When all else fails, purge the voter rolls

One thing about the Trump era is that Republicans don't have to even pretend they aren't racial motives behind more restrictive voting laws and procedures.

The latest example is in southern Georgia. Randolph County is 61% black - double the statewide average. The Randolph County Board of Supervisors voted last week to close down 75% of the polling stations in Randolph County.

The Board will argue that they are making the move for financial reasons but that excuse doesn't hold any water because the real effect is to close as many polling stations in the black sections of the county as possible in order to aid Republican office seekers. If it costs more than the county wishes to pay to keep the stations open there is a perfectly fair solution -- raise the filing fee for running for office.

With the US Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act, white Republicans have been knocking each other down to see who can pass the more restrictive voting laws and who can make it more difficult for the poor and minorities to vote. And the reason is clear -- as I've pointed out before, the old white power structure knows that due to demographic changes, its days of holding power are limited and they are doing everything they can to prolong the inevitable.

As white America showed that it is not afraid to vote for an outwardly racist candidate for president, these moves are to be expected. Those who vote Republican are supporting these efforts whether they wish to admit it or not. It would appear that no Republican candidate running for office has the guts to challenge the overt bigotry of Donald Trump and his administration. Their silence is affirmation of their support.

And, lest you think these shenanigans are used only in the Deep South, it's going on in Houston, too.  Residents of the Third Ward, a mostly black area of Houston just east of downtown, received letters from the County's voter registrar, Ann Harris Bennett, informing them that they had but 30 days to return a letter confirming their address to her office in order to avoid being removed from the voter rolls. The letters were sent out to folks who hadn't moved and who had been living at their current address for years.

“If you do not respond at all to this notice, your registration will be canceled if you have not confirmed your address either by completing the response form or confirming your address when voting before November 30 following the second general election for state and county officers that occurs after the date the confirmation notice is mailed.”

The letters were the result of challenges made by Republicans to voters in predominately minority parts of Houston. You see, Republican candidates will win the majority of votes in the suburbs since most of the residents moved away from Houston to get away from darker skinned folks. But elections in Harris County center on the turnout within the city limits of Houston. If there is a large turnout in the city, it will cancel out the Republican voters in the suburbs. And Republicans are anticipating that will be the case come November.

Texas fights to make it harder to vote

The State of Texas will do everything it can to make it harder for residents to register to vote. And by now it should be obvious, even to the most dyed-in-the-wool Trumpkin that these efforts are designed to restrict the number of Texans who are able to exercise their right to vote.

The latest salvo is a ruling from US District Judge Orlando Garcia who told the state it had 45 days to create an online system to allow folks to register to vote when renewing their driver's license online. The current system directs people to the Secretary of State's website and instructs them to print out an application and mail it to their local county clerk's office. Judge Garcia said that system is not in compliance with federal law.

It is not known what argument Attorney General Ken Paxton will make in support of the state's current system - other than telling the judge that the only way the GOP will continue to dominate state electoral politics is to keep the blacks and browns from voting as much.

And, when given the opportunity to propose a fix, state officials looked at each other and just shrugged their shoulders.

The demographics of this state are changing rapidly and the old, white power structure knows that the only way for them to maintain their power in this state is to do everything in their power to restrict the right to vote. And that's what this is all about. It has nothing to do with the Republican bogey-man of voter fraud. It's all about manipulating the system in such a way so that the minority exercise more electoral power than the majority.

Voting, education and guns

It's election time here in Houston and, with the Republicans in power, we've got to deal with voter restriction measures such as the requirement that a voter present a government-approved photo ID before being allowed to carry out their constitutional right to vote.

It's interesting that when the GOP was winning presidential elections (or, stealing them with the help of the US Supreme Court and local voter officials), no one from the right raised the slightest hint of voter fraud. I suppose it's because the last thing you want to do is draw attention to voting irregularities when your own party is elbow-deep in suppressing votes in minority areas.

Here is a look at the poster that Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart is posting at voting locations throughout the county:

Interesting that a military identification card or a concealed handgun license is acceptable ID for voting purposes, but a photo ID issued by a public college or university doesn't quite cut the mustard. Kind of speaks volumes about the importance we place on education here in the Lone Star State as opposed to how we play violence on a pedestal.

And, as an aside, since when did the office holder become more important that the office? Most elected county officials now place their names above the name of the department they head. Just something to think about.

The assault on voting rights continues

Well, it certainly didn't take long for a state to put forward the most restrictive voter ID law in the country following the Supreme Court's neutering of the Voting Rights Act.

Pat McCrory, the Republican governor of North Carolina signed into law a bill that will require everyone who wants to vote to show a government-issued ID card before they will be allowed to pick up a ballot. No college ID's and no out-of-state licenses will be accepted. The bill also shortened early voting by a week, ended same-day registration and allows any registered voter to challenge the eligibility of anyone to vote.

According to Mr. McCrory, the aim of the legislation is to prevent voter fraud in North Carolina. However, when asked by Jeremy Hobson, co-host of the NPR show "Here & Now" the governor couldn't point to any specific instance of voter fraud.

Why? Because there is no evidence of wide-spread voter fraud in the United States. The purpose of the legislation isn't to combat non-existent fraud; the purpose of the legislation is to make it harder for the poor, the elderly and minorities to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

If the purpose is to combat voter fraud, why reduce the time for early voting? What does one have to do with the other, Governor McCrory? Early voting makes it easier for people to cast their ballots - and, in a country where the average turnout for an election is generally quite pathetic, anything that makes it easier for folks to get out and vote should be considered a good thing.

