November 5, 2014

TX GOP Photo ID Voter Suppression Working as Hoped, Keeping (Dem) Voters From Voting

TX GOP Photo ID Voter Suppression Working as Hoped, Keeping (Certain) Voters From Voting
By BRAD FRIEDMAN on 11/1/2014, 6:38pm PT * BradBlog

Congratulations, Texas Republicans! Mission accomplished! Ya'll kept this guy from being able to cast his vote this year!...



The TX GOP has also kept a 93-year old veteran from being able to vote (because, ya know, fuck him and his "freedom&quot along with a whole bunch of others this year that we'll get to in a moment, thanks to their new polling place Photo ID law which was found to be both "purposefully discriminatory" and an "unconstitutional poll tax".

Unfortunately, despite the U.S. District Court judge's well-documented findings after a year-long trial process, the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the law to be implemented this year anyway. Their apparent reason: the lower court struck down the law due to illegalities and unconstitutionalites of the Photo ID scheme, but that determination happened just too close to this year's elections to be allowed to stand this year.

But that 93-year old vet and the man pictured above, Eric Lyndell Kennie, are hardly the only ones losing their right to vote in the Lone Star State election this year due to the Republican voter suppression scheme. The unconstitutional law, for now, replaces the state's previous Voter ID law which had already required every single voter to present an ID at the polls before voting. That's right, that was already the law since 2003, and during the trial, state Republicans were only able to demonstrate two cases of polling place impersonation over the past decade out of 20 million votes cast in the same period.

Nonetheless, with the new, much more draconian version of the law threatening some 600,000 legally registered voters who do not have the new type of ID required to vote, all sorts of disenfranchisement is already underway.

Let's start with Kennie's story, since it's both amazing and heart-breaking, even if, we fear, not particularly unusual right about now...
MORE: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10912

November 5, 2014

Brad Blog is Ablaze With GOP Election Fraud Red Flags

Just Sayin' ... where there's this much smoke, there's bound
to be a little fire somewhere.
http://www.bradblog.com

This much is clear: we have been well-played. Shame on us.

The M$M lead-up ad nauseum about some "inevitable" GOP US
Senate take-over, did effectively lay groundwork for a smooth
as silk faux "electoral" coup, including MSNBC's "Democratic coverage".

Big missing piece = absolutely NO .. ZERO .. coverage ANYwhere about
ANY issues or problems voters have had in casting their vote.

We would probably never even learn about this if it weren't for Brad Blog, et. al.
doing the heavy lifting to document the multiple issues cited there.

Hats off to Brad Blog

November 5, 2014

Please provide party ID when posting election results.

Some don't know all the names in play in all the states.


Thank you.

November 4, 2014

Computerized Vote Rigging Is Still the Unseen Threat to US Democracy

Whether Dems keep or loose the US Senate, either way we need Federal legislation to REQUIRE paper ballots and hand counting that is verifiable. This needs to get done between now and the 2016 General Election. Vote by Mail has become the norm in Oregon where I live, which completely sidesteps GOP's favored cheating practices such as requiring Voter ID, long lines on election day, and voter intimidation at the polls. For this reason, I think Vote by Mail should be required as well.

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Computerized Vote Rigging Is Still the Unseen Threat to US Democracy: It's Time to Change the System
By Victoria Collier * Truthout | News Analysis * Monday, 03 November 2014 13:43

Our article in Truthout last week, Top Ten Epic Reasons Why You Should Give a Sh*t About Voting, elicited quite a few comments from readers voicing concern that ballots may not be correctly or honestly counted by our "black box" computer voting systems - and we would never know.

The Internet is already roaring with stories of visible attacks on democracy so far in the 2014 elections: 40,000 mostly minority voters purged from Georgia's voter roles and thousands more in 26 other states, up to 600,000 Texas voters disenfranchised due to new Voter ID laws, and the attempts to override the electoral college in gerrymandered blue states like Michigan.

We can fight this fraud because we can see it, like the part of the iceberg that is above the water. But yes, there is more below.

Exactly two years ago Harper's Magazine published a cover story "How to Rig an Election," (written by this author) detailing the hidden threat to democracy posed by our electronic vote counting systems. Easily rigged and hacked, these computers are controlled by a handful of shady corporations, some with criminal records, who fight to keep their vote-counting software a "trade secret."

Computerized Voting Today Ensures That Americans Cannot Oversee or Verify Their Own Elections.

Elections are held in a vast patchwork of electoral fiefdoms where laws, procedures and private-vendor technology change from state to state; even from county to county. It's difficult for one hand to know what the other is doing, particularly when legal public record requests on electronic voting systems are routinely denied.

Little-known grassroots Election Integrity (EI) organizations have been fighting an unrecognized war to reclaim and secure our vote count; groups like Election Defense Alliance, Michigan Election Reform Alliance, Voter PA, Voter GA, Wisconsin Citizens for Election Protection, California Election Protection Network, and many others, including social media sites like Occupy Rigged Elections.

These activists have been holding the line in the democracy trenches for years now, even decades. Almost always underfunded or totally unpaid, they are our friends and neighbors, working people - they need increased support now, as we head toward the pivotal 2016 elections.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27204-computerized-vote-rigging-is-still-the-unseen-threat-to-american-democracy-it-s-time-to-change-the-system

November 4, 2014

David Corn: Why Picking Tom Perez for AG Would Be a Smart Move for Obama

I so think I agree with Corn's recommendation. We sorely need an AG who will focus on police abuses, election fraud, and calling out corrupt pols, instead of continuing pot-SWAT raids in states with legal weed. Do I hear an Ay-men?


Why Picking Tom Perez for Attorney General Would Be a Smart Move for Obama
Win or lose, a nomination battle would rally Democrats—and put Republicans on the defensive.
By David Corn * Mon Nov. 3, 2014 * Mother Jones

Whether or not the Democrats lose their Senate majority on Tuesday, President Barack Obama will need to show some fight after the midterm elections. If the Republicans triumph, Obama must do something to rally his discouraged supporters and show he won't spend his final two years as a truly lame-duck president. If the Dems manage to hold the Senate, the president, who has been pinned down by ISIS, Ebola, and other crises, will still be looking for a way to take back the political narrative and flex his political and policy muscle. Either way, he has a good option: nominate Tom Perez as attorney general.

The chatter in Washington is that Obama will announce his pick to replace the outgoing Eric Holder soon after Election Day, and Perez is on the White House's short list. Based on his resumé, Perez, who is now secretary of labor, is a reasonable choice. He's also one of the administration's most stalwart progressives.

Before taking charge of the Department of Labor in July 2013, Perez was the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil rights division. The office had been eviscerated under George W. Bush, and Perez revitalized it by mounting voting rights cases and legal challenges to discrimination against gays and lesbians. During his tenure, the division opened a record-breaking number of investigations into police abuse and forged wide-ranging agreements to clean up various police forces accused of misconduct, no small matter given recent national debates and controversy sparked by the Ferguson episode and the Trayvon Martin shooting.

As Mother Jones previously reported:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/tom-perez-attorney-general-obama

November 2, 2014

Re Measure 92: Check out this inter-active map showing how many OTHER states,

including MOST states, ALREADY have some form of GMO labeling laws either in place or that are being legislated and/or introduced via citizen initiatives.

This simple fact exposes the big lie being promulgated by the No on 92 campaign that "92 would result in a $400 annual increase in an Oregon family's food budget" because they IMPLY that Oregon would be the ONLY state in USA where food producers would need to separately label and distribute non-GMO food.

Oddly enough, Yes on 92 ads DO cite how many other NATIONs already have GMO-labeling requirements and/or ban them altogether; but I have never seen them point out how many other states have GMO labeling requirements in the works, which clearly shows that food producers are ALREADY going to be required in SOME STATES to label GMOs, it won't "only" be required Oregon.

http://www.righttoknow-gmo.org/states


I only ran across this interactive map yesterday, or would have posted it earlier.

November 2, 2014

Until Leading Democrats Do THIS In Unison, we are all up shit creek without a paddle

You name it. We all know the sorry list ..

Climate change come-a-cropper (which Noam Chompski thinks is more pressing than ANYthing right now),
endless wars in the ME, Wall Street still unleashed, etc. etc. <--- WE ARE ALL ROYALLY SCREWED!!

Democrats won't even take the tiniest baby step towards owning-up to the crises we face.
Exhibit A: One such necessary baby-step would be to put a permanent end to blatent GOP
election fraud and buggering once-and-for-all. http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/double-voters/

It will be messy and balls-to-the-wall for sure, for them to even try to do such a thing. But IMHO this
is an even more immediate, albeit shorter-term, crisis than climate change.

Until Dems uniformly do this, why focus on anything else?