Fight against so-called voter "fraud" unwittingly targets legitimate voters.

[DaShi]

How to wear firearms with style: Lesson No.1

[ATTACH=CONFIG]172505[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]172506[/ATTACH]

God bless America!

[Felch]

I'd be curious to know how many militant right-to-bear arms white people also happen to be racist/white supremacist.

You mean in terms of percentage? Civilrights.org says there are about 50,000 members of white supremacist groups. Assume all of them are militant about the right to bear arms. The NRA has 4.3 million members, a tiny minority of the population of gun owners. Assuming all 50,000 supremacists are NRA members, they'd make up slightly more than 1% of the total.

Of course, these are statistics, and statistics are lies. But it should give you an idea of how you totally misconceive the gun rights movement.

[MrFun]

I misconceive the gun rights movement, and you misconceive the whole voter "fraud" thing. Let's call it even.

[molly bloom]

God bless America!

It would be interesting to see how many of the Black Panthers pictured later died of gunshot wounds. Not self-inflicted, that is...

[DaShi]

The Black Panthers were true Americans...well, except for that whole separate nation thing.

[Felch]

Wanting your own country is what being American is all about.

[kentonio]

Oh yeah so about that photo ID thing..

Voter ID Laws Take Aim At College-Student Voters

In Tennessee, a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls explicitly excludes student IDs.

In Wisconsin, college students are newly disallowed from using university-provided housing lists or corroboration from other students to verify their residence.

Florida's reduction in early voting days is expected to reduce the number of young and first-time voters there.

And Pennsylvania's voter identification bill, still on the books for now, disallows many student IDs and non-Pennsylvania driver's licenses, which means out-of-state students may be turned away at the polls.

In 2008, youth voter turnout was higher that it had been since Vietnam, and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. This time around, the GOP isn't counting solely on disillusionment to keep the student vote down.

In the last two years, Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed dozens of bills that erect new barriers to voting, all targeting Democratic-leaning groups, many specifically aimed at students. The GOP's stated rationale is to fight voter fraud. But voter fraud -- and especially in-person fraud which many of these measures address -- is essentially nonexistent.

None of the new laws blocks student voting outright -- although in New Hampshire, Republican lawmakers almost passed a bill that would have banned out-of-state students from casting a ballot. (The leader of the State House, Bill O'Brien, was caught on tape explaining how the move was necessary to stop students from "basically doing what I did when I was a kid: voting as a liberal.")

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1791568.html

[MrFun]

How Voter ID Laws Are Being Used to Disenfranchise Minorities and the Poor

Conservatives say this kind of legislation is meant to curb voter fraud. But while evidence of fraud is scant, proof of the regulations' failings is not.

Associated Press
First, let's call it what it is. The burgeoning battles over state redistricting and voter ID laws -- and the larger fight over a key part of the Voting Rights Act itself -- are all cynical expressions of the concerns many conservatives (of both parties) have about the future of the American electorate. The Republican lawmakers who are leading the fight for the restrictive legislation say they are doing so in the name of stopping election fraud -- and, really, who's in favor of election fraud? But the larger purpose and effect of the laws is to disenfranchise Hispanic voters, other minorities, and the poor -- most of whom, let's also be clear, vote for Democrats.

Jonathan Chait, in a smart recent New York magazine piece titled "2012 or Never," offered some numbers supporting the theory. "Every year," Chait wrote, "the nonwhite proportion of the electorate grows by about half a percentage point -- meaning that in every presidential election, the minority share of the vote increases by 2 percent, a huge amount in a closely divided country." This explains, for example, why Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona are turning purple instead of staying red. "By 2020," Chait writes, "nonwhite voters should rise from a quarter of the 2008 electorate to one third. In 30 years, "nonwhites will outnumber whites."

