Voter suppression in America
August 2, 2016 7:42 AM   Subscribe

When the deputy sheriff’s patrol cruiser pulled up beside him as he walked down Broad Street at sunset last August, Martee Flournoy, a 32-year-old black man, was both confused and rattled. He had reason: In this corner of rural Georgia, African-Americans are arrested at a rate far higher than that of whites. But the deputy had not come to arrest Mr. Flournoy. Rather, he had come to challenge Mr. Flournoy’s right to vote. - From the county and town level to the state level, voter suppression in America is all about race.
posted by Artw (55 comments total) 44 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Five Worst Roberts Court Rulings - "1. Shelby County v. Holder. The Roberts Court’s evisceration of the most important civil-rights legislation passed since Reconstruction was its lowest moment. "

Republicans keep trying to block black votes. That's why fair judges are crucial

N.C. State Conference of the NAACP v. Patrick McCrory [PDF]
These consolidated cases challenge provisions of a recently enacted North Carolina election law. The district court rejected contentions that the challenged provisions violate the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and TwentySixth Amendments of the Constitution. In evaluating the massive record in this case, the court issued extensive factual findings. We appreciate and commend the court on its thoroughness. The record evidence provides substantial support for many of its findings; indeed, many rest on uncontested facts. But, for some of its findings, we must conclude that the district court fundamentally erred. In holding that the legislature did not enact the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent, the court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees. This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina.
"Faced with this record, we can only conclude that the North
Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of
the law with discriminatory intent. Accordingly, we reverse the
judgment of the district court to the contrary and remand with
instructions to enjoin the challenged provisions of the law."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:46 AM on August 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


This is the kind of election fraud that people who insist that requiring every voter to present ID is what will Keep Our Democracy Safe would like you to not pay attention to. It is far more effective at discouraging participation and swaying outcomes than anything else we've seen in recent history.
posted by rtha at 7:49 AM on August 2, 2016 [25 favorites]




Claiming the lawsuit is overblown, because only a small number of the people targeted were actually ineligible to vote is a special kind of dumb lawyer thinking that drives me crazy on a regular basis.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:56 AM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


But my neighbor's grandfather told me that he once heard about someone that voted twice in Philadelphia back in the '30s. That's why we need voter ID.
posted by octothorpe at 7:56 AM on August 2, 2016 [14 favorites]


I'm totally giving Artw the side-eye right now, because I was working on an FPP using this exact article as a launching pad. Anyway, here's what I had (minus the NYT article):

Ever since the Supreme Court struck down major portions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 with the decision in Shelby County v. Holder--issued by Chief Justice Roberts, who has a long and sordid history opposing voting rights--many states have enacted laws aimed at limiting the ability to vote. These laws do so in a variety of ways, such as purging their voter rolls like Sparta did, redistricted precincts, remove accessibility for voter registration, preventing former felons who have completed their sentences and parole from regaining the right to vote, and re-institute modern-day poll taxes, almost all of which have shown at least some discriminatory intent. While most of them have been in the southern US, former home of the Confederacy and Jim Crow, conservative Republican governors and state houses in states such as Wisconsin have also resorted to similar voter laws. Many of these laws were enacted in the name of "fighting voter fraud," although organizations such as the Brennan Center for Justice have found that allegations of voter fraud are often overblown or even entirely unsupported (PDF), while actual voter fraud is vanishingly rare. In fact, it's often easier to find state and local officials admitting that these laws are politically-motivated, have parallels in past injustices , or are just plain racist.

However, in recent weeks, things seem to be getting better.

Ari Berman: 5 Major GOP Voting Restrictions Have Been Blocked in 10 Days
On Friday, an array of new voting restrictions were struck down in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Kansas. This followed rulings the previous week softening voter ID laws in Texas and Wisconsin and striking down Michigan’s ban on straight-ticket voting. When you include a court decision in Ohio from May reinstating a week of early voting and same-day registration, anti-voting laws in six states have been blocked so far in 2016.
Tierney Sneed: Five Points On The Big Court Losses For GOP Vote Suppressors
Voting rights advocates have had a good couple of weeks at the courts this summer, having received favorable rulings in cases coming out of Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina, Kansas, Michigan and North Dakota. The setbacks states have faced in enacting restrictive voting requirements like voter ID and laws that cut back early voting, limited pre-registration or made absentee voting more difficult could affect minority turnout in key battleground states like North Carolina and Wisconsin. The recent opinions are also shaping the broader legal battle over whether these laws are veiled efforts to discriminate against groups of voters who lean Democrat.
Richard L. Hasen: Turning the Tide on Voting Rights
States and localities will continue to look for ever new and creative ways to disenfranchise minorities. Voting rights groups will have to fight each change individually, without the benefits of a preclearance system that the Supreme Court wrongly eliminated in Shelby. This drive to limit the franchise and the findings of the Fourth Circuit in the North Carolina case show the fallacy of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s contention in Shelby that intentional racial discrimination in voting is a thing of the past.

