Month: February 2013

PBS “Need To Know” episode on MAS

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by David Safier PBS's "Need To Know" program devoted a half hour to the history of TUSD's Mexican American Studies program last night. You can watch it online. If you've been keeping up with the MAS story, you probably won't learn much new and may notice a few inaccuracies, but the overall story is well … Read more

Republicans and voting “reform”: Even when they are trying to be subtle, they’re like an elephant in a china shop

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By Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings

 

During the 2012 election cycle, there were many Republican-initiated moves across the country intended to inhibit or even block voting by groups that tend to not vote for them.

For example, here in Arizona we saw the Maricopa County Elections Department tell Spanish-speaking voters the wrong day for Election Day, the same elections department under-train staff and under-supply polling places in Democratic-leaning areas, leading to ballot shortages and long lines on Election Day, and a suspiciously interminable vote-counting process after the election.

The efforts brought forth a mixed bag of results.

Nationally, Barack Obama won reelection as President, and the number of Democrats in the US Senate surprisingly increased, while the Republicans retained a comfortable majority in the US House.

Locally, Democratic candidates won all three competitive Congressional seats here, and made small gains in the Arizona legislature, while the Republicans now control all statewide elected offices and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe "Bull Connor Jr." Arpaio won reelection comfortably.

Because of the lessons from the 2012 election cycle is that Republicans across the country are attempting to make systemic changes, to impose rule changes at local and state levels, to "stack the deck" in favor of Republican candidates.

In many of the states that tend to vote for Democrats in presidential elections but whose state governments are dominated by Republican, proposals to change the way electoral votes are allocated.  Instead of the current "winner take all" system, they want to change to a system where electoral votes are split between the major candidates, based on things like percentage of the popular vote or by congressional district.  However, no such proposals have been put forth in states that tend to favor Republican presidential candidates.

In other states with state governments dominated by Republicans, they've seen proposals to restrict voting by groups that tend to favor Democrats, all in the name of "reform"..

None of the schemes qualify as "subtle", and all of them have justifiably caused an uproar wherever they've be put forth.

Here in AZ, the Republicans have seemed to learn a bit of a lesson from all of that.