Let's Be Clear About What the Republicans Are Doing to Our Elections and Vote

I hadn't heard of this man or his quote but it certainly seems to describe the Republicans' efforts, individually as well as by the political party, across the nation, to disenfranchise likely millions of fellow, taxpaying citizens.

Stop vote suppression.

Be Aware, Missourians---Republicans In Jeff City Are Also Working on Vote Suppression Here

From NPR today: The same day last month that Georgia's legislature passed a controversial new voting bill, Missouri's Republican-led House approved one of its own. It would impose strict photo ID and other requirements on voting. Both bills are part of a wave of measures proposed across the country after the 2020 elections, and reflect a deep partisan divide over who has access to the polls and how. The divide is not new, but the sides have become increasingly entrenched.

Understand, folks. The Republicans and their ideas and work is so very unpopular with the rest of us out here in America that they have found the only way they can get or stay in government offie is to HAVE FEWER AMERICANS VOTE. They are actively working, now in 47 states, to disenfranchise fellow working, tax paying American citizens, voters. This cannot stand. We mustn't allow this. Call your government representatives. Tell them to support HR1 in the House and S1 in the Senate. We must stop all attempts at vote suppression.

Companies Had to Form an Organization to Counter This President's and His Political Party's Efforts Against Our Voting

 This is what this has all come down to.

This Republican Party President and that political party have been working so hard against we Americans, we citizens and taxpayers voting and for so long, they had to form an organization to work for helping us vote. Check it out.

Civic Alliance

From their website:

We are the Civic Alliance,

a non-partisan group of businesses

working together to build a future

where everyone participates in

shaping our country.

Participation is fundamental to a healthy, functioning democracy.
Yet, in recent U.S. elections, nearly half of eligible voters didn’t participate.

In 2020, a global pandemic, growing civil unrest, and polarizing politics are challenging our democracy in new ways.

As a growing coalition of businesses, we strengthen our democracy by supporting safe, healthy and trusted elections, and by inspiring our employees and customers to participate in civic life.

We aspire for historic voter turnout in 2020 and beyond, with a goal to achieve 80% voter turnout by 2028.

We have a ways to go, but by working together, we will create a culture where civics matter and every vote counts.

Each of our companies has unique values. Yet, we are united by these shared beliefs: 

• Every American has a voice in our democracy. 
• Voting should be safe and accessible to all. 
• Elections must be fair and transparent.

As business leaders, we’re committed to strengthening our democracy by encouraging nonpartisan voter participation. Here are unique ways each of us is activating our companies and communities.

Hundreds of Companies Will Pay Employees to Volunteer as Election Workers

More than 60 Civic Alliance member companies – including Starbucks, Target, Old Navy, Salesforce, Microsoft, Expedia, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, and Warby Parker – are taking concrete steps to encourage their employees or consumers to serve as poll workers.

How cool is that, that they would do this but ladies and gentlemen, how sick is it that this is necessary? How sick is it that the Republicans could, would and are fighting our voting, what with their gerrymandering and then voter ID laws and so much, how sick is it that this is necessary?

Anyway, I was so glad to see their full, double-page ad in Sunday's New York Times. Very cool. Great on these companies. I'm going to do what I can to support them. Hoping you will, too.

Membership is free – join today!

Additional links:

Trump And The Republicans Are Doing Everything They Can To Confuse Voters Before The Election

Trump And Republicans Voter Suppression In 2020

What Is Voter Suppression? Republican Strategy Explained

The racist anti-vote effort by Florida Republicans

Republicans in Jefferson City, At It Again

Image: Think Progress

Yessir, Republican legislators in Jefferson City are at it again. They're writing and trying to pass very self-serving legislation, all in the guise of "protecting our vote." Here it is.

Missouri voter photo ID measures pass 

House committee

Never mind that it's been proven, time and again, that there really is no significant problem with vote fraud of any kind.

How Voter ID Laws Are Being Used 

to Disenfranchise

Never mind that the costs of voter ID far exceeds any value obtained in keeping voting rolls any more clean and accurate than they already are.

How Republicans Rig the Game 

This is yet more un-American, Right Wing, Republican vote suppression and disenfranchisement of Americans. It helps them get and keep the poor, blacks, Hispanics, the elderly and physically-challenged, at minimum---read: possible Democratic Party voters---from voting.

It's not just wrong but deeply wrong and we need to fight this, we need to end it in America. They've been pushing these "voter ID" laws and gerrymandering for far too long. It all needs to end and we need to get started on it. We can and should tolerate this no longer.

