Kris Kobach's Ministry of Voter Suppression

Voter suppression czar, Republican Kris Kobach

In the cruel pantheon of the modern American Republican Party ideology, aside from a fetish-like obsession with lowering the tax burden on the wealthiest 1%, no idol is more worshiped than the suppression of the right to vote.

Content to abandon their supposed allegiance to Constitutional principles, many Republicans have now gone full tilt and embarked upon a crusade to aggressively block access to the ballot box on a nationwide scale.

No that long ago these reprehensible voter suppression tactics were generally engineered from the state level in those states with majority-Republican state legislatures and Republican governors mostly working off of scripts, media talking points and model legislation courtesy of our old friends at the American Legislation Exchange Council (ALEC).

Check out the Center for Media and Democracy's 'ALEC Exposed' Website to learn more about how ALEC helped Republican politicians lay the groundwork for massive voter suppression by enacting ludicrous, overly-burdensome voter ID laws in at least 37 different states following the 2010 mid-term elections.

To most Americans it's an affront to the basic principles of democracy, but as you've likely heard over the past week couple weeks, Republican efforts to target the voter rolls of the entire nation are now being orchestrated from the federal level - directly from the Trump administration.

As Madeline Conway reported yesterday in an article for Politico.com, written requests from the Presidential Advisory Commission On Election Integrity for individual states to provide detailed information including voter's full names, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, party affiliation, voting history since 2006, and information on felonies and military status, were met with widespread outrage - and not just from traditionally blue states either.

Mississippi Sec. of State Delbert Hosemann

After reviewing a copy of the letter sent from Trump' widely-panned commission, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said his response would be:

"They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from." 

And he's a Republican from Mississippi.

As Chris Cillizza reported for CNN yesterday, at least 45 states have already refused to provide at least some of the information to the commission.


Democratic Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe got to the heart of the matter when he said in a statement:

"This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November. At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump's alternative election facts, and at worse is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression."
 
The blowback for the Trump administration's "voter integrity commission" and it's chief architect Kris Kobach has been swift, but what's really bizarre are their attempts to justify and defend it.

Despite serious pushback from dozens of secretaries of state and governors, Kobach simplistically dismissed the media's efforts to question the commission's motives "fake news."

And predictably, Trump took to Twitter to suggest that anyone who doesn't comply has something to hide.

What else can you expect from Republicans who know they can no longer win the mainstream American vote based on the issues?

Whether it's gerrymandering of political districts or voter suppression, they must cheat to win.

What real voter fraud looks like courtesy of Crosscheck

What's particularly troubling is that if you take some time and go back and read Greg Palast's meticulously-researched article "The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters" published in Rolling Stone back in August of 2016 in the lead-up to the November elections, Trump's outrageous information request is really nothing more than a souped-up version of Kris Kobach's widely-condemned voter data collection system known as Crosscheck.

As Palast noted, based on the algorithms and search parameters within the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program as it's formally known, the program "disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters" by incorrectly listing certain ethnic-sounding last names as inherently suspicious.

Click the link above and read some of the flagrant ways in which thousands of mostly-minority Americans were improperly and unfairly "flagged" by Crosscheck and denied the right to vote.

It's truly Third-World authoritarian stuff, and this big data request by Trump's "commission" (ostensibly headed up by Kobach) is nothing more than an attempt to create a "Crosscheck 2.0" in time for the 2018 mid-term elections.

If you missed it, check out Ari Berman's profile of Kobach that was published in the New York Times Magazine back on June 13th.

Kobach is a genuinely dangerous individual, heading up a hyper-partisan "voter integrity commission made up of a cast right-wing zealots summoned up from the putrid depths of authoritarian bigotry.

Voter suppression zealot Hans Von Spakovsky

No member of Trump's "commission" embodies that more than the widely-reviled Hans Von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission who oversaw the division of the Justice Department that monitored voting rights during the Bush administration.

If there is a Creature From the Black Lagoon of Republican voter suppression, it's this guy.

His mission in life is clear:

Use arcane misinterpretation of data, racist and xenophobic fear-mongering and the flagrant manipulation of existing federal and state laws to prevent as many people of color, the elderly, students, legal immigrants and people with foreign-sounding names from participating in the voting process as possible.

If you're not familiar with this guy, take some time to read Leon Neyfakh's recent feature on Von Spakovsky published on Slate.com titled, "The Dark Prince Of Voter Fraud Alarmism Is Joining the Trump Administration".

Kris Kobach may be the evangelist of Republican voter suppression in America but Hans Von Spakovsky is arguably the high priest - a man who has literally spent years trying to make it harder for non-white people to vote in the name of mass voter fraud that simply does not exist.

Trump is far too self-obsessed, uninformed and shallow to realize the degree to which Kobach and Von Spakovsky are true believers in the Ministry of Voter Suppression.

He embraces them and their so-called commission only because he thinks it will help legitimize his continuing delusional fiction that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton because 3 to 5 million illegal aliens cast votes in the 2016 presidential election.

Make no mistake, men like Kobach and Von Spakovsky need Trump too in order to lend an air of credibility to the dark and arcane arts they practice - Trump's concocted unproven lies about fictional "busloads" of illegal aliens costing him the popular vote in 2016 are right up their alley.

And their "presence" in the White House under the guise of a presidential advisory board is indeed a boon to the likes of Trump policy advisors like Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller - and proof positive that a cabal of white nationalists eager to create a 21st century version of Apartheid in America now runs the presidency.

