Agreed, I don’t recall electing anyone to decide what a representative democracy is.
This bears repeating, he is a proponent of the state using its power to oppress people based on their ethnicity and political ideology, that is the literal definition of fascism.
Why do people even engage Bricker about voter suppression? He’s a fan of it because it helps the red team. As long as there’s a fig leaf of technical adherence to the letter of the law it does not matter that the clear intent is to disenfranchise people who are likely to vote Democratic. So he’s fine with taking people off the rolls in Democratic areas who may have skipped a couple elections and send them a postcard designed to look like junk mail to “warn” them that they’re about to get removed. That’s his schtick and he isn’t going to change.
I don’t get the sense that Bricker’s a fan of voter suppression; he just argues that in this case, it’s not unconstitutional and that the Court has spoken. He’s a lawyer, a natural contrarian. I know nothing about Bricker but my image of him is that he’s a fairly wealthy Reagan/Bush republican. Not a member of Donald Trump’s party and probably not even a Tea Party republican, but like (maybe) Don McGahn, Condi Rice, and the Bush family, he wants to believe there’s still just enough left of what used to be his Republican party that he can still keep his membership card without guilt. I think he’s wrong as hell, but I don’t think he’s a bad seed.
In Dungeons & Dragons terms, Bricker is Lawful Evil.
Because he is held up as this reasonable conservative around here, but if you barely scratch the surface of his arguments it’s clear he holds some pretty repugnant views. It’s important to not let him drop his pompous utterings without calling them out for what they are.
Bricked is a HUGE fan of voter suppression, as long as it’s the right voters getting suppressed.
The only good thing I can say about Bricker on this issues is that he isn’t being a racist; it just so happens that suppressing black votes suits his needs.
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Yup.
Voting should be easier not harder. There is no real evidence of fraud. Yet GOPers always believe it because they have their own news sources that say as much.
Its frustrating. Its a carefully orchestrated plan to exploit racial animosity to degrade democracy and at the same time secure control of the rich at the top.
I honestly have come to the conclusion that the US was doomed from the start. The “deal with the devil” they made was giving small states too much power and protecting slavery. Those were both poison pills that I think future historians will see as major elements of our demise.
What will happen? Well the rich will really get a tight grip. Racial animosity will be enflamed and effectively legalized. You will see it the first time a court approves segregation again (it won’t be “court approves segregation,” it will be “supreme court sides with defendent in Something vs Something” that effectively legitimizes it again). It will probably involve the libertarian “right to property,” i.e. if I don’t want to rent to black people I don’t have to so ergo, segregation is legal.
Then it will be stoking up racial fears as much as possible. GOP will turn into “You don’t want the darkies back in your towns do you??”
All the while, two Americas will diverge again. Whites will have well funded public education, blacks poorly funded. Drug laws will be tightened (but never crack down on opiates because that will affect white people) so as to punish blacks more.
No one will be paying attention to the collapsing infrastructure or the ballooning debt and misery of the youth. Sometimes these things lead to revolution. But I think in this case, you will end up with a permanent under class that believes they are poor because its their fault, and will internalize it by escapism (suicide, video games, drugs).
This is some sunken place trash and I genuinely feel sorry for you. If you were learned in the history of this country, you would know that this cry of voter fraud is nothing but white folks attempt to stifle the vote of people of color. It’s so sad to see a person of color so blind to the systemic injustices that white people inflict every, single day. This very thread is about a white Secretary of State purging the voter rolls of thousands of people, the majority of them people of color; the white Secretary of State shrugs and points the finger at the black canvassers who he accuses of not spelling the names correctly. What the dog-whistling devil doesn’t tell you is that white folks constructed a system that requires a perfect match, meaning that that the lack a hyphen (Nelson-Cox v. Nelson Cox) or an apostrophe (Ja’nelle v. Janelle) in the voter registration can jeopardize people’s ability to vote And, if you were learned in history, you’d understand that this isn’t the first time white folks have engaged in these tricks to prevent people of color from voting under the cloak of “preventing distrust in the voting system”.
I don’t blame you, I feel sorry for you, and your beliefs are not entirely your fault. I think that these beliefs are part and parcel of being inculcated in waters in white supremacy. If you did the pre-lawyer training, you likely did minimal coursework in the sciences or allied health. This means you exchanged coursework that encourages critical thinking for coursework that allows the pre-lawyer to play with Vulcan logic puzzles and robotically memorize logical fallacies.
Kuchiyose No Jutsu
Help this brother, please.
Thanks, Wikipedia.
Indeed, if you’re a lawyer, you spent a considerable amount of time learning about the rulebook of white supremacy. This rulebook is the laws that white men wrote themselves, passed into law themselves, and adjudicated themselves. This bears repeating. The law - or rulebook of white supremacy - is a collection of rules made by and for the benefit of white folks. The rulebook doesn’t care how the how that law was enacted, or the ramifications of that law, or impact the law will have on people, the only thing that matters is if it’s legal. The masters of whiteness have even codified one the pillars of white supremacy - their emphasis on intention over impact - as mens rea (though, due to the law school brainwashing, you know more about this topic than me). Finally, this rulebook peddles the fantasy that man can be impartial, that fairness exist in the legal system, that man is capable of objectivity, that the law is unbiased and just, that every person is equitable under the law, that justice is blind, and it’s the individual - not the social structures that bind them - is the primary driver of criminal and unlawful behavior.