Links:

Texas Voter ID Law Is Unconstitutional and Discriminates

Federal Court Rejects Texas' Voter ID Law As Unfair

Dartmouth Study: N.C. Voter ID Law Unfair to Black Voters

Missouri Republicans' Successful Gerrymandering

First, because I don't think enough people know what gerrymandering is, I put up a definition. Gerrymandering is to manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.

Political parties gerrymander districts so that their candidate(s) gets elected or re-elected to government office.

And it's wrong.

It skews voting away from the will of the people in the area, in the district, and puts more in the favor of the political party instead of the constituents.

And news out this week shows, further, that the Republicans in the Missouri statehouse in Jefferson City keep doing precisely this and it's a beauty. This from Addicting Info:

Huge Gerrymandering Fail Leaves College Student As Sole Voter In Missouri District

Businesses in Columbia, Missouri attempted to use their political pull to throw taxes at consumers instead of themselves, but a massive failure in their gerrymandering effort left them with one major roadblock: a 23-year-old college student who, on February 28, became the only registered voter in the district.

Representatives of the Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District attempted to remove every single eligible voter as part of an effort to ensure that local businesses had complete control over legislation — including a sales tax increase that would enable them to effectively force citizens to pay the businesses’ bills. The Columbia City Council voted in 5-2 in April to establish the district, which resembles a dinosaur drawn by a kindergartener (pictured below).

With this, their handiwork was done:

The Columbia Daily Tribune notes that, with pesky voters out of the way, the local businesses could effectively set their own laws:

“The Columbia City Council established the district on a 5-2 vote in April in response to a petition from a group of property owners in the CID boundaries. The “qualified voters” in a CID are capable of levying various taxes or assessments within the boundaries of the district to fund improvement projects. Under state law, decisions to impose sales taxes in a CID are to be made by registered voters living in the district boundaries. If no such registered voters are present, property owners vote.”

This is bad enough, certainly, but I think it's been shown, time and again, across cities, states and the nation, that the worst outcomes of all this gerrymandering is when they weaken votes of Americans due to their skin color.

We need to overcome this gerrymandering, certainly, and it can be done. We need to outlaw it so we can take our state and Federal governments back, for the people.

That and overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and ending campaign contributions so we get the big money out of our election system and government.

No small tasks, to be sure but these can be done. We have to stand up.

Republican Party Chutzpah Again--This Time in Arizona

Have you been following what came out of Arizona in the last year regarding voting and voting districts and gerrymandering?

Supreme court to hear case on voter-approved redistricting

The court hears argument Monday in an appeal by Republican lawmakers in Arizona against the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission for creating the districts of U.S. House members. A decision striking down the commission probably would doom a similar system in neighboring California, and could affect districting commissions in 11 other states.

It seems the voters of Arizona were sick of legislators creating very arbitrary voting districts of bizarre shapes just to protect legislators getting re-elected. The voters got together and created a vote to end it. The legislators, not liking it, have since taken this all to court in a lawsuit and it's now before the Supreme Court. They will decide.

Basically, the legislators want to overturn the people's will. Screw the people, the legislators are more important--to the legislators, anyway.

These same legislators are claiming the laws call for "the legislature" to create laws on this so they think it's against the law.

Mind you, these are, once again, "small government" Right Wing Republicans in Arizona trying to overcome the people's will.

This much, surely, is true--again, from the article:

Independent commissions such as Arizona’s “may be the only meaningful check” left to states that want to foster more competitive elections, reduce political polarization and bring fresh faces into the political process, the Obama administration said.

The thing is, every state, nationwide, needs to be able to overcome gerrymandering by legislators. We need government representatives--of the people--to create voting districts that are, once and for all, not supporting specific incumbent representatives and/or their political party. Arizona's state law here could be one step forward in a long trek to get and keep good legislation and laws that are for the people and not representing one candidate or one political party.

These kinds of efforts should come from no political party but especially not from one that insists it is for true, representative government, from  and for the people.

Links: Will The Supreme Court Kill Citizen Redistricting Commissions?

Supreme Court Seems Divided Over Independent Redistricting Commissions

The Supreme Court and the Freedom to Gerrymander

A Senate Republican Speaks Truth to Their Power

At last, long overdue, but we get some truth and honesty from someone inside this political party, calling their "Voter ID laws" what they really are and that is voter suppression.

Most assuredly un-American.  It's shameful. We need to rise up, speak out against this and overturn these efforts and soon as possible.

