Keith Sellars and his daughters were driving home from dinner at a Mexican restaurant last December when he was pulled over for running a red light. The officer ran a background check and came back with bad news for Mr. Sellars. There was a warrant out for his arrest.
As his girls cried in the back seat, Mr. Sellars was handcuffed and taken to jail.
His crime: Illegal voting.
“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Sellars, who spent the night in jail before his family paid his $2,500 bond. “I thought I was practicing my right.”
Mr. Sellars, 44, is one of a dozen people in Alamance County in North Carolina who have been charged with voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election. All were on probation or parole for felony convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies a person from voting. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison.
While election experts and public officials across the country say there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, local prosecutors and state officials in North Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Idaho and other states have sought to send a tough message by filing criminal charges against the tiny fraction of people who are caught voting illegally.
“That’s the law,” said Pat Nadolski, the Republican district attorney in Alamance County. “You can’t do it. If we have clear cases, we’re going to prosecute.”
Unsurprisingly, there's a racial element to this as well:
The case against the 12 voters in Alamance County — a patchwork of small towns about an hour west of the state’s booming Research Triangle — is unusual for the sheer number of people charged at once. And because nine of the defendants are black, the case has touched a nerve in a state with a history of suppressing African-American votes.
Local civil-rights groups and black leaders have urged the district attorney to drop the prosecution, saying that black voters were being disproportionately punished for an unwitting mistake. African-Americans in North Carolina are more likely to be disqualified from voting because of felony convictions; their rate of incarceration is more than four times that of white residents, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit organization.
“It smacks of Jim Crow,” said Barrett Brown, the head of the Alamance County N.A.A.C.P. Referring to the district attorney, he added, “I don’t think he targeted black people. But if you cast that net, you’re going to catch more African-Americans.”
Mr. Nadolski said that race and ethnicity are not a factor in any case he prosecutes.
Of course not. Methinks that the next time he's up for re-election, Mr. Nadolski needs to be handed walking papers.
I'm sure it's deliberately the point, but this just seems needlessly cruel. It's like prosecutorial discretion doesn't exist for these people only when they don't want it to.
Republicans are trying to terrify people who aren’t 100% sure if they can vote, like naturalized citizens and people who committed a crime but not a felony. If you risk draconian penalties for being wrong about your right to vote, the temptation is to stay at home to be safe, since individual votes don’t have much effect. And guess who people on the margins tend to vote for?
+36
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Republicans are trying to terrify people who aren’t 100% sure if they can vote, like naturalized citizens and people who committed a crime but not a felony. If you risk draconian penalties for being wrong about your right to vote, the temptation is to stay at home to be safe, since individual votes don’t have much effect. And guess who people on the margins tend to vote for?
They are also trying to confirm their narrative of justification for voter ID, so they can suppress the vote that way
Yep, 100% terror tactics to induce a chilling effect. Fucking hell. I don't like to use the word evil because I think that is a naive concept, but I think this kind of behavior earns that descriptor.
Since I actually like democracy, I don’t think there exists a crime or state of being that should ever prohibit voting, as long as you’re a citizen (natural-born or otherwise).
Republicans have always been at least a bit anti-democracy but the way they have been acting over the last several decades is closer to the system Russia has. There are other choices besides the strongman but we will do everything in our power to prevent you from voting for them.
The main difference is that so far they don’t have enough power to literally murder people who create ballot problems for them. So far.
I'd day felons should be able to vote from jail, and they probably should, but I expect some jails would be less than the best when it came to manipulating the votes coming out of their jails.
They should be allowed a postal vote to their last registered address. Voting in districts they have zero attachment to and can’t wait to leave would make no sense.
Would also reduce the incentives to manipulate somewhat. But I absolutely would expect to hear about guards forcing inmates to vote a certain way, or changing the votes, etc. Also other prisoners, but the guards more so.
Realistically you'd have to have a seprate independent security team and polling volunteers monitor and collect the votes to ensure they remain anonymous
Possibly too much trouble to be worth it, then.
