I Pit the ID-demanding GOP vote-suppressors (Part 1)

I gather Bricker likes to see Republican governments, but like sausages, he chooses not to think about how they are made.

Anyway, in response to his various, numerous and yet specious hypocrisy accusations:

  1. Making things easier for voters is cool, regardless of which party does it. Ideally, they would both support such measures.

  2. Making things harder for voters is not cool, regardless of which party does it. Ideally, they would both oppose such measures.

Concerns about whether or not this leads voters to esteem something too lightly, well… those are just plain stupid.

Has anyone shown you the rudiments of what is commonly known as “cut and paste”? This is a method by which you can “capture” a quotation and bring it to our attention. It is quite commonly used, and I am a bit surprised that you are unfamiliar with it.

Pull the other leg, its got bells on it. Pull the middle one, I’ll give you a nickel.

I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work - if you ask simple questions, he ignores them. If you ask complicated questions, he looks for minor things to nitpick and ignores your main point.

Yes, but even then your statement is incomplete and creates a wrong impression. But at least it’s now technically accurate.

“At trial, the state tried to justify rolling back certain voting days because those were the days that more black people voted.”

This gives the context of the statement. Even THEN, it should be further explained what was going on during the argument and why the state said this.

Did you ever even question that? I mean… according to you, the state simply disgorged this admission. Now, you must know that even if we imagine the state legislators and the AG’s team as senior KKK leaders during their evening and weekend hours, they must be at least somewhat hip to the fact that candid admission of their KKK views is not going to help them in public discourse.

So why, in your imagination’s version of this concession, do you imagine this concession was delivered? They’re unrepentant racists, but by gawd, they took an oath to tell the truth? They were caught off guard by a series of innocent questions and then this one was sprung so unexpectedly they just blurted out the truth by accident?

I’m actually kind of curious about this, since you accepted the recitation as gospel that “state legislators” admitted that they researched ways black people voted and then, as a result, eliminated all those ways.

What do you picture made them 'fess up?

How dare you demand he retransmit copyrighted material without the express written consent of Major League Baseball! You obviously know NOTHING about law, you person who is a liberal democrat and probably hates Jesus, too.

You’re sure trying hard at being patronizing for a guy who refuses to recognize two plus two being four.

Yes. Or No.

By that I mean the sentence is true, but creates a false impression.

In 2011, when the GOP gained control of both houses of the legislature, they passed a bill to remove the first seven days of early voting and all Sunday voting.

This happened before any racial voting data was requested by the legislature.

So the legislature could not have been motivated by the racial data request in that decision.

Do you agree?

Now, this bill did not become a law. As you may recall from “Schoolhouse Rock,” the legislature must pass and the executive must sign a bill for it to become a law.

At the time, while the GOP controlled the houses of legislature, the governor was a Democrat. Governor Beverly Perdue vetoed the legislation the legislature passed.

Do you understand that the governor is not the legislature?

Do you understand that you cannot claim the legislature decided to send a message back in time?

Do you understand that the legislature tried to remove early and Sunday voting BEFORE they got this racial voting data?

I think the state was blatantly admitting their reasoning was based on electoral concerns – they weren’t admitting racial animus, IMO. So I don’t think my statement creates a wrong impression at all. But from my understanding of the “results” clause of the VRA, their motives don’t matter – actions like this that disproportionately harm black voters are outlawed, and rightly so. And the state did admit that their actions disproportionately harm black voters, and admitted that they wanted to disproportionately harm black voters (in the service of electoral victories).

I would cheer anytime democracy is made more inclusive, and disagree any time it was made more restrictive.

Absentee ballots for example. They are rife with fraud. It would behoove those who find integrity of elections to be paramount to oppose these quite strongly. It would also benefit democrats rather strongly, as the elderly are a large consumer of them, and the elderly tend to vote republican.

If a democratic legislature went to eliminate absentee ballots, I, and I suspect many of your opponents in this debate, would oppose such measures, unless provisions were made to ensure that it did not reduce voter turnout. This is because we put country ahead of party, and believe that upholding democracy is paramount to creating and maintaining a free and fair society.

I’m conflicted here. I mean, I could use a nickel but…

You’re ignoring an entirely plausible line of causality and asking instead for a more speculative approach based on a bunch of hyperbolic rhetoricals? Why do you think that’s going to be useful in winkling out the truth of the matter? Or are you just asking questions, Mr. Cavuto?

Nonetheless, at least one legislator involved openly admitted on camera that the purpose was to suppress voting in Democrat-heavy districts. What do you picture made him 'fess up to that?

Personally my money’s on “arrogance”. It’s a good bet for any politician.

Same question to you.

Are you asking me to cut and paste 23000 pages to show you that the words you’re looking for do not appear anywhere in them?

If I claimed that Senator Smith said “I like to fuck weasels,” then I could cut and paste the supporting quotation.

Here, you are claiming he said he liked to fuck weasels, and I am saying that the quote does not appear in the Joint Appendix. How do you propose cut and paste could be used here?

I understand all this – and it might have been a harder case to prove for an earlier legislative process that did not include this research (though I still believe it would have violated the VRA due to the “results” clause and the disproportionate harm towards black voters). But the research data request, plus the subsequent amending of the bill to remove specifically the days that the data indicates are disproportionately used by black voters, plus the state’s admission that they removed certain provisions because they were disproportionately used by black voters, makes it very clear that the state and legislators intended this bill to help Republicans electorally by disproportionately harming black voters, which violates the VRA, no matter the underlying intention of electoral gains rather than racial animus.

Answer: they didn’t.

But you just agreed that they did say this!

While it is usually true that two plus two equals four, it is not invariably the case. For instance, in this paper bag is an example of a time when two plus two did not equal four! Unfortunately, you can’t see it. However, my reputation for strict honesty and utter candor should move you to accept my testimony. If you are not blinded by liberal hypocrisy!

And besides, in a super-dooper close addition, one of the factors may be very slightly more than “2”. Say, “2.0000001”. In which case, the result would not be precisely “4”, but just the tiniest bit more!

I will calmly await your sobbing admission of error, while I try to come up with a more condescending way of lying to you.

Ummmm…how about; the legislature took actions they knew would reduce the black vote, and used the racial preferences data to refine and confirm those actions? Didn’t we just have this discussion?

OK. So did the racial data request cause the legislature decision to eliminate early voting?

OK. Good.

Now, I think we have an actual argument.

*North Carolina’s actions violated the VRA, no matter the underlying intention of electoral gains rather than racial animus
*

I disagree that racial animus was in play. But now you’re saying it doesn’t matter: the VRA was violated even so.

You’re probably right.

The question now becomes whether the VRA, if applied in this way, is constitutional.

And i say it is not.

Hah! He got you! He used “the state” in paragraphs 2 and 4, but “state legislators” in paragraph 6. So he’s technically correct!

Hey, welcome to the same page everyone else has been on for a while now. Glad you could join us.