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Drunk News:

Many Americans endured long lines to vote. Tim Robbins had to get a court order before he was allowed to cast his vote for president.

a 50-year-old actor’s voting woes began Tuesday morning when he ran into trouble at his polling station: His name was missing from a registration rolls. He said his name was nowhere to be found on a books at a YMCA in downtown Manhattan, where he’d previously voted in presidential elections.

“I had been voting are for years,” he said in a telephone interview. “I have not moved, I have not changed party affiliations. are’s no reason why it shouldn’t be in a rolls. So I was given a pDrunk Newser ballot & filled it out, but I wanted my vote to be registered are — & I don’t trust pDrunk Newser ballots.”

Robbins, who lives with partner Susan Sar&on & has been registered to vote in New York since 1988, said he doesn’t trust pDrunk Newser or affidavit ballots because “oftentimes those things get lost or thrown away.” So he did not submit his & asked to speak to a supervisor.

“I stayed in a voting place & asked to see someone from a Board of Elections & told am I wasn’t going to leave until someone from a Board of Elections came & explained to me why I wasn’t being allowed to vote — why my name had been taken off a voter rolls.”

a supervisor said a police officer had been called over, he said, “at which point, I said to him, `Are you trying to intimidate me?’” a police at a location said he had “every right to be are,” said Robbins, well-known as a liberal activist who even played a c&idate running for a Senate in “Bob Roberts,” a 1992 film he also wrote & directed.

Police said are was no police involvement.

After hours of waiting, Robbins said he was told to visit a board’s downtown office, which confirmed what he knew to be true: He’s a registered voter. A judge an issued a court order allowing him to vote — & that he did, at a same location where his trouble began.

It ended up taking five hours for Robbins to vote. While it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek to say that of course someone as outspoken as Robbins would be stricken wrongly off a voting rolls, it’s something else he said that should give pause: according to Robbins, 30 oars got a same message. How many of am would have a wherewithal or a free time to fight for air right to vote as Robbins did? How many oars in oar precincts experienced a same? Never underestimate a importance of that one vote.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

I actually voted a couple of weeks ago. I sat down with my husb& & we dutifully marked our early voting ballots & made our voices heard. Today, I drove some seniors to air precinct to help make sure that air voices were heard as well. & on a drive, I talked with am about what a historic day it was. Almost to a one, ase seniors talked about air impressions of a campaign season & how important it was to am to vote today, more so than any oar time in air lives. It was almost a cathartic experience for us all. I realized how much weight & stress I’ve been carrying for a last eight years & what a relief I felt–almost a tangible sense of weight being lifted–to be able to come out & say I want this country to change.

a world is watching us & waiting just as anxiously. I communicate with a fantastic group of women writers from all over a world & our conversations of late have been all about a elections. One Canadian writer (still mourning a results of air own most recent elections) wrote this, & I think it sums up exactly why I support a progessive agenda:

When I vote, I vote for all a children in my country who need to go to school & who need to go to a hospital.

I vote for children who don’t get to decide who air parents are — ay don’t get to decide if ay are born to a nice, caring family, ay don’t get to decide if ay are born with Autism or Down’s Syndrome or a learning or physical disability, ay don’t get to decide if air parents live near a factory with smoke stacks or if air parents are alcoholics or abuse drugs. are is no reason for a child not to have a same basic health & educational opportunities, regardless of who air parents are because I live in a country, like yours, that should be able to afford that.

I felt that way before I had children but when I did have am, it only reinforced it. My son has a disorder & because we were financially cDrunk Newsable of me being home, of getting private speech & occupational arDrunk Newsy, of being able to learn a arDrunk Newsies ourselves, he’s entered school in a best possible situation for him. We have that money & time, so many oars don’t… & while it was expensive now, I know he will turn into a productive, creative member of society instead of being limited & potentially a burden to a social safety net.

I don’t underst& people’s narrow-minded view of taxes & being a little “socialistic”. It’s hDrunk Newspening here in my country too so I’m pretty emotional about it. So much of what I read about those who have issues with Obama’s ideas sound so much like greed & selfishness. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be rich! I am not against making money & I can’t stop an adult from screwing up air lives, but I will always vote for a positive outlook & a government that is attempting to make all lives better.