The struggle is not over, but this wave of court decisions means that more eligible voters should get a chance to register to vote and cast a ballot in November. These votes will help elect a president whose choices for judges and justices will very likely seal the fate of voting rights (and much more) for a generation.
Zachary Roth: Will the Court Revisit Shelby County?
Conservatives have long sought to limit Section 2’s scope, by arguing that it applies only to explicit and intentional racial discrimination, not actions that have a discriminatory effect. That’s a claim Texas made in defending its voter ID law. (So too did John Roberts, as a young lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department back in 1981, in a memo to his boss. And it’s one that, as the appeals court in that case noted, would make Section 2 all but useless, since few people writing laws these days announce their intention to racially discriminate. A Supreme Court opinion resoundingly affirming the idea that Section 2’s ban on racial bias in voting should be read broadly would strengthen the Voting Rights Act and make it much easier for lower courts to continue blocking laws that obstruct the right to vote.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:57 AM on August 2, 2016 [67 favorites]


I wonder how much of this can be laid at the feet of Donald Trump. I mean obviously the Republican Party faces an existential crisis by definition. How, in a supposedly democratic society, does the elite manage to vote in policies that advance their interests at the expense of the majority?

The Republican Party has done a very good job, for decades now, of getting poor whites to vote for them, and keeping non-whites from voting at all. And as long as it was a machine of, for, and by the elites, the elites didn't seem to have that much of a problem with it.

But along comes Donald Trump, who realizes he can play that mighty Wurlitzer a lot better than they can and takes the whole thing away from them. Now the election shaping machine they had built for their own purposes is working to elect Donald Trump to the presidency, and that (rightfully) scares the hell out of them. So now the system is working to dismantle their wondrous machine before it consumes them all.
posted by Naberius at 7:58 AM on August 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


My father once complained at length about the trouble he had to go through to vote absentee in the NC Republican primary from vacation (it involved a notary for some reason; in honesty I wasn't listening that closely), and ended by concluding that his experience showed that voter ID laws weren't that onerous, which just blew my mind. "This was harder for me, and I barely did it while being a middle class retiree, so suck it up."

He did it to vote against Trump, though, so not all bad.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 8:01 AM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's like our system of checks and balances has lost all sense of decency. I mean, what sense it had.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:02 AM on August 2, 2016


The worst timeline.
posted by Fizz at 8:08 AM on August 2, 2016


I wonder how much of this can be laid at the feet of Donald Trump.

Probably very little, if any. See Mother Jones' Timeline: The Long History of Voter Suppression, posted on Nov. 4, 2012.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:14 AM on August 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


I wonder how much of this can be laid at the feet of Donald Trump.

He's definitely taking advantage of it, but an overwhelming amount of the blame goes to Edward Blum, a neocon and litigation hobbyist who relentless challenges civil rights cases, and was responsible for the case that overturned federal oversight of voting laws.

He was featured on a recent episode of RadioLab, which was interesting but I think a little too cautious in confronting him. He's not some reasonable man with a difference of opinion who is using the courts to push a particular conservative agenda. He's a racist activist meticulously looking to undermine any laws that create a level playing field for people of color -- those are exclusively the laws he focuses on (his most notorious recent case was Abigail Fisher, who he backed in trying to overthrow affirmative action). This is racist activism, and should have been described as such.
posted by maxsparber at 8:23 AM on August 2, 2016 [14 favorites]


If people are truly worried about double voting, the Purple Finger solution seems a lot cheaper and easier to implement than voter ID.
posted by fings at 8:25 AM on August 2, 2016 [14 favorites]


But my neighbor's grandfather told me that he once heard about someone that voted twice in Philadelphia back in the '30s. That's why we need voter ID.

I have a new hobby: finding people who post racist, misogynist, or just horribly offensive things on Facebook groups without realizing (or caring) that it's a public forum, and who publicly list their employer, and then emailing a link to it to the highest-ranked person I can find in the company. (n.b. this is the single most satisfying hobby you will ever find and I cannot recommend it enough) The one downside to this is that it means I spend a lot more time that I used to reading through Trump-supporting cesspools. And they are all filled with the same poorly-researched memes, which can be roughly summarized as "there were voting districts in heavily-black communities that voted 100% for Obama, and that's STATISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE because I don't understand statistics."

