Flash of Inspiration

I'm pretty sure that crocodiles have more moral compunction than republicans.

David,

According to the same article you linked to, the GOP has some strong ties to Michigan's largest foreclosure law firm. This is pretty seedy and stinks to high heaven. It's almost as if the Michigan GOP is just trying to kick people in the crotch after they've already been knocked to the ground. Perhaps our wonderful press corps could bring this up at some point?

Republicans trying to challenge voting from unoccupied addresses?

Outrageous!

Next they will try to disenfranchise voters from vacant lots and cemeteries. I’ve also heard a rumor they were trying to limit voting to U.S. citizens.

Quick question from someone who doesn't know much about the nitty-gritty of election law: do you have to have a home to vote? In other words: can a homeless person register? If you had a particular address at the time you registered, but, say, 10 days before the election, you either get kicked out of your home, or even just move, what's the protocol?

Roro: Every state has different election laws, so it's impossible to answer your question directly. But assume that, theoretically, there has to be a way for the homeless to register to vote. Whether or not one is practically available is another matter entirely.

Almost all states (I actually think all, but don't want to make that blanket statement) require some proof of residency, as registering to vote does depend upon in what precinct (or equivalent) you have the right to vote, and therefore which races you can vote, so actually unless an individual has an address they can use as their permanent address, no, a truly homeless person cannot register to vote.

As to the Michigan Republican Party's current move, there is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law. This so offends the spirit of the law, it makes me embarrassed to be a nominal Republican. Sometimes common sense and decency are more important than a slavish obedience to the rule of the law.

This is SO egregious, I cannot see how the heat will not force them to back off this ridiculous position.

jwest - you embarrass yourself as well with your reply. IMHO.

Thanks for the info, guys. Is it just me, or does it seem pretty messed up that someone without an address can't vote? Kind of like the 98-year-old nuns in Indiana who got turned away from the poles? There is a certain percentage of the population that is moving apartments or homes at any given time -- surely there's some system set up to take that into account, under which people being forclosed upon could fall? Is there some way to make those "people-who-are-moving" exceptions known to the people it will affect?

Dear lord I'm a bleeding heart...

so roro - how do you handle someone with no address? The Presidential race is a state by state vote, not just a popular vote. So, how for any given homeless person do you determine the state? Is it the state they are in the day of the election? Where they wee born? Their last known address? Etc.

The same problem becomes worse as you move down the list of races, getting into more and more localized races, where only those who live in that localized area have and should have the right to vote in those races.

For those who are moving, they have addresses, and there are systems to accommodate that (even the foreclosure issues we are talking about, in most cases).

But if we are talking about people with no address whatsoever, the true homeless, there is no answer for that.

Given fraudulent voting practices by groups such as ACORN, I don't doubt the wisdom of using more scrutiny of votes.

Austin,

I won’t be volunteering to man the fire hoses or hold the police dogs to prevent African Americans from voting, but I do draw the line at the blatant voter fraud perpetrated by the democrats in election after election.

If someone wants to vote, let it be legal.

From the linked article, "“I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

To that issue, if those people are still living in their homes, even if they have received a foreclosure notice, then they should be able to vote. If there's any question, then perhaps they should mail in an absentee ballot. That way they get to vote. If there is an issue and it is ruled illegal for them to vote then those specifc ballots that are illegal can be pulled.

After election day no one can vote, so if someone is illegally turned away from the polls (or intimidated and does not vote) they've lost their chance to vote in that election.

jchem:

"the GOP has some strong ties to Michigan's largest foreclosure law firm."

in fact, mcCain's campaign in michigan is being run out of one of their offices. wow.

jwest:

it doesn't bother me so much that you're obviously in deep for the republican party, no matter what they do or say. what does bother me is that you don't seem to have any balance at all.

sure, the DNC is a flawed organization (as is the RNC). but are you as completely untroubled as you seem by the latest blatantly obvious lies and unscrupulous maneuvers of the supposedly "honorable" mcCain camp? i actually thought he was a decent man (not perfect, but decent all the same) in the early 2000s, when he still had some claim to integrity.

i don't know what happened to that man. what i see now is someone cynical and desperate enough to do anything to be president. and i don't know whether i'm more sad or angry.