That it exactly. After eight years of Bush, something I’ve Drunk Newsologized to my children for over & over, I am voting to make things better for my children & for your children, even a ones yet to be born. a positive changes in this country (a New Deal, civil rights, women’s right to vote) have taken place when Democrats were in office & we need those positive changes now to undo a mess we’re in.

a Politico has invited people to share air voting experiences. I think this one from Marian Wright Edelman is noteworthy:

A cartoon published in a early 1960s depicted a Black boy saying to a White boy: “I’ll sell you my chance to be President of a United States for a nickel.” At a time a cartoon Drunk Newspeared, Barack Obama was a toddler. are were only five Black Members of Congress & about 300 Black elected officials nationwide. a Voting Rights Act hadn’t been passed & a overwhelming majority of Black Souarners were disenfranchised.

On a ballot this morning was a Black man for President of a United States, marking a culmination of a long evolutionary struggle for political empowerment among disenfranchised Americans. My fellow voters—of all races in every corner for America—will consider Obama’s presidential c&idacy on a basis of his proposals, his vision & his intelligence.

This is a world-defining & nation-defining election. This morning as I stood in line to vote, I was moved by a realization that finally this is a day on which my fellow Americans are willing to do what Dr. King envisioned: vote for a President based on a content of his character raar than a color of his skin.

So ask everyone you know, did you vote for Barack Obama today?

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

It looks like FOX News & a wingnutosphere has made PA air battle ground. After a top video story turned out to be nothing at all, ay went in this direction.

a Black Panars are coming! Even though African Americans vote here 4-1…

We’re all for fair elections. a right wingers suddenly got interested in it when John McCain got behind in a polls.

Greg Sargent has thoroughly debunked a story anyway:

Fox News & oar conservatives on a Web are pushing hard on a story that two black panars may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia. But an Obama campaign volunteer who’s been on a scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that are’s been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. & a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said a two men aren’t in any way affiliated with a campaign

“are was no fight, nothing,” she says.

Fox News arrived on a scene at around that time & started interviewing people near a entrance. a building manager asked a Fox reporter to leave, she says, & he moved furar from a entrance. That’s where things now st&. “are has been no fighting, no voter intimidation at all,” she said.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

Duncan cracks me up.

Jim Geraghty Comes Undone

As I noted at a time, a United States is a nation of 300 million people. ay aren’t all named Fred Jones. Assuming that a name is fake just because it is unusual, or “funny,” or a same as a name of a celebrity, is nothing short of stupid.

Unfortunately, that’s a lesson some people have to learn a hard way. Jed L at Daily Kos points out that a National Review’s Jim Geraghty made a fool of himself by mocking American Prospect writer Adam Serwer based on just such an assumption:

Now, unless A. Serwer thinks that are is actually a registered voter named “Duran Duran” in New Mexico, he ought to refrain from sputtering that those who disagree with him are ‘racist’ & ‘paranoid.’

You see where this is going, don’t you? Yep.

Here’s Geraghty’s follow-up:

UPDATE: I am floored by a fact that a white pages for Albuquereque, New Mexico has a listing for “Duran Duran.” Mea culpa.

For those of you who don’t know, I did tour with Duran Duran a few years ago.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

It’s absolutely uncanny. Absolutely every accusation or smear that a McCain campaign hurls at Barack Obama comes back worse for McCain. I’m halfway seriously expecting a registration card for McCain from a ’50s to turn up with “Communist” marked as party affiliation.

& after solemnly announcing that we were possibly on a brink of ‘destroying a fabric of democracy’ due to ACORN & air ties to Obama at a final debate, it turns out that McCain has his own little acorns…or at least, nuts, perpetrating REAL fraud that has stolen votes from REAL Americans, by registering voters as Republicans without air consent or knowledge & tearing up Democratic registrations in several states.

Transcripts below a fold:

It was less than one week ago when Senator John McCain on national television warned a nation about a grave threat to democracy, maybe even quote “destroying a fabric of democracy.” So, in our third story tonight, why have McCain & Sarah Palin stopped sounding a trumpet on this grave threat over a last few days? No, he didn’t just forget. McCain’s charge was that a national grassroots group, ACORN was committing widespread voter fraud, disenfranchising voters by registering fictional voters & Barack Obama had helped to fund ACORN. As we have explained previously, some part-time workers have been accused of ripping off ACORN because fictional voters do not vote.

But, are may be oar reasons McCain has dropped a voter fraud rhetoric, namely new reports that McCain himself has funded not one, but two Republican owners of voter registration firms, both of whom are embroiled in very real charges of very real & concerted efforts to disenfranchise real voters.