Anyway, point is, there are an ungodly number of people reposting the same shit, day in and day out, and an equally alarming number of people expressing support for it. The idea that voter ID is the only thing standing between us and Tammany-Hall-esque voting fraud is really widespread, and it's only taken root in the last five or ten years. It's another of those GOP-funded phenomena that's really incredible from a purely logistical perspective--I can't think of a single memetic concept the Dems have managed to push half as well in the last three decades. It's an impressively evil bit of work they've done, and it might well win them electoral votes if we don't push back against it with everything we've got.
posted by Mayor West at 8:26 AM on August 2, 2016 [13 favorites]


So. What can we, as citizens, do about this? How do those of us with the privilege to vote, ensure that everyone else do the same?

I'm not asking to be a smartass, I just seriously want to know what individual citizens can do.
posted by teleri025 at 8:29 AM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


What can we, as citizens, do about this? How do those of us with the privilege to vote, ensure that everyone else do the same?

Donate to Democrats. Canvass for Democrats. Vote for Democrats.

I mean, I'd like for it to be a more ideological sort of thing, but it's straight-up partisan dickheadedness. Republicans don't want certain people to vote and work against it to the exact extent they are allowed to, even in purple states.
posted by Etrigan at 8:34 AM on August 2, 2016 [14 favorites]


So. What can we, as citizens, do about this? How do those of us with the privilege to vote, ensure that everyone else do the same?

Volunteer as an election judge and learn the rules to help minimize people being turned away at the polls by bullshit challenges.

Volunteer with local organizations that are working on voter registration/voter id procurement efforts to help lessen the effects of the bullshit red tape put in place to try to suppress people before polling day.

Make voting access an issue that you ask your state and local elected officials about when you are choosing which state and local candidates to vote for. Vote in primaries, so that you aren't stuck voting for the "Democrat" who, say, supports LGBT rights but doesn't treat voting rights as a priority because they are better than the Republican who wants to actively suppress everyone's civil rights.
posted by sparklemotion at 8:36 AM on August 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


I'd guess that some of the recent pushback might be attributable to Trump. A lot of the forces behind voter suppression in the past are not enthusiastic about stealing an election for him.

Our state rejected some pretty onerous voter identification requirements before the last presidential election, but I still had a bad feeling about it, so on the first day of early in person voting, I went to my polling station and used a utility bill as ID, and boy, did I get harangued.

First of all, they had a big sign sitting right out front telling people they needed a state ID or driver's license. Then, when I got up and gave them my utility bill, the two women working the front table flipped the hell out. They started yelling at me, really loudly, telling me not to cause trouble. Among other things, they asked me how I got there, and threatened to call the police on me for driving there without a license.

Then, they went on moaning about how they couldn't figure out how to fill out their forms without an official ID number. It was just awful, but I made them do it.

Then, when I got home, I emailed the election (um, judge? commissioner? the main guy) about it. He called me back instantly, and he was MAAAAAAD. He said right off that I didn't even need to tell him who it was who did it, because they'd been going on and on about it all along, and he was worried they'd cause trouble.

Anyway, he said he was going to pull them out and not let them back until they'd gotten some 'retraining.' I tried to get one of my family or friends to go in and retest the system, but some of them had already voted, and the rest are lazy apathetic bums.

We do all mail in voting except in presidential elections, so I haven't tried it since.

But if this kind of thing pisses you off, I highly recommend trying it yourself. Read up on what the acceptable forms of ID are, pick whatever seems like the easiest option for people to get that you also have, and show up at your polling station as soon as it opens and test the system.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:44 AM on August 2, 2016 [57 favorites]


I wonder how much of this can be laid at the feet of Donald Trump.


My suspicion is that Trump may actual rulings in favor of voter supression. Right-leaning judges are the judges voting in favor of these things. If they aren't as enthusiastic about their candidate (assuming these judges would prefer someone line Cruz or Kasich), they may be less likely to rule in favor of these things. This may be happening on the margins but im not sure.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:51 AM on August 2, 2016


I'd guess that some of the recent pushback might be attributable to Trump. A lot of the forces behind voter suppression in the past are not enthusiastic about stealing an election for him.

I think the recent pushback is because the forces of voter suppression have been pushing it forward past all bounds of credibility. None of the judges involved seem to be calculating opportunists who would have let this stuff go if Jeb Bush was the nominee.
posted by Etrigan at 8:53 AM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'd guess that some of the recent pushback might be attributable to Trump. A lot of the forces behind voter suppression in the past are not enthusiastic about stealing an election for him.

