage" voters by mail.)

How feds could trump state voter ID laws

Yes, Texas's voter ID law has also gotten a smackdown in appeals court yesterday, but that's not going to either stop AG Greg Abbott from appealing to the Supreme Court, with a possible win there, or if that fails, the Texas Legislature to draft something just slightly less onerous next year.

But per friend Leo Lincourt, who cites a letter to the editor in Fort Wayne, Ind., about voter ID there, and the dangers of not renewing a driver's license on time, I got to thinking.


And here's a tentative possible solution.

Federal photo ID Medicaid cards!

Yes, it's state administered, but it's a federal program. True, folks like Tricky Ricky Perry might try to go so far as to use this as an excuse to opt out of even current abysmal Medicaid service providing, but there'd be other sticks of heavier hitting if he tried.

Or since states now have debit-type cards for food stamps, like the Lone Star Card here in Texas, which get federal funds, require a photo on there and force states to accept.

I think that, based on the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, even though Chief Justice Roberts' majority swing vote on the Obamacare ruling trimmed its sails, you could force states to do this on legal grounds.

Chubbing – why Texas needs an every-year Lege

I have said time and time again that Texas needs an every-year legislature, that it’s ridiculous that a state of more than 20 million people has a legislative body that just meets every other year. I agree that voter ID is bad law, at least as written by Texas Republicans, and should be killed, but I don’t like all the collateral legislative damage.

That said, with a solution like New Mexico’s, for example, of a shorter term in even-numbered years, Texas wouldn’t have this mess of too many bills crammed on a tight legislative calendar in the first place.

Beyond THAT, though, lets not forget that the Texas GOP brought this on itself by suspending the Senate’s two-thirds rule to pass voter ID there in the first place.

Texas voter ID bill dead?

Or, so says Texas House Democratic leader Jim Dunnam, calling on the House GOP to accept that fact and move on.

That said, this shows what a difference a new Speaker can make. If we still had Kid Craddock in place instead of Joe Straus, he'd probably have Dunnam staked to an anthill or something.

Of course, the first graf is true only if the House does not suspend its rules for consideration of Senate bills: Dunnam saidthat's likely, but voter ID still won't make it past a load of other bills.

Unless...

Straus allows the GOP to "call the question" on bill after bill. Dems hope that isn't the case, but want more assurance.

Update: The demise of Voter ID now seems official, barring one more possible hurdle: Lil Ricky Perry calling a special session, as he’s threatening, if the Lege doesn’t pass a windstorm bill.

Naïveté watch – Steve Benen and Kevin Drum

Two deluded people on voter registration reform

At Washington Monthly, Steve Benen believes the GOP would willingly sign off on the federal government registering voters.

At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum things we should make a national ID card part of this.

My response to both of them, in order:

Boy, are you naive if you think the GOP would sign off on this, Steve.

The last thing it wants to do is depoliticize this.

Ditto for Dems on certain issues.

Some 20 months ago, I and many other real progressives begged Pelosi to attach a COLA to the min-wage increase. Wasn't done.

But, Steve isn't half as naive as Kevin is.

As for “national ID,” there’s going to have to be decades of trust-building before I’d accept a national ID card, given what the current administration would have done with one.

And, given his status as a FISA 45 percenter, the “that one” from Illinois hasn’t raised the cockles of trust inside me very much on civil liberties issues.

Geez, with MSLBers like this, no wonder Kool-Aid sellers can get elected as “agents of change.”

Is GOP using HAVA to run a massive voter-denial program?

Now, I’m not going to claim the Help Americans Vote Act is perfect, by any means.

But, RFK Jr. and Greg Palast would have a better claim if they didn’t cite Las Vegas, N.M. as their
first example.

Yes, Paul Maez, the city’s elections supervisor, was bounced from voting lists, as was State Auditor Hector Balderas.

Maez blames the state privatizing its voting list management.

But, you know… that privatization was done by well-known Democratic governor Bill Richardson and a Democratic state legislature.

And, while Palast can always be entertaining, he’s not always spot-on. And, RFK Jr. has been and remains full of crap about autism and thimerosal. And other things.

So, take this story with a fair, but not necessarily huge, grain of salt. But, at least a fair grain.

