Yet more vote suppression -- closing polling places

[Jimmy Higgins]

It is cute that Americans think they have a democracy.

Yeah, people were too occupied worrying about SJWs.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I was forced to surrender my driver's license because of my disability. I could have voted forever with just the driver's license, but the fact that I had had a driver's license didn't qualify me to get a voter's ID card. It makes no sense.

How about going to your DMV and getting a 'Non-Drivers ID'? Every DMV I've ever been to has had them available. They are accepted as Government-issued ID equivalent to Drivers Licenses (except, of course, you can't drive with them). Surely the voting-bureaucracy would accept them.

You're new enough here not to know the whole story.

He had no ID after the state pulled his DL. You can't walk into a DMV without documentation and get an ID. The only ID he could get would be his birth certificate--but that requires either a signature (something he can't do) or a trip to where he was born (a major undertaking given his medical situation.)

It would have been so simple for the state to handle this better--if your license is pulled for any reason (other than identity issues) it should automatically be replaced with a non-driver's ID.

 

[lpetrich]

I remember when the Clinton Administration proposed having a national ID card. The right wing went into hysterics.

Dems spark alarm with call for national ID card | TheHill
The National ID Card: It's Baaack! | Cato Institute

But state-issued ID's seem to be OK with such people.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_GD7iHncZ8

Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook

Rigged chronicles how our most important right, the right to vote, is being undercut by a decade of dirty tricks including the partisan use of gerrymandering and voter purges and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. The film captures the 2016 elections as we witness real-time voter purges in North Carolina and voter intimidation in Texas.

----------

A documentary for those interested in such things.

 

[angelo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_GD7iHncZ8

Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook

Rigged chronicles how our most important right, the right to vote, is being undercut by a decade of dirty tricks including the partisan use of gerrymandering and voter purges and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. The film captures the 2016 elections as we witness real-time voter purges in North Carolina and voter intimidation in Texas.

----------

A documentary for those interested in such things.

The Obama administration had 8 years to fix any anomaly, yet now Dems are the loudest protesters about perceived vote rigging!

 

[southernhybrid]

Each state controls their elections, including polling places, ID requirements, etc. How was the Obama administration supposed to fix that? The only option that people have if they feel that the rules are causing voter suppression is to take it to a federal court.

 

[ZiprHead]

Each state controls their elections, including polling places, ID requirements, etc. How was the Obama administration supposed to fix that? The only option that people have if they feel that the rules are causing voter suppression is to take it to a federal court.

Well, gee. He wasn't just president Obama, He was President SUPER OBAMA, the all powerful, yet totally ineffective superhero!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_GD7iHncZ8

Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook

Rigged chronicles how our most important right, the right to vote, is being undercut by a decade of dirty tricks including the partisan use of gerrymandering and voter purges and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. The film captures the 2016 elections as we witness real-time voter purges in North Carolina and voter intimidation in Texas.

----------

A documentary for those interested in such things.

The Obama administration had 8 years to fix any anomaly, yet now Dems are the loudest protesters about perceived vote rigging!

Fix it, how? They couldn't force stuff through Congress, they didn't have control in the states that are doing the suppression.

 

[angelo]

Each state controls their elections, including polling places, ID requirements, etc. How was the Obama administration supposed to fix that? The only option that people have if they feel that the rules are causing voter suppression is to take it to a federal court.

Well, gee. He wasn't just president Obama, He was President SUPER OBAMA, the all powerful, yet totally ineffective superhero!

well, many people did think he was the Messiah!

 

[angelo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_GD7iHncZ8

Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook

Rigged chronicles how our most important right, the right to vote, is being undercut by a decade of dirty tricks including the partisan use of gerrymandering and voter purges and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. The film captures the 2016 elections as we witness real-time voter purges in North Carolina and voter intimidation in Texas.

----------

A documentary for those interested in such things.

The Obama administration had 8 years to fix any anomaly, yet now Dems are the loudest protesters about perceived vote rigging!

Fix it, how? They couldn't force stuff through Congress, they didn't have control in the states that are doing the suppression.

I just finished reading a newspaper article about the US midterms, and it's stated there seems to be a record number of pre postal votes [an estimated 30 million] and it's looking like a record number of voter turnout on voting day.

 

[ZiprHead]

Each state controls their elections, including polling places, ID requirements, etc. How was the Obama administration supposed to fix that? The only option that people have if they feel that the rules are causing voter suppression is to take it to a federal court.