Republican Chicanery At Texas Voting Booths

Election law expert Rick Hasen

Today's 'Fresh Air' segment with NPR's Terry Gross interviewing author, law professor and Election Law Blog creator Rick Hasen was an interesting snapshot of what may or may not be in store for the November 8th elections in just under two weeks.

And an interesting dissection of some of the outlandish claims of rampant voter fraud that have been levied by Donald Trump in recent weeks.


Despite the delusional Orange-Haired One's apocalyptic warnings of an imaginary nationwide Democratic plot to rig the upcoming presidential elections, as Hasen observed in one of his entries on his Election Law Blog today, early signs based on eyewitness accounts and complaints from Texas are that it's actually Republicans engaged in widespread voter fraud of a more sinister nature.

Haden posted a link to the October 25th press release by the Texas Civil Rights Project highlighting samples of some really troubling reports from early voting in three counties in the Lone Star State: Harris, Bexar and Denton.

The TCR Project notes that during the course of the two-day period covering Monday October 24th and Tuesday October 25th, the Election Protection hotline logged approximately 200 calls and emails identifying complaints that include poll workers in the Bayland Park Community Center and the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Harris County incorrectly telling early voters that they were required to show photo ID.

They also posted a link to a photo taken on Monday by a voter who went to the Castle Hills City Hall in San Antonio to cast an early vote showing a sign posted on the wall of the election sight that wrongly states, "Photo ID required for Texas Voters"

Notice that the sign says a concealed weapons carry permit is acceptable ID to vote but not a college ID? Outrageous.

This sign is not true and has no business being posted in a voting site in Texas let alone a city hall.

Back in July a panel of federal judges from the 5th Circuit Court struck down the Texas voter ID requirement prior to the start of early voting - so Texans do not have to present photo ID in order to be able to vote.

As Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law observed, "Across Texas we are seeing local elections officials undermine the weight of the 5th Circuits' ruling striking down the state's voter ID law as discriminatory."

The Texas Civil Rights Project also detailed reports from Denton County of at least one individual being turned away from a poll center in Flower Mound, TX for not having a photo ID and an armed man walking along talking to voters waiting in line in Carrollton, TX.

Is this 2016 or 1916?

Fortunately the Election Protection initiative has partnered with more than 100 other groups including the Brennan Center For Justice, the NAACP, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters to provide up-to-date voter rights information, grass roots support and legal experts to confront this kind of chicanery and misinformation engineered by desperate Republicans who know their policies and candidate are a lost cause amongst mainstream American voters.

Trump can continue to childishly pound the podium and prattle on about his righteous indignation over imaginary fears about non-existant plots by Democrats to "rig" the upcoming elections.

But as reports from the front lines in Texas show, in truth it's actually Republicans on the local county and state level who are using intentional misinformation, intimidation and ignoring federal court rulings in order to try and rig the outcome of the 2016 election process.

Despite the presence of many fair-minded Americans from both ends of the political spectrum and from all races and ethnicities in the Lone Star State, there's still something dark at work deep in the heart of Texas.

Especially when some elections officials are knowingly ignoring federal rulings on voter restrictions that violate the law of the land.

Cast Your Vote & Smile For the Camera!

With live coverage of the New Hampshire primaries underway on the always-reliable WNYC, I'm preparing to go home, make dinner and binge out on political analysis.

Some of the Republican presidential candidates, particularly New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, are going to have to make some tough decisions tomorrow depending on how the primary results pan out.

Christie only captured 1.8% of the vote in the Iowa caucus last week, and he won none of the 30 delegates at stake either as he came in 10th place.

So I'm interested to see if the pummeling he gave Marco Rubio at the GOP debate on Saturday is enough to persuade the notoriously late-deciding New Hampshire voters to push Christie to a top three finish tonight - anything under 3rd place and he's really going to have to consider whether or not it's realistic for him to continue.

Earlier this morning on The Brian Lehrer Show there was an interesting segment with New Jersey Public Radio reporter Matt Katz, who produces The Christie Tracker podcast, (which has the latest on the Bridge Gate scandal) and Annie Karni who's in New Hampshire covering Hillary Clinton's campaign for POLITICO.

Definitely worth a listen if you want some insight from a reporter who really knows Christie.

Journalist / author Ari Berman

Not to be outdone on New Hampshire primary day coverage, Leonard Lopate had an insightful but disturbing interview this afternoon with Ari Berman, senior contributing writer for The Nation.

Berman, author of the timely non-fiction book published in 2015, "Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle For Voting Rights in America", has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the issue of voting right in this nation.

Berman used that knowledge to cover a lot of territory during his interview with Leonard Lopate this afternoon.

From Senator Ted Cruz's long-time advocacy for the aggressive (and borderline illegal) suppression of the right to vote for those Americans who tend to pull the lever for Democrats, to the Republican party's determination to maintain control over state legislatures across America in order to enact even more restrictive laws and regulations designed to make it harder for college students, the elderly, African-Americans, Hispanics, legal immigrants and people convicted of felonies to cast their votes and participate in the Democratic process.

If you're interested in hearing how the current crop of Republican presidential candidates are also working to keep (some) people from voting, you might want to give the interview a listen.

As Berman reported in an article for The Nation yesterday, New Hampshire is one of the 16 states controlled by majority-Republican legislatures who've enacted tough new voter ID laws for the 2016 presidential elections.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice reports, those states account for 178 electoral college votes.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency - think about that.


