coolcoolcool
Why?
Agree.
I don’t think that the steps taken in this case were reasonable, however.
But, it is constitutional and legal.
Well, it is a lot easier than arguing against the position that an action that lead to the purging of 10% of registered voters from the Georgia rolls, of which 70% were black, was not some kind of voter purge.
Shodan, do you believe that throwing out a piece of mail that you thought was junk is adequate justification for taking away fundamental rights? Or is it just adequate justification for taking away your right to vote, but not your right to freely assemble or your right to own a gun?
Would you have a problem with this kind of scheme, but applied to gun control? The government sending you a letter, and if you missed that letter or failed to respond to it or your copy got lost in the mail, your gun license was rescinded and you had to either re-register quickly (for most, the deadline would come before they even realized anything was wrong) or the cops would come and take your guns? Would it make it better if they could come up with some justification for doing so?
Would it make any difference if this disproportionately affected older white men, and around 10% of the state’s population ended up losing their guns over it?
Because lemme tell ya, I think we should remove the second amendment from the constitution, and I would have a problem with that! Because it’s such a blatantly obvious end-run around the rights people have that it should be nipped in the bud pronto. Except that in that case, you could still vote the asshole who did it out. In my example, the right they’re attacking is exactly the right you need to change things in a democratic system. So it’s actually way worse than that.
Is the objection that the voter rolls were purged at all, or more to the method of the purge?
The NVRA requires a reasonable attempt to purge in some way, and that was signed in 1993 under Clinton. It seems Georgia, and previously Ohio essentially followed the letter of the law. I’m not commenting specifically on the steps that Georgia took or their motivations, but it seems like in general a voter roll purge is appropriate.
No one’s right to vote is being taken away. Should I post the link to the Georgia Secretary of State’s website again?
Apparently both, based on this -
Regards,
Shodan
The results, which impugns the method.
Best case scenario: this was entirely above-ground and there wasn’t any ill intent. In which case, Brian Kemp should be thinking to himself: “Holy fucking shit somehow 1/10th of the population, and a portion of it which is overwhelmingly made up of black people, of which at least 100,000 are known to still be in the state, just lost their ability to vote in the upcoming election! As the secretary of state, it’s my solemn duty to do something about this!” Because it almost doesn’t matter how your reached that conclusion, it points to the method being completely and utterly fucked.
However, that’s not what happened. There’s no sign that Kemp has any problem with the methods used or the result. The man responsible for ensuring the validity of the vote has thrown at least 100,000 legitimate voters off of the voter rolls. Keep in mind, the margin in the last election was 3,000 votes. Whatever method you used to come to that result, the result where the number of disenfranchised voters is at least 33 times higher than the margin of the last election… your method sucked.
And, in fact, we know this method sucks. You get one shot. The government sends you a postcard - if you miss that postcard, or it gets lost in the mail in either direction, or you get it and lose it, or you procrastinate and wait too long on it, you can’t vote. And the government never takes any further action other than quietly removing you from the rolls in a state where you only have until a month before the election to register. Miss that deadline, or let it pass thinking that your secretary of state didn’t disenfranchise you, and you cannot vote. There are countless single points of failure in a system where, if you fail, you don’t get to vote! And all this for what? To keep the rolls up to date? They did that before - this is new.
Oh, have I mentioned that Brian Kemp, the republican responsible for these actions, is running for election?
This is blatant voter disenfranchisement. The goal here is to reduce democratic turnout in the upcoming election to benefit the republican party. I don’t know how they can make it more blatant than this.
General principles:
- Democracy functions better when more of the electorate are involved.
- Solutions should not be worse than the problem they’re purported to solve.
The first one seems to me to be a progressive (not Democratic or Republican, but definitely left-wing) principle, going back to the founding of our nation. From King George through the Ku Klux Klan through the jerks who jailed suffragettes, the fight against enfranchisement has been deeply conservative, a belief that hoi polloi voters endanger government.
The second one, though, is a pretty broad principle.
What problem does a voter roll purge solve? How severe is the problem?
What problems are created by the purge?
Actually, no. Cleaning/maintaining the rolls is not the problem. Removing valid voters from the rolls is.
Let me bold the part you seemed to ignore:
“Resolved: removing registered, valid voters from the rolls is a bad thing, and instituting policies and processes by which the government will automatically do so is also a bad thing.”
Let me just ask again, the question(s) you refuse to answer:
Do you think removing registered valid voters from the rolls is a bad thing?
Do you think that instituting policies and processes by which the government will automatically do so is a bad thing?
What percentage of the purged voters were black, as compared to the whole of Georgia? My apologies if it was mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
Also, I am not clear - you do know that none of them lost their ability to vote - the multiple ways in which registration is available have been cited above.
Regards,
Shodan
Per this article:
“An analysis of the records obtained by The Associated Press reveals racial disparity in the process. Georgia’s population is approximately 32 percent black, according to the U.S. Census, but the list of voter registrations on hold with Kemp’s office is nearly 70 percent black.”
OK, there is the appearance of impropriety, like when the guy in charge of making such decisions just happens, coincidentally, to be running for Governor. I can see why some people might have a problem with that. Especially when that same guy is in a neck and neck race for the office. And his opponent just happens to be black. (I’ve heard it said that black people in Georgia tend to vote Democratic.)
This slap-dash approach doesn’t disfavor blacks so much as it favors such persons who own their own home, live there, have lived there for years, and most likely continue to live there until time for the dirt nap. OK, so maybe most of those folks are white. Maybe. Likely. If I were offered a bet on that, I would bet everything I have, everything I could borrow, a testicle and a kidney.
