(OT ?) Stolen Votes

[Ingo Siekmann]

Hallo,

democracy at work:


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890

Thoughts?

Bye
Ingo

[mog...@hotmail.com]

No democracy is perfect.

[Francis A. Miniter]

No, but active subversion of it by a political party ought to be a
serious crime. I would send hundreds of state GOP leaders to prison for
wilful denial of the right to vote.


Francis A. Miniter

[Carol Dickinson]

> No, but active subversion of it by a political party ought to be a
> serious crime. I would send hundreds of state GOP leaders to prison for
> wilful denial of the right to vote.
>
>
> Francis A. Miniter

Ummm hundreds of GOP leaders have not been convicted of subversion. None as far as I know.

There are a few Dems over the years that have been found to be subverting the system. For instance those ACORN fellows in Louisiana some years back that had registered something like 40 times. I don't think they went to jail either. Just had the false registrations removed. Can't remember what they used to do about the cemetery voters in Chicago years ago.

Your "liberal intolerance" is showing. Not my phrase - often heard from the anti-progressives.

Carol
an independent

[Mike Burke]

This is an issue that is very hard for Australians to get our heads around.
Here in Oz, taking the federal situation as the example (some state
electoral rules differ), we have a Commonwealth Electoral Commission
responsible for all electoral matters. As voting is compulsory down here
(don't ask!), every citizen over the age of 18 is required by law to have
their names recorded on the electoral roll. The same roll is used for state
elections so you only have to register once unless your name and/or address
changes, when you must submit an amended registration. Now, it's decades
since I had to do any of this, but I'm pretty sure that when you submit
your enrolment form (usually at a post office, IIRC), some approved form of
identification, eg birth certificate, drivers licence, passport or the
like, with some proof of current address, needs to be sighted by the person
taking the application for enrolment.

Perhaps it's just that we Australians are a pretty docile lot without any
significant degree of paranoia as to the evil intentions of our
governments, but the number of people who raise any objections to these
procedures is, judging by the absence of media reports about them, is
vanishingly infinitesmal.

Now, if your left-wing parties are anything like ours, they encourage dead
people and babes in arms are to vote. The phrase "Vote early, vote often"
originated at Tammany Hall, I believe, and it's notoriously our Labor
Party, our Democratic Party analogue, that has this practice down to a fine
art. So, if it is true, as alleged by the conservative media, that the
Dems are registering aliens (or whatever politically correct euphemisms for
illegal immigrants are in vogue this week), then it is surely the duty of
Republican leaders to ensure that only eligible people get on the electoral
rolls.

If it is not true that the Dems are illegally rorting the system, then -
in the absence of any over-arching government authority - it is surely the
duty of the leaders of both parties to ensure that the rolls are honest.

So, what is it that Rep leaders are actually doing that is wrong? I have
read that they actually have had the temerity to ask for proof of identity.
Oh, the horror! If that is all, why is that a prison offence? Down here
it might not be quite a prison offence, but the electoral officials would
certainly be punished if they failed to ensure that only eligible persons
got to vote.

Mercuns sure are weird, Mabel.

--
Mique

[Ingo Siekmann]

Am 15.09.2016 um 16:10 schrieb Mike Burke:
- snip

> This is an issue that is very hard for Australians to get our heads around.
> Here in Oz, taking the federal situation as the example (some state
> electoral rules differ), we have a Commonwealth Electoral Commission
> responsible for all electoral matters. As voting is compulsory down here
> (don't ask!), every citizen over the age of 18 is required by law to have
> their names recorded on the electoral roll. The same roll is used for state
> elections so you only have to register once unless your name and/or address
> changes, when you must submit an amended registration.

Interesting. How does this roll look like? Is it some kind of file on
paper, or a data base?

Here in Germamy, you are *invited* to vote.

See, by law, you have to get registered at the registration office of
your community, so the powers that be know your address. Yes, you have
to do this every time you change your place of residence for a longer
time - since the last year, event students who move out from home to
study in another city have to do it.