Go. Now. Or soon as possible

Another bad list Kansas is on

This little gem:

These states are trying to stop young people from voting

No, it's no surprise but still, it's disheartening. From the Washington Post:

Earlier this year, North Carolina lawmakers passed a bill aimed at stifling the newfound political muscle of their youngest eligible voters. The package of laws, known as HB 589, stripped away crucial policies that made it easier for young people to cast their ballot and participate in the political process. This week, lawyers have descended on Winston Salem to argue that eliminating these policies may have violated the 26th Amendment, which prohibits age-based voting discrimination.

The programs under attack have been proven to boost youth participation. In 2012, young people in the state were 2.6 times more likely to take advantage of same day registration.  And over a three-year period, 160,000 eligible young people were automatically registered to vote from pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds. Now these options are unavailable to the young residents of North Carolina.

Laws like HB 589 are part of a troubling pattern taking hold across the country, triggered by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, thus allowing Southern states to make changes to their voting laws without securing federal approval. A raft of voter ID laws—designed primarily to suppress turnout of minority voters—are also turning away young people, and often, both at the same time. Millennials are the largest, but also the country’s most diverse generation, with 43 percent identifying as people of color. In all, 22 states have new, restrictive voting laws that will go into effect before the 2014 midterms.

An undisguised attempt to block new immigrants and minority voters, new laws in Kansas and Arizona require voters to present proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in the first place. That means when you’re stopped on the street by a nice kid with a clipboard, you have to have your birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents just lying around in your purse or back pocket. Rock The Vote recently joined other community-registration arms including Voto Latino to sign an amicus brief, arguing that the laws unduly impair efforts to register new voters. It also launched an online petition to spread the word.

It seems the opposite of what we thought America was and Americans are about, doesn't it?

I'm telling you, folks, we have to fight to get our country back. We have to fight to end campaign contributions. We have to get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of money from the wealthy and corporations out of our elections and government. Until we do that, nothing will change.

Link:  Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government

Republicans: Against progress, even against America

Republicans and the entire Republican Party have been impeding progress for the nation and for Americans for so long, we're nearly getting immune to it.

But we can't be. We can't let these injustices stand. We need the nation to move forward and on so many different levels, not least of which is regarding the economy. Here's just two current examples, from yesterday  in The New York Times:

New GOP Bid to Limit Voting in Swing States

Already, nine states, under Republican control, have passed measures making it harder to vote since the beginning of 2013.

And this is one of the worst cases of the Republicans' handiwork. Getting fewer and fewer Americans to vote. How un-American can they be or get?

Then there's this one:

California Farmers Short of Labor, and Patience

Growers say inaction on immigration legislation is hurting productivity, and a powerful group that represents them says its members may withhold campaign contributions.

And this one is a real beaut since, in the last few elections, more and more Hispanics have been voting for the Democrats because, well, they get support from them. The Republicans say they're trying to be inclusive for all kinds of people--Hispanics included--yet they've famously and even notoriously and very publicly been fighting anything remotely close to creating a path to citizenship for Hispanics, Mexicans and others.

Your opinion voters? Who needs that?

KC mayor calls airport vote petition drive a 'wasted effort' 

Citizens of Kansas City and the area?  Who needs your opinion?

You're just going to be the ones paying for any new airport at KCI with higher fees to fly in and out of town.

Your vote?   Bah.

Democracy?

Fuggedaboudit!

The types of people the voter ID laws effect

Let's see, female, check; handicapped, check; elderly, check; possibly even Hispanic--that way they'd get a four-way win.

The Republican strategy:  If you can't get 'em to follow and vote for you, take away their vote.

Quote of the day

"This is going to be a squeaker of an election. Polls are showing Obama and Romney within a hair's breath of one another in the critical swing states that will determine the outcome. How can that be when Romney is an empty suit who believes nothing, hasn't articulated any program, and has (along with his running mate) called for more tax cuts for the wealthy, more spending cuts for the poor, and an evisceration of Medicare and Medicaid? When they want to deregulate Wall Street and regulate women?

The answer is the jobs situation. Yes, Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 with higher unemployment than we have now. But at least he had the wind at his back: an economy that by 1936 was growing by 14 percent. Barack Obama doesn't have an economy that's moving that swiftly in the right direction. It's growing just 2.2 percent, on an annualized basis.

So the real contest is between someone who very few Americans know or even like -- Mitt Romney -- who doesn't stand for anything, or someone most Americans feel they know quite well and like very much -- Barack Obama -- who is presiding over a terrible economy that shows few signs of fundamental improvement.

My betting is on Obama, but, frankly, I'm worried."

--Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Go, register, folks. Register to vote and then be sure to vote this November.

And enjoy your Sunday.

Links: https://www.facebook.com/RBReich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich

NPR asks a great question on our voting

The question NPR asked yesterday is one I've put forward before and it's a good and timely one. That is "Should Elections Be Held On Weekends?" I think the answer is partly tradition and partly so we keep the voter rolls down but really, voting in the middle of the week makes no sense at all. If we want voters voting and we want turnout at the polls--and I suggest most of America does, in fact--then why don't we vote on Saturdays when more people are off work? This would likely help both getting volunteers to man the booths as well as making it easier to get to them to do this civic duty. Oh, yeah, it's time this changed.

Ep. 238: February 17, 2012 - Overtime

Links: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/18/145397003/why-vote-on-tuesday-why-not-the-weekend; http://www.whytuesday.org/

Kansas, No. 1 of "States Trying Really Hard to Keep Poor, Black, and Students from Voting"

Yes, you read correctly. Kansas is voted number one as the state trying hardest to keep people from voting. Next door neighbor Missouri? Number 5. Whatever happened to the US that wanted its citizens to vote? Who have we become? Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/151687/11_states_trying_really_hard_to_keep_poor%2C_black%2C_and_student_voters_from_voting/

Jeff City Statehouse is broken: 3 current examples

The things coming out of Jefferson City at the statehouse are pitiful.  This is not government representing us.  This is government representing corporations, the wealthy and themselves.  Herewith, 3 current, maddening examples, as promised:

1)  The legislators, in their wisdom (read:  sucking up to corporations) came up with legislation limiting how much we, as citizens of the state, can sue corporate hog farms, for instance, in order to get them to literally clean up their collective acts.  If a corporate hog farm moves into your area, fouls the air for all and never cleans it up, even after you've sued, you and I will be stuck with that because the legislators did the corporation's bidding and have declared that a "nuisance" lawsuit.  Since it's a nuisance to them, they've decided it will be a nuisance for everyone in the state. 

As one Janelle Ramsburg of Prairie Village (KS) so aptly put it today in the Star's Letters to the Editor:  "Do I understand the intent of the Missouri legislators correctly?  Corporations should have the right to come into a community and ruin it for inhabitants.  The only rights the inhabitants are to be allowed is to sell their property and move away, assuming they can find a buyer?"

Yes, Ms. Ramsburg, you are absolutely correct on this.  Thank goodness you don't live in Missouri.  However, that said, you also have a Republican legislature in Kansas, too, so you might want to keep an eye on them;

2)  As I wrote earlier, the legislators re-wrote the vote we had last Fall by stripping Prop B of its protections for animals from "puppy mills".  Instead of honoring our votes, the legislators are going with their corporate buddies, instead, and going for more protections for these animal abusers, to boot, rather than leaving the protections in.  Additionally, Governor Nixon apparently hasn't got the courage--political or otherwise--to stick with what we voters already spoke on, either, and stand up to the businesses that want their protections, and not the pets.

From The Star today:

Nixon cited technical — rather than substantive — problems as the reason for the veto and indicated he was open to approving the legal protections for factory farms if those problems are corrected.


Next time, we need a governor who can and will stand up to corporations, so he and our government protect us, the "little guy", instead of always siding with big, corporate interests and the "fat cats", the way our government used to.

3)  Finally, there is the obscene, ugly and unnecessary Voter ID bill the Rethugs are pushing through so everyone has to show a picture ID of some kind when they vote.

Forget that voter fraud is nearly non-existent in the state.

Keep in mind, instead, that this is far more likely to disenfranchise the elderly, the poor, minorities and the disabled from border to border since all those groups are far more likely to vote Democratic.

So, kudos, Republicans--you and your corporate buddies certainly, clearly know how to take care of yourselves but in the meantime, you all--the wealthy, the corporations and the Republicans--are the only people getting what you want or need.

The rest of us can just suck on now-spoiled Easter eggs.

Links:  http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/02/2844587/nixon-veto-is-small-comfort-to.html
http://politicmo.com/2011/04/18/nixon-brokers-compromise-on-prop-b/
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=missouri%20prop%20b&aq=0&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=f941f71c05026393&pf=p&pdl=500

The truly odd--to the point of weird--saga that is the e-tax vote

A mulit-millionaire on the other side of the state gets a hankering to have the two largest cities in his state get rid of their earnings taxes and we all have to react.

He starts paying for advertising out of his own pocket, gets it on ballots and here we are, it's election day and we have to vote on it.

