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Voter suppression


creed

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Just saw an interview with Stacey Abrams concerning voter suppression. She is extremely articulate and stated she thinks suppression exists but didn't supply examples. Not asking to start a unruly topic I really want to know what could be construed as voter suppression to help me understand the root cause. Can someone give examples and have you personally seen it or experienced your examples.

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I watched the Georgia election with some interest because one of my TV news stations comes from Georgia.. As I understand it, the race Abrams lost (by 50,000 votes) set a record for the number of votes cast. Then she whines about voter suppression?

There was undoubtedly voter suppression, if that's the term you want to use, back in the 1950's and before. I don't know how voters could be suppressed these days. Currently the qualification rules are well established and they apply to everybody. In my county in Alabama, if a person says they are unable to  come to the Board of Registrar's office in the courthouse, the office will send a person with the necessary documents to their residence. It's hard to imagine how someone's vote is suppressed these days.

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Good piece that reviews the history of voter suppression in the south

 

Georgia election fight shows that black voter suppression, a southern tradition, still flourishes

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp has been sued for suppressing minority votes after an Associated Press investigation revealed a month before November’s midterm election that his office has not approved 53,000 voter registrations – most of them filed by African-Americans.

Kemp, who is running for governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams, says his actions comply with a 2017 state law that requires voter registration information to match exactly with data from the Department of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration.

The law disproportionately affects black and Latino voters, say the civil rights groups who brought the lawsuit........

 

............Voter suppression today

Over the past decade, Republican lawmakers have chipped away at the last century’s advances, enacting voter ID laws that make it harder to vote.

Claiming they seek to deter election fraud, some 20 states have restricted early voting or passed laws requiring people to show government ID before voting.

Voter identification laws have hidden costs, research shows.

Getting a government ID means traveling to state agencies, acquiring birth certificates and taking time off work. That puts it out of reach for many, a kind of 21st-century poll tax.

Federal and state courts have overturned such laws in some states, including Georgia, North Carolina and North Dakota, citing their harmful effect on African-American and Native American voters.

But the Supreme Court in 2008 deemed Indiana’s voter ID law a valid deterrent to voter fraud.

Perhaps most damaging to black voters was a 2013 Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act.

For a history of voter suppression, read the full piece at:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/georgia-election-fight-shows-that-black-voter-suppression-a-southern-tradition-still-flourishes

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Thanks Homer, after reading the article the key causes of voter suppression (today) appear to be having enough time and/or transportation to acquire a government ID ( birth certuficate/SSN) and registering to vote. Could be others but those were the key ones I saw. This sounds like an easy problem to fix, with group help and time management.

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20 hours ago, creed said:

Thanks Homer, after reading the article the key causes of voter suppression (today) appear to be having enough time and/or transportation to acquire a government ID ( birth certuficate/SSN) and registering to vote. Could be others but those were the key ones I saw. This sounds like an easy problem to fix, with group help and time management.

Indeed! Imagine the horrors the Democrats raise about having an ID to vote.

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6 hours ago, PUB78 said:

Indeed! Imagine the horrors the Democrats raise about having an ID to vote.

I don't think this is a political party issue because I'm sure it effects individuals from both sides of the party  line. Personally I consider the voting time slots as suppressive and think the voting booths should be open for more than a few hours on one day. 

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Usually open from 7am-7pm.

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I think there is an overarching judicial ambivalence in matter's of voting rights. To the extent judicial action gives validation to the existence of "voter suppression," the results are sparse. 

A most recent example of one litigated issue of voter suppression is Husted v A. Philip Randolph Institute. Although the Court upheld the statute, the issue was whether it amounted to voter suppression such that it could be remedied judicially. In other words, that the Court ruled the way it does not foreclose whether the statute constituted "voter suppression." In other words, in the minds of many, the statute did constitute voter suppression, irrespective of judicial affirmation. Under the federal statute at issue (National Voter Registration Act), a regime is permitted in Ohio by which the state can essentially  presume that a voter has moved, and accordingly purges the voter from the rolls, if they engage in no voting activity for six years,  and if they fail to return a postcard to the state confirming their address.

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1 hour ago, PUB78 said:

Usually open from 7am-7pm.

On a Tuesday when lines for a POTUS election can be hours long.  People have jobs man, many of them hourly.  They literally can't afford to stand in line to vote and then also take care of their families.

Personally, I'd like to see us move election day to a two day event on Friday/Saturday.  Would help a ton of people out in getting to exercise their right to vote.

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No problem with voting on two days and one being a Saturday. Don’t think the voter id laws are that onerous on anyone, because you can’t do anything else without one(Id). Would stop double voting and most fraud.

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3 hours ago, toddc said:

No problem with voting on two days and one being a Saturday. Don’t think the voter id laws are that onerous on anyone, because you can’t do anything else without one(Id). Would stop double voting and most fraud.