As if the snowstorm hitting New Hampshire on  primary day isn't enough, the state's new voter ID laws include a provision that calls for registered voters who don't have ID with them at the polls to sign an affidavit, then submit to having their picture taken.

It's absurd and a clear violation of the right to privacy - and ironic that it's the law in the "Live Free Or Die" state.

But, as Ari Berman pointed out in an article for The Nation back in January, as the then-solicitor general of Texas Ted Cruz said back in 2008 after filing a court brief in support of restrictive new voter ID laws in Indiana:

"There is no right to be free from any inconvenience or burden in voting"

With that I must be off, coverage of the New Hampshire primaries is about to get underway and I'm interested to see if registered voters report having problems casting their votes because of these new Republican voter suppression measures.

I guess Republicans would say it's not that bad, if you forget your ID in New Hampshire, all you have to do is sign an affidavit and smile for the camera!

As for who does what with all those photos of folks who didn't have ID's, I'm sure right-wing Republicans and their friends at the American Legislative Exchange Council have some great ideas.

Republican Psychosis & GOP Voter Suppression in Michigan

Professor Sean Wilentz

In a special report published in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz wrote what I consider to be one of the most concise, insightful and well-written analysis of the evolution of the Republican party I've ever read entitled, "The Turning Point".

Do yourself a favor and click the link above and check it out if you haven't read the piece, it's a must-read if politics gets your blood going or you just want to better understand the madness of today's GOP.

Wilentz looks back at the enormous philosophical changes that have taken place within the Republican party since the 1960's and on through the 70's, 80's 90's up to today in order to help make some sense of the fractured, divisive undiluted rage that defines today's GOP.

Based on the bizarre antics and statements of some of the Republican presidential front runners, or the reckless political obstructionism of members of the Congressional Freedom Caucus, one might think a psychologist would be better suited to such a task.

But Wilentz ably draws on the volumes of research he conducted for his well-received 564-page analysis of the rise and fall of the Reagan era published in 2008, 'The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 to craft one of the most insightful political pieces in Rolling Stone this year.

In doing so he makes the case that 2016 is going to be one of the most important political elections of our time; not only because of what's at stake, but because of how it will impact the three major branches of the American government - especially the Supreme Court.

White House material? Bush, Rubio, Walker, Cruz and Paul

Though you might not know it by the caliber and quality of the candidates seeking to become the GOP presidential candidate next year, the importance of the 2016 elections isn't lost on Republicans either.

It's not just the conservative corporate oligarchs like the Koch brothers who've pledged to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money into the 2016 elections to tilt the political outcome in favor of their own self interests.

The Republican party has eagerly tapped into the divisive undercurrent of fear and anxiety that courses through the minds of millions of working-class white Americans who ironically feel disenfranchised and shut out of an economic system tilted in favor of the same wealthiest 1% who've bankrolled the conservative think tanks and activist groups that intentionally created the Tea Party.

Not as a viable political party as the talking heads of conservative media would have you believe, but as a mechanism to vent the anger these Americans feel onto immigrants, racial minorities, women's reproductive rights, same-sex couples and refugees fleeing the ravages of terrorism and conflict that was fueled in no small measure by wars started by the Republican presidential administration of George W. Bush - and paid for by American blood and trillions of dollars of taxpayer money.

As Wilentz observes in his article in Rolling Stone, Americans across the south and mid-west who once voted for Democrats in the 30,'s 40's, 50's and 60's now vote against their own self interest by aligning themselves with a political party that has vilified those they label as "other".
 

As a result, these days the term "voter suppression" has become synonymous with the Republican party in America.

As reported in a fascinating piece posted on the progressive Michigan Website eclectablog.com, Michigan voter repression law SB 571 (among other things) blocks public institutions like schools boards, library boards and local governments from "providing information about bond and millage proposals."

Like other similar voter suppression laws passed by Republican-majority state legislatures in states around the nation, Michigan's SB 571 would create longer lines at the ballot on election days, restrict the amount of time working folks have to vote and block the use of public funds to educate voters about the election process.

As the eclectablog article notes, Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press tore into Michigan Republican legislators for the political hoodwink they pulled on the people of Michigan in an op-ed in which he described how Republicans deceptively passed SB 571 in total secret. As Dickerson wrote:

"...when it emerged from a Republican caucus room Wednesday evening, SB 571 had metastasized into a 53-page behemoth that included GOP-friendly amendments to 10 different sections of Michigan’s Campaign Finance Act. It was adopted by both houses late Wednesday night without a single Democratic vote or amendment, and after the Republican majority voted to clear the Senate chamber of Democratic staffers and lock the senators themselves inside."

The actions of Michigan Republicans were as repugnant to the principles of Democracy as voter suppression is to American values enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.

You really have to read Dickerson's op-ed piece in the Detroit Free Press to believe the kind of shit these guys pulled in an effort to put in place what he describes as a "permanent majority" in the state legislature; and eventually, in Congress as well.

It lays bare the determination of Republicans to alter the foundations of American Democracy so that a numerically shrinking demographic can run it, revealing a desire to put in place what is essentially a Democratic version of Apartheid here in America in order to counteract the demographic shift that will make Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians and non-white people the majority of the American populace within two decades - possibly sooner by some estimates.

The actions of the Michigan legislature also underscores the main thrust of Sean Wilentz's article, a point I think most Americans understand.

With the titanic shifts in the demographic makeup that define who we are as a nation, 2016 is truly going to be one of the most critical elections of our time - one the American people cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and watch unfold. 