Which is why "whites," and especially white men, seem so determined this election cycle to make it harder for nonwhites to exercise their right to vote. The news from the front this week is telling. On Wednesday, in Pennsylvania, GOP Governor Tom Corbett raced to sign a bill that requires photo identification of voters. The day before, in Texas, GOP Attorney General Greg Abbott amended the Lone Star State's complaint against the federal government to seek to strike down the pre-clearance section of the Voting Rights Act, which had in turn been used by the Justice Department to block Texas' recent efforts at a stringent new voter-ID law.

In Wisconsin, meanwhile, a state court judge on Monday blocked the state's new voter ID law, ruling that it unconstitutionally created a new (and lower) class of citizen-voter. Even the Human Rights Council of the United Nations has been dragged into the controversy, by the NAACP, to the great consternation of conservative bloggers and conspiracy theorists. It's all happening because lawmakers are dissatisfied with less onerous identification requirements -- like those just enacted in Virginia -- which allow registered voters to produce a wide range of documentation to establish that they are who they say they are.

Even though the Justice Department acted first in December in blocking a South Carolina voter-ID law, election law experts seem to agree that the Texas case is going to be the tip of the spear. Here's how the Justice Department responded when it reviewed Texas' new voter-ID law. Federal lawyers wrote:

[W]e conclude that the total number of registered voters who lack a driver's license or personal identification card issued by DPS could range from 603,892 to 795,955. The disparity between the percentages of Hispanics and non-Hispanics who lack these forms of identification ranges from 46.5 to 120.0 percent. That is, according to the state's own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification. Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver's license or a personal identification card issued by DPS, and that disparity is statistically significant.

There's more. As Brentin Mock wrote earlier this week at Colorlines, the practical reality of life in Texas makes it difficult, if not impossible, for people who want to comply with the new ID law to do so. Mock wrote:

Texas has no driver's license offices in almost a third of the state's counties. Meanwhile, close to 15 percent of Hispanic Texans living in counties without driver's license offices don't have ID. A little less than a quarter of driver's license offices have extended hours, which would make it tough for many working voters to find a place and time to acquire the IDs. Despite this, the Texas legislature struck an amendment that would have reimbursed low-income voters for travel expenses when going to apply for a voter ID, and killed another that would have required offices to remain open until 7:00 p.m. or later on just one weekday, and four or more hours at least two weekends.

Here's how Governor Rick Perry responded:

Texas has a responsibility to ensure elections are fair, beyond reproach, and accurately reflect the will of voters. The DOJ has no valid reason for rejecting this important law, which requires nothing more extensive than the type of photo identification necessary to receive a library card or board an airplane. Their denial is yet another example of the Obama Administration's continuing and pervasive federal overreach.
Continuing and pervasive federal overreach. We've heard that refrain before, as constantly as a chorus in fact, since President Obama took office in 2009. Opponents of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, for example, have asserted that Congress overreached its authority under the Commerce Clause when it enacted. Now many of those same people say that the Justice Department is overreaching with its interpretation of the Voting Rights Act by seeking to void these state ID laws -- and that the federal law itself is a statutory overreach that violates the 10th Amendment right of states to determine their own election rules.

Which brings us to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among his colleagues has expressed interest in striking down section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. In 2009, in a case styled Northwest Austin v. Holder, Justice Thomas memorably proclaimed "victory" in the federal war against state laws designed to disenfranchise black voters. "The constitutionality of section 5 has always depended," he wrote, "on the proven existence of intentional discrimination so extensive that elimination of it through case-by-case enforcement would be impossible ... 'There can be no remedy without a wrong.'" (citations omitted by me)

And then Justice Thomas wrote this:

The lack of sufficient evidence that the covered jurisdictions currently engage in the type of discrimination that underlay the enactment of §5 undermines any basis for retaining it. Punishment for long past sins is not a legitimate basis for imposing a forward-looking preventative measure that has already served its purpose. Admitting that a prophylactic law as broad as §5 is no longer constitutionally justified based on current evidence of discrimination is not a sign of defeat. It is an acknowledgment of victory.