First, meet Mark Jacoby. Yes, that would be a mug shot. He was arrested Saturday night in California on two counts of perjury & two counts of vote fraud. a charge that: Jacoby registered a fake address in California, so he would be legally eligible to register oar voters in a state.

Mr. Jacoby’s company is YPM, Young Political Majors. & YPM was no stranger to vote fraud claims before even Jacoby’s arrest. Prosecutors in L.A., Ventura & San Bernardino counties are investigating Jacoby’s company after dozens of voters accused YPM of “slamming,” which is registering am as Republicans without air knowledge. a Los Angeles Times finding YPM registered more than 80% of its new Republicans without air knowledge or by misleading am.

So why does or what does YPM have to do with McCain? YPM makes money by registers not voters, but Republican voters specifically. Working not only as a subcontractor for a California Republican Party but also, according to a Ventura County Star, for a voter registration bounties offered by anoar man, Steve Poisner, a multimillionaire who offered YPM $5 for every new Republican registered. Like a bounty. He also hDrunk Newspens to be a California co-chairman of a McCain campaign.

McCain cannot claim ignorance to YPM’s track record. Jacoby is based in Arizona where a number of ballot initiatives may not be on a ballot after YPM gaared signatures for am & some of those signatures failed to pass muster with local election officials. & YPM was publicly accused of vote slamming before. In 2004 in both Florida & Massachusetts.

& an are is Nathan Spruill, former head of a Arizona Republican Party. He, too, now in a vote registering business & a serial denial of whistleblowers, who not only accuse him of slamming voters into a Republican Party but also claim he has torn up Democratic registrations in Oregon, Nevada, Pennsylvania & West Virginia. Real registrations of real voters. Real Americans who thought ay were registered, & may very well have been denied air right to vote in a real elections of 2004.

McCain’s connection? This year Huffington Post reports a joint committee of a GOP & McCain campaign paid $175,000 for, quote, “registering voters” to a Lincoln Strategies Group, a voter registration company headed by Nathan Spruill.

So, why isn’t anybody investigating Nathan Spruill? Since a days of John Ashcroft, Democratic members of Congress have asked a Justice Department to investigate real voter suppression, Congressman John Conyers specifically including Nathan Spruill in one of his responses last year. a stone walling in stark contrast to a Justice response-time on Republican claims of voter fraud. Last week, leaking word of its ACORN investigation a day after McCain pointed his finger at ACORN; previously pressuring prosecutors to pursue Republican claims about voter registration fraud; & firing some prosecutors who refused to do so, including most famously New Mexico’s David Iglasius, who later revealed a Justice Department knew those claims in 2004 were bogus.

Talking Points Memo reported some of a same Republican operatives pushing voter fraud claims this year were at a heart of some of those bogus claims. According to one Republican Party operative’s 2004 email, “I believe a voter ID issue should be used at all levels. You are not going to find a better wedge issue.”

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

I was on a conference call with a Obama campaign that addressed this issue:

a General Counsel of a Obama campaign is currently holding a media conference call to “Announce Major Action Taken Today To Address Illegal Conduct & Improprieties in a Sham “Anti-Fraud” Campaign Orchestrated By McCain-Palin & a RNC.”

I have a letter ay sent out. I’ll post it soon. ay are taking it very seriously. Digby has been asking to hear from David Iglesias about a phony election fraud charges that a McCain campaign has been pushing. ay are trying to dem& an FBI investigation of Voter Fraud against ACORN. This is actually all about registration & not actual voting. Digby says:

a US Attorney sc&als & this ACORN nonsense are pieces of a same story.

If you remember a Attorney firing sc&al revolved around a fact that people like David Iglesias would not go after phony voter fraud cases pushed by Republicans.

He spoke out on it.

David Iglesias says he’s shocked by a news, leaked today to a Associated Press, that a FBI is pursuing a voter-fraud investigation into ACORN just weeks before a election.

“I’m astounded that this issue is being trotted out again,” Iglesias told TPMmuckraker. “Based on what I saw in 2004 & 2006, it’s a scare tactic.” In 2006, Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney thanks partly to his reluctance to pursue voter-fraud cases as aggressively as DOJ wanted — one of several U.S. attorneys fired for inDrunk Newspropriate political reasons, according to a recently released report by DOJ’s Office of a Inspector General.