But to me one of the most troubling aspects of the GOP's voter suppression tactics is the idea that rather than accept and understand the ways in the American populace is changing, Republicans have decided that gerrymandering legislative districts to create false majorities and actively working on ways to keep millions of eligible voters from taking part in the election process is actually a viable solution.

That in itself is an indicator of a much deeper psychosis - I'm not a psychiatrist but it's a clinical term I don't use lightly.

Just consider the tone of the 2016 Republican presidential race; you know the names, you've heard the statements about building walls and treating foreigners like some kind of menace; or blocking women from making their own choices about their personal health care decisions.

When is the last time you can recall attendees at a political rally physically attacking protesters who show up?

Or literally dragging a reporter of a different ethnicity out of the room for asking questions?

Does any of that sound rational?

If you look at even a basic definition of psychosis, it's not a stretch to say it sounds an awful lot like today's Republican party and the right-wing media spin doctors who control their message.

Consider this definition from the Healthline.com Website:

"Psychosis is a serious mental disorder characterized by thinking and emotions that are so impaired that they indicate that the person experiencing them has lost contact with reality. People who are psychotic have false thoughts (delusions) and/or see or hear things that are not there (hallucinations). These experiences can be frightening and may cause people who are suffering from psychosis to hurt themselves or others." 

Do those characteristics sound like any particular political party you know?

Sweet Home Alabama - Republicans Drive Over Voter Rights

A state drivers license center in Alabama

The restrictive voter ID law passed in 2011 by the the conservative Republican politicians who now dominate the Alabama state legislature didn't take affect until 2014.

But it only took a year for them to take another swipe at the voting rights of Alabama citizens; those who vote Democratic anyway.

In another low point for the basic principle of American democracy, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency ( the result of a consolidation of 12 different law enforcement agencies under a single authority now known under the acronym ALEA) announced that budget shortfalls would require the closing of an astounding 31 different driver's license centers around the state.

Republicans, including Governor Robert Bentley (we'll get to him in a moment) were quick to deny accusations leveled by politicians, members of the press, voter rights groups and citizens that the closing of these centers were part of an underhanded effort to put up barriers that make it more difficult for citizens of Alabama to comply with the voter ID law that Republicans themselves drafted and passed in 2011.

But statistics suggest otherwise.

As Rachel Witkin wrote in an article posted on TheNewCivilRightsMovement.com on Monday,
8 of the 10 counties where the drivers license facilities are being closed just happen to have the largest percentages of non-white voters in the state.

Driver's license centers in every county in the state of Alabama where more than 75% of registered voters are African-American will be closed.

Coincidence? Hardly.

First off, Alabama is one of many American states with a solid "super majority" of Republican state legislators dominating the state house; as well as a Republican Governor.

Since it's the Republican party who are essentially responsible for establishing the budget for the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (which runs the driver's license centers across the state); Republicans are the ones responsible for the apparent lack of available funds to keep the centers open.

Oct 2013, Ted Cruz & Sarah Palin protest WWII memorial closing THEY caused 

That kind of  manipulative legislative nonsense is taken right from the playbook of the senseless Republican "starve the beast" strategy of governing.

And the illogical political spin, where they childishly blame Democrats for their own Republican handiwork, is hardly new for them either.

It's the same kind of demented GOP thinking that led Republicans Senator Ted Cruz and former VP candidate Sarah Palin to fan the flames of conservative hysteria which lead to an intentional shut down of the federal government in 2013.

Once they'd accomplished their demented goal, they had the gall to actually go and stand theatrically in front of the WWII Veteran's memorial in Washington, DC and piously criticize Democrats for not keeping the national parks open (pictured left).

Is it a total PR nightmare that contributes to the Republican's dismal approval rate? Sure, but they still do it.

And then they have the temerity to act offended by people who call their actions out for what they are by dismissing them as nosy outsiders trying to politicize an issue for personal gain.
 
Since the news about the closing of the driver's license centers has been so dominated by national media news outlets lately, I was genuinely curious to see what people who actually live in Alabama had to say on the issue.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley

To gain some perspective, I decided to troll through some of the over 522 reader comments that were posted in response to a story posted on the AL.com Website by Charles Dean about Republican Governor Robert Bentley (pictured left) strongly denying accusations that the decision to close 31 different state-run facilities where (mostly) people of modest income who reside in more remote rural areas can obtain driver's licenses, was not a race-based decision intentionally designed to make it more difficult for people of color to get ID's to vote.

Interestingly, the reader comments seemed to break down along just about the same political lines as national reactions to the story; but there seemed to be blacks and whites on both sides of the issue.

There were white Alabamans who thought the closing of the centers were clearly race-based, and there were also black Alabamans who pointed out the relatively low state voter turnout (under 50%) in the last election to point out that if you really want to vote in the state, you just have to register to do it.

Someone who claimed to be black pointed out the fact that there are large numbers of black folks in the state who have valid state ID's to cross state lines to gamble in Mississippi or Louisiana or buy alcohol legally.  

Some white Alabamans felt it was only being made into a national issue because Alabama's legacy of racism and political correctness make it easy to accuse the state of such racial shenanigans.

More than one reader expressed skepticism over the fact that Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson have both inserted themselves into the controversy - for what some readers felt were for self-serving reasons rather than the issue of voter rights.

But as you may have guessed, I'm just not buying that.

Nov 5, 2012 - Voters in Akron, Ohio wait hours for early voting

Especially given the Republican party's openly passing dozens of sketchy voter ID laws in states like Ohio (pictured left), North Carolina and Florida - and other ALEC-crafted legislation that intentionally restricts the rights of the poor, racial minorities, working class, students, legal immigrants and the elderly to cast their votes in elections.