AustinRoth -- I don't pretend to know terribly much about this, but I guess I think of it this way: a person has to register to vote, and then they have to go vote. Unless the person is a Wabash Cannonball type transient, those two events will likely take place in close proximity to each other. Let's say a homeless person is approached by someone going around to register voters, as said homeless person sits in a park where he or she can often be found. The person doing the registering puts down something like "transient address -- [address of park]", including the zip of that area. Homeless person is then told where to go on the day of the election for that district. If that person is a true transient and happens to be in some other city that day, obviously he or she will be unable to vote. I don't actually see any problem with that. At the very least, I think that someone better suited to such a task could come up with a system that doesn't by default disenfranchise those down on their luck or who choose to live a very different lifestyle than most of us.

Onleyone,

As an atheist, pro-choice republican whose biggest issues are education and healthcare, I’m pretty much in the center.

Of course, by comparison to the majority of this group, I must seem like the fringe right.

There are some here who must think Keith Olberman is an unbiased centrist doing straight news reporting, so trying to place the rest of the world in perspective would be a real chore.

With authors citing Think Progress, Kos and Huffington Post as reliable sources, I can imagine what the worldview of these people must be. I can assure you, most of us on the right don’t have a KKK robe in the closet, we don’t hate old people or want to starve children and our greatest dream isn’t to kill the planet.

After what the country went through with Clinton, no democrat should mention the words “blatant lies and unscrupulous maneuvers” for many decades to come. Don’t you remember the press trying to convince everyone that lying is as natural as breathing?

Just a tip. Before you lock yourself into thinking something is untrue, make at least a cursory effort to find out the facts from the other side.

I’ll do the same.

jwest:

i get that. i understand about olbermann. i realize that clinton was a liar; i wasn't a big fan. i know that the media tends to focus on theatrics these days (these past decades) rather than truth.

having grown up amongst fundamentalist christians, i know that many republicans -- maybe even most? -- are decent people.

but: "before you lock yourself into thinking something is untrue"... i've done the research on mcCain. have i made some mistaken assumption about him? is there a hidden "truth" behind the flood of recent "untruths" that i've missed?

what do you say?

jwest - there are times you come across as fringe right to me, and I don't think anyone here thinks I am a Lefty. More accurately, you often come across, IMO, as I felt I was (but even more so) - just a reflexive, unthinking naysayer of the Left, and a blind cheerleader of the Right.

Perhaps you should do what I did, and go back and re-read your past few months of posts, and see if it doesn't make you, too, want to change the tone of your replies overall. Maybe it won't.

jwest, if it's any consolation I think you're more clown than anything -- or a rabble-rouser, if you prefer. You say things off the top of your head just to stir things up. At least I hope that's the case.

If you’re talking about the bridge to nowhere, the article I posted sums up the facts.

All of this back and forth about blatant lies seems to be an act of desperation by those who see an overwhelming defeat for Obama in a few weeks.

The overriding fact is that perception is reality in politics. Palin has been accepted by the general public, they have the impression that she wouldn’t lie and they will believe her version of the events concerning the bridge.

I know you don’t agree, but think about this in historic terms of elections. Democrats seem to always shoot themselves in the foot when victory was within their grasp. In this election, Obama is going for multiple wounds.

First, the wrong person won the primary. Hillary had been through the fire, she had baggage but nothing she hadn’t addressed before.

Obama didn’t get vetted by your voters. The press killed the worst of his background and turned a deaf ear to how things would be perceived in a general election. If you think he’s in rough shape now, just wait a few weeks.

Second, democrat strategists are the absolute worst at picking themes and areas to attack. Palin’s introduction, if handled correctly, would not have solidified the majority of independents into the republican column. Every attack, (and I know you don’t want to hear this) looses votes for your side. Cut your loses on this and move on to base issues.

Third, lock Joe Biden in a closet until after the election. He is of no use on the campaign trail and he has the potential to make a cosmic-level mistake.

Naturally, as a Karl Rove trained conservative, I might be trying to trick you into making a mistake. You’ve just got to trust me. (heh)

i also hope that the way Ricorun frames it is the case. that would make more sense to me.

i don't think in the short time i've been posting here at ModVox that i've posted anything explicitly pro-obama. because i think everyone in this race should be examined thoroughly, word and deed. i do think that obama's words and actions (and biden's) deserve scrutiny. but so do mcCain's and palin's. and as far as political careers go, mcCain has done a complete 180 on many of his "maverick-y" issues, and palin is, still, largely unexamined by the major media outlets.

sadly enough -- and i guess this is the something i have to re-learn at each new election -- the media are far more concerned with style than substance, with minor exceptions here and there.

yes, i do believe the wrong person won the democratic primaries.

and i'd noticed that biden has been "in the closet" too. still no medical records for him, yet, either....

what disturbs me most about mcCain is that he now supports basically the same kinds of "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on him in 'Nam. i guess i'd thought better of him.