Thank you, ernielundquist. That was the point I was trying to make - and didn't word as well as I might have wished - that the sudden turning of the tide against these methods might have to do with Trump taking the helm, not that Trump is in any way connected to the original drive to suppress voting by minorities et al, which has been going on for a long, long time.
posted by Naberius at 8:59 AM on August 2, 2016


The GOP getting desperate enough to overstep the mark and trip themselves up might be something to do with the current election cycle, but it would go back to before Trump started winning. Things haven't looked good for them from the get go and they no it.

Long term there is no future in this, and consequently for them as they currently stand.
posted by Artw at 9:00 AM on August 2, 2016


Just over a month ago, the US Supreme Court struck down a series of Texas abortion restrictions in Whole Woman's Health ET AL. v. Hellerstedt.

A big part of what that decision was based on is focused on the obvious difference between the laws' stated intent: "To protect women's health through hospital-like regulations/standards", and the actual intent of the lawmakers' who wrote it: "To restrict access to abortion as much as possible, by solving a 'problem' that doesn't really exist".

The became stunningly obvious when you look at how it was implemented and the data before and after the passing of the law, and the Court used that as part of the reasons for overturning the law. So, not only did these laws present women with an undue burden (the legal standard required to overturn them), but the court was also irritated that Texas's state legislature (and those defending the law) continued to pretend that they weren't intended primarily to close abortion clinics.

Sound familiar?

When you unwind them, the recent set of voting restrictions follow a very similar pattern, and the rulings (at least the ones I've had the chance to read) follow a very similar logic in overturning them: Voter ID and other restrictions are ostensibly for the purpose of "reducing voter fraud", but the way the laws were written reveals their true intent: "To disenfranchise {black, native, poor} people who usually don't vote Republican".

The evidence in North Carolina was particularly disgusting. Lawmakers there asked for a study showing how different groups of people cast their votes, and then "surgically" removed or restricted several of the methods that the study showed were favored by the black population. Outside of the PR office, they didn't even make an effort to hide their intent.

Now that the Supreme Court has made known its feelings about this behavior restricting access to a Constitutionally protected right, lower court judges are following suit (perhaps they have less fear that their rulings will be overturned). The canard of "But, but, voter fraud!" isn't standing up to the same kind of scrutiny that the USSC just gave to the most carefully watched case of the last term -- and the lower courts know it.

The next USSC term starts in October. It seems unlikely that they're going to hear and rule on appeals to any of these before the 2016 elections. It's not out of the question that they'll deny cert to one or more of these, especially given the possibility of a 4-4 non-decision, but that doesn't set precedent or affirm the rulings of the lower courts.
posted by toxic at 9:12 AM on August 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


Trump is already saying the election will be rigged. This dovetails nicely with one of the justifications for voter ID, that it's needed to stop voter fraud.

But there's so much wrong with this line of propaganda it just makes me grawr. There is no meaningful voter fraud in America. And voter ID legislation time and again is being used to disenfranchise minorities. 25% of African Americans lack IDs of the kind illegally being demanded for voting; compare 8% of white Americans. Requiring that kind of ID to fight imaginary fraud is not some kind of accident.

Also it's crazy for Trump to already be talking like a loser now, over 90 days before the election. And let's say he somehow wins the popular vote; he's already saying the vote will be rigged. So he's conceivably undermining his own legitimacy. For the security of the Republic, I think the election needs to be a Clinton landslide and not some close race.

(Bonus: this 2014 article does a great job humanizing how hard it can be for some citizens to get an ID to vote, in this case in Texas.)
posted by Nelson at 9:23 AM on August 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


Volunteer as an election judge and learn the rules to help minimize people being turned away at the polls by bullshit challenges.

posted by sparklemotion at 11:36 AM on August 2


To build on the above:

Be an Election Worker! Election workers are essential to ensuring that elections are a success. With each election, millions of Americans dedicate themselves to sustaining the backbone of democracy - our election process. [The US Election Assistance Commission] encourages those interested in becoming election workers at the polls on election day to learn more about what is required and how to sign up to work with your local election official.

See also their web site BeReady16 for how election workers and officials can "inform voters, advocates and the media about state election laws and procedures, voting technology" and more.
posted by magstheaxe at 9:25 AM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


So. What can we, as citizens, do about this? How do those of us with the privilege to vote, ensure that everyone else do the same?

What can we do to improve the accuracy of the public's perception of this problem?