As the AL.com article reported, the state's embattled Governor, Robert Bentley offered up some fairly sketchy reasoning for the closures of the 31 driver's license centers during a press conference on Tuesday when he said:

"The last time I looked, 16-year-olds that get their license at a driver's licenses place, don't vote," said Bentley. "That's all we're doing. We're repositioning people in the state because we don't have enough funds in this state to keep these offices open." 

"Repositioning people"? He and his Republican cohorts in the state legislature are the ones who control the funds that keep the drivers license centers open in the first place!

Now just bear in mind folks, this statement is from the same Governor who self-righteously opposed gay marriage on the grounds that  heterosexual marriages like his represent 'Stability' before his wife of 50 years, Dianne Bentley, filed for divorce back in August. 

Bentley has also had his toes in hot water over race recently, after what many perceived as insensitive comments insinuating common simplistic stereotypes about the black family structure were to blame for the horrific kidnapping and murder of 8-year old Hiawayi Robinson.

Governor Bentley took particular issue with Hillary Clinton weighing in on the issue of his party actively suppressing the rights of minority voters in Alabama, saying:

"The one that I'm really angry about is Hilliary Clinton. You know Hillary Clinton never lets the facts get in the way of a good political sound bite and that's exactly what she has done criticizing the state of Alabama,"  

Hillary Clinton wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade; she called the decision to close the centers in Alabama  "a blast from the Jim Crow past."

And her criticism of Alabama's closing 31 drivers license centers isn't her first time calling out Republicans for suppressing votes.

Bentley's insinuation that she just started chiming in on the issue after Alabama's latest voter suppression efforts earned national attention for a "soundbite" is plain wrong.
 

Guess who vetoed state legislation to add early voting hours?

Say what you want about her, Hillary has been attacking Republican presidential candidates for suppressing voter rights for months.

The "Truth-o-Meter" of the Pulitzer Prize-wining PolitiFact.com Website fact-checked Clinton's claims of Republican voter suppression by Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and Scott Walker.

They found them to be "largely accurate" and rated her claims, "Mostly True."

Why? Because the reality is that actively using legislation, illegal redistricting, gerrymandering and even voter intimidation are now part of the accepted (by Republicans anyway) strategy for winning the White House in 2016 and holding on to a majority in the House and Senate.

It's disgraceful and a mockery of everything this nation stands for, but that's today's Republican party for you.

But the closings of the 31 centers is far from a done deal. Politicians and activists groups including the NAACP are calling for legal challenges to the closings as well as a Department of Justice investigation.

If you were curious about what would happen after the Supreme Court gutted key provisions of the Civil Rights Act, look no further than the state of Alabama.

"Sweet Home" indeed.

Remember, Remember the Elections of November

Earlier this evening I wrapped up at work and headed over to the polls at 5:40pm to cast my vote in New Jersey's District 54.

My polling site was in the library of a senior center just around the corner from where I live and work.

A cagey old WWII veteran sat between the two polling booths and kept a sharp eye on things as he guided voters into the booths and pressed the button once people had cast their votes.

He grumbled good-naturedly about having to be there for 16 hours. I asked him if he was getting overtime for being there so long and he said no, he wasn't.

The older ladies seated a few feet away at the check-in table were very polite and efficient. My name was listed in the voter rolls and I walked into the booth, checked off my candidates on the electronic key board and cast my vote in about 90 seconds; no ID required.

But just before I was called to the table to check in, an older man of color with what sounded like a deep Caribbean or possibly Spanish accent was confused because his name wasn't listed in the voter rolls - and he lives IN the same senior complex where the polling site was set up.

One of the ladies behind the table asked if he had entered a change of address form recently, when he said he hadn't she tried to assure him that it had happened earlier to another woman too.

It was a bit of an awkward moment.

The couple in line before me were African-American and there was a young college-aged white couple nearby too; all their names were in the voter rolls and they were able to cast their votes under the watchful eye of the cagey old WWII vet.

But the uncomfortable reality of the nation-wide campaign of voter suppression by the GOP kind of hung in the air; we all silencdtly wondered if we were witnessing that.

The woman behind the desk was very nice and told him he would need to fill out a provisional ballot at another table. She asked him if he needed some help and he said he did; so she got up and guided him over to a table a few feet away and sat down to help him fill out his provisional ballot.

NJ Senator Corey Booker won by a wide margin, but I'm still thinking about the older man with the accent who lived at the same address of the polling site but wasn't listed in the voter rolls. Will his provisional ballot be counted?

I wonder how many times that happened across the nation today.

It's 11:42pm and it appears Republicans will take control of the US Senate.

Even though the idea of the 'Party of No' controlling of both houses of Congress is personally repugnant to me, I'm trying to remember that today millions of Americans headed to the polls to celebrate the privilege of being able to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

At least those citizens whose voting rights haven't been suppressed by flagrantly illegal "Voter ID" laws enacted by Republican state legislatures.

The Supreme Court having gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act last summer - enabling states like North Carolina, Texas and Georgia to intentionally make the voting process less accessible to racial minorities, students and elderly citizens - is certain to impact various races around the country, but there's not enough data to show to what extent.

The absurdity of North Carolina's arcane "Voter ID" laws are glaring. Laws that shorten the time to cast a vote by a week? Or won't accept valid student ID's from college students so they can vote? Or even local municipal government employees ID's as valid voter ID at the polls?