So if section 5 doesn't apply to "long past sins" against black voters, what about current sins against Hispanic voters? If the Voting Rights Act was originally designed to protect the rights of black Americans to vote, do we now need a new Voting Rights Act that would protect the rights of Hispanic Americans to vote? If so, why aren't federal lawmakers tripping over themselves to get on the good side of a voting bloc that is going to increase in power over the next generation? Oh, that's right. As Chait reminds us, we are not quite yet at the point at which the benefit of shilling for Hispanic votes outweighs the burden of angering white voters.

It's unlikely new legislation is needed -- we can still use the old reliable 1965 statute and apply it to new circumstances like the ones presented now. But does the discriminatory effect of state ID laws have to be so bad -- "violence, terror and subterfuge" is how Justice Thomas put it -- before the federal government may step in against a state? Or is it enough to establish that there is a national effort by conservative groups to press for these types of laws? (Ironic, isn't it, in a dispute conservatives argue is states' rights, that so many of these state voter ID laws would be conceived within the Beltway.)

Several commentators over the past week or so have called the current generation of voter ID laws "a solution in search of a problem." But that doesn't give enough respect to the argument that we should as a nation strive to be as accurate as possible with our voting. If voting fraud is the third oldest profession, and if it is somehow rampant in all these states that have Republican leaders at their helm, then there should be reasonable ways to combat it. No responsible lawmaker ought to be against that. But no one seems able to find good evidence that a crisis is at hand. All Texas Attorney General Abbott could muster this week was this:

Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice has prosecuted more than 100 defendants for election fraud. During the same period, election fraud investigations by the Texas Attorney General's Office have resulted in 50 convictions. Those cases include a woman who submitted her dead mother's ballot, a paid operative who cast two elderly voters' ballots after transporting them to the polling place, a city council member who unlawfully registered ineligible foreign nationals to vote in an election that was decided by a 19-vote margin, a Starr County defendant who voted twice on Election Day, a Harris County man who used his deceased father's voter registration card to vote in an election, a worker who pled guilty after attempting to vote for two of her family members, and a Brooks County man who presented another voter's registration card and illegally cast that voter's ballot on Election Day.

In 10 years, just 100 federal prosecutions and 50 state convictions -- in a colossal state with a population of more than 25 million people. You can do the math. You can be stupid and vote in America. You can be drunk and vote in America. You can be mentally insane and vote in America. You could vote in America for Snooki or Rod Blagojevich. Or, like tens of millions of your fellow citizens, you can choose not to vote at all. But if you don't have the means to get a driver's license, or if you cannot afford the time and money it takes to get certain other forms of government ID, you are out of luck? What a great country this is.

Why don't we just admit that these so-called anti-fraud voting laws are motivated by racism and ethnocentrism?

[DaShi]

It's not voter fraud, they really don't like you:

Republicans look for voter fraud, find little
IVAN MORENO, Associated Press
Updated 10:42 a.m., Monday, September 24, 2012
DENVER (AP) — Republican election officials who promised to root out voter fraud so far are finding little evidence of a
widespread problem.
State officials in key presidential battleground states have found only a tiny fraction of the illegal voters they initially suspected existed.
Searches in Colorado and Florida have yielded numbers that amount to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all registered voters in
either state.
Democrats say the searches waste time and, worse, could disenfranchise eligible voters who are swept up in the checks.
"I find it offensive that I'm being required to do more than any other citizen to prove that I can vote," said Samantha Meiring, 37, a
Colorado voter and South African immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in 2010. Meiring was among 3,903 registered voters who
received letters last month from the Colorado Secretary of State's office questioning their right to vote.
Especially telling, critics of the searches say, is that the efforts are focused on crucial swing states from Colorado to Florida, where both
political parties and the presidential campaigns are watching every vote. And in Colorado, most of those who received letters are either
Democrats or unaffiliated with a party. It's a similar story in Florida, too.
Republicans argue that voting fraud is no small affair, even if the cases are few, when some elections are decided by hundreds of votes.
"We have real vulnerabilities in the system," said Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a Republican elected in 2010 who is
making a name for himself at home by pursuing the issue. "I don't think one should be saying the sky is falling, but at the same time,
we have to recognize we have a serious vulnerability."
The different viewpoints underscore a divide between the parties: Are the small numbers of voting fraud evidence that a problem
exists? Or do they show that the voter registration system works?
COLORADO
Last year, Gessler estimated that 11,805 noncitizens were on the rolls.
But the number kept getting smaller.
After his office sent letters to 3,903 registered voters questioning their status, the number of noncitizens now stands at 141, based on
checks using a federal immigration database. Of those 141, Gessler said 35 have voted in the past. The 141 are .004 percent of the
state's nearly 3.5 million voters.
Even those numbers could be fewer.
The Denver clerk and recorder's office, which had records on eight of the 35 voters who cast ballots in the past, did its own verification
and found that those eight people appear to be citizens.
Kevin Biln, an Adams County resident on the list, said he didn't know he was registered and maintains that he's never voted. Another
voter on the list, Erica Zelfand, a Canadian immigrant, said she's a U.S. citizen no longer living in Colorado. Robert Giron said he was
furious that the 20-year-old daughter he adopted from Mexico was listed as having illegally voted. He said she went to the Denver
clerk's office with her U.S. passport and other documents to prove her eligibility to vote.
To Pam Anderson, the clerk and recorder in Jefferson County in suburban Denver, the investigation proves what's already been her
experience: Cases of noncitizens on the rolls are extremely rare.
Anderson said the fighting between the political parties over the perception of voter fraud also has less tangible consequences.
"It impacts people's confidence in elections, which is extraordinarily important," she said.
FLORIDA
Florida's search began after the state's Division of Elections said that as many as 180,000 registered voters weren't citizens. Like
Colorado and other states, Florida relied on driver's license data showing that people on the rolls at one point showed proof of noncitizenship, such as a green card.
Florida eventually narrowed its list of suspected noncitizens to 2,600 and found that 207 of them weren't citizens, based on its use of
the federal database called SAVE, or the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. The system tracks who is a legal resident
eligible to receive government benefits.
Of the 2,600 initially marked as possible noncitizens, about 38 percent were unaffiliated voters and 40 percent were Democrats,
according to an analysis by The Miami Herald.
The state has more than 11.4 million registered voters, so the 207 amounts to .001 percent of the voter roll.
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, a Republican, said in a statement that the initiative "is already proving to be a successful
process to identify illegally registered voters," which he noted is crucial in a state where the 2000 presidential election was decided by
537 votes.
NORTH CAROLINA
In North Carolina, the nonpartisan state elections board last year sent letters to 637 suspected noncitizens after checking driver's
license data. Of those, 223 responded showing proof they were citizens, and 79 acknowledged they weren't citizens and were removed
from the rolls along with another 331 who didn't respond to repeated letters, said Veronica Degraffenreid, an elections liaison for
the board.
She said the board did not find evidence of widespread fraud, noting there were only 12 instances in which a noncitizen had voted.
North Carolina has 6.4 million voters.
"What we're finding is there is strong indication that the voter rolls in North Carolina are sound," Degraffenreid said.
MICHIGAN
Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, a Republican, last week estimated that as many as 4,000 noncitizens are on the state's
voter roll.
The department said it verified 1,000 registered voters who are noncitizens, based on an analysis of about 20 percent of complete
citizenship data. She extrapolated the 4,000 number from the most recent U.S. Census' five-year American Community Survey, which
showed Michigan has a noncitizen population of about 304,000.
That's as far as the investigation has gone. The figures have not been verified.
OTHER STATES
Ohio and Iowa, both with recently elected Republican secretaries of state, also are negotiating with the federal government to also use
the SAVE database to verify citizenship, although it's unlikely they'll have enough time to do anything before the Nov. 6 election. While
Ohio doesn't have a list of names it wants to check, Iowa is looking at verifying the status of 3,500 registered voters.
Last week, Iowa's Division of Criminal Investigation filed election misconduct charges against three noncitizens who voted in
gubernatorial and city elections in 2010 and 2011. Among the three are Canadians who told investigators they thought they were only
barred from voting in presidential elections.
The three were on a list of about 1,000 names of potential noncitizens who had voted since 2010, which Iowa Secretary of State Matt
Schultz forwarded to the Division of Criminal Investigation.
Early voting in Iowa begins Thursday and Schultz recently told legislators that his office wants to use the information from the federal
database "in a responsible manner."
"When somebody casts a ballot you can't un-ring that bell," he said. "If somebody is ineligible to vote and they cast a ballot that's been
counted we can't take that back. This is an important election coming up."
___
Associated Press writer David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Republicans-look-for-voter-fraud-but-find-little-3889723.php