Well, gee. He wasn't just president Obama, He was President SUPER OBAMA, the all powerful, yet totally ineffective superhero!

well, many people did think he was the Messiah!

Yeah, right.

View attachment 18599

 

[Loren Pechtel]

well, many people did think he was the Messiah!

Yeah, right.

View attachment 18599

Admittedly, I know little of the Bible. However, the only case I can think of of words becoming flesh was the snake in the garden. Thus the voice of Satan.

 

[angelo]

results are in. As was expected, Dems win Congress and GOP win senate. It must be stated that every sitting president in modern history from either party has always lost one house at least in mid terms.

 

[lpetrich]

There is evidence of gerrymandering. I once got the numbers for the 2012 House elections; I got them from the Boston Globe. I then did proportional representation on those numbers, both state-by-state and national. I used rounding downward (Hare quota), then topping off with d'Hondt's highest-averages method. Here are my results:

Number of Seats: 435
Number of Contested Seats: 422

By party in each district (actual): GOP 234, Dem 201

State-by-state proportional:
GOP 219, Dem 213, Lib 1, NPA 1, NPD 1
GOP 219, Dem 213, other 3
GOP 220, Dem 215

Nationwide proportional:
Dem 215, GOP 211, Lib 5, Ind 2, NPA 1, Grn 1
Dem 213, GOP 210, other 12
Dem 220, GOP 215

So (Dem) - (GOP) is:
Each district separately: -33
Each state separately: -5
Nationwide: +5

So the disproportion from the states' districts is -28, and the disproportion from the states themselves is -10.

 

[lpetrich]

2018 House Forecast | FiveThirtyEight claims that the Democrats would need 5.6% more votes than the Republicans to win. That's 24 seats, less than my earlier estimate of 38 seats. The Democrats got around 22 more seats than the Republicans (How Democrats Took The House On Election Night | FiveThirtyEight), giving a total of 48 seats or 10.6% more votes. So the states and districts created a disproportion that gave the Democrats only half the extra seats that they would have gotten with nationwide proportionality.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

2018 House Forecast | FiveThirtyEight claims that the Democrats would need 5.6% more votes than the Republicans to win. That's 24 seats, less than my earlier estimate of 38 seats. The Democrats got around 22 more seats than the Republicans (How Democrats Took The House On Election Night | FiveThirtyEight), giving a total of 48 seats or 10.6% more votes. So the states and districts created a disproportion that gave the Democrats only half the extra seats that they would have gotten with nationwide proportionality.

The Republicans had 49.1 and the Dems 48.0 in 2016 and the Republicans held a real sweet advantage. No word yet on how much more the Democrats had to win by to get a smaller majority in 2018.

 

[ZiprHead]

Wait times to vote in some areas Tuesday were averaging three hours, a representative for Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization devoted to voting security, told WIRED. This was owing both to problems at polling places and higher than expected turnout, according to Henderson. At one polling place in Snellville, in Gwinnett County, north of Atlanta, people were unable to vote for hours because there were no power cords for the machines when the polls opened, according to NBC News. Snellville’s population includes a higher percentage of blacks, 36 percent versus 29 percent than the county overall.

https://www.wired.com/story/georgia-voting-machine-issues-heighten-scrutiny-brian-kemp/

 

[James Brown]

It feels to me like a circular argument:

These are low barriers to vote--what's the big deal with insisting everyone get State-issued IDs or drive a few miles to a polling place or bring along a birth certificate?

All these hurdles place an undue burden on voters, particularly the poor and middle class.

We have to have these high barriers to vote or else bad actors will commit voter fraud.

There's little to no evidence that people are committing voter fraud. The burdens harm many individual voters and provide a miniscule public benefit.

These are low barriers to vote--what's the big deal with insisting everyone get State-issued IDs or drive a few miles to a polling place or find a birth certificate?

All these hurdles place an undue burden on voters...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Ohio 2016

Republicans - 3.0 million votes
Democrats - 2.0 million votes

Republicans 12 seats
Democrats - 4 seats

Ohio 2018 (aggregated data from CNN)

Republicans 2.3 million votes
Democrats - 2.0 million votes

Republicans 12 seats
Democrats - 4 seats

Gerrymandering? In Ohio? Naw!

The Democrats won districts 3, 9, 11, and 13. Their margin of victory was 175%, 109%, 354%, and 55% of the total votes received by the Republican. The Republican margin of victory in their districts ranged from 9% to 126% of the Democrat's vote total, averaging 54%.