But losing 3 years of voting inside is nothing compared to losing another 50 after their sentence.
Too much trouble to ensure what should be civil rights of the inmates?
Fuck no.
And yes, I realize that sounds alarmist but the past couple of years have basically shown me that the Republican capacity for integrity, consistency, and shame has no floor.
+14
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Treason is the only crime I can think of that ought to immediately strip voting rights.
I'd day felons should be able to vote from jail, and they probably should, but I expect some jails would be less than the best when it came to manipulating the votes coming out of their jails.
They should be allowed a postal vote to their last registered address. Voting in districts they have zero attachment to and can’t wait to leave would make no sense.
Would also reduce the incentives to manipulate somewhat. But I absolutely would expect to hear about guards forcing inmates to vote a certain way, or changing the votes, etc. Also other prisoners, but the guards more so.
Realistically you'd have to have a seprate independent security team and polling volunteers monitor and collect the votes to ensure they remain anonymous
Possibly too much trouble to be worth it, then.
But losing 3 years of voting inside is nothing compared to losing another 50 after their sentence.
Too much trouble to ensure what should be civil rights of the inmates?
Fuck no.
Maybe we can restore the voting rights of felons first, hmm? That, on its own, would be a fight of epic proportions, enough to define a Presidency.
I'd day felons should be able to vote from jail, and they probably should, but I expect some jails would be less than the best when it came to manipulating the votes coming out of their jails.
They should be allowed a postal vote to their last registered address. Voting in districts they have zero attachment to and can’t wait to leave would make no sense.
Would also reduce the incentives to manipulate somewhat. But I absolutely would expect to hear about guards forcing inmates to vote a certain way, or changing the votes, etc. Also other prisoners, but the guards more so.
Realistically you'd have to have a seprate independent security team and polling volunteers monitor and collect the votes to ensure they remain anonymous
Possibly too much trouble to be worth it, then.
But losing 3 years of voting inside is nothing compared to losing another 50 after their sentence.
Too much trouble to ensure what should be civil rights of the inmates?
Fuck no.
Maybe we can restore the voting rights of felons first, hmm? That, on its own, would be a fight of epic proportions, enough to define a Presidency.
Sure, that's a decent starting point.
But that's not what you said.
You said that independent security teams and polling volunteers might be too much trouble, they are not.
I'd day felons should be able to vote from jail, and they probably should, but I expect some jails would be less than the best when it came to manipulating the votes coming out of their jails.
They should be allowed a postal vote to their last registered address. Voting in districts they have zero attachment to and can’t wait to leave would make no sense.
Would also reduce the incentives to manipulate somewhat. But I absolutely would expect to hear about guards forcing inmates to vote a certain way, or changing the votes, etc. Also other prisoners, but the guards more so.
Realistically you'd have to have a seprate independent security team and polling volunteers monitor and collect the votes to ensure they remain anonymous
Possibly too much trouble to be worth it, then.
But losing 3 years of voting inside is nothing compared to losing another 50 after their sentence.
Too much trouble to ensure what should be civil rights of the inmates?
Fuck no.
Maybe we can restore the voting rights of felons first, hmm? That, on its own, would be a fight of epic proportions, enough to define a Presidency.
Sure, that's a decent starting point.
But that's not what you said.
You said that independent security teams and polling volunteers might be too much trouble, they are not.
This is what they call “the perfect being the enemy of the good.” You need to start climbing that mountain with the first step out the door, but that first step won’t take you up the mountain.
Arranging for people in prison would be too difficult without first arranging for felons to vote. I think that would actually require a constitutional amendment- and with the pile of right-wing nutbags that Republicans are stacking the supreme court with, that’s possibly an impossible battle to start with, at least in the next 40 years.
There always exists at least one party to serve the interests of those with power and their desire to maintain it. The debates over voting rights throughout history and across nations reflect this.
We're going to see a truly monumental shitstorm of dirty tactics in 2018 and 2020, aren't we?