What's happened is the Roberts Court has acquiesced to the far right's open philandering of people's right to vote and embraced a "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" approach to judicial oversight of the nation's voting laws.

Even as the GOP begin their election night celebrations, voter rights groups are challenging the Interstate Crosscheck Program, a voter ID fraud database (created by Republicans) that may purge the names of some 27 million people from the voter rolls.

The IC program compiles names suspected of voter fraud based simply on first, last and middle names; as an Al-Jazeera investigation reports, the system ends up capturing the names of mostly black, Latino and Asian-Americans voters who often share common last names.

So what happens to someone in say Georgia, whose name gets placed on the Republican's voter purge list illegally? What happens to their vote?

Just as Republicans won a decisive majority in the House of Representatives back in the 2010 mid-term elections even though Democratic candidates won more numerical votes, the GOP may win the Senate.

But it's not a victory for the spirit of Democracy; it's a victory for Jim Crow.

Mittens Checks In As GOP Tries to Deflect Media Attention From Despicable Voter Suppression Tactics

Failed 2012 Presidential candidate Mitt Romney: back on the political trail

Our old friend Mittens (Romney) was back in the news again today, bringing his folksy, substance-free brand of conservatism to the great state of New York to fire off a couple of political cheap shots at incumbent Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The Republican gubernatorial opponent, West Chester County Executive Rob Astorino, isn't likely to make a dent in Cuomo's commanding double-digit lead, or overcome hizzoner's deep-pocketed backers, name recognition or mastery of Albany politics. Republicans know that.

They certainly couldn't have forgotten that Romney got his political clock cleaned during the November 6, 2012 presidential elections when President Obama took the state of New York by an overwhelming margin of 63.35% to Romney's 35.17% on the way to a decisive 2nd term victory.

So it's not like Mittens is some kind of political rock star in New York; aside from some sparsely populated upstate rural areas, the voting populace soundly rejected he and former vice-presidential candidate Congressman Paul Ryan's economic policies in 2012.

The real reason the GOP asked Mitt to pen an open letter to New York voters criticizing Cuomo as a "typical corrupt New York politician" was more likely just a calculated PR ruse designed to help deflect the pummeling the Republican brand took in the media last week.

And it wasn't just the media taking Kansas Governor Sam Brownback to task for the economic disaster resulting from his bizarre Tea Party-inspired "experiment" to use failed Reagan-era supply-side economic theories to jump start the Kansas economy.

Even Republicans have publicly criticized Brownback's combination of massive tax cuts (for guess who?) and huge cuts in state spending on things like education and job training programs for the current sad state of the Kansas economy. More than 100 Kansas Republicans fed up with the Tea Party's grip on power publicly backed Brownback's Democratic opponent for governor, statehouse leader Paul Davis.

As the members of the editorial board of the Washington Post observed back in late September:

"Mr. Brownback’s Kansas trial is rapidly becoming a cautionary tale for conservative governors elsewhere who have blithely peddled the theology of tax cuts as a painless panacea for sluggish growth. Most key indicators suggest that job creation and economic growth in Kansas are lagging those of its neighbors."
  
Romney's political cheap shots at Cuomo served the GOP's purposes by making media headlines and also temporarily serving to put a more moderate face on the Republican party. Plus it's valuable low-cost media attention; media focus that won't be turned on the Republican right wing's ongoing effort to sway the outcome of the upcoming November elections by actively violating the right to vote for many Americans.

Did you hear about 79 year-old Joy Dunn of Arkansas?

Check out the article on ThinkProgress.org. She's an African-American resident of Little Rock, AK who can recall the time when black citizens like herself had to pay a $2 poll tax in order to vote; a sum which could represent a week's wages for rural blacks in the south during the time of Jim Crow.

Ole' Jim is apparently alive and well in Arkansas as Ms. Dunn's recent vote in a March special election in Arkansas was returned to her in the mail along with a note saying it was not counted because she had not provided copies of her ID.

She's never had to provide copies of her ID to vote in the decades she's been voting - and of course, no state or local municipal agency ever contacted her directly, or informed her to notify her that she had to; even though she does have valid state ID's.

Ms. Dunn manged to have a friend take her ID's to the library to photocopy them so she can vote in the November elections; but how many elderly residents in rural areas found their votes returned and don't have someone to help them figure out how to comply with state ID laws in order to vote? How many just gave up?

Similar doings are still going on down in North Carolina. The weekly news roundup on the Friday October 10th edition of NPR's Diane Rhehm Show featured some interesting discussion on the status of voter suppression in America. A caller from NC called in to say that he'd worked as a voting monitor at a polling site in a NC community with a liberal arts college and a fairly large black population.

He claimed that many people had received information in the mail that intentionally gave them the wrong polling location for their address or district. When many of those who'd received the bogus info showed up at what they thought was their correct polling site, they were not permitted to cast a vote.

The GOP's ongoing efforts to undermine the fundamental right to vote as a campaign tool is a disturbing travesty that fundamentally violates the law and drags the nation backwards into a much darker era.

Thanks to the destructive influence of the Tea Party extremists who now control the Republican party at the behest of right-wing billionaire backers like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson (who seek to "reverse social engineer" the nation back into their own warped perception of a Democracy), the GOP is unapologetically ethically bankrupt at this point - lacking both scruples and a sense of decency and fair play.

The old joke about a politicians taking candy from babies has been replaced by a brutal reality where the GOP (literally) steals votes from the elderly, the poor and working class and students seeking to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.