If people think there's really a problem, but we use institutional mechanisms to keep things the same, people are just going to get angrier. Instead, addressing the information that people have in the first place, and what they can do with that information, seems like a healthier option.

And it's critical that any dialog on this be credible and unbiased enough. People need to trust, realistically, that they're not being given "spun" partisan information. That trust needs to be built somehow.
posted by amtho at 9:34 AM on August 2, 2016


If people could volunteer to hold babies or watch strollers outside the polling place, man, that would be awesome.
posted by Etrigan at 9:44 AM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Trump is already saying the election will be rigged.

He's going to try a pustch, isn't he? He has armed-to-the-teeth supporters and a way to mobilize and direct them swiftly and efficiently (social media). Armed insurrection at a small scale has already happened, at a wildlife refuge of all things. That dragged on for months.

And now he's laying down his cause for war, his excuse to de-legitimize democracy. There are already Trump supporters promising rivers of blood if he doesn't win.

I'm not saying he's going to succeed, or come close, but we're in uncharted waters, here.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:46 AM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


I think the country as a whole isn't that crazy, Slap*Happy, but I share your fear.
posted by Nelson at 9:47 AM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Thanks, you all. You've inspired me to sign up as an election worker in my county. Even said I'd be willing to work in the Returns Center. Could be fun!
posted by suelac at 9:49 AM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


I think the recent pushback is because the forces of voter suppression have been pushing it forward past all bounds of credibility.

I've been thinking about this in terms of the Overton Window, in that it cuts both ways: if they want to reintroduce the poll-tax, we should introduce a new VRA that significantly broadens protections not only for minority voters but also for itinerant voters (students, migrant laborers, homeless), as well as affirms the vote to person regardless of carceral status (does a criminal record make him/her less a citizen?) and includes language to codify and standardize alternate voting (absentee, affadavit, early voting) and sets a national voting holiday. Instead of fighting phantom 'fraud', let's do some work that actually needs to be done.

Let 'em choke on it.
posted by eclectist at 9:50 AM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'll lol if voter suppression efforts accidentally resulted in election ink.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:57 AM on August 2, 2016




He's going to try a pustch, isn't he? He has armed-to-the-teeth supporters and a way to mobilize and direct them swiftly and efficiently (social media). Armed insurrection at a small scale has already happened, at a wildlife refuge of all things. That dragged on for months.

I think election day will be a horror show, with the more dedicated Trump supporters doing everything they can to intimidate people. I expect to see pictures from open-carry states showing groups of Trump's amateur-brownshirts standing outside polling stations armed to the teeth. Just standin' around an' exercisin' their rights, y'know.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:39 AM on August 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm not worried about Election Day. I'm worried about the next day when the reality that the delusional individuals have created comes crashing down around them, that fantasy that Mr. Trump was going to not only win, but win in a landslide. What happens when that prophecy doesn't come to pass? What new reality will replace it? I have a hard time believing that it's going to be the same one in which the rest of society resides.
posted by dances with hamsters at 11:46 AM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


He's going to try a pustch, isn't he?

I think that'd be too much work for him. He's pretty lazy, really.

His supporters might stir up some shit, but I expect it'll be disorganized and manageable.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:48 AM on August 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Ian Millhiser: Voter Suppression Will Continue Until States Are Punished For Doing It
Last week, a federal appeals court struck down several major provisions of North Carolina’s omnibus voter suppression law, finding that state lawmakers intentionally designed the law to increase its discriminatory impact on black voters. It was an important victory for voting rights, as North Carolina’s law was widely viewed as the most aggressive voter suppression law in the nation and now it is largely neutered.

The court’s decision, however, was also an imperfect victory for voting rights because the court declined to impose a meaningful sanction on the state. Much of the voter suppression law is gone, but the state remains free to carry out its business without any more supervision than it faced before this law was enacted. The lawmakers who voted to make it harder for African-Americans to cast a ballot have little incentive to shy away from future efforts to enact more voter suppression laws in the future.

It doesn’t have to end this way, however. Federal law permits states that engage in racial voting discrimination to be subjected to continuing federal supervision of their voting laws. And an unusual source on the Supreme Court has suggested that such a remedy may be appropriate in a case such as this one.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:23 PM on August 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Donate to Democrats. Canvass for Democrats. Vote for Democrats.

This is true, but also the ACLU has been doing work on this front. I'm sure there's a 501 focused solely on voting rights, but I don't know it off the top of my head.
posted by tobascodagama at 4:08 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


These ploys to disenfranchise people are a kind of treason against our republic.
posted by humanfont at 5:00 PM on August 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


You shouldn't need ID to vote anyway. We manage it in Australia. You turn up to the polling place and you get asked "have you voted anywhere else today?". You say "no" and then you just get your name crossed off the electoral roll at the polling place. Then you go and vote.