Never mind that he doesn't live here.

Never mind that it would wipe out two-hundred million dollars from the Kansas City operating budget.

He was bored, I imagine.

I also imagine he's a huge egotist.

But whatever.  Here we are.  We have to vote on this thing.

As if that isn't all odd enough, no one is quite sure how we the voters feel on it.  No one is quite sure if it will get an "up" or "down" vote.

And as if THAT isn't all odd enough, even if we kill it today, we have to vote on it again, in 5 years.


Weird as it all is, folks, get out there and vote today.

Then, let's all tune in at 7 and see how it went.

Links:  http://www.kansascity.com/2011/04/04/2776716/tuesday-is-election-day-in-kc.html
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/04/04/2776205/the-stars-editorial-voters-should.html

The stupid coming out of Jeff City, part I

Every time some Republican office holder proposes making voting more difficult in Missouri, like they're doing right now, I just want to explode.  Here we go again:

Missouri lawmakers back photo ID requirement for voting

by David A. Lieb

The Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Missouri lawmakers endorsed measures Tuesday that could resurrect a requirement for voters to show government-issued photo identification in order to cast ballots. 


The photo identification requirement has been pushed by Republicans -- who now have even larger legislative majorities than they did five years ago -- as a means of guarding against voter fraud. 


I swear, if these people--Republicans and the Republican Party--had their way, we would vote on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday nights (only one), at 3 am so as few could show for the polls as possible.  


Think about it, since more than 90 percent of us work, why don't we vote on Saturdays?  It would even be easier to get volunteers to run the polls, let alone voters.  It makes no sense--unless you don't want large quantities of the population voting, that is.


The fact is, this will make it more difficult for Senior citizens, minorities, people with physical handicaps and the poor to vote and that is decidedly, absolutely not their voting demographic.  This is just more of the same, where people with money and education are trying to keep the voting to and for themselves but keep out people who don't think or vote the way we do, so by gosh let's keep them from easily being able to get to the polls and vote.  This is disgusting.


Not only is this ignorant and obnoxious, but for anyone who has followed voting laws out of the capital, it's part of a long line of such attempts at laws.   Check it out, from The New York Times five years ago:


EDITORIAL

Voter Suppression in Missouri

Published: August 10, 2006

Missouri is the latest front in the Republican Party’s campaign to use photo ID requirements to suppress voting. The Republican legislators who pushed through Missouri’s ID law earlier this year said they wanted to deter fraud, but that claim falls apart on close inspection. Missouri’s new ID rules — and similar ones adopted last year in Indiana and Georgia — are intended to deter voting by blacks, poor people and other groups that are less likely to have driver’s licenses. Georgia’s law has been blocked by the courts, and the others should be too.

Even before Missouri passed its new law, it had tougher ID requirements than many states. Voters were required, with limited exceptions, to bring ID with them to the polls, but university ID cards, bank statements mailed to a voter’s address, and similar documents were acceptable. The new law requires a government-issued photo ID, which as many as 200,000 Missourians do not have.


As if that weren't enough, back in 2008, we Missourians were already given the notoriety for having "The Worst Voting Law in the Country":  http://www.alternet.org/news/85198/


So let's see this for what it is.  This is another of many attempts, down through the history of our country by various groups, to keep people from voting.  They wanted to keep women from voting.  They wanted to keep African-Americans from voting and now, with this, they can try to keep at least four portions of the electorate--again, Seniors, minorities, people with physical handicaps and the poor--from voting.

That they would do this to claim to keep the ballot box safer is only more galling.


Next up for stupid out of Jeff City:  government money going to private, religion-based schools.


Links:  http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Missouri-lawmakers-back-photo-ID-requirement-for-voting-116277449.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/opinion/10thu1.html?_r=1

You probably think you know where this poll of Americans is going--but you don't

What you're sure of and what we expect: 52% of the undecideds in the Senate race disapprove of President Obama to 35% who like the job he's doing. They don't think much of the Democrats in Congress either- only 26% have a like the job they're doing. But what you don't know and don't expect: Those numbers might seem bad- but they pale in comparison to how negatively those voters feel about Congressional Republicans- only 10% approve of the job they're doing while 61% disapprove. So these voters are down on President Obama and the Democratic majority- but their most negatives feelings are toward the Republican minority. Fortunately, Republicans are both in a world of hurt AND they're tearing each other apart, along with the job Libertarians and Tea Party members are doing to them. Man, this is getting good. Link to original article: http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2010/07/undecideds-in-ohio.html