Mitt Romney's cheap shots won't change that.

The Sound & The Fury: GA Sec of State Brian Kemp Warns About "Registering All These Minority Voters"

Georgia Sec. of State Brian Kemp 

In terms of the GOP's rather feeble minority outreach efforts, March of 2013 seems like the distant past - or possibly another dimension.

That's when a far more conciliatory and humbled Republican National Committee made national headlines with the release of a frank and openly self-analytical examination of their 2012 election losses acknowledging the urgent need of the GOP to do more to reach out to women, minorities and the LGBT community.

Here's a quote from that report:
“the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.”

Recent comments by Georgia Secretary of State of Georgia Brian Kemp would suggest that the "commitment" to a more progressive GOP was little more than superficial self-serving hot air.

According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, at a GOP breakfast earlier this summer Kemp told an audience:

“In closing I just wanted to tell you, real quick, after we get through this runoff, you know the Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.”

By "all these minority voters" I assume he meant the citizens of Georgia exercising their Constitutional right to participate in the Democratic process? 

In its quest to recapture the Senate, maintain a majority in the House, keep "super majorities" in state legislatures around the nation and take another crack at the White House, the GOP is busy trying to harvest the fruits of the Southern Strategy by dividing voters along racial lines and making it more difficult for students, the poor, the working class, the elderly and minorities to vote - and not just in Georgia.

Just last Thursday federal judge Peter Economus blocked efforts by Republicans in Ohio to eliminate early voting hours and ordered the state to add more voting dates to the calendar in the interest of ensuring equal access to the electoral process in November by minorities, the elderly and the poor. Republican secretary of state Jon Husted and Republican Governor John Kasich were both active supporters of measures intended to suppress votes.

While those kinds of measures may stand in total contrast to the Democratic principles of freedom the Republicans like to claim they stand for, it's par for the course with today's GOP.

A Washington Post article reports that a staggering 95% of Republican House districts are majority white - a direct result of years of Republicans spending their time in Washington gerrymandering House districts into all manner of bizarre shapes to create Republican majority districts where they don't actually exist.

Take a moment to look at the shapes of some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country from this Wonkblog article in the Washington Post by Christopher Ingraham. These are the kinds of bush-league tactics a Republican Party that can't win on the issues employs to win elections. 

Speaking of issues, as the fall elections approach, the default Republican strategy for stimulating the economy, cutting taxes for the wealthiest citizens by stripping revenue from critical state programs (like cutting pay for teachers and firefighters or stripping funding for schools) has proved to be as big a failure as it was when it was called the "trickle down" theory under Ronald Reagan.

Bond rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poors both recently downgraded the state of New Jersey's bond rating because of a flat economy and Governor Chris Christie's failure to shore up the states massive pension obligations in part because if his ill-advised and highly criticized decision to grant generous tax breaks to (drum roll please...) the states wealthiest individuals.

By the way, that's the record eighth time the state of NJ's bond rating has been downgraded under Christie's leadership and the state still lags almost last among the fifty states in new job creation - no wonder Hizzoner has spent much of the summer traipsing around the country trying to sew the seeds for a 2016 run at the White House.

It's the same story in Kansas where Republican Governor Sam Brownback famously trumpeted the explosion in job growth a generous tax cut for the wealthiest Kansas citizens would create. So he slashed state spending and what happened?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics as of August 18th, Kansas created a grand total of 6,900 jobs - a gain of . 5 %. Point 5 percent. Right across the state line in Missouri where tax cuts were NOT used to strip the state of revenue during a fragile economic recovery, job growth has been 1.2% for the same period.

Such is the state of the Republican Party party as we approach critical fall elections.

As Shakespeare said, "Sound and fury signifying nothing."

Limbaugh Claims Poll Data is a Voter Suppression Tactic

"The mainstream media's efforts to suppress your vote is now at full speed. It's getting tiresome to me, but it is taking place now at full speed."

That's talk-show host and touchy professional grouch Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday trying to explain away Romney's trailing in the polls even though it's actually Republican state legislatures behind the REAL voter suppression efforts.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 180 separate bills aimed at restricting the right to vote have been introduced by legislatures in 41 different states since the start of 2011. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a shadowy quasi-public/private think tank that I blogged about back in March of last year, actually drafts the language of right-wing legislation for GOP politicians has been very busy indeed; the implications for the basic tenets of Democracy are chilling.  

In one of the most perplexing political jabs of the campaign season, Limbaugh claims that two CBS/New York Times and Washington Post polls that show President Obama with significant leads in critical swing states are "..irresponsible. They are designed to do exactly what I have warned you to be vigilant about, and that is to depress you and suppress your vote. These two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over." The transcripts are on Limbaugh's own Website.

Let's review shall we? The same guy who advocates on behalf the Koch brother's Tea Party-backed True the Vote -the organization behind morally reprehensible voter-suppression tactics - is claiming that poll data taken by three of the most trustworthy news sources in the world are themselves, tactics to suppress the Republican vote. How crazy is that? Kevin Cirilli wrote an interesting piece on Limbaugh's kooky assertions on Politco.com.
 
If Rush Limbaugh were just another schmuck with a radio show, the baseless absurdity of his loony right-wing political theories would likely be dismissed as the rantings of just another small-minded man channeling his anger into a mic. But he's not.

Limbaugh is the anointed mouthpiece of all things Republican, so his latest effort to help salvage poor Flipper's imploding presidential campaign only served to further cement the perception of the GOP as hopelessly stuck in a detached ideological reality the majority of the country can't identify with let alone stomach.