Registered to vote —maybe not

The WaPost explains how statewide databases may throw out many voter registrations when voter registration lists are compared to information from driver’s licenses or state IDs. It’s all part of the Help America Vote Act, which was designed to get state databases, searchable online, as the basis for checking registrations. That said, at least one in five “errors” may not be.

The graphic below, from Electoral-Vote, illustrates the issue.



And, the McCain campaign and the GOP have politicized the whole issue, presumably to keep people, especially first-time voters and even more so, first-time minority voters, from the polls.

Abbott wastes Texas money for nonexistent ‘vote fraud’

Showing that he is a “GOP Oreo” (bipartisan on the outside, attack dog on the inside” Greg Abbott dug up a whole 26 “cases” of alleged vote fraud. I put “cases” in scare quotes because part of what Abbott labels as “cases” is old folks getting someone else to mail in a mail-in ballot for them, and that person then not identifying himself or herself on the envelope. (Texas law makes it a crime to carry someone else’s filled-out ballot to the mailbox, unless the carrier puts his or her own name and address on the envelope.)

In other words, 18 of the 26 cases Abbott prosecuted were technicalities.

Jerry Strickland, an Abbott spokesman, rejected that, saying the attorney general's office responds to complaints it receives. Under state law, the attorney general can initiate voter-fraud cases or respond to district attorneys seeking outside help in local political cases.

Bullshit. Who complained?

With just 18 of these non-cases, Mr. Strickland, it looks pretty obvious that Abbott deliberately went searching for penny-ante crap like this.

In another case, three Hidalgo County women were indicted on charges they illegally assisted elderly voters and mishandled the mail-in ballots in the 2005 McAllen mayor’s race. A judge dismissed the charges in March.

“They were not our investigations, and I didn't feel they would stand up before a jury,” said Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra.

Read the story for more examples of Greg Abbott looking for the mote in somebody else’s eye while walking around with a 2x4 in his own.

Meanwhile, in the real world, has Greg Abbott prosecuted, or even investigated, allegations of real vote fraud?

Hell, no:

Democrats accuse Mr. Abbott of a partisan operation to discourage voters, especially minorities.

They contrast the prosecutions with complaints that more than 100 ballots were mishandled in a 2005 Highland Park election, a case in which Mr. Abbott took no action.

First, Mr. “Open Government” needs to be open with us just how much money he wasted on this snipe hunt.

Second, he needs to stop being chickenshit about dodging interviews. Did he get marching orders from Rove?

Strickland said Abbott declined to be interviewed because of ongoing litigation and investigations.

Citing pending litigation, the office also declined to release letters, e-mails and other documents – other than a list of the cases prosecuted – sought by The News under the state's Public Information Act. So it’s unclear how many complaints the attorney general has received or investigated overall.

Is it something about being the state’s AG, if you’re a Republican, that has an especially corrupting influence?

Texas Observer has much more than the Snooze does, including having been on this a month earlier.

And, his own initial press release made clear he was targeting large, Democratic-leaning metropolitan areas:

In early 2006, he announced “a statewide initiative to work with local law enforcement and prosecutors to combat and prevent the persistent problem of voter fraud.” The project’s initial phase would target “44 key counties that either have a history of voter fraud or the population of which exceeds 100,000,” the release said.

And money for this came from the same state grant pool that funded the Tulia non-drug task force clusterfuck.

Oh, if you visit teh Snooze story, there is a sidebar about Abbott pushing again (natch) for voter ID laws.

Photo ID on the Texas Lege agenda?

Don’t tell me Speaker Tom “Kid” Craddock didn’t see the Supreme Court ruling today upholding Indiana’s photo ID law for voters. This is the DeLay-type wedge issue that he thrives on.

The SCOTUS 6-3 vote had two separate votes, a majority and a concurring decision.

The law “is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,’” Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy.

The hardcore right of Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence.

David Souter spoke for the opposition of himself, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer:

In dissent, Souter said Indiana’s voter ID law “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state's citizens.”

Stevens’ is the vote that most surprises me. Maybe he was on the fence and jumped off when Roberts told him he could write the opinion, and craft it narrowly.

Update: Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has already come out blazing with a promise of a 2007 do-over in trying to ramrod a voter ID bill past the Texas Senate.

Will he go so far as in the mid-decade redistricting fight and try to suspend the rules of the Senate?