Twitter

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Alabama Offering "Free" Voter ID cards? Well, Sorta, Kinda..



Nothing is free, taxpayers are funding this little folly.  Although voter fraud is rarer than a shark attack, in an attempt to make sure democrats don't get to exercise their right to vote, Alabama republicans changed the rules in the middle of game.  All of a sudden the state issued voter registration card voters have been using for years is required to include your photo.

Oh wait... the state issued voter registration card doesn't have your photo on it.  Here's an idea, why not re-issue those cards with photo's from the DMV,  those voters who don't have a drivers license can go have their picture made at the DMV, or better yet, by the the mobile vans they've promised to provide for people who can't get to the DMV?  Instead of making the voters come to them, the state of Alabama should go to voters.  After all, the Secretary of State should know who they are, and where they are.

I'm just saying..

36 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why should you not be required to have I.D. TO VOTE? You need I.D.if you write a check at Publixs, Wal-Mart, gas stations etc! How do these so called poor people who can't afford an I.D. sign up for welfare and other programs? How do they prove who they are? There is an easy solution. Make all non driver I.D.'s $1.00! CASE CLOSED! This is 2014 everyone should have an I.D.!

Redeye said...

No one is saying you should not have ID to vote.

Anonymous said...

GREAT, we agree!

Redeye said...

We have always had to show ID to vote, but not a government issued ID.
"It is ironic that the right, which yowls that giving people more liberty and greater freedom or a more secure life such as through health care reform or forming a union is unconstitutional. Yet as they make a noise over here, over there they are busy dismantling everything the Constitution stands for."

No wonder we are in the midst of a Constitutional crisis.

Brian said...

What would constitute a non government issued ID?

Redeye said...

Let me clarify and revise my comment for you Brian, we have always had to show ID to vote, but not a government mandated photo ID to vote.

Unknown said...

A funny thing happened when I read your post: I realized that Obama has done nothing which violates the constitution.

The Federal government has cheery picked which laws it wanted to enforce since George Washington (remember him?) And yes, this power is granted by the Constitution and has been upheld by the Supreme Court. The Federal government also has prerogative over which crimes it wants to prosecute, and this has also been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Recess appointment are also constitutional. But the case you appear to be referring to is being reviewed by the Supreme Court who must ultimately decide if the Senate was technically in session. If the Senate was in session when the appointments were made then these appointments will be ruled unconstitutional. Still, this hardly means that a sitting POTUS is willfully disregarding the constitution. Many past and future president have acted in error of the constitution on technical grounds, and we all know that Senate Republicans are technically trying to block Obama from making appointments by keeping the Senate in session on technical grounds.

Czars have been used since Nixon and have no real power. Never in history have they been required to be confirmed by the Senate.

The individual mandate and Medicaid have both been ruled constitutional.

The Independent Payment Board Advisory Board was a Republican idea to help the elderly plan their estate.

Congress has the power to levy taxes.

And Health care waivers are executive actions.


But if the POTUS was really in violation of the constitution then I honestly think he would have been impeached by now, don't you?


yellowdog said...

I had to register to vote. Now I am on a list of eligible voters in my voting precinct/district. When I come up to the table, theres my name. I say "There I am." They mark me off - one name, one vote.

This is a sacred right to vote fought for by so many of our ancestors - and fought for us today. Finding ways to impede that simple process is denying fellow citizens the right to vote.

I imagine it is just a coincidence that minority Democratic voters are disproportionately targeted in this disenfranchisement. Even as prominent Republicans and conservatives say this is the purpose of requiring new identification to vote.

Even when you are registered and on the list right there, one name, one vote.

So I am denied my Constitutional right to vote because even though my name is right there, registered to vote, some Republican legislator decided I lose my vote cause I don't have the exact ID they want me to have? Or it expired yesterday? I'm obviously unqualified to vote as an American citizen because I don't have the same ID as you?

Our revered founding fathers believed only white male landholders had the "right to vote." I'm sure there are a lot of Republicans who long for the good old days.

Redeye said...

Here is the rub about the photo ID, unless voters are required to update their photo every year, what good is it going to do? What if the voter changes their hair color, or loses their hair? What if they gain or lose weight? How many of us look like our drivers license picture. If our name is on the list and we show up to vote then we should be allowed to vote. Period.