Austin,

Do you honestly think that a response to a Shaun Mullen rant should be measured?

With the shear volume of mindlessly stereotyped articles and comments, it’s hard to make each post the ideal of centrist republican reasonableness.

I do have a problem getting irony and humor across in my comments without using tags, so I’ll work on that.

If, in the future, you read that I want to carpet bomb San Francisco, rest assured I’m just looking for dramatic effect.

Now, if you and the left wing posse are done piling on poor old jwest, how about calling out some of the incredibly stupid things some of the authors put out there?


Ricorun,

A clown? I’m crushed.

I know you’ve had difficulty keeping up at times, and for that I apologize. Let’s start fresh and I promise I’ll explain things in a more understandable way.

You’re still one of my favorite little liberals.

jwest:

"left wing posse"? didn't i mention that i might vote for bob barr? lol. because if we think you're intemperate, we MUST be librul!

"I do have a problem getting irony and humor across in my comments without using tags, so I'll work on that."

what, are you starting right after this? :|)

Let's talk about voter fraud, then. You don't like Kos or Olbermann? Fine, that's fair. I'm assuming your not the sort who also appends the same blanket mistrust to academic scholarship. A great article dealing with the current state of empirical evidence on voter fraud (it focuses on the efficacy of Voter ID laws, but the lit review is quite wide ranging) is Spencer Overton, Voter Identification, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 631 (2007).

Too long? Okay, I can just give you my posts on the subject (everyone knows I have a gift for brevity): here, here, here, and here.

Bottom line: All the empirical evidence suggests that voter fraud is not a significant problem. Moreover, the proposals designed to fix it (such as ID laws) end up disenfranchising more legitimate voters than they deter fraudulent ones, by a significant margin.

jwest: If you’re talking about the bridge to nowhere, the article I posted sums up the facts.

Well, that wasn't the only thing. But now that you brought it up, it was a summary of only those facts that were convenient to the author's point of view. It was an editorial, not a piece of reporting. And for the record, I consider Shaun's posts as editorials from a particular POV as well.

As for myself, I think it's a mistake to get too deep into her personal life. And I think it's a mistake to paint her has summarily unqualified. However, it is a fact that we have very little to go on in terms of her views on national issues. That's essentially a complete blank. And that alone should be unsettling. And for the life of me I can't imagine how anyone can be excited about the possibility of electing a big question mark as VP -- and particularly one that plays so fast and loose with the truth. As far as what we know about her managerial style, about which we have some information, it seems to be very troublesome. It appears that she likes to surround herself with cronies whose loyalty paramount, perhaps more than their competency.

A clown? I’m crushed.

You'll get over it.

Schraubd,

Luckily, we have a Supreme Court that determined it wasn’t unreasonable to ask voters to show they are actually eligible to vote.

I’m just here trying to protect the rights of a small minority who seems to get screwed at every turn. We are the ones disenfranchised by voter fraud and liberal policies.

I speak of the 5% of legal American citizens who pay 80% of the income taxes.

Each and every time an illegal alien or convicted felon votes, or a determined democrat casts votes for his dead uncle, the civil rights of my minority are violated. Just as you would recoil at someone blocking the door at polls for other groups, the result is the same for us if fraudulent votes are allowed.

Stuffing the ballot box has been an open secret and big joke for democrats throughout the years. It’s their way of getting even for all the supposed inequities of the world. The typical rejoinder is a claim that the republicans cheat too, only in more mysterious and sophisticated ways. How else could George Bush win twice?

This is a lonely fight, but I believe in protecting minorities.

jwest:

so this is why you pestered jazz? because he's such a Lefty?

Jazz has a reading comprehension problem.

I tried to make a simple point to him that voting third party was the equivalent of voting “present”.

No matter how many times I went over it or how many ways I tried to explain it, he kept coming back with “his right to vote how he wanted”.