When the next election is up - be it federal, communal or of the Laender
- the registration office sends you a month or so before a letter with
the inivitation and the information where and when you can make your
cross. Yes, we still use paper forms and ballot-boxes (which are called
"vote - urns" in German).


It is up to you if you follow that invitation or not. Which is probably
the reason the participation is dropping since... well, since the whole
democracy thing started.

Bye
Ingo

[Mike Burke]

Well, in practice these days, the roll is a computer database which is
produced as paper books for each electorate. Put together, these books
would form a very large mountain. I can appreciate how herding 350 million
Americans into electoral rolls would constitute a much more complicated
task than doing so for 23 million. But, broken down into electoral
districts the task becomes much easier. If there were a will, of course,
which is doubtful.

Mique



--
Mique

[bruce2...@gmail.com]

Francis A. Miniter <fami...@comcast.net> wrote:

That goes back to the historic Brutus, Cassius Mark Antony dispute. How do friends and/or opponents prosecute crimes of those at the top of the food chain? (be it local, state or federal)

[Carol Dickinson]

> So, what is it that Rep leaders are actually doing that is wrong? I have
> read that they actually have had the temerity to ask for proof of identity.
> Oh, the horror! If that is all, why is that a prison offence? Down here
> it might not be quite a prison offence, but the electoral officials would
> certainly be punished if they failed to ensure that only eligible persons
> got to vote.
>
>

> --
> Mique

Mique I agree with you 100%. But just to explain the logic of the other side as I understand it,to require an ID makes it just about impossible for those persons who are non-white or conservative to vote because they can't get ID's. Its just too hard. And its a conspiracy by white people to keep the minorities and poor from voting so the Republicans can steal the elections. Never mind that as you say "Vote early, vote often" originated here in the US and has been the mantra of the progressives for nearly a century. As my previous post mentioned, their claim is that despite 5 business days every day of the week and all the previous mentioned ID's acceptable most places and available free most places it's just "too hard." The only place ID should be essential is to get into the Democratic convention.

In general, our Democrats these days seem to believe in open borders, and that aliens are not illegal but "undocumented". So just with that word one can see why progressives wish "no proof" should be the standard because they believe the majority of "undocumented" persons will be non-white and they also believe that everybody in the country who is not white is obligated to vote Democrat, because only they can fight the evil (RICH) white establishment, protect all poor and minorities, right all wrongs, and create utopia for the underclass (while punishing all those evil Republicans for centuries of oppression), despite decades of evidence that the opposite is true. You see, there is no such thing as a non-white person who might not be rich and/or have conservative ideas. Which is why they call people like Adam West, Herman Cain, Ben Carson, etc. race traitors.

Hope that helps.

Hope my intolerance for progressive, haters isn't too blatant. Sorry it crept a bit into the explanation.

Carol

[Carol Dickinson]

As voting is compulsory down here
> (don't ask!), every citizen over the age of 18 is required by law to have
> their names recorded on the electoral roll.

Of course the key word here is CITIZEN. Our Democrats want that word removed from the concept of universal registration.

[Francis A. Miniter]

Utter nonsense.


Francis A. Miniter

[Mike Burke]

Francis A. Miniter <fami...@comcast.net> wrote:

You haven't answered my question, Francis. What is it that you believe
Reps have done to deserve prison terms? It was a serious non-partisan
question.

--
Mique

[Francis A. Miniter]

Sorry, Mike. Since Obama was elected president, states controlled by
Republicans have passed law after law making it more difficult for poor
people and women to vote. As one Republican consultant, Carter Wrenn of
North Carolina, frankly admitted, “Look, if African Americans voted
overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where
it was . . . .” Voter ID laws have been used to disenfranchise people
who have voted for 40 years or more. The requirement of furnishing a
birth certificate to be allowed to register to vote cannot always be
met. I personally know one person, a black man born in North Carolina,
who cannot get a birth certificate because the town hall burned down
some decades back. That presumably affects a lot of people in that
town. I also know another person, a black woman, whose mother had her
apart from her own family, then dropped her off at her mother's house
and disappeared. My friend knows neither the date nor place where she
was born.