Brian said...

So there is about 900000 shark attacks each year? TV station in Florida found at least 94 people that were registered to vote and had voted but when it came to registering for jury duty, admitted they were non-citizens (making them ineligible for jury duty).

Redeye said...

You mean the Florida that didn't count all the votes in 2000?

Brian said...

There was a variety of reason that votes were not counted in Florida in 2000. And not all the votes that were not counted were for Gore. The recounts show that it could have gone anywhere from Gore winning by 332 votes (a 869 swing for Gore) to Bush winning by 1,665 votes (a 1,128 swing for Bush). It was one of the key reasons the Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002 because there was over 2 million votes in 2000 that were not counted because they either registered two votes or no votes when they were ran through the counting machines.

Redeye said...

The reason the votes weren't counted is because Bush went to the Supreme Court and they stopped the recount.

Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), is the United States Supreme Court decision that effectively resolved the dispute surrounding the 2000 presidential election. Three days earlier, the Court had preliminarily halted a recount that was occurring. Eight days earlier, the Court unanimously decided the closely related case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000).

In a per curiam decision, the Court, by a 5-4 vote,[1][2] ruled that no alternative method could be established within the time limit set by Title 3 of the United States Code (3 U.S.C.), § 5 ("Determination of controversy as to appointment of electors"), which was December 12. However, seven of the justices agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties.[3] Three concurring justices also asserted that the Florida Supreme Court had violated Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the Constitution, by misinterpreting Florida election law that had been enacted by the Florida Legislature.

The decision allowed Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris's previous certification of George W. Bush as the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes.

Brian said...

What does votes not be counted in Florida in 2000 due to antiquated methods of voting have to due with whether or not there is voter fraud?

One reported in Florida found 94 cases of voter fraud in one county (Lee). If all 67 counties in Florida had the same number of cases, that would be 6,298 cases of voter fraud, easily more votes than would have been need to swing the 2000 election. If there were an equal percentage of illegal votes across Florida equal to Lee county, there would still be 2,611 cases of voter fraud, still well more than the 537 that decided Florida in 2000. And there still can be more cases in Lee county...

And the initial reason the votes were not counted was due to the machines rejecting them because of over or under voting. The recounts were stopped because of Bush v. Gore. And it was stopped because there are at least 8 different ways the votes could be recounted, and each of those different ways would have resulted in a different tally.

Bush argued that recounts in Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because there was no statewide standard that each county board could use to determine whether a given ballot was a legal vote.

In brief, the breakdown of the decisions was:

Seven justices (the five Justice majority plus Breyer and Souter) agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties.[3]

Five justices agreed that December 12 (the date of the decision) was the deadline Florida had established for recounts (Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist,[31] Scalia and Thomas in support; Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens opposed). Justices Breyer and Souter wanted to remand the case to the Florida Supreme Court to permit that court to establish uniform standards of what constituted a legal vote and then manually recount all ballots using those standards.[32][33]

Three justices (Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas) argued that the Florida Supreme Court had acted contrary to the intent of the Florida legislature. However, four justices (Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg, and Stevens) specifically disputed this in their dissenting opinions, and the remaining two Justices (Kennedy and O'Connor) declined to join Rehnquist's concurrence on the matter.

Brian said...

BTW, what is your opinion on this:

"All five major US TV news networks (CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and CNN) made the incorrect assumption that all of Florida's polls closed at 7:00 p.m. EST. All five of them reported this incorrect statement at the top of the 6:00-7:00-hour. Westernmost counties in Florida had polls open for another hour, until 8:00 p.m. EST, as they were part of the Central Time Zone. This region of the state traditionally voted mostly Republican. Because of the above mistaken assumption, some media outlets reported at 7:00 p.m. EST that all polls had closed in the state of Florida. Also, significantly, the Voter News Service called the state of Florida for Al Gore at 7:48 p.m. EST. A survey estimate by John McLaughlin & Associates put the number of voters who did not vote due to confusion as high as 15,000, which theoretically reduced Bush's margin of victory by an estimated 5,000 votes;[11] a study by John Lott found that Bush's margin of victory was reduced by 7,500 votes.[12] This survey assumes that the turnout in the Panhandle counties would have equalled the statewide average of 68% if the media had not incorrectly reported the polls' closing time and if the state had not been called for Gore while the polls were still open. This opens the possibility that Bush would have won by a larger victory margin and controversy would have been avoided if the networks had known and reported the correct poll closing times, and called the state after all polls were closed. Some individuals made public statements to the effect that they would have voted for Bush, but did not vote because of the poll close time confusion, or the Gore call."