Of course he has the right to vote any way he likes. The point was that either Obama or McCain will run this country after November and the people who choose between these two decidedly imperfect candidates are the ones living up to their responsibilities as citizens. A third party vote is saying “No one matches my preferences perfectly, so I’m going to throw away my vote on some fringe Bozo and not be blamed when something goes wrong”.

Simple point. Impossible to get through some skulls.

jwest - I didn't say anything about Shaun. He is a special case.

He is, as I said in an earlier thread, like nothing more than a deranged street-person shouting at passerby's at the top of his lungs in incoherent, paranoid ramblings. Most of the time. (I've got to keep working on that 'more measured response' thingy)

Remember, too, I am his personal troll. Even you have not achieved that distinction.

Your point is that there is no point in tilting against windmills? Sorry, I love Don Quixote, and all he stood for.

I will never accept limited choices, especially if I don't like either one. How does the groundswell for change start without those willing to reject to status quo?

kwest: This is a lonely fight, but I believe in protecting minorities.

A regular Emmet Kelley you are.

jwest:

wow, you really are full of it.

A third party vote is saying "No one matches my preferences perfectly, so I'm going to throw away my vote on some fringe Bozo and not be blamed when something goes wrong".

i'm sure he understood your point. (note, too, this was not the only issue you pestered him on, just the latest.) it's that just he (and i, and likely many others) obviously don't think it's the mistake that you think it is, and take your obvious derision a little personally.

or can you not get it through your skull that taking a longer view (by pushing for a broader set of political perspectives beyond our present bipolar craziness) is a perfectly legitimate stance, and that those who take this stance are "living up to their responsibilities as citizens" at least as much as you (think) you are?

either that, or maybe we're just all morons, dazzled by your exquisite intellect.

i pick the former.

Onleyone,

Well, you had a fifty-fifty chance of getting something right, but you blew it.

Sure, let’s be like Italy. We can have 50 different factions trading favors to put a ruling coalition together.

Actually though, my point went a bit beyond just the obvious notion that a third party could signal a group of disaffected voters. I was trying to bring the nexus of the decisions a president faces with the decisions we make as voters.

Presidents aren’t often faced with easy choices. Most times, he needs to pick between two imperfect options. He doesn’t have the luxury of voting present (which I was using as a bonus dig against Obama) to put off making a hard decision.

Just as a president must face these challenges, in a close election year each one of us must step up to the plate and cast a vote that matters. If we send that vote into the black hole of third parties, it is the same as sitting on the sidelines.

Save your fringe third party vote for an election that will be a landslide – like Palin ’12.

(If you just would have picked the latter, you would have at least one good decision to brag about.)

Caution: This comment may contain sarcasim, irony, humor or insensitivity.
Read at your own risk.

jwest:

haha, Palin '12, now i know you're joking! maybe she'll have learned something about foreign policy by then.

i'm not looking for a third party (your point about italy is well taken, and didn't the weimar republic have the same fatal flaw?), just for a broader platform within our current major parties.

and i'm not sure how voting third-party in a non-swing state hurts either candidate. not a lot of us fringe-y types out here, anyway.

and thanks for the word of caution, but but i think i caught the snark this time. ;)

Onleyone,

I’ll concede the point on states that are lopsided one way or the other (just as I did with Jazz).

My point was that if you stand a chance of making a difference, it’s no time to bunt.

jwest:

"I'll concede the point on states that are lopsided one way or the other"

concession accepted -- i knew that under all the vitriol you were just a big teddy bear!

Luckily, we have a Supreme Court which allows the burdening of fundamental rights on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. As I wrote when that Sup. Ct. case came down, Indiana had as much cause to pass a voter ID law on the theory that it would fraud as Maryland had cause to pass a law barring Republicans from voting on the theory that Republicans are more likely to secretly be fire-breathing dragons. True, there has yet to be a documented case of a Maryland GOPer being a dragon (the closest we've had is Ellen Sauerbrey). But then, neither has there ever been a single prosecuted case of voter fraud in the entire history of Indiana. They are literally equivalent. (The one exception for Indiana is absentee ballot fraud -- which, coinicidentally, is a type of voting that leans conservative and, also coincidentally, is exempted from the bill.)

As Prof. Overton extensively documents in his article, the empirical evidence demanding a response to voter fraud just isn't there. It's a made up problem with a solution that is 1000x worse than the putative disease.