Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Talking Points Memo reports that "a representative of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division declined to say Monday whether federal authorities were considering taking action in Maricopa County, Ariz., where Latino voters were allegedly steered towards provisional ballots on election day. DOJ Stays Mum On Arizona Ballot Counting: Civil rights organizations have … Read more
by Pamela Powers Hannley
Loneprotestor has done it again. Check out her poignant video about recent deaths along the US/Mexico– in honor of the Day of the Dead.
Eight days after Border Patrol agent Nicholas Ivie was killed by friendly fire on the U.S.- Mexican border, a sixteen year-old boy was shot seven times through the border fence by a Border Patrol agent. Yet – in spite of involving the murder of a child across international lines – one incident received national attention for weeks, but the other was largely unknown except in the town where it happened. On November 2, the Mexican Dia de los Muertos, both sides of the border in Nogales, Arizona, walked to honor Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez and the sixteen others killed by Border Patrol in the last three years, and called for an end to Border Patrol immunity.
Video after the jump.
by Pamela Powers Hannley We here are Blog for Arizona have been beating the drum for election reform continuously for several weeks (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10, 11)– long before our state was disgraced last week with 600,000+ uncounted ballots. In the election integrity arena, one thing that Arizona has done right– despite the Arizona Legislature– is to … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
After witnessing the most overt and blatant GOP voter suppression efforts in this election that we have seen in years, the "Felonious Five" of the U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to hear a legal challenge to Section 5 preclearance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Lyle Denniston writes at SCOTUSblog.com, Court to rule on voting rights law:
Acting three days after the nation’s minority voters showed that they
have increased and still growing power in U.S. elections, the Supreme
Court agreed on Friday to
rule on a challenge to Congress’s power to protect those groups’ rights
at the polls. The Court said it would hear claims that Congress went
beyond its authority when it extended for another twenty-five years the
nation’s most important civil rights law, the Voting Rights Act,
originally passed in 1965 and renewed four times since then.
Specially at issue is the constitutionality of the law’s Section
5, the most important provision, under which nine states and parts
of seven others with a past history of racial bias in voting must get
official clearance in Washington before they may put into effect any
change in election laws or procedures, no matter how small. The Court
came close to striking down that section three years ago, but
instead sent Congress clear signals that it should update the law so
that it reflects more recent conditions, especially in the South.
Congress did nothing in reaction.
That would be because the U.S. Supreme Court does not get to legislate policy. The Congress does. The Court only decides whether Congress acted within the scope of its constituional authority, which it clearly did in this case, as the Court has held many times since 1965. [Note: Congress reauthorized the VRA most recently in 2006, by a vote of 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate.]
The Court accepted the voting rights case from Shelby County, Ala.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Participating in the civic duty of voting should not be a test of physical endurance. This is not a reality TV show of "Survivor." The long waits in line to vote, exceeding eight hours in some locations around the country, is unacceptable in the most technologically advanced country on Earth.
Now I realize that this was not a bug but a feature in several states, e.g., Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Forida, where hyper-partisan secretaries of state sought to make voting more difficult and a challenge to certain voters — college students, the poor, minorities, and the elderly — because they tend to vote Democratic.
But far more frequently it is because of poor logistical management, e.g., not enough polling locations, not enough voting booths, not enough ballots, not enough poll workers, old equipment that breaks down, etc. Again, I realize that this is not a bug but a feature in several states. This is a classic form of voter suppression. See this Hart Research study sponsored by the AFL-CIO which found that:
16 percent of Obama voters waited more than 30 minutes to vote, versus
only 9 percent of Romney voters. Strikingly, 24 percent of Latino
voters, and 22 percent of African Americans, waited longer than 30
minutes, while only 9 percent of whites did.
President Obama mentioned the long lines to vote in his victory speech Tuesday night and said "By the way, we we have to fix that" to loud applause.
In a report at the Washington Post today Obama faces a host of tough issues as second term begins is buried this passage:
[Obama] also made a glancing reference to another issue that many Democrats,
and Obama himself, have elevated recently to a possible priority in a
second term: political reform.
A package of legislation could include bills to make voting easier
across the country and a constitutional amendment to invalidate the
Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed
corporations, labor unions and other interest groups to spend unlimited
amounts of money on behalf of candidates.
Asked two months before Election Day what
he would do about “the corrupting influence” of money in politics,
Obama said he would “seriously consider” such a push, noting that “even
if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the
super PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.”
Some state efforts to make it more difficult for people to vote and
the long lines Tuesday outside some polling stations — many of them in
urban neighborhoods where Obama was expected to do well — have drawn
calls over the campaign and in its immediate aftermath for an overhaul
of U.S. election laws.