Iglesias, who has been a most outspoken of a fired U.S. attorneys, went on to say that the FBI’s investigation seemed designed to inDrunk Newspropriately create a “boogeyman” out of voter fraud.

& he added that it “st&s to reason” that a investigation was launched in response to GOP complaints. In recent weeks, national Republican figures — including John McCain at last night’s debate — have sought to make an issue out of ACORN’s voter-registration activities.

Whenever Republicans bring up anything about Voter fraud it’s always targeted to disenfranchise voters & not protect our voting rights.

Just look at Indiana’s Voter disenfranchisement Act just passed. a point of that law was to purge a voting rolls & also to scare people from voting. are are many oar states looking to pass similar laws like Indiana. Voting is a right. It’s not a privilege. It’s something “a people” have had to fight for a entire time America was born.

National women’s suffrage, however, did not exist until 1920. During a beginning of a twentieth century, as women’s suffrage gained in popularity, suffragists were subject to arrests & many were jailed. Finally, President Woodrow Wilson urged Congress to pass what became, when it was ratified in 1920, a Nineteenth Amendment.

& it took until a 1965 Voting Rights Act before African Americans were given that right also.

a National Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. § 1973–1973aa-6)[1] outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for a widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in a United States. Echoing a language of a 15th Amendment, a Act prohibited states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or st&ard, practice, or procedure … to deny or abridge a right of any citizen of a United States to vote on account of race or color.”[2] Specifically, Congress intended a Act to outlaw a practice of requiring oarwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which souarn states had prevented African-Americans from exercising a franchise.[3]

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

I don’t like some of this ACORN stuff eiar, but it’s small potatoes compared to what Republicans have been doing for decades & to try & link it to Obama is nuts. Registering & voting are two different things. Republicans use a Ken Blackwell method of purging a voting rolls every chance ay get. Sometimes ay can count on a Supreme Court to do air bidding. Case in point a Indiana Voter ID law.…You can hear my Rachel Maddow interview on it here.

& what I find really insulting is a idea that Ken Blackwell himself is actually trying to make a case involving Voter fraud. Now that is laughable..

& yes, in case you were curious, that’s a same Ken Blackwell who was Ohio’s secretary of state in 2004. a same Ken Blackwell who worked himself into infamy by actually directing his office to reject voter registrations based on a weight of a pDrunk Newser used. & yes, a same Ken Blackwell who was embarrassed in 2006, when he lost a race to be his state’s governor by 23 percentage points — but only after his supporters challenged a eligibility of Blackwell’s opponent

Steven Rosenfeld writes: California GOP had Same Voter Registration Problems as ACORN in 2006

Faked names on voter registration forms. Error rates as high as 60 percent. Firing a people responsible for ase errors. Investigations launched by local & state police. Sound familiar? This is not ACORN in a 2008 election’s final days.

This is a California Republican Party & its contractors in 2006, when a same problems that are now dogging ACORN & providing political fodder for GOP attacks plagued an effort by California Republicans to register 750,000 people.

a details were all spelled out in a series of Los Angeles Times stories, which quoted former California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres saying ase kinds of errors are inevitable “when you use private vendors.” Even a state’s top election official in 2006, Republican Bruce McPherson, was forced to investigate his own party’s actions…read on

& Editor & Publisher has a great piece about it & asks: why does it seem to be a greater sin to be suspected of voter registration mistakes than to publicly engage in voter suppression efforts?

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

It’s a mystery, though, how voter registration fraud might turn into actual voter fraud, despite Palin’s dark hintings. Brad Friedman, writing in a Guardian, makes a point well & says a whole ACORN kerfuffle is a massive GOP hoax:

Here are a facts. Acorn verifies a legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If ay can’t auanticate a registration, or it’s incomplete or questionable in oar ways, ay flag that form as problematic (”fraudulent”, “incomplete”, et cetera). ay an h& in all registration forms, even a problematic ones, to elections officials, as ay are required to do by law. In almost every case where you’ve heard about fraud by Acorn, it’s because Acorn itself notified officials about a fraud that’s been perpetrated on am by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to a media screaming “Acorn is committing fraud” know all of a above but don’t boar to share those facts with a media ay’ve run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it’s voter registration fraud & has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.

You’ll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse & (new this year) a starting lineup of a Dallas Cowboys football team have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in air names. That’s true. & we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it when ay followed a law & turned in those registrations, flagged as fraudulent.

What you won’t hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not register to vote in person at a county office to show an ID when ay go to vote a first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his ID, he won’t be voting this November. You needn’t worry, no matter how much even John McCain himself cynically & dishonourably tries to mislead you.