These laws are aimed deliberately and specifically at black people who
were often born at home in the South, whose births were never formally
registered. No matter that everyone knows who they are and where they
were born. The requirement of documentation would preclude their
voting. These laws are violations of the civil rights laws, and as
deliberate actions taken to deny people their rights, they are criminal
acts.

18 U.S.C. ｧ 241, 18 U.S.C. ｧ 242, 18 U.S.C. ｧ 245, 18 U.S.C. ｧ
594 and 42 U.S.C. ｧ 1973gg-10(1) Voter intimidation or voter
suppression schemes that target victims on the basis of race, color,
national origin, or religion. The punishment imposed by these statutes
generally depends upon the injury suffered by the victim. The more
serious the injury, the more severe the penalty. In some cases, where
the victim had died as a result of the defendant's conduct, the death
penalty applies.

As to women, the Texas law resulted in a state judge, a woman, being
denied the right to vote two years ago because she had not provided
certified documentation of her marriage and divorce, with the resulting
name changes.

Four years ago, the biggest voter fraud in the country was perpetrated
by the GOP when its agents took voter registration on the street and
then threw away the cards of anyone who registered as a democrat. This
happened in Florida and South Carolina. At the polls there were
something like 26 incidents of people voting fraudulently. The GOP are
clearly NOT trying to prevent voting fraud. They are out to
disenfranchise hundreds of thousands, if not millions of black people,
all because the tend to vote democratic.


Francis A. Miniter

[Mike Burke]

Yes, I now understand. Thank you. I can also understand that herding cats
would be easier than standardising the voting systems across such a huge,
decentralised nation with a divisive history such as yours. The size of
any centralised bureaucracy sufficient to herd those cats effectively would
triple the national debt.

I'm not sure how our system deals with identity problems such as those you
mentioned. I suspect it involves nothing more than completion of a
properly notarised Statutory Declaration (do you have the equivalent, ie a
statement, not sworn, but formally witnessed, for which penalties apply if
proven false?). It's then up to any challenger to prove falsehood, and
that's a daunting task. Of course, with the degree of sheer malice that
exists, sometimes in even the most "civilised" polities, I don't expect to
live long enough to see your problems solved.


--
Mique

[Carol Dickinson]

I personally know one person, a black man born in North Carolina,
> > who cannot get a birth certificate because the town hall burned down
> > some decades back. That presumably affects a lot of people in that
> > town. I also know another person, a black woman, whose mother had her
> > apart from her own family, then dropped her off at her mother's house
> > and disappeared. My friend knows neither the date nor place where she
> > was born.

If the town hall burned several decades back, the person you are referring to is OLD. And there will be other records substituting as sources established by now for that situation. I speak as a genealogist. Public records and vital information is a hobby I practice daily. For some of my lines I can go back earlier than Charlemagne. I used to have an Adam and Eve line but I lost it when Ancestry.com corrupted my files. Haven't found it again yet.

I personally also know of a person whose birth was not registered. My Grandmother was born at home in 1894 when births were regularly recorded in that state. She was able to prove her birth status by going to court and having Aunt Ag testify she was present at the birth, and exactly when she was born because Ag was watching the Decoration (Memorial) Day parade when called to attend the birth. This was, at that time, a no fee process.

At the time of the beginning of WWII, all persons were required to provide some sort of documentation of their citizenship also. This same grandmother worked at the courthouse (1/2 a block from her residence) to assist persons with their documentation. Because of that she discovered she, her siblings, in-laws, cousins, and most of the persons in the area were not legally married, and all the children were bastards. Because the "minister" who performed the marriages was not ordained nor legally allowed to perform such ceremonies and therefore never recorded them. It was addressed by the Michigan state legislature who passed a law retroactively legitimizing all the marriages, and the children born to them. Hollywood made several movies based on the situation (although one had been made before WWII). My father used to love teasing my mother that she was a bastard, and my mother did NOT appreciate it at all. So again, in a small town, this person was able to document something that was not recorded in a timely manner.

My father's parents also were required to prove citizenship because they were born in Canada, and not naturalized. They also had an obvious German last name, so were under suspicion despite the fact that the family had, by that time, been living in the US in the same county since 1881. We have the documents (including a baptismal letter) my grandfather submitted attesting to his father's birth in New York state, while his parents were temporarily in Canada, and my Grandmother's documents claiming citizenship based on marriage to an American citizen.

