Make Sure You Have Valid Photo ID!

[trish]

Worker vs. Management.

Indeed. This election season the choice is, "Do you want a president or a boss?"

[Faldur]

I didn't know I came across as cloudy. I thought I was just analyzing some of the problems both political parties have and some unique to the GOP. Was there anything in particular I said that you disagreed with?

The error was in omission Bronco, in my opinion I look harder at the republican party faults than your willing to look at the democrats. Going tit for tat on a forum like this has proven to get you no where. But the lists for both sides are endless, just seems your side is not getting an honest look.

[theoryman]

This board does seem to tilt quite far to the left but there are people on the right on here as well.

A lot of times it comes down to what part of policy you think is most important.

Personally, neither party comes close to my ideal... but some issues trump others.

--

[broncofan]

The error was in omission Bronco, in my opinion I look harder at the republican party faults than your willing to look at the democrats. Going tit for tat on a forum like this has proven to get you no where. But the lists for both sides are endless, just seems your side is not getting an honest look.

I understand. Just for the record I wasn't trying to engage in a tit for tat but was trying to encourage vigorous debate on the subject. Maybe I came across as partisan but I've always thought that impartiality is not saying there's an even balance of positive and negative facts if you don't think there is. No disrespect.

[Faldur]

[buttslinger]

You're a good American, Faldur
Maybe you'll be a great American by 2016, ha ha

[Prospero]

Voting is important wherever you live and in any country where you have a right to vote.
Which is why the dirty tricks being played to try and deprive people of the right to vote in certain US states are deplorable.

This is an extract from a longer essay by the Harvard professor or law and jurisprudence Ronald Dworkin on attempts to mess with the law to disenfranchise people. After a GOP victory the supreme court might have anew and longer term Conservative majorrity, he warns.

The possible outcome should alarm all - right and left wing - if they truly believe in democracy.

"If the public had been engaged, it would have been warned about a further decision compromising democracy that the Roberts Court seems poised to make. It seems likely to declare unconstitutional crucial parts of the venerable Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 5 of that act requires all or some counties in states that have a particularly egregious record of voter discrimination in the past—Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia—to obtain a “preclearance” from the Department of Justice or from a three-judge federal court before they change their voting laws in any way. The act was a celebrated civil rights victory when first adopted, and it has been reenacted by Congress several times since, most recently in 2006 when it was extended for twenty-five years by a large majority of both houses. It places the burden of proof on a covered state to show that any new law would not have the effect of disadvantaging minority voters.

Section 5 continues to be an important safeguard of electoral fairness. Since 2010, when the Republican Party greatly expanded its power in state governorships and legislatures, it has tried through a variety of means to minimize the electoral impact of citizens likely to vote Democratic or to prevent them from voting at all, and Section 5 has been crucial in blocking the most blatant of these attempts.

When Florida recently decided to reduce the number of early-voting days, which allow people to vote who cannot take time off on Election Day, it was barred from making the change in five counties covered by the preclearance requirement. So it simply exempted those counties from the change. The Department of Justice then objected to different election schedules in different counties and required Florida to negotiate a common voting schedule for the entire state. Freed of the requirements of Section 5, Florida would have had much greater latitude to curtail early voting.

When Texas was recently awarded four additional congressional seats, the state legislature drew the new boundaries so as to reduce the chances that Hispanics would have an impact on elections in mixed districts. The plan was blocked by Section 5: neither the Department of Justice nor a federal court would grant the preclearance the act required. A three-judge federal panel said, unanimously, that the evidence left no doubt that the plan was designed to reduce the overall voting power of Hispanics in the state.

Since 2010, several states (all but one with Republican governors) have enacted laws that require voters to present official identification cards, in many cases with a photo, at the voting booth. The most common ID is a driver’s license; people who do not have one are mostly poor and disproportionately black or Hispanic. Such citizens can obtain substitute ID cards in those eleven states but only after burdensome and in some cases expensive application, often requiring applicants to travel a considerable distance to official card-dispensing offices.

The antidemocratic intent of voter ID laws has barely been disguised. A Pennsylvania Republican official openly declared that that state’s new ID law would help ensure that Romney carried the state.5 Governor Rick Perry of Texas rushed through a particularly strict ID law as “emergency” legislation, bypassing established procedures to ensure that the law would be in place for the coming election. Perry’s law provided that gun permits, among other official certificates, would be acceptable ID cards but that student registration cards would not.

When Republicans defend voter ID laws at all, they claim them necessary to prevent voter impersonation fraud. But there are extremely few documented cases of such fraud in recent years. Pennsylvania, when its law was challenged in federal court, declared that it did not rest its case on any assumption that fraud was a serious problem,6 and an executive of the South Carolina Election Commission conceded, in court, that the new law would not prevent voter fraud.7

Courts have declared several voter ID laws illegal, or postponed their enforcement, after extensive litigation. But Republicans try to adopt such laws shortly before an election so that litigation cannot prevent their immediate use. A Pennsylvania judge refused to enjoin its ID law while it was being tested in the courts; it was finally denied immediate effect on October 2, only weeks before the presidential election. The Pennsylvania judge ruled that people could vote without ID cards, in this election, though they could—pointlessly—still be asked to produce one. The preclearance demanded by Section 5 provides, for the historically most racist states, a much more effective barrier. Texas’s statute could not go into effect without positive clearance, and voter ID laws were refused preclearance in South Carolina.

In the Texas case, a three-judge federal court declared, in a long and painstaking opinion by Judge David Tatel of the D.C. court, that the evidence Texas offered not only failed to prove that its law was not discriminatory, as the act required it to show, but positively proved the opposite: that the law was in fact thoroughly discriminatory.

However, Shelby County, Alabama, which is covered by Section 5, has now asked the Supreme Court to declare Section 5 unconstitutional, and it has been joined by the attorneys general of five states. They were all but invited to sue by Roberts, who, in a related 2009 case, went out of his way to suggest that he thought Section 5 unconstitutional, and that he would vote to strike it down if asked to do so. “Things have changed in the South,” he said. “Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking for himself, was even clearer: “I conclude,” he said, “that the lack of current evidence of intentional discrimination with respect to voting renders Section 5 unconstitutional.” It seems likely that the rest of the right-wing justices will follow this lead and agree to strike down the preclearance requirement, perhaps in yet another 5–4 decision.

Roberts’s statement was curious. He summarily contradicted Congress on a complex judgment of fact, in spite of the extensive record of continuing discrimination that Congress compiled in renewing the Voting Rights Act in 2006, and in spite of the large majorities that voted for renewal. The recent Texas examples alone, in which obviously discriminatory redistricting plans and voter ID laws were blocked by the preclearance requirement, would seem to indicate that Congress had at least a substantial basis for its decision.

In any case, the coming Supreme Court ruling will be yet another decision testing the integrity of our democracy. From time to time, when a new justice is nominated and Senate hearings are held, the nation’s attention does shift, mildly, to constitutional issues. But these hearings are a sham: candidates say only that they believe in applying the law and senators duly nod approval.

Most politicians apparently assume that the character of the Supreme Court is too abstract an issue to figure in an election campaign. But FDR successfully campaigned against the “nine old men” who were blocking his New Deal, Nixon made the Court’s race decisions the center of his “southern strategy,” and generations of Republicans have been elected by denouncing the Court’s 1973 decision recognizing abortion rights. The record of the Roberts Court is already one of the worst in our history. In pursuing a right-wing agenda it has overruled many precedents. Next term it will probably not just strike down Section 5, but also overrule its own recent decision allowing limited affirmative action. It gives every sign of soon reversing abortion rights. Perhaps it is impossible to make independent voters alert to these dangers. If so, that is a shame."

[BigDF]

Indeed. This election season the choice is, "Do you want a president or a boss?"

You hit it right on the head, Trish. Far too many people in this country think it's a big business, including the GOP candidate for President. But this is a nation and cannot possibly be run on the profit/loss model of business.

[Faldur]

You hit it right on the head, Trish. Far too many people in this country think it's a big business, including the GOP candidate for President. But this is a nation and cannot possibly be run on the profit/loss model of business.

So lets spend $11 for every $7 we take in. It's ok, theres a machine in the back room that makes money. What could possibly go wrong?

[Prospero]

Faldur - love to have your thoughtful response to my post of the essay by the Harvard Law Professor?