If there is a problem with the results, then all the rolls from all the polling stations in that electorate are cross-checked to see if there has been some double-up. That's it. System works.
posted by awfurby at 5:11 PM on August 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


It's as if they were trying to suppress the black vote at least 40%, down to ~3/5 . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 5:59 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


So. What can we, as citizens, do about this? How do those of us with the privilege to vote, ensure that everyone else do the same?

Push hard to implement vote-by-mail in your state. Start by bugging your state representatives and senators, and where applicable, attempt a ballot initiative. It's no panacea, but I'm pretty sure vote-by-mail has increased participation in Oregon and Washington. It also reduces the cost to do elections, gives people who have to work and struggle to get time off a way to vote easily, and lowers friction for voting in local elections. You don't even need to spend the money to use postage - near me, the library was an easy way to drop off the ballot, and if you couldn't get there during its open hours, there was a 24/7 ballot drop at the nearest McDonald's. Combined

Vote by mail doesn't solve all problems, but it certainly solves THIS problem. Combine postal voting with single-transferrable vote, and you're well on your way to fixing a lot of issues with [the mechanics of] contemporary U.S. democracy...
posted by Strudel at 7:20 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


> Push hard to implement vote-by-mail in your state.

Speaking from the UK, we've got some problems with postal voting leading to vote rigging. I wouldn't recommend that as a solution, unless you want to end up with the actual problem the Republicans are arguing exists.
posted by Leon at 2:35 AM on August 3, 2016


You shouldn't need ID to vote anyway. We manage it in Australia. You turn up to the polling place and you get asked "have you voted anywhere else today?". You say "no" and then you just get your name crossed off the electoral roll at the polling place. Then you go and vote.

If there is a problem with the results, then all the rolls from all the polling stations in that electorate are cross-checked to see if there has been some double-up. That's it. System works.


In my state, if you are unable to produce an ID, or as I found out the hard way - if the Registrar of Voters accidentally moves your registration to your parents' house across town, they give you an affidavit to sign and provide you with a provisional ballot. As I understand it, the provisional ballots are set aside and no one even bothers double-checking anything if their number wouldn't affect the outcome. I'm a Caucasian male in a suburb so who knows if my experience would have been different, but I'll be damned if it didn't feel like the poll workers lived for that kind of excitement as half a dozen volunteers jumped on the case like the gang from Scooby-Doo. It didn't matter how late I was going to be for work, they were going to make damn sure I got to vote.

But then again, that's not the point of these laws.
posted by dances with hamsters at 4:48 AM on August 3, 2016


Leon: "> Push hard to implement vote-by-mail in your state.

Speaking from the UK, we've got some problems with postal voting leading to vote rigging. I wouldn't recommend that as a solution, unless you want to end up with the actual problem the Republicans are arguing exists.
"

A few states have had vote-by-mail for a while and haven't had many issues.
posted by octothorpe at 5:11 AM on August 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


octothorpe: It's a very particular set of circumstances that cause postal fraud in the UK. It's entirely possible US demographics mean it would never be an issue.
posted by Leon at 6:51 AM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Every so often in rural southwest Virginia (rural Appalachia) there's a small-town vote-buying / vote-stealing scandal relating to mail-in (absentee) ballots. It's been awhile, but the most recent one in 2005 (!) made it to a full investigation:
"Among the claims: that some votes were bought with promises of cigarettes and six-packs of beer, that absentee ballots were stolen from voters' mailboxes and fraudulently cast"
The one before that was people buying votes with bourbon. The one before that was (I think) voter intimidation to force people to fill out their absentee ballots under the gaze of local muscle. You get the idea.

Despite those experiences, I'm still very interested in vote-by-mail. I'd wager (but want to see the numbers before passing a law) that such voter fraud would be massively swamped out by improved participation.
posted by introp at 7:13 AM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


So far the data show very mixed and conditional effects ranging between large decreases and moderate increases.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:45 AM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


finding people who post racist, misogynist, or just horribly offensive things on Facebook groups without realizing (or caring) that it's a public forum, and who publicly list their employer, and then emailing a link to it to the highest-ranked person I can find in the company

I know you're trying to hurt people who are shitty but this is really gross. It should not be ok to contact someone's employer for what they post on the internet, unless that affects their job. This is already used as a tool to harass women who happen to speak out on the internet.