Concern about voter fraud, meanwhile, is quite common, and creates even more distrust in the outcome.
That’s because the Gritpost article misstates what the original articles, that they are citing, say.
This is actually incorrect. What is causing the distrust in voting is the Right wing noise machine, making giant unsubstantiated claims about the threat of voter impersonation so as to have a cover to advance their voter suppression agenda. In years past voter fraud wasn’t a major concern, and hasn’t been no sudden surge of voter fraud or voter fraud event that would trigger it into being a concern. It was only when Republicans started realizing that they could weaponize it to take out inconvenient voters that it started being a thing.
If the goal was simple to assuage voter concern there is the far simpler and more effective method of doing this, that involves no voter suppression. Simply have the right shut up and quit lying about a problem that doesn’t exist in any significant form. But deep down we both know that that isn’t really what this is about.
No, I’d say the Florida 2000 presidential election, where less than 600 votes were sufficient to tip the winner of the state, and thus the entire election, were enough to make people think voter fraud was a major concern. No serious analysis would believe there were a million fraudulent votes in Florida, but 535 was plausible.
You realize that without those original compromises there might never have been a US.
Voter fraud is the modern equivalent of the Reichstag fire. Just a nice little excuse for tyranny that the brain dead swallow hook, line, and sinker.
Thanks for the information regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling on whether these shenanigans are legit. Although I was interested to see from BPC’s post that it was a 5-4 split, suggesting there was partisan disagreement. So, I’m still suspicious of what led to the ruling. I realize I’m kinda’ pulling a Shodan (“I wonder what really happened”), but if even the Supreme Court ruling showed partisanship, I hope you can see that [*while perfectly legal] it doesn’t inspire much confidence in election-related activities that already have the appearance of strong political bias.
Well, maybe your feelings aren’t the subject of this debate, but I think Eonwe’s feelings are.
(S)he seems clearly pissed off. (Hence, the Pit.)
You seemed pissed off (disgruntled? nonplussed? irked?) in your first post deriding the OP.
Seems to me a lot of Georgians have good cause to be pissed off.
So, let’s not be afraid to open up and share our feelings about this issue.
OK. I imagine it’s not an issue affecting you directly, so that might factor into your dispassionate take on the matter.
I agree that the integrity of the voting process should be ensured through some reasonable measures of oversight.
But let’s keep it real. The issue being challenged is the purging of a very significant (and impactful) number of otherwise eligible voters; by means of a verification process that has been called into question precisely because it removed people who had not moved out of the district they were registered to vote in. In other words, it’s a flawed [*while perfectly legal] system of verification.
OK. Kinda’ off topic, but I get what you’re trying to do.
You have strong moral principles and opinions, but you don’t allow them to cloud your steadfast commitment to upholding proper legal processes.
(Hey, I also think abortion is “wrong”, while recognizing the importance of its being legal, and available.)
But if you believe in the general principle that people should revere the law, even when it runs counter to their personal moral beliefs, then I hope you would also acknowledge that people may at least pursue legal recourse or legal channels if they feel their rights are somehow being violated (even if you don’t think their case has a leg to stand on).
And if, broadly speaking, you believe that laws can and should be changed under certain circumstances, then you shouldn’t have a problem with people voicing their opinion that the laws should be amended to prevent impropriety in election-related activities.
OK, but let’s keep in mind that they weren’t removed for failure to vote, because that wouldn’t be legal, right?
(Skimmed, not read. My underlining.)
So, they were removed because they were presumed to have moved, after a “reasonable” effort to verify that they had moved, by means of a single postcard, even though many of them had not actually moved.
I agree that if you have a system that is easily and greatly influenced by voter fraud, that would undermine confidence in the system, and the legitimacy of the outcome of elections.
I also believe that if the people in charge of the system are removing large numbers of legal, registered citizens from the voting process then it undermines confidence in the overseers of the system and creates suspicion of their intent.
Reasonable people might disagree, but I don’t know why the heck they would.
M’kay. I think we can both believe in the importance of democracy while having divergent opinions on this point.
I think a government truly committed to serving the people should encourage and facilitate maximum participation in the democratic process to ensure that the interests of the people are properly represented.
You, perhaps, feel that the government has no such moral obligation and that the onus is instead on the individual to pursue his or her own right to participate in the democratic process.
Jolly good.
I think it’s crazy that you’re all arguing whether a Republican secretary of state should be allowed to purge state voter roles while ignoring that there’s something seriously wrong with the very concept of partisan control of voter rolls. Even more so when the person in control is the one running for office.
A proper democracy should have an independent, nonpartisan organization that organizes and runs all elections.
Sure. And the courts have spoken. Does that anything to you?
I’m perfectly happy with the system as it stands, yes. I don’t agree it’s subversion of the democratic process: even a person removed may cast a provisional ballot. All they have to do, even if returning the card was too damn difficult, is show up, vote provisionally, and then (finally, overdue though it is) confirm their registered residence. That’s just not the level of difficulty that I (or the rest of society) believes is too difficult to manage. That’s democracy at work, in fact.