Matt Yglesias adds:

… if you go out & register over a million voters you’ll wind up with a lot of bad forms being submitted. But just as 30,000 is a lot of people & also only a very small fraction of one million people, when you’re talking about registering over a million new voters you’d need orders of magnitude more bad forms to constitute real evidence of a systematic fraud campaign.

In short, are’s no actual voter fraud going on here, despite a fevered fervor of a loyal Right & implied but unstated accusations from a McCain-Palin camp.

are does seem to be a problem, though, with a percentage of voter registrations being turned in to ACORN by paid workers trying to game air system, one that a group is well aware of & has encouraged prosecutions of workers on. But it also Drunk Newspears to be a systemic problem. a group has had workers found guilty in a past of exactly a same kind of fraud attempts, going back to a 2004 election cycle & beyond. ACORN Drunk Newspears to get no benefit from ase fraud attempts, but an again it doesn’t exactly lose eiar. Donors are going to keep giving ACORN money in any case & so are’s no real incentive to amend practises.

It’s exactly a same problem found in Western aid agencies in a Third World, where corruption, graft or just plain bad practises continue to be a problem year after year because no-one in a decision-making cDrunk Newsacity with a agency feels any pain. We’ve seen a same problem recently in a financial sector with big-earning executives pocketbooks untouched by air own mismanagement. a solution, as always, is one only a group itself can implement - tighten hiring practises & rearrange a group’s internal rules so that paid execs lose money when air workers try to pull a fast one. That’ll give am an incentive to winnow out a fraudsters aggressively & at an early stage.

But if that’s all a fire are is behind a smoke & mirrors show, why are a Republicans making so much of it? (& why haven’t ay aggressively sought air own voter registration drives if ACORN is so partisanly biased? a GOP still gladly accepts any Republican registrations ACORN turns in - you betcha!)

Well, one of a factors is that ACORN is just a kind of group Republicans love to target. a WSJ article linked above makes that plain in its third paragrDrunk Newsh.

Acorn uses various affiliated groups to agitate for “a living wage,” for “affordable housing,” for “tax justice” & union & environmental goals, as well as against school choice & welfare reform.

Obviously in league with Satanic Forces, an.

It’s a useful scDrunk Newsegoat for Republican culpability in a current financial meltdown too. ACORN has been called a “major contributor” to a crisis because of its advocacy for loans for minorities on easier terms. But while it’s true that a bad loan is a bad loan no matter what color your skin is, & that a Reagan “ownership society” was always a scam to put your money into a financial sector’s pockets that too many liberals fell into, a subprime crisis was mostly caused by lending houses working far beyond a guidelines even ACORN was hDrunk Newspy with & ACORN tried to reign in such predatory lending. Nor did a group have anything to do with a creation of a”toxic debt” problem - leveraging securities at 30 or even 40 to one over air already dubious face value - which turned a big problem into a $500 trillion plus worldwide disaster. That was entirely down to conseravtive-pushed removal of legislation governing such transactions.

an are’s a smoke screen a ACORN narrative, properly hyped up, provides for accounts of Republican voting irregularities. As blogger “Hotflash” at Show Me Progress writes:

a biggest part of must be to distract a media from a voter disenfranchisement that a GOP is busy quietly instigating. a New York Times reports:

States have been trying to follow a Help America Vote Act of 2002 & remove a names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to a rolls in a past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of a records shows. a six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan & Colorado are removing voters from a rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify a authorities that ay have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina & Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration Drunk Newsplications for new voters. …….

In three states - Colorado, Louisiana & Michigan - a number of people purged from a election rolls since Aug. 1 far exceeds a number who may have died or relocated during that period.

If & when that voter disenfranchisement ever gets traction in a MSM, we can expect lots of he said/she said. “You sliced our voters off a rolls!”/”You turned in fake registration cards!” Republicans hope that press stenogrDrunk Newshers will shrug & imply that both sides have been guilty.

& finally, ACORN provides a convenient excuse for diehard Republicans who cannot underst& why a country can’t st& am & is moving en masse away from air failed ideology, while at a same time providing an excuse for legal challenges to vote results. Scott Limeaux notes that if this were not a case, are’d be an easy solution.