My son was adopted and we belonged to local the Adoptive Parent Association which worked on legislation to improve birth certificate issuances in our state way back 30 years ago. Of course, at that time, our state had a Republican Governor and I believe the majority in the state legislature was also Republican but I can't swear to that. I don"t remember the exact year.

My husband also does not have an original birth certificate because he was adopted. But still he has other documents.

And I would point out, that everyone who must file a tax return, including people who need to prove they do not need to pay any taxes, must have a social security card. In my state, all infants that are alive by March 31 must have a SS#, because they all have income from our Permanent Fund distribution.

I would point out also that a black man living in North Carolina now, is likely descended from a slave so if not his parents, his GRANDPARENTS would be findable in public US Federal census records, an ancestor living in 1940 even at the age of 1 day, will be recorded. Many of the census years the data includes place of birth, and back to 1850, it shows relationship to head of household.

There are also state census records. I don't happen to have worked with the state of North Carolina as no relatives lived there. But MANY state census records are also available online. And there are city directories etc. There is just NO END to the various records that are available. You can find most of these records online using your local library, at no cost except perhaps a few cents to print a copy.

Should someone who IS A CITIZEN have none of those resources, many states also accept the same documents a person uses to get welfare benefits, like an envelope, or piece of mail with a name address, like an electric bill. It is nearly impossible to not have some documentation of who you are.

Citizenship might be a little more difficult but my goodness, I do genealogy for friends and acquaintances all the time. It is a rare event that I can find absolutely nothing. In fact, I don't believe its ever happened. Look yourself up. You'll see your whole life is available online, unless you are living off the grid, underground, like a fugitive. But that applies to nobody reading this.

I worked many elections as a precinct poll worker. At least where I live, ANYBODY NOT REGISTERED can still vote, but in a sealed questioned ballot. They fill out a form stating who they are, where they live etc. That ballot goes to the election office where the information on the form is verified. If it proves valid, their ballot envelope opened and is placed in a ballot box, still in the envelope but with identifying information now absent, and counted at the same time absentee ballots are counted. The form in my state does not ask for race.

Every state has to have some sort of mechanism for this contingency. I am not familiar what that would be in the state (is it Oregon?) that only does online voting.

So I don't buy the argument that it is a Republican conspiracy to keep blacks from voting. Maybe 50 years ago it was an agenda. Not now. And back then it was the Democrats not the Republicans who had that agenda. It was the Republicans who passed the voting rights act. It was the southern Democrats who voted against it.

Carol
not a Republican

[Carol Dickinson]

Carol Dickinson wrote:
> My father's parents also were required to prove citizenship because they were born in Canada, and not naturalized. They also had an obvious German last name, so were under suspicion despite the fact that the family had, by that time, been living in the US in the same county since 1881. We have the documents (including a baptismal letter) my grandfather submitted attesting to his father's birth in New York state, while his parents were temporarily in Canada,

Oops I see I messed up my point by screwing up the fact. My grandfather was born in Canada. His father was born in Tonawanda, NY. The documents submitted explained that. So my great-grandfather was an American citizen, which made my grandfather a citizen even though he was born in Ontario.

carol

[Francis A. Miniter]

Yes, he was old; he died a few years ago. Just getting him his social
security, though, took two years of submissions of documents to the SSA.

The Republican controlled states that I mentioned are using these laws
to disenfranchise people who have been registered voters for decades.
The following article lists GOP voter suppression tactics from 2002
forward:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

This article summarizes the voter suppression laws of certain states:
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Mississippi, Newbraska, North
Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin.
http://prospect.org/article/22-states-wave-new-voting-restrictions-threatens-shift-outcomes-tight-races

The Brennan Center for Justice has an excellent PDF on the problem of
"Citizens Without Proof" , which I encourage you to download. By way of
summary, it says:

--------------
A recent national survey sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice at
NYU School of Law reveals that millions of American citizens do not have
readily available documentary proof of citizenship. Many more –
primarily women – do not have proof of citizenship with their current
name. The survey also showed that millions of American citizens do not
have government-issued photo identification, such as a driver’s license
or passport. Finally, the survey demonstrated that certain groups –
primarily poor, elderly, and minority citizens – are less likely to
possess these forms of documentation than the general population.
----------------

Their study shows that about 7% of U.S. citizens (13,000,000 citizens)
do not have ready access to citizenship documents. Low income citizens
may not be able to afford the cost of birth certificates or driver's
licences. (I know many poor who are not drivers.) The study showed
that 11% of the population does not have government-issued photo IDs.
People living in large cities may never drive in their lives. (Again, I
have known some.) Further, documentation proving citizenship may not
match with current names (like the Texas judge I mentioned). Elderly
people on a budget have to choose: food or ID for voting. The survey
shows that African-Americans disproportionally lack photo IDs - 25%
compared to 8% of whites (and the GOP legislators are well aware of
this). This amounts to 5,500,000 black voters who could be
disenfranchised.


Francis A. Miniter

[Carol Dickinson]

The study showed
> that 11% of the population does not have government-issued photo IDs.
> People living in large cities may never drive in their lives. (Again, I
> have known some.)

In my state also since a vast area of it has no roads, and people travel by boat,or dogsled. Lets ignore ATVs & planes, since they require licenses.
At least in my state, ANYONE who does not have a drivers license, can get a state ID with photo at the Division of Motor Vehicles. They look just like a drivers license but it says it is not a drivers license. Minors can get them too, its just that their picture has a red background instead of a yellow.

If the driver's license is your issue, work on changing state laws to provide legal ID's not changing the entire US ID system for proof of citizenship for the purpose of voting. This is simple to do compared to redoing a federal system of anything. Sheesh. The fee for that in my state is about the price of one McDonalds burger (not meal). A person who can't afford that will probably already be on entitlement support. Its affordable for anybody at least ONE DAY during an entire year. If you don't think I'm right, then work on STATE legislation making it FREE. That's the fastest and easiest way.

And all those persons who don't drive and never have driven -- need some sort of transportation at some point in their lives that is not walking. They undoubtedly have a bus pass or take a taxi. They have to have money for that.

My BFF/cousin Audrey who passed away a year ago was low income, and using all sorts of entitlements. (Some made me kind of angry. I mean why should tax payers provide her with THREE cell phones. One should be enough.) For 5 years she was my roommate so I saw up close and personal. I know how poverty (and being a minority)impacted her life. The nearest bus is a 3 mile walk from my house. It doesn't go anyplace she needed to go. Due to a traumatic event in her life before I met her, she also was without any documents whatsoever. She managed to re-document. Its not that hard.

I bet if you PRIVATELY sent me the name of your undocumented friend with a place of residence, date of birth or death etc (the kind of thing his state would require for proof) I COULD find documents on him and send them to you PRIVATELY as proof. Unless his name is John Smith, as an example. There would likely be too many of them to eliminate the wrong ones in big city. But if that was the case the State would have more resources than would be online, based on his application.

Carol

[Carol Dickinson]

On Sunday, September 18, 2016 at 3:59:56 PM UTC-8, Francis A. Miniter wrote:

> Yes, he was old; he died a few years ago. Just getting him his social
> security, though, took two years of submissions of documents to the SSA.

AHA!! So he DID have DOCUMENTS. You blew your argument using him as an example.

[Carol Dickinson]

> A recent national survey sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice at
> NYU School of Law reveals that millions of American citizens do not have
> readily available documentary proof of citizenship. Many more –
> primarily women – do not have proof of citizenship with their current
> name.

So you're saying these women don't have a record of their marriage? License, news clipping, insurance policy (medial, life, home, car). title on car, house mortgage? Didn't change their driver's license name when it was renewed after their marriage. (Unless you're claiming all these women were not drivers - all of them.) They don't have a birth certificate for a child which lists her name and that of her husband?