Redeye said...

It doesn't really matter what all 5 of the major TeeVee networks said, Bush stopped the vote count in Florida.

Brian said...

So a possible 15,000 people that didn't vote because of the media telling them the polls were closed and it's not a problem to you? Did Bush tell them to announce that the polls were closed?

Bush didn't stop the count, the Supreme Court stopped the recount. And studies have shown that it would not have mattered either way. The recount that was stopped, Bush would have still won. The recount that Gore wanted, Bush would have still won. At the time the recount was stopped, the count still had Bush winning.

Redeye said...

Bush asked the Supreme Court to stop the recount and they did. That is a fact, everything else is just speculation.

Brian said...

Seven of nine Supreme Court Justices agreed with Bush that the recounts as they were being done violated the Equal Protection Clause. Five justices felt that a recount that did not violate the Equal Protection Clause could be done within the time frame set by Florida law.

So we have spectulation about what happened in 2000, but we have a reporter that discovered 94 non-citizens that have cast votes past elections. And he did interview some of them and they admitted they were not a citizen of the United States, which means they are not eligible to vote.

Redeye said...

What ever.

Redeye said...

So, some reporter in Florida of all places claims to have found 94 non citizens who voted in past elections and that justifies wholesale voter suppression? Only in America. The land of the free and the home of the brave.

Brian said...

So back to voter id is voter suppression? Is there any evidence of people not being able to vote because of these laws that wouldn't be able to vote normally (i.e. non-citizens)?

In fact, the person the lawsuit in Pennsylvania was using as it's key got her photo id without much trouble.

http://thegrio.com/2012/08/17/viviette-applewhite-93-year-old-plaintiff-in-pa-voter-id-case-gets-card-amid-appeal/

Redeye said...

So back to Voter ID is voter suppression. There is no evidence of massive voter fraud, and no, this one case in Florida of all places does not prove that non citizens are voting. If the non citizens name is on the voter roll that's the fault of the person who put their name on the roll, i.e. the Secretary of State.

And I guess it depends on what your definition of without much trouble IS, because the person in Pennsylvania was a plaintiff, meaning she had to go court in order to be allowed to vote.

Funny how republicans want to fix things that aren't broken, but ignore things that are broken.

Brian said...

Wrong Redeye, I didn't just say a reporter found non-citizens on the voter registration roles. He found 94 non-citizens on the lists of people who have voted in elections. Some up to six different elections. And this was only in one county in Florida.

So there is about 900000 shark attacks each year? TV station in Florida found at least 94 people that were registered to vote and had voted but when it came to registering for jury duty, admitted they were non-citizens (making them ineligible for jury duty).

And the Help America Votes Act which fixed the issue of voter suppression that happened in Florida in 2000, was sponsored by a Republican(Robert Ney, House, OH), was voted in by a Republican controlled congress. The only 2 No votes in the Senate were Democrats (Clinton and Schumer, both representing NY).

Redeye said...

And I said if non citizens names were on the list it's because the Secretary of State put their names on the list.

The Help America Vote Act is all hat an not cattle. It's didn't fix voter suppression, it enabled it.

Brian said...

Actually they were put on the list because of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 aka the Motor Voter Act. The NVRA of 1993 does not require any confirmation of citizenship when registering to vote. If when you register for your drivers license, food stamps, disability services, etc, your are to be offered to register to vote. The Secretary of State must accept these applications without question. They can't check it with other databases. It is assumed that the department that collected the voter registration, i.e. the dmv, did it's job confirming the information.

Redeye said...

And your point is what exactly?

Brian said...

