“In 2012, Republican officials in Ohio were limiting early voting hours in Democratic-majority counties, while expanding them on nights and weekends in Republican counties… Why do Ohio Republicans suddenly feel so strongly about limiting early voting hours in Democratic counties? Franklin County (Columbus) GOP Chair Doug Preisse gave a surprisingly blunt answer to the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday: “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine.” Preisse is not some rogue operative but the chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio’s second-largest county and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich.”
"Georgia state Senator Fran Millar (R-Dunwoody) wrote an angry op-ed following the news that DeKalb County, part of which he represents, will permit early voting on the last Sunday in October. The voting will take place at the Gallery at South DeKalb mall. Here’s what Millar wrote in The Atlanta-Journal Constitution: “[T]his location is dominated by African-American shoppers and it is near several large African-American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist… Is it possible church buses will be used to transport people directly to the mall since the poll will open when the mall opens? If this happens, so much for the accepted principle of separation of church and state.”
“In an interview last year with The Daily Show, Don Yelton, a GOP precinct chair in Buncombe County, North Carolina, defended the state’s new voter ID law, saying so many offensive things, he was asked to resign the day after it aired. Yelton admits at the start of the segment that the number of Buncombe County residents who commit voter fraud is one or two out of 60,000 a year. The interview correspondent, Aasif Mandvi, replies that those numbers show “there’s enough voter fraud to sway zero elections,” and then Yelton replies, “Mmmm…that’s not the point.” He goes on to say that “if it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.” and then adds, “The law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt.” After the segment aired, the Buncombe County GOP Chair issued a statement on Yelton’s comments, calling them “offensive, uniformed and unacceptable of any member within the Republican Party” and called for Yelton’s resignation. He obliged.”
It’s not hard to see. There’s a pattern. The Republicans want to suppress voting by blocs that traditionally vote Democratic.
Actually, I think most places require something with your address, like utility bill or bank statement. That may sound equally bad, a bill is just something you have. But combined with something you know, it’s the basis of two factor authentication.
At the polling place, the other half of the equation is usually comparing your signature to the one on file. Not perfect authentication by any means, but much stronger than you might initially suspect.
I see you completely missed the key word As long as you assume the other sides motives are always self-serving and/or evil, we will make no progress in this country. Yes you can find racist Republican. Two out three example were regarding voting hours, not voter ID, and don’t see how third supports your case.
What happen to the Mr Yelton after he said this stuff? He was fired and his statement called uniformed. So his opinion is clearly not “the Republican” view but rather an offensive Republican.
I think you’re missing the evidence. And being critical of attempts to suppress voting is about making progress. We should be encouraging people to vote rather than setting up new hurdles that result in fewer people voting.
I am not making a claim that every proposed voting change put forth by Republicans is an attempt to suppress voting, but rather that there’s a pattern of this by Republicans.
Or he exposed a bit too much behind the curtain, explicitly stating what was true, but also would be rightly called out. Electoral gerrymandering, particularly in places like Pennsylvania, combined with the evidence on Voter ID implementation, provide a pretty conclusive picture of what the intent is.
In 2012 for Congress the popular vote, by party, was 50.28% Democrat, 48.77% Republican. Of the 18 congressional seats 13 went to Republicans, and 5 to Democrats.
That is fucked beyond belief.
In 2014 things weren’t so egregious. Due to midterm elections generally having lower turnout the results were 55.54% Republican to 44.46% Democrat for the same 5 to 13 seat split.
Were things not so horribly gerrymandered you would expect something like 9-9 in 2012 ±1, and 10-8 in 2014. That it was 13-5 is broken. So, yes, Pennsylvania really is that bad.
NC found itself in a similar enough boat (eerily so in some respects). In 2014, with abysmal turnout (2.789m), we went 55.76% R, 44.24% D in House votes, but the seat allotment wound up going 10-3 in the Republicans’ favor. In 2012’s huge year (4.384m voters), things went 48.75% R, 50.6% D, yet somehow, the seat allotment was 9-4 in the Republicans’ favor.
At least we might make a tiny amount of progress with the recent federal court ruling, but I remain dubious. The State House has overwhelming R control at the moment. I’d compare voting figures for that, but they make a lot less sense (about half of our State House reps ran unopposed by another Major Party candidate). Assuming party voting lines for the federal House reflect approximate preferences for the State, however, one might well assume that the present 74-45-1 R-D-I split there might not necessarily reflect the will of the people, either. . .
Eh, but part of the reason that is because a massive chunk of the Democratic vote in PA is in Philly and Pittsburgh. In Philly, you have whole districts which are, literally, 100% Democrat. This isn’t because of gerrymandering.
The vast majority of Republican vote comes from the rest of the state, which is generally quite conservative, but does not at all exist in such a uniform, concentrated form as you see in Philly.
Again, this is not due to gerrymandering, its just because most of the state in quite conservative. You would actually need to perform gerrymandering to gather together the Democratic votes in the majority of the districts in rural PA.
Gerrymandering is a new “it” word. Seems every state is gerrymandered. As someone who live sin California I can understand that. But is it really any worse now than it was 20-40 years ago. Have the systems for allocating districts changed that much, or that little?
It’s pretty bad, but it kind of always has been. As parties become more divisive and the public pays less attention (or don’t care as long as their “team” wins), it’s gotten worse. I mean the term originates in fucking 1812, so it’s been with us for 200 years at this point, which boggles the mind really considering that it was vilified back then and hasn’t really improved as time goes on.
Of course now the Constitution is unamendable so we’re stuck with it, but it’s odd someone didn’t do something back in the 1840’s or something. I guess they were flummoxed by how to word it or the like.
California had a proposition under the Arnold that passed that was supposed to change the way districts were allocated, it created some magical “non-partisan” committee or something. I remember right after they re-drew the map the first time the GOP sued to have it overthrown. The method was their freakin idea.
If Soros wanted to make a difference, he’d fund initiatives in all states for that.
Gerrymandering is much more advance today thanks to technology. You have voter rolls and participation history of every voter, along with their affiliation, dumped into essentially Google Maps. You can draw districts that maximize the party’s advantage like never before.
Well, they thought they would be no worse off, and thought it might give them a chance to re-take CA. Well, a better chance than the current at the time districts. They were really, really wrong and it totally backfired by giving the Dems supermajorities in both houses, but that never lasted due to Chevron hiring a Dem who had won a mostly Red district in your neck of the woods.
Gerrymandering is mostly an ‘it’ word now, because the GOP has for decades been far ahead of the Democrats in making it a priority, and it paid off huge in 2010 (one of Obama’s largest blunders), but it’s been paying off ever since Tom Delay called an off-decade redistricting in the '90’s and flipped Texas from a Blue state to a Red State. You will find that the worst offenders in Gerrymandering are the GOP as they tend to push the legalese as far as they can, and have probably drawn 100% of the districts found to be illegal in the past 20 years (if not 100, it’s damn close).
I would certainly prefer the CA way things are done now than the partisan way they are done in most other states.
What will it take for people to believe that the gop is doing this on purpose against vulnerable democrats (mostly minorities)? It’s like when that video of Romney complaining about the 47% came out, i assumed it would do minor harm as i thought it was well known and obvious that was the gop philosophy.