We should not be encouraging employers to make employment decisions based on non-work related activities if they don't affect the job at hand (so yes someone who is a racist asshole probably shouldn't be working in the welfare office but someone who is a racist asshole shouldn't be fired from their road construction job). I know that's not where we are at in this country, but we should be and promoting this kind of behavior helps no one.

What if you're the opposite of a racist asshole but you work for a company that is one. Should you get fired for supporting Black Lives Matter on the internet?
posted by LizBoBiz at 7:26 AM on August 4, 2016 [7 favorites]


Just want to emphatically endorse LizBoBiz's point. There's no government agency to which you can report people for saying awful things! So you hand over enforcement of "don't say awful things on the Internet" (or in public generally?) to... corporate America? Is that the world we want to live in?

You can't get arrested for expressing your opinion, but you can get fired? That kind of thing is going to lead to more companies having policies about what their employees can and cannot post about on Facebook, which is already apparently a thing, and I'm appalled by it. Their employees are people with identities separate from their jobs, and should get to say whatever their right to free speech allows on their off hours. We have a right to free speech because not everyone agrees about which opinions are awful!

The exception is when someone is actually representing their employer, posting from an official account or interacting with a customer about a business related transaction ir something. Companies can and should have rules about what employees can say in their capacities as employees. But not about what they say when they are speaking only for themselves as private citizens.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:41 AM on August 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Dana Liebelson: This Georgia County Keeps Electing White People Because It Discriminates Against Minorities
Minorities made up more than half of the population of Gwinnett County, Georgia, in 2010. But thanks to discriminatory election rules, the county has never elected an African-American, Latino or Asian-American candidate to any county office, voters and civil rights groups alleged in a federal Voting Rights Act lawsuit filed Monday.

The five-member Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners, which is all-white, divides minority voters so they aren’t a majority in any district, the plaintiffs claim. The County Board of Education, also all-white, concentrates minority voters in one district, according to the lawsuit. Since 2002, white candidates have defeated 12 minority candidates who have run for these boards, the plaintiffs allege.

The plaintiffs, who include Gwinnett County voters, the state branch of the NAACP and the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, would like to see the districts redrawn so minority voters have an equal shot at electing a candidate of their choice. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:00 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


Alice Ollstein: North Carolina Spent Millions Of Taxpayer Dollars Defending Discriminatory Voter ID Law
New data reveals state leaders spent nearly 5 million dollars since 2011 defending a voting law that “bears the mark of intentional discrimination,” according to the federal judge who ruled against the state in July.
The law in question eliminated same-day voter registration, cut a full week of early voting, barred voters from casting a ballot outside their home precinct, ended straight-ticket voting, and scrapped a program to pre-register high school students who would turn 18 by Election Day. It also mandated one of the country’s strictest voter ID requirements, which does not count student IDs.

Before passing the law, the legislature studied the voting habits of African Americans, and “with almost surgical precision” got rid of the voting accommodations they depended on the most. As the vast majority of black voters in the state — as well as the nation — lean Democrat, the civil rights groups that challenged the law characterized it as Republicans’ attempt to maintain political power.

After learning how much the state had spent trying to uphold the law, Rep. Cecil Brockman (D-Guilford) told ThinkProgress such spending was “indefensible.”

“There are so many more important priorities for the state instead of defending taking away the rights of our citizens,” he said. “We should be making it easy for everyone to vote in our state. I’m very happy that the court overturned this blatant racism against African-American voters.”

According to the same report, North Carolina Republicans spent an additional $3.5 million defending their heavily gerrymandered voting maps from lawsuits arguing they are racially and politically motivated. While the state split nearly evenly between Democrats and Republicans in 2012, Republicans won 9 of the state’s 13 seats in the U.S. House, and nearly 75 percent of the seats in the state legislature thanks in large part to favorable maps drawn by Republicans.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:32 AM on August 9, 2016 [3 favorites]


Ian Millhiser: North Carolina Hires One Of America’s Most Expensive Attorneys To Defend Voter Suppression
So, to summarize, the state told the appeals court that it was prepared to implement a July order striking down parts of the law. Then, after the court complied with this deadline, the state sat on its hands for two-and-a-half weeks before it finally got around to asking the Supreme Court to consider this case. And now it expects the justices to say that much of the Fourth Circuit’s order must be stayed because we are too close to Election Day.

The state has, to borrow from Leo Rosten, murdered its parents and then demanded mercy because it is an orphan.
[...]
Without diving too deep into the details of these specific legal claims, it is sufficient to note that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is actually an entirely different part of the law than Section 2, and that the race discrimination claims in North Carolina are distinct from the fundamental rights claim in Crawford. Neither Crawford nor Shelby County has much at all to say about the proper outcome in North Carolina.