But there's extremely little evidence of double voting or voter fraud in this country.  In fact, it's miniscule.

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11 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

But there's extremely little evidence of double voting or voter fraud in this country.  In fact, it's miniscule.

Being miniscule, it should be easy to eliminate. Which should be in the interest of everyone. 

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3 hours ago, bigbird said:

Being miniscule, it should be easy to eliminate. Which should be in the interest of everyone. 

Sounds good, but the real issue is the imposition of "solutions" that serve to disenfranchise voters and prevents far more legitimate votes from being cast than the number of fraudulent votes it prevents.

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4 hours ago, bigbird said:

Being miniscule, it should be easy to eliminate. Which should be in the interest of everyone. 

I don't know exactly how much voter suppression affects us. It has become harder to get a drivers licence in parts of alabama. I don't know what other ID is accepted. I do know that there have been investigations launched on voter fraud. The results were indeed miniscule. I am also in favor of fixing them both. but i think it has been shown that fraud has not been a significant problem. I REALLY don't think those who oppose voter suppression are just trying to make fraud easier.

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53 minutes ago, alexava said:

I REALLY don't think those who oppose voter suppression are just trying to make fraud easier.

Do you think those wanting ID verification really want suppression?

 

With technology today, DPS should be able to manage some way to issue IDs through a secure app that can capture your picture, fingerprint, and other information. Then mail out the state issued ID to the person. Just a random thought that would increase access.

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12 minutes ago, bigbird said:

Do you think those wanting ID verification really want suppression?

 

With technology today, DPS should be able to manage some way to issue IDs through a secure app that can capture your picture, fingerprint, and other information. Then mail out the state issued ID to the person. Just a random thought that would increase access.

I don’t think that’s necessarily the motivation of most supporters, but it is the motivation of most promoters. More valid voters are impacted than those intent on fraud..

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I was almost “suppressed “ myself. Lol. It was my fault I guess. I moved about 6 miles. Hadn’t changed my license yet. Didn’t dawn on me that it would be an issue. I showed my license and she asked if I had the same address. I said actually no. She was not going to let me vote. The lady at the next chair was just shaking her head. I told her I just moved down the road and still owned the property I moved from. The lady shaking her head said “ oh yeah well if he still owns the property it’s ok, then winked at me. So just say your address hasn’t changed next time. 

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6 hours ago, bigbird said:

Do you think those wanting ID verification really want suppression?

 

With technology today, DPS should be able to manage some way to issue IDs through a secure app that can capture your picture, fingerprint, and other information. Then mail out the state issued ID to the person. Just a random thought that would increase access.

Seeing how fraud hasn’t shown to be a problem..... maybe. 

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https://time.com/5455179/georgia-brian-kemp-voter-suppression-recount-republicans-trump/

I’ve Worked in Republican Politics. The Party’s Voter Suppression in the Midterms Has Been a Disgrace

excerpt:

A representative for Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp called his opponent Stacey Abrams’ unwillingness to concede before all votes were counted “a disgrace to democracy.” But leaders like Kemp are the real disgrace. Abrams engaged new voters; in turn, Kemp openly said he’d like to suppress their participation. Kemp was also running while serving as secretary of state, the office that oversees elections, and resigned two days after balloting, only when challenged by a lawsuit.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t easy to vote in Georgia, because of broken voting machines, or functional machines with missing power cords, or too few machines—and, at the very least, hours-long lines. (A U.S. District judge characterized of Kemp’s leadership in a ruling on Georgia’s readiness: “The Defendants and State election officials had buried their heads in the sand.”) If all this had occurred in Iraq or Afghanistan or Zimbabwe, American election monitors would protest the result.

But it happened here, in districts across the United States. Consider the rule that any Mississippians wishing to vote absentee in the Nov. 27 runoff would need to notarize their ballot during the week of the Thanksgiving holiday. Complicated voting procedures like these—designed to stunt turnout—are the modern-day equivalent of a poll tax.

Worse still, the responses of Republican officials, including the President, have made it clear that they missed the civics lesson explaining that elections need to be perceived as free and fair to establish the legitimacy of elected leadership. So far, the rare member of the party involved in a close contest who has acted in a manner worthy of that mandate is one who will not be serving: with her gracious concession, Arizona Senate candidate Martha McSally has been the lone outlier in a sea of Republicans crying fraud.......

 

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On 8/19/2019 at 8:23 PM, Brad_ATX said:

On a Tuesday when lines for a POTUS election can be hours long.  People have jobs man, many of them hourly.  They literally can't afford to stand in line to vote and then also take care of their families.

Personally, I'd like to see us move election day to a two day event on Friday/Saturday.  Would help a ton of people out in getting to exercise their right to vote.

Won’t work. Would interfere with too many Congressional tee times.

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