If you think about it, it's kind of like the build-up to the invasion of Iraq under W back in 2002.

When Dick Cheney didn't like the intelligence he got from the CIA and MI-6 saying Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 911 attacks; he simply instructed his staffers (none of whom were actually intelligence experts) to use inconclusive raw data to create their own intelligence conclusions about WMD's for W to use during his State of the Union address; Yellow Cake anyone?

But you have to admit Limbaugh's got moxie. Poll data isn't saying what you want? Smear it! It's like when Paul Ryan got all worked up when multiple fact-checking organizations called him out for blatant factual errors in his speech at the RNC. Rather than make loose accusations about poll data, perhaps Limbaugh should blame the current culture of the GOP which never seems to let facts stand in the way of the rigid convictions of it's own ideology.

Do you know who Catherine Engelbrecht is? The New York Times sure does. If you believe all American citizens legally registered to vote in this nation have the right to do so, you should too.

Countdown in Ohio: Will Jon Husted Really Fire Two Board of Elections Members for Standing Up for Voter's Rights?

Tonight millions of people across the nation are holding their breath as Hurricane Issac chugs towards New Orleans; threatening landfall on the Gulf coast on the eve of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

But a potential storm is brewing in Ohio too.

Embattled Secretary of State Jon Husted (who just canceled a featured-speaker appearance at the True the Vote Ohio summit in the wake of increased media scrutiny over his voter suppression tactics) will have to decide whether to fire Democratic Montgomery County Board of Elections members Dennis Lieberman and Thomas Ritchie (pictured left).

Both men made an appearance on tonight's edition of Politics Nation with Al Sharpton and I was impressed by Lieberman's statement that, "I can find another job but I only have one conscience." in reference to the very real possibility that he will loose his job because of Republican efforts to suppress voter participation across the nation.

Lieberman and Ritchie (who also made an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show) were suspended last week for defying Husted's order that early voting and weekend voting hours be curtailed; despite the fact that 197,000 Ohio voters cast their votes early or during evening and weekend hours during the 2008 election.

Between the flood of money from billionaires and Super Pacs, the constant stream of negative TV ads distorting President Obama's record and the voter suppression efforts, clearly there's a method to the Republican madness and it may just be the numbers. Earlier this evening Rachel Maddow and her guest, former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, discussed the startling fact that this election will likely be the last presidential election where a white demographic will have enough voters to be able generate a sufficient majority to elect a president.

By 2016 with the rapidly-expanding Hispanic and Asian populations changing the fabric of the nation, the traditional Republican demographic (as it now stands) just won't have the numbers to elect a president. That's a huge shift for this nation and it scares a lot of people on the Republican side.

Enough for them to start laying the foundation to be able to suppress voters in heavily-Democratic districts. If Jon Husted fires Dennis Lieberman and Thomas Ritchie tomorrow for simply supporting expanded hours for Ohio citizens to take part in the electoral process, a basic foundation of the United States reinforced by the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the GOP may very well unleash a storm that could end up doing more damage to their own brand than simply loosing an election. 

GOP Efforts to Strip Voter Rights: Jim Crow Rides Again

Say hello to one of the faces of voter suppression in 2012. He's not some thug you'll find standing around the ballot box with a club trying to intimidate people attempting to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.

Nor is he some mafia hood like the kind gangster Al Capone sent to Cicero, Illinois in 1924  to physically beat voters into casting ballots for his hand-picked corrupt Republican candidate Joseph Z. Klenha.

The man pictured here is Jon Husted, the Secretary of State of Ohio and his name is popping up in the mainstream media after he led efforts to cut back the available hours for Ohio citizens to vote during the upcoming elections; including totally eliminating early voting and night and weekend voting hours.

Just so we're clear here, during the 2008 Presidential elections many voters in Ohio complained about facing waits as long as six hours to cast their ballots; the same year 48% of voters in Franklin County cast their votes early.

It's not like it's a big secret about why Republicans nationwide are going out of their way to make it more difficult to vote. The Franklin County Republican chairman Doug Preisse freely admitted the rule changes would restrict black voter turnout in an e-mail to the Columbus Dispatch. According to Priesse, a former primary adviser to Newt Gingrich, "...we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban voter-turnout machine."

But Republicans should contort it to keep people from participating in the Democratic process? What has happened to the GOP? And when did they decide to turn America into a Banana Republic?

Have you heard of the organization called 'True the Vote'? Last night Rachel Maddow featured a spot on this right wing group openly dedicated to intimidating voters at polling stations. True the Vote claims it's training millions of members to simply show up at polls (mostly in places where minorities vote) like they did in Houston, Texas.

Yup, same Texas that had four cases of voter fraud in the last two general elections. Make no mistake this isn't a "black or Hispanic-thing"; this an "American-thing". All Americans should be very concerned at this kind of hijacking of people's right to vote; not just because it's immoral, illegal and a mockery of American values, it's a blatant violation of the most basic premise of Democracy.

The same sort of mindset who embrace abstract patriotic rhetoric to send US troops over to foreign lands to kill people in the name of "Democracy" are actively trying to obstruct the Democratic process here in America. Think about that. If you don't, you're just going to make it easier for the GOP to obstruct the votes of whichever demographic that disagrees with them.

"The sides are being divided now. It’s very obvious. So if you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re suddenly anti-American. Its breeding fear of being on the wrong side. Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism."

SAM SHEPARD, The Village Voice, Nov. 12, 2004