I happen to know that the DAR collects marriage announcements from every newspaper in the country and files them in their genealogy collection in D.C. as part of their effort to facilitate documentation of all descendants of patriots when applying for membership. And every state keeps records ONLINE of marriages. I frequently use the online state marriage files.

I suspect the study did not investigate whether these proofs were available.

Carol

[Francis A. Miniter]

On 9/19/2016 10:42 PM, Carol Dickinson wrote:
> The study showed
>> that 11% of the population does not have government-issued photo
>> IDs. People living in large cities may never drive in their lives.
>> (Again, I have known some.)
>
> In my state also since a vast area of it has no roads, and people
> travel by boat,or dogsled. Lets ignore ATVs & planes, since they
> require licenses. At least in my state, ANYONE who does not have a
> drivers license, can get a state ID with photo at the Division of
> Motor Vehicles. They look just like a drivers license but it says it
> is not a drivers license. Minors can get them too, its just that
> their picture has a red background instead of a yellow.
>
> If the driver's license is your issue, work on changing state laws to
> provide legal ID's not changing the entire US ID system for proof of
> citizenship for the purpose of voting.

This "entire UD ID system" is (1) NOT a US system, but a state-by-state
system; (2) relatively new, and not universal in all states. Virginia
was the first state to implement a pilot program and that was in 1999.
So far, 33 states have some kind of voter ID law. And what matters is
the KIND of ID. The restrictive laws, the ones that impose burdens on
voters, are the ones that the courts are in the process of striking
down. On the federal level, the last four digits of your SSN will
suffice.

The laws are summarized as follows:

Strict photo ID required in effect:
Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Strict non-photo ID required in effect:
Arizona, North Dakota and Ohio.

Non-Strict photo ID required in effect:
Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Rhode Island,
South Dakota and Texas.

Non-Strict non-photo ID required in effect:
Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri,
Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Washington.

No ID required to vote at ballot box:
California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington,
D.C. do not require ID to vote.

The woman I mentioned does not know her date of birth. She knows it is
somewhere in one of two months. Nor does she know what town. Her
mother dropped her off with family and left and did not come back.


Francis A. Miniter

[Francis A. Miniter]

He had an SSN issued many decades before. Since he did not have a birth
certificate and could not get one, he had to submit copies of employment
records, tax returns, affidavits, etc., etc., etc. to SSA. And still
they wanted more. It took two years for them to be satisfied. (I said
that in the first post.) I doubt if, were this in the South, he would
have been able to vote even then.


Francis A. Miniter

[Francis A. Miniter]

On 9/19/2016 10:57 PM, Carol Dickinson wrote:
>
>> A recent national survey sponsored by the Brennan Center for
>> Justice at NYU School of Law reveals that millions of American
>> citizens do not have readily available documentary proof of
>> citizenship. Many more – primarily women – do not have proof of
>> citizenship with their current name.
>
> So you're saying these women don't have a record of their marriage?
> License, news clipping, insurance policy (medial, life, home, car).
> title on car, house mortgage? Didn't change their driver's license
> name when it was renewed after their marriage. (Unless you're
> claiming all these women were not drivers - all of them.) They don't
> have a birth certificate for a child which lists her name and that of
> her husband?

You are fortunate to have had a peaceful life. Life is not that simple
for many women, women who are beaten, thrown out of their homes, come
back to find their belongings trashed, or who are evicted because they
cannot pay rent, and the sheriff puts all their belongings on the
street. Records disappear. Reconstructing the records takes time and
costs money. The courts want ID before they will make copies, and
certified copies cost more.

And if a Texas state judge can be refused the right to vote because she
did not have marriage and divorce documents on her person, what chance
have poor or battered women?

Please, instead of scoffing at these people, show some empathy.

>
> I happen to know that the DAR collects marriage announcements from

DAR? Daughters of the American Revolution???? Do they include the
slaves then in America in their diligence?

> every newspaper in the country and files them in their genealogy
> collection in D.C. as part of their effort to facilitate
> documentation of all descendants of patriots when applying for
> membership. And every state keeps records ONLINE of marriages. I
> frequently use the online state marriage files.
>
> I suspect the study did not investigate whether these proofs were
> available.
>
> Carol
>

Francis A. Miniter