The Green party is largely funded by the GOP. They understand the power of a union (of voters) and always encourage discord, especially among the Naderite/Green fringe. If you elevate the extreme you encourage GOP leaners to not stray and split the anti conservative vote.
Epic and significant irregularities in Georgia county of Habersham. Security issues may have allowed tampering with voter records. Reported instances:
670 ballots cast in a presinct with 276 voters.
People from the same address being assigned to different presincts
People's presinct assignments changing repeatedly while the polls were open - one woman reported being bounced back and forth between two presincts.
People getting ballots for different districts (in particular Democrats getting ballots for an unopposed republican rather than their own competitive district).
Voting machines that were used but recorded no votes.
Sounds like a total train wreck, I'm sure we'll get a repeat in November, because this is a lot to fix.
The Republican nominee for Governor in Georgia has been the Secretary of State down there. Since 2012, there are actually fewer Georgians registered to vote despite a continuing population boom with all the people moving to Atlanta. It's pretty awesome.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
But Massachusetts doing this is symbolic and important because they were one of the first states to have voter registration in the first place, to try to keep Irish and German Catholics from voting way back in the day. Making the system opt-in instead of opt-out was always a tactic for disenfranchisement.
But Massachusetts doing this is symbolic and important because they were one of the first states to have voter registration in the first place, to try to keep Irish and German Catholics from voting way back in the day. Making the system opt-in instead of opt-out was always a tactic for disenfranchisement.
Unfortunately we can celebrate when we start seeing it in states Hilary didn't carry by 27 points. Although, I guess its a good buffer against a further degradation of our coalition. Hopefully they will take the next step and start expanding voting days, and trying better voting systems for their reps. STV for President and senators for example. That would be a solid wall against Republicans setting up fake third party candidates.
The super trolling justification is apparently that those seven polling places are not ADA compliant. Sometimes you have to marvel at the GOP's capacity for dickery.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The super trolling justification is apparently that those seven polling places are not ADA compliant. Sometimes you have to marvel at the GOP's capacity for dickery.
"How can we use TRAP laws to fuck over even more people"
Ride-hailing service Lyft said Thursday that it wants to help tackle the problem by offering half-priced rides across the country during this year's midterm elections. Riders can enter location-based codes into the Lyft app to access the discounted rides.
...
Lyft will also offer free rides to people from underserved communities, who are more likely to report transportation barriers. Lyft will provide the codes through nonpartisan, nonprofit groups like Voto Latino and the Urban League, which will then either distribute the codes to people they work with or use Lyft's Concierge service to order a ride for someone.
"We rely on their expertise to know who needs a ride to the poll and when they need that ride," Masserman said.
Lyft is also launching an effort to help riders and drivers register to vote. From now until Sept. 25, the service will give drivers handouts with voter registration information at Lyft Hub locations, and will also remind passengers about voter registration deadlines on social media. Then, between Sept. 25 and Election Day, Lyft will partner with organizations like TurboVote and Vote.org to provide people with information on how to vote early or by mail. The company will also share information on how to schedule a ride through the service for Election Day.
I don't see this impacting much outside of college towns, but every little bit helps.
The solution to "some people in this community can't vote" should be "help everyone to vote," not "nobody in this community gets to vote."
*angryface*
When a county resident asked if he would be open to finding other ADA-compliant polling locations, Malone said that he was “not hired to find alternatives.”
FF XIV - Qih'to Furishu (on Siren), Battle.Net - Ilpala#1975
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Ride-hailing service Lyft said Thursday that it wants to help tackle the problem by offering half-priced rides across the country during this year's midterm elections. Riders can enter location-based codes into the Lyft app to access the discounted rides.
...
Lyft will also offer free rides to people from underserved communities, who are more likely to report transportation barriers. Lyft will provide the codes through nonpartisan, nonprofit groups like Voto Latino and the Urban League, which will then either distribute the codes to people they work with or use Lyft's Concierge service to order a ride for someone.
"We rely on their expertise to know who needs a ride to the poll and when they need that ride," Masserman said.