Just as importantly, Crawford and Shelby County are not the sort of cases a lawyer should cite if they are trying to win over liberal justices. Crawford upheld a voter suppression law that was ostensibly enacted to fight in-person voting fraud, despite the fact that the Court’s lead opinion was only able to cite one example of such fraud occurring in the last 140 years! Shelby County gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act on the theory that America simply isn’t racist enough to justify such a law.

For liberals, these cases are anti-canon — the kind of decisions that illustrate how judges must never, ever behave. It’s easy to read Clement’s claim that the Fourth Circuit’s decision “not only will threaten voter-ID laws throughout the country despite this Court’s decision in Crawford, but also will gut this Court’s decision in Shelby County,” and imagine Justice Sonia Sotomayor turning to her head to the sky and crying out “Hallelujah!”
posted by zombieflanders at 10:54 AM on August 16, 2016 [4 favorites]


Ari Berman at The Nation has really been killing it on the voter suppression beat:

Donald Trump Is Encouraging Intimidation and Racial Profiling at the Polls
 After the [1981 NJ gubernatorial] election, the Democratic National Committee won a court settlement ordering the RNC to “refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities.” Now Donald Trump may be violating the consent decree against the GOP by asking his supporters to become a “Trump Election Observer” to “Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election.”

Trump unveiled the page on his website the same day he campaigned in Pennsylvania, where he claimed, “The only way we can lose, in my opinion—and I really mean this, Pennsylvania—is if cheating goes on…. And we have to call up law enforcement. And we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching…. The only way they can beat it in my opinion—and I mean this 100 percent—if in certain sections of the state they cheat, OK? So I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th, go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine, because without voter identification—which is shocking, shocking that you don’t have it.”

Let’s leave aside the fact there’s no widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania or elsewhere and that Trump is losing Pennsylvania by nine points in the Real Clear Politics average. His election observer program mirrors the type of voter intimidation the courts have blocked the RNC from doing. And his call for law-enforcement officers to monitor the polls expressly violates Pennsylvania law.
North Carolina Won’t Stop Suppressing the Vote
North Carolina has spent $5 million and counting defending the country’s worst voting restrictions, which the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said targeted black voters with “almost surgical precision.” The state waited 17 days after that ruling, then asked the Supreme Court yesterday to reinstate its voter-ID law, cuts to early voting, and ban on preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds. Governor Pat McCrory hired Paul Clement, the former solicitor general in the Bush administration who argued against Obamacare and for the Defense of Marriage Act before the Supreme Court, to represent the state.

Republicans in North Carolina are pulling out all the stops to suppress the state’s reliably Democratic black vote. After the Fourth Circuit court reinstated a week of early voting, GOP-controlled county elections boards are now trying to cut early-voting hours across the state. By virtue of holding the governor’s office, Republicans control a majority of votes on all county election boards and yesterday they voted to cut 238 hours of early voting in Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County, the largest in the state. “I’m not a big fan of early voting,” said GOP board chair Mary Potter Summa, brazenly disregarding the federal appeals court’s opinion. “The more [early voting] sites we have, the more opportunities exist for violations.”
posted by zombieflanders at 2:49 AM on August 17, 2016 [2 favorites]


Rolling Stone - The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters
What's far more likely to undermine democracy in November is the culmination of a decade-long Republican effort to disenfranchise voters under the guise of battling voter fraud. The latest tool: Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from the voter rolls.

The data is processed through a system called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which is being promoted by a powerful Republican operative, and its lists of potential duplicate voters are kept confidential. But Rolling Stone obtained a portion of the list and the names of 1 million targeted voters. According to our analysis, the Crosscheck list disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters – with some of the biggest possible purges underway in Ohio and North Carolina, two crucial swing states with tight Senate races.
And more:
In our effort to report on the program, we contacted every state for their Crosscheck list. But because voting twice is a felony, state after state told us their lists of suspects were part of a criminal investigation and, as such, confidential. Then we got a break. A clerk in Virginia sent us its Crosscheck list of suspects, which a letter from the state later said was done "in error."

The Virginia list was a revelation. In all, 342,556 names were listed as apparently registered to vote in both Virginia and another state as of January 2014. Thirteen percent of the people on the Crosscheck list, already flagged as inactive voters, were almost immediately removed, meaning a stunning 41,637 names were "canceled" from voter rolls, most of them just before Election Day.
posted by cashman at 9:55 AM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


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