SubscribeHe's wrong. Everything he said had already long since been hashed out in the press.
posted by aaron at 2:45 PM on April 13, 2001
I agree on this point; I'd love to see checkpoints go. But they have been ruled to be allowable under the Fourth Amendment under some circumstances, so our opinions on it don't matter for that much. Perhaps when a few more SC justices get appointed it will change.
But, there is no evidence whatsoever that these checkpoints were set up for any voting-related purposes; the evidence I've read said they were regular checkpoints based on a schedule that had been in place for quite some time. And there is most certainly no evidence that the checkpoints were there to stop black people. If they see that as inherent harassment, when people of every race are being stopped, then that, I'm afraid, is their problem, and they'll just have to learn to deal with it, find another route to their polling place, or stay home and pout. African-Americans have no right to preferential treatment by the police, nor should the police have to completely throw out one method of catching criminals just because it makes people who happen to have dark skin feel bad when they see it happening.
In NYC, there is at least one officer present at every polling place at all times. Do the feelings of African-Americans - and only some of them - override the need of the city to ensure that rampant vote-tampering doesn't occur at every precinct throughout Election Day?
While it wouldn't solve the false problem of "intimidation," there is a simple way to clean up 90% of the electoral mess in one fell swoop: Immediately pass a law that demands some form of identification be presented at two points in the voting process: When registering and when voting. All the "motor-voter" bills of the last decade, which were rammed through purely because they knew it would add to the Democratic rolls (and it did), have made it absolutely impossible for the government to prevent all but the absolute lamest attempts at voter fraud. You can mail in a form claiming to be anyone you want, as long as there's someone at the address who will accept the card when it arrives. And when you show up to vote, they're usually not allowed to ask for any ID beyond your signature. And since you're the one that filled out the form in the first place, the signatures will match. That is absolutely unacceptable.
posted by aaron at 11:33 PM on April 13, 2001
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(Postroad, I'm pretty sure this is what you were trying to link to with that Hotmail address!)
* One of 14 states that removes the right to vote from felons, Florida used error-ridden data banks. Often eligible voters with similar names were removed; they were not allowed to vote at the polls.
* Top officers in the election apparatus, including Republican politicians, knew that the process wasn't clean, but proceeded anyway.
* The state ignored complaints from disenfranchised voters beginning more than a year before the election.
* County supervisors requested funds for voter education, but the state refused.
Other problems found affected Latino voters, and often poll workers misinterpreted laws on election day. The Nation previously documented how Florida had illegally disenfranchised out-of-state felons.
posted by dhartung at 8:53 AM on April 13, 2001