Lyft is also launching an effort to help riders and drivers register to vote. From now until Sept. 25, the service will give drivers handouts with voter registration information at Lyft Hub locations, and will also remind passengers about voter registration deadlines on social media. Then, between Sept. 25 and Election Day, Lyft will partner with organizations like TurboVote and Vote.org to provide people with information on how to vote early or by mail. The company will also share information on how to schedule a ride through the service for Election Day.
I don't see this impacting much outside of college towns, but every little bit helps.
Every vote counts. Honestly I still don't understand why someone hasn't gamified getting Democrats to vote. Hell, Pokemon Go was huge last election. Have a special Pokemon that you can ONLY catch at polling locations, and you can only catch it if the GPS tracker records you going INSIDE the polling station and spending at least 15 minutes within 100 meters of it. Thats an extra few tens of thousands of young people who go to their polling locations and have to spend enough time there to vote.
There are all sorts of rewards you could offer people like this which would be hugely appealing to young people, but meaningless to old people.
Edit - And to be clear, why would any of these web games give a monkeys what old Republicans think of them. They already hate them, and don't play them.
Finding actual demographic data isn't proving easy (nor am I surprised by that), but I'm guessing that Pokemon Go players trend younger, which is a group that is notorious for not voting enough, and when they do they lean Democrat, so actually I do think that'd be a kind of solid targeted effort to help get the youth vote out.
Would it swing the country up in a blue tidal wave? No, probably not, but like *previous elections I won't go into details about*, we know that every little bit helps. Turning out even hundreds of thousands (tens of thousands, perhaps) of previously unlikely voters in that demographic could have an impact. Note, I did say AN impact, I'm not trying to oversell the results, but I can't see how it would hurt either.
And no, obviously it shouldn't be the sole or primary method of getting out new/more voters. That'd be dumb. But as a small part of a multi-pronged effort to get more people engaged in the process, it seems like a low risk/potentially high (comparatively) reward situation.
*Edit: yes, I'll also note that this seems to apply globally, not specific to the US, but I'm also going to guess that the US saw proportional (within a reasonable margin of error) increases in users as well. Point is, "how many people actually play?" is answered with "a lot, apparently".
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Yeah, my wife is back into it - I get dragged along to raids and what have you. Basically I'm saying you'd be surprised at the number of older people who play, but we're getting waaaaay off topic here.
Posts
I'm sure it's deliberately the point, but this just seems needlessly cruel. It's like prosecutorial discretion doesn't exist for these people only when they don't want it to.
They are also trying to confirm their narrative of justification for voter ID, so they can suppress the vote that way
Republicans have always been at least a bit anti-democracy but the way they have been acting over the last several decades is closer to the system Russia has. There are other choices besides the strongman but we will do everything in our power to prevent you from voting for them.
The main difference is that so far they don’t have enough power to literally murder people who create ballot problems for them. So far.
Fuck no.
Maybe we can restore the voting rights of felons first, hmm? That, on its own, would be a fight of epic proportions, enough to define a Presidency.
But that's not what you said.
You said that independent security teams and polling volunteers might be too much trouble, they are not.
This is what they call “the perfect being the enemy of the good.” You need to start climbing that mountain with the first step out the door, but that first step won’t take you up the mountain.
Arranging for people in prison would be too difficult without first arranging for felons to vote. I think that would actually require a constitutional amendment- and with the pile of right-wing nutbags that Republicans are stacking the supreme court with, that’s possibly an impossible battle to start with, at least in the next 40 years.
but it's the new jim crow for a reason.
https://www.salon.com/2018/08/11/green-party-candidate-in-montana-was-on-gop-payroll/
We're going to see a truly monumental shitstorm of dirty tactics in 2018 and 2020, aren't we?
Guaranteed.
This is a very standard GOP tactic. They've been funding Green Party candidates for ages now.
The Green party is largely funded by the GOP. They understand the power of a union (of voters) and always encourage discord, especially among the Naderite/Green fringe. If you elevate the extreme you encourage GOP leaners to not stray and split the anti conservative vote.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Epic and significant irregularities in Georgia county of Habersham. Security issues may have allowed tampering with voter records. Reported instances:
670 ballots cast in a presinct with 276 voters.
People from the same address being assigned to different presincts
People's presinct assignments changing repeatedly while the polls were open - one woman reported being bounced back and forth between two presincts.
People getting ballots for different districts (in particular Democrats getting ballots for an unopposed republican rather than their own competitive district).
Voting machines that were used but recorded no votes.
Sounds like a total train wreck, I'm sure we'll get a repeat in November, because this is a lot to fix.
But I'm sure a voter ID law or two, and a voter roll purge will be effective in fixing those issues.
I have a hunch that this same sort of shit impacted Jon Ossof's special election, too.
But Massachusetts doing this is symbolic and important because they were one of the first states to have voter registration in the first place, to try to keep Irish and German Catholics from voting way back in the day. Making the system opt-in instead of opt-out was always a tactic for disenfranchisement.
Unfortunately we can celebrate when we start seeing it in states Hilary didn't carry by 27 points. Although, I guess its a good buffer against a further degradation of our coalition. Hopefully they will take the next step and start expanding voting days, and trying better voting systems for their reps. STV for President and senators for example. That would be a solid wall against Republicans setting up fake third party candidates.
Georgia is trying to close 7/9 polling locations in a predominately black county. Because they are apparently panicked about the governor's race?
Don't forget to mention that the current Secretary of State, who can decide to close polling locations, is running for Governor.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Won't be long before Republicans start posting Khaddafi/Hussein/Kim electoral margins.
"How can we use TRAP laws to fuck over even more people"
I don't see this impacting much outside of college towns, but every little bit helps.
The solution to "some people in this community can't vote" should be "help everyone to vote," not "nobody in this community gets to vote."
*angryface*
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Every vote counts. Honestly I still don't understand why someone hasn't gamified getting Democrats to vote. Hell, Pokemon Go was huge last election. Have a special Pokemon that you can ONLY catch at polling locations, and you can only catch it if the GPS tracker records you going INSIDE the polling station and spending at least 15 minutes within 100 meters of it. Thats an extra few tens of thousands of young people who go to their polling locations and have to spend enough time there to vote.
There are all sorts of rewards you could offer people like this which would be hugely appealing to young people, but meaningless to old people.
Edit - And to be clear, why would any of these web games give a monkeys what old Republicans think of them. They already hate them, and don't play them.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be a bad idea necessarily, but I also think at this point it would come across as "hello, fellow kids."
According to a cursory Google search, Pokemon Go may have seen more players in May 2018 than anytime since the 2016 launch*. So, there are a LOT of players. Another article indicated that the game was installed on roughly 10% of Android devices in the US. That's... a lot of people.
Finding actual demographic data isn't proving easy (nor am I surprised by that), but I'm guessing that Pokemon Go players trend younger, which is a group that is notorious for not voting enough, and when they do they lean Democrat, so actually I do think that'd be a kind of solid targeted effort to help get the youth vote out.
Would it swing the country up in a blue tidal wave? No, probably not, but like *previous elections I won't go into details about*, we know that every little bit helps. Turning out even hundreds of thousands (tens of thousands, perhaps) of previously unlikely voters in that demographic could have an impact. Note, I did say AN impact, I'm not trying to oversell the results, but I can't see how it would hurt either.
And no, obviously it shouldn't be the sole or primary method of getting out new/more voters. That'd be dumb. But as a small part of a multi-pronged effort to get more people engaged in the process, it seems like a low risk/potentially high (comparatively) reward situation.
*Edit: yes, I'll also note that this seems to apply globally, not specific to the US, but I'm also going to guess that the US saw proportional (within a reasonable margin of error) increases in users as well. Point is, "how many people actually play?" is answered with "a lot, apparently".
"Yes, but if we closed them after election day these ableist minority voters would never learn their lesson and nothing would change!"
This might be a new low.