So, appearance of impropriety. What does this do to the sacred neutral value of voter confidence? That gold standard of civic virtue? How does this impact the voter confidence of the black voter that their state government appears to be up to shenanigans and skulduggery? How can they have any sort of confidence except the confidence that, once again, they’re getting the bizness, good and hard?
Kemp’s fingerprints are all over this. But hey! innocent until proven guilty! Wonder how long before Kemp claims he’s being “Kavanaugh’d”?
So get it passed. Go ahead.
See, that’s the difference between your scheme and the one I support: mine was passed by the legislature, signed into law by the executive, and passed constitutional muster by the judiciary.
Yours hasn’t. But if you get it past all those hurdles, I’ll acknowledge it as legitimate law.
Go get 'em, champ!
I haven’t delved into the history of Georgia laws, but if I recall, this method of purge isn’t newly adopted, and it wasn’t passed by Kemp. He is essentially executing the law that the state legislature passed, and he’s doing it based on the rules according to what the legislature passed. Do I have that right?
If that’s the case, why the ire towards Kemp? Do you think he has discretion to not remove people, and upon seeing the result, should have not executed the law? So the method sucks - I’m not sure I’m on board with that, but okay there’s probably a number of ways to improve the algorithm. Then the method should be changed. Until then, it should be carried out according to the law. If that 10% figure were instead, 50% or 80%, so be it. That would be more persuasive to change it then.
But there should be a method to purge, and that should go through the legislature.
Bricker, we get it, you are a huge fan of the fact that republicans are doing everything in their power to remain in power, up to and including making it harder for democrats to vote. You’ve made that opinion richly clear on countless occasions - the republicans are winning, they’re doing it legally, and ha ha, stupid libs are just mad because they can’t vote. But can you please not show up in every thread of this type just to gloat about it? It’s like if we had a guy who was like, “Yeah, I know what Erdogan is doing means the end of democracy in Turkey. Sure sucks to be one of his opponents! Go Erdogan, WOO!”
We get it - you care more about partisanship than democracy, and you’re eager to rub our noses in it. Good for you. Gloat about it in someone else’s thread. At least Shodan is trying to make a case for why this is defensible, however badly.
To my understanding, it started in 2017 under Kemp, and continued this year. It was less of a problem then, because 2017 isn’t an election year. I could be wrong. But as the person in charge of administering state elections, Kemp is responsible for this. He necessarily knows about this. It’s his job to do something about it. Instead, he’s held back another 53,000 registrations. Which is new news. This is part of his ongoing and deeply controversial “exact match” program, where any discrepancy between your registration and your ID leads to your registration being thrown out.
But the landscape of voting laws in Georgia looks very different than it did a decade ago, and Kemp, the top election official in Georgia and a candidate for governor, has been the subject of criticism over his handling of the voting process. His office settled a lawsuit in February over the use of a controversial “exact match” program that prevents voters from registering if there is even a small discrepancy in the voter’s information on their ID compared with their registration. The lawsuit noted that although Black applicants only made up about one in three voter registration applicants from 2013-2016, they comprised almost two-thirds of the rejected applicants based on the “exact match” voter verification technique. Latino and Asian-American voter registration applicants were similarly disproportionately impacted by the policy.
Man, sure is weird how all these republican-led states keep making it harder to register, stay registered, and vote. I wonder why that is. :rolleyes:
Y’know, this might be the least important part of my post. I’d ask why you care… but I don’t care why you care, it really doesn’t matter compared to the whole “over 100,000 legitimate voters thrown off the voter rolls” thing. Which is the problem.
Hypothetical time. I didn’t vote in the 2016 election for whatever reason. Due to moving within the same town and not having a reliable for a while, I missed my letter. It just never arrived somewhere I could get it. Maybe my ex threw me out when we broke up, and hasn’t been forwarding me my mail. I also didn’t catch the news about this happening until after the arbitrary voter registration date. I show up at the polls and get told that I am no longer registered.
Would you say that I still have my right to vote?
Sure. Take the voting power you haven’t got, and use it to get the power to change the laws so that you do have the voting power… you haven’t got.
But, gosh,** Bricker,** what about the sacred value of voter confidence? You remember voter confidence, right? That crucial and vital function that you defended so vociferously and so recently? What happened to that? You think this sort of Republican trickery will enhance the voter confidence of the black voter? Or will it simply remind them of the history of scorn and abuse they have suffered from the great state of Georgia?
“Legal and Constitutional” is not the touchstone of legitimacy, it is justice being done and being seen to be done. Its going the extra step to ensure equality in voting opportunity. Hell, maybe the Republican Party of Georgia will take positive and assertive steps to clear up these problems to ensure equal justice before the law.
Maybe Mr Kemp is that kind of guy, who will forthrightly insist on putting his election in jeopardy for the sake of principle?
I wonder, who would be more surprised? You, or me?
Which election are you referring to here?
Thanks. Are the registrations on hold the same as the ones who were purged, or the list of those who will be purged if they don’t respond?
No, you’re SOL.
I think the interest of Georgia in maintaining clean voter rolls outweighs the need to cater to that set of circumstances.
Come on - I don’t vote, I don’t read my mail, I don’t watch the news, I don’t know the multiple ways available to re-register, I didn’t realize that I need to notify my county of a change of address. At some point I should be treated as an adult. Adults don’t expect the government to feed them their rights with a spoon.
Regards,
Shodan