That the state's Secretary of State doesn't have a say in who gets on the the list of eligible voters. The motor voter act in fact has stopped states attempts to verify citizenship to keep non-citizens from voting. The secretary of state has to take the application without question and can only remove them when a compliant or tip is made.

Redeye said...

None of what you said is true but if it makes you feel better to believe the lies have at it.

Brian said...

Please tell me what part of what I said is not true.

REPORTER: County supervisors of elections tell me they have no way to verify citizenship. Under the 1992 "Motor Voter" law, they're not required to ask for proof.

HARRINGTON: We have no policing authority. We don't have any way of bouncing that information off of any other database.

REPORTER: The only way supervisors of elections can investigate voter fraud is if they get a tip, so that's what our list became.

HARRINGTON: It could be very serious. It could change the whole complexion of an election.

The NVRA requires States to “accept and use” a uniform federal form to register voters for federal elections. 42 U. S. C. §1973gg–4(a)(1). That “Federal Form,” developed by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), requires only that an applicant aver, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen. Arizona law, however, requires voter-registration officials to “reject” any application for registration, including a Federal Form,that is not accompanied by documentary evidence of citizenship. Respondents, a group of individual Arizona residents and a group of nonprofit organizations, sought to enjoin that Arizona law. Ultimately, the District Court granted Arizona summary judgment on respondents’ claim that the NVRA pre-empts Arizona’s requirement.

Redeye said...

"It's been a major conflict in the voting wars: Across the South and country, Republican-led states have moved to shrink the early voting period before Election Day. But this week, voting rights advocates scored a key victory in a state where the GOP enjoys a strong majority."

http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/03/move-to-slash-early-voting-defeated-in-georgia.html

Brian said...

And your point is what exactly?

Brian said...

What does early voting have to due with Voter ID, or with the Motor Voter Act? Is restricting it a form of voter suppression? You do know there are multiple times of early voting? Georgia uses both "early voting" and "advanced voting". "Early voting" voting allows voters to go 1 of 159 county election offices upto 45 days early to vote. "Advance voting" opens up more voting locations a week before the election. Please note that both "early voting" and "advance voting" are no-excuse style of voting. Excused early voting methods are not affected.

14 states don't allow for any kind of no-excuse early voting. The 14 states are New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Colorado, Oregon, and Washington have gone to all-mail voting.

Minnesota allows for no-excuse absentee voting.

Arkansas, Indiana, West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas allow for in-person no-excuse early voting.

The other 26 states and D.C. allow for both in-person and no-excuse absentee early voting.

So are we saying that restricting no-excuse early voting is suppressing voters? How long should no-excuse early voting be allowed for? A week? A month? Once the candidates have been selected?

Redeye said...

"Until Thursday, Don Yelton was a precinct chair in the Buncombe County, North Carolina Republican Party. That ended after a Daily Show interview riddled with racism and candid admissions about the purpose of a voter suppression bill enacted by Republican lawmakers in his state. Over the course of the interview Yelton admitted that he supports requiring voters to show ID, in addition to the other, many voter suppression provisions included in the North Carolina law, because “the law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt.” He also denied that the law is racist during the course of an interview where he both used a particular racial slur that begins with the letter “n” and claimed that he is not racist because he “one my best friends is black.” http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/25/2835101/gop-asks-party-official-resign-admits-voter-suppresses-democratic-votes/

Brian said...

Is there any evidence that voter id laws suppress anybody's vote?

Is there any evidence that voter ID bills are written to hurt any group more than any other group?

Reason I ask that is that the Supreme Court has ruled that Gerrymandering is legal as long as it does not violate any groups civil rights. The political party in power is allowed to make changes that will aid that party more than the other party as long as it doesn't violate any groups civil rights. If Democrats got back into control of Alabama, they could redraw all the districts to favor Democrats as long as they didn't violate any groups civil rights in the process.

Redeye said...

"In short, allegations of widespread voter fraud belong in the same dustbin as teaching creationism in public schools and denial of global warming. Actually, if proponents of voter ID are so concerned about the integrity of our voting system, they would provide a much better service directing their energies to investigating electronic voting machines, which may have already altered at least one election."

http://ivn.us/2014/02/05/the-case-against-voter-id/