[Dr Strangelove]

How about removing 10 MILLION voters, mostly low income to lower middle class, from the roles? How's about that for fixin' an election. Take THAT Ahmadinejad! Take THAT Putin! In your FACE! Who da MAN now?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New voting laws in 23 of the 50 states could keep more than 10 million Hispanic U.S. citizens from registering and voting, a new study said on Sunday, a number so large it could affect the outcome of the November 6 election.

The Latino community accounts for more than 10 percent of eligible voters nationally. But the share in some states is high enough that keeping Hispanic voters away from the polls could shift some hard-fought states from support for Democratic President Barack Obama and help his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.

The new laws include purges of people suspected of not being citizens in 16 states that unfairly target Latinos, the civil rights group Advancement Project said in the study to be formally released on Monday.

Laws in effect in one state and pending in two others require proof of citizenship for voter registration. That imposes onerous and sometimes expensive documentation requirements on voters, especially targeting naturalized American citizens, many of whom are Latino, the liberal group said.

Nine states have passed restrictive photo identification laws that impose costs in time and money for millions of Latinos who are citizens but do not yet have the required identification, it said.

Republican-led state legislatures have passed most of the new laws since the party won sweeping victories in state and local elections in 2010. They say the laws are meant to prevent voter fraud; critics say they are designed to reduce turnout among groups that typically back Democrats.

Decades of study have found virtually no use of false identification in U.S. elections or voting by non-citizens. Activists say the bigger problem in the United States, where most elections see turnout of well under 60 percent, is that eligible Americans do not bother to vote.

Nationwide, polls show Obama leading Romney among Hispanic voters by 70 percent to 30 percent or more, and winning that voting bloc by a large margin is seen as an important key to Obama winning re-election.

The Hispanic vote could be crucial in some of the battleground states where the election is especially close, such as Nevada, Colorado and Florida.

For example, in Florida, 27 percent of eligible voters are Hispanic. With polls showing Obama's re-election race against Romney very tight in the state, a smaller turnout by Hispanic groups that favor Obama could tilt the vote toward the Republican.

[Dr Strangelove]

Saddam Hussein, Mommar Kadafi ain't got nuttin' on us!

('Cept rigor mortis.)

[Felch]

How about removing 10 MILLION voters, mostly low income to lower middle class, from the roles? How's about that for fixin' an election. Take THAT Ahmadinejad! Take THAT Putin! In your FACE! Who da MAN now?

I think it's perfectly reasonable to limit voting to citizens. If you limit the vote to citizens, it follows that voters should be expected to provide proof of citizenship in order to vote.

[kentonio]

Just like people had to for the couple of centuries before the black guy came into office right?

[Felch]

Kentonio, the conservative, thinks all laws should stay the exact same in perpetuity. I guess he's against gay marriage too, since we haven't had that for the past couple centuries.

[kentonio]

I just find it ever so convenient that this stuff just suddenly becomes an issue now, after no-one seeming to care for the last couple of hundred years. Must be all that fraud they found since the last election right?