And why eliminate same-day voter registration? Could it possibly be that forcing voters to register 30 days or more before an election reduces the number of potential voters? And who are the voters who take advantage of same-day registration? How about the young and the disenfranchised who feel compelled to make their voices heard?

And why allow any registered voter to challenge the eligibility of another person to vote? In most states it is up to the election judge (or whatever title is conferred upon the person administering the election in a polling station) to determine who is, and who isn't, eligible to vote. The election judge has undergone training and has been instructed in the law. Allowing voters to challenge another's right to vote is a return of the days of the KKK and Jim Crow. It is simply to intimidate the poor, the young and minority voters.

The reason North Carolina and other predominately southern states (such as Texas) have pursued these laws in because the traditional voter base that sends conservative politicians to Congress and the statehouse know that they are increasingly outnumbered by voters belonging to groups they have shunned. If you allow the poor and the young and the minority voters to cast their ballots, the days of the Right are numbered.

Modern day James Crow

It's well known that the conservatives are out to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. They have pursued their goals by striking voters off the rolls who had same or similar names to convicted felons. They have pursued their goals by striking legal immigrants from the rolls based upon questionable lists from immigration officials. They have pursued their goals by requiring voters to show a government-issued ID card. They're even trying to shut down early voting.

In Texas they've done it by not processing voter registration cards filed by folks renewing their driver's licenses at local DPS offices.

According to this article in the Houston Chronicle:

There are unexplained dips in so-called "motor voter" registrations, and the rates of voters who successfully registered via drivers' license offices in fast-growing Harris and Fort Bend counties consistently lagged behind state averages from 2008-2012, according to a Chronicle analysis of new voter registration data kept by the Texas secretary of state. 

On Thursday, the Secretary of State's Office emailed an alert to all county voter registrars warning of interruptions in its system to electronically transfer registrations it gets daily from the Texas Department of Public Safety. The alert came after individual "motor voters" complained about issues with their attempts to register at DPS offices in Tarrant and Harris counties.

The explanation given is that human error was to blame for the drop in motor voter registration. I don't buy it for a minute. This is the new Jim Crow. You can't charge a poll tax and you can't intimidate folks to stay away from the polls - but you can sure reject their registration forms and not inform them until it's too late to do anything about it.

The math is quite simple. Wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands in this country. There are far more workers than bosses. Our criminal (in)justice system closely resembles the old apartheid system in South Africa.

There are fewer folks who worship at the altar of the free market than don't. There are fewer folks calling for less regulation of corporations than who aren't. There are fewer folks who think only those who can afford health care should have it than don't. There are fewer folks who want the government to have more power to intrude into your private life than don't.

The solution is to get rid of as many voters as you can. And these are the methods being used.

Now this isn't a polemic urging you to re-elect President Obama or to elect a slate of Democratic candidates. The truth is President Obama is barely more palatable than Mitt Romney - the difference between tho two is more semantics than substance. About the only real difference between the two is their pools of potential Supreme Court nominees.

It's a cess pool out there, folks. But it doesn't take a lot to figure out who benefits in the end.

Suppressing the vote

Texas' latest attempt to reduce voter turnout this November has been struck down by panel of three federal judges. The GOP controlled legislature passed a bill that would require voters to present a driver's license or other form of government-issued ID before being allowed to vote.

Well, what's so bad about that, you might ask.

Shouldn't everyone have a drivers license? How hard can it be?

If you've got a Texas drivers license then you've got it made in the shade. Need to renew it? You can do it by mail, online or (if you have nothing better to do with two hours of your life) in person. But what if you've never been issued a drivers license? That's where the fun begins.

Do you have a passport? How about a Certificate of Naturalization? What about some document from Homeland Security or Customs and Immigration? No? Now it gets interesting.

Do you have your birth certificate or a State Department Certification of Birth Abroad? How about a court order of a name change? Oh, but that's not all. If that's all you got, then you've got to have two additional pieces of supporting documentation.

US Attorney General  Eric Holder rightfully decreed that the Voter ID bill constituted a poll tax for poor and minority voters that would only serve to deter them from voting in November.

And what about the claims by Gov. Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott that this measure is needed to combat voter fraud? Of the 13 million votes cast in the 2008 and 2010 general elections there were but four allegations of fraud that resulted in one indictment.

So, if it's not fraud, then just what is the new bill supposed to combat? And why are Mr. Perry and Mr. Abbott fighting so hard to get the law upheld? It's because Republicans know they need to suppress voter turnout to ensure victory. Just take a look at the 2008 general election in Harris County.

In a pattern that is duplicated in pretty much all metropolitan areas, voters in urban areas tend to lean Democratic while suburban voters lean Republican. If, as in 2008, the urban vote outnumbers the suburban vote, Democratic candidates tend to win. If, as in 2010, the suburban vote is greater, the Republicans win.

In 2008, the urban vote in Harris County was overwhelmingly Democratic and turnout was significantly higher than in 2004. The result was a near Democratic sweep in Harris County. The opposite was true two years ago.

Those in favor of voter ID laws know that the people who will find it the hardest to obtain the necessary form of identification tend to vote Democratic. When you factor in the more onerous requirements to obtain a drivers license in Texas (and in some other states), the intent of the law becomes crystal clear.

Every election, commentators decry the pathetic turnout. We hear pundits proposing new ideas to increase voter participation. And, now, we watch in state after state as the Republican Party does its best to make it harder for minorities and the poor to vote.