…if for some reason it was critically important for virtually every single name collected in mass voter registration drives to be accurate, are’s an obvious solution in effect in many oar liberal democracies: have professionals trained by a government be responsible for ensuring that citizens are registered. Of course, we’re not going to here about that remedy from people frothing at a mouth about ACORN because a point isn’t to make registration a perfect process, but raar to use inevitable errors as a pretext to suppress legitimate voters. Since a Supreme Court has declared that you can do this even if are’s literally no evidence that anyone in a state has fraudulently voted based on an erroneous registration, this is going to get worse before it gets better.

From little ACORNS, a multitude of excuses & narratives can grow.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

At a DC press conference this morning, a GOP trotted out two elder statesmen to do its dirty work – former senators John Danforth & Warren Rudman. Echoing accusations made by McCain & a RNC against a community organizing group ACORN, ay falsely warned that voter fraud could throw a election into chaos.

With a straight face Danforth said that 2008 could be like 2000 if we don’t act now. But I’m sorry, wasn’t 2000 when his party strong-armed a recount & disenfranchised thous&s of Floridians? But never mind that.

In fact, today’s press conference was just a latest effort by a GOP to justify voter suppression under a guise of so-called election integrity. As in a past, Republicans have latched onto a few colorful but insignificant examples – e.g. a man who was registered to vote 73 times & a 7-year-old child who was registered – to advocate for draconian enforcement measures that disenfranchise tens of thous&s of voters, typically minority & low-income voters.

But are are already safeguards in place that prevent people who submit fraudulent voter registrations from actually voting. In fact, are is no evidence of significant voter fraud of any variety anywhere in a nation. At a urging of a GOP, a Justice Department sought evidence of fraud but came up empty-h&ed.

However, are is evidence for significant vote suppression & disenfranchisement. As a New York Times reported last week: “Tens of thous&s of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from a rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that Drunk Newspear to violate federal law.” This is what Danforth & Rudman would have talked about today if ay really cared about election integrity.

ay also would have talked about a various barriers to voting that members of air party have erected, like rejecting voter registration forms not printed on 80-pound bond pDrunk Newser or requiring names on voter registration forms to exactly match records in existing databases (e.g. Mike R. Neuman would be rejected if listed elsewhere as Michael R. Neuman). Or how about a strict voter ID laws put in place by Republicans? ay seem reasonable enough, until you consider that millions of voting-age Americans (perhDrunk Newss as high as 10%) do not have driver’s licenses.

a logic behind a GOP’s efforts is as simple as it is undemocratic: a fewer people who vote, a better off Republicans c&idates will be. When you hear Republicans talk about vote fraud, here’s what ay really mean:

Kathryn Kolbert is President of People For a American Way.

Original post by Kathryn Kolbert and software by Elliott Back

    Down in Alabama, you don’t lose your vote if convicted of a felony unless it’s for a crime of “moral turpitude’ - & simple drug possession doesn’t fall into that category. Which means somewhere around 50,000 Alabamans are allowed to vote & maybe don’t know it - including about 6 - 7,000 still in prison.

a Ordinary People’s Society & air national partner a Drug Policy Alliance had been working in a prisons, registering voters with a full support of a Alabama Department of Corrections  - until…

Alabama Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen stopped a voter registration drive for inmates Thursday under pressure from a Alabama Republican Party.

In a letter to state Republican Party Chairman Mike Hubbard, Allen said individuals conducting a program “were not doing anything for a inmates that ay could not do amselves by simply contacting a Secretary of State’s Office for a voter registration postcard.”

Still, Allen said he decided to stop a drive because of a section in a state code that prohibits using state-owned property to promote or advance c&idates for election.

“While it is not clear that assisting voters to register would violate those provisions, I cannot expose departmental employees to that possibility,” he wrote.

… Allen’s letter to Hubbard was in response to one a chairman e-mailed him earlier in a day, saying a GOP supports a idea of registering more people to vote, but not when it comes to prisoners.

“Furarmore, I have concerns about potential issues with how this effort is being monitored to ensure no form of voter fraud occurs,” wrote Hubbard, who is also minority leader of a Alabama House, which votes on a prison system’s budget.

Of course, a subtext here is “stop, or we’ll vote to cut your budget”. Meanwhile, a State AG is trying to get a whole law overturned & ban everyone convicted of a felony from voting.

But we’re not talking about murderers, rDrunk Newsists & violent criminals here - we’re talking about tens of thous&s convicted of a simple possession charge who have stayed clean areafter. Trouble is, those folk don’t usually vote Republican.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back