Candid Republican operators admit that voter ID laws are about disenfranchisement

boing
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Take heart, there are small glimmers for the future. Corruption by cash is entrenched, but not intrinsic to the system. Maybe enough candidates will begin to figure this out they won’t be quite so beholden.

The Republican’s concerted national gerrymandering efforts have been a great success, but they are not insurmountable.

I don’t think we’ve hit the far side of the pendulum’s swing yet, but it is coming. Hopefully we can keep up momentum once it starts swinging back.

There’s a farm team system for politicians in this country. Get out there for your local progressives, be it school board, city council, county commissioner or state rep.

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The mere fact that only Republicans are doing it is prima facie evidence there is something wrong with it.

Wait.

The mere fact that only Republicans are doing it is prima facie evidence there is something wrong with it.

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Well, Clearly yours would be the final word as to what you meant with your statement.

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When your comments are stupid, fixing is extra-polite.

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GANGS: gangs form in disenfranchised neighborhoods that feel that the system cannot or will not represent their interests. They form an in-group out-group mentality and exploit that to build armies of soldiers that attack other gangs over territory which is used to facilitate illegal activities that make up the local economy. They go back about as far as what we consider civilization.

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Isn’t that what they’re doing? I think they’re jumping the whale shark.

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Dammit, you’ve made a liar of me. My only other regret is that I also have only one like to give you too.

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I thought of that, but gangs are still subject to the nature of society. We don’t live in a Mad Max world where anyone can do anything as long as they have the force/violence to back it up. Yes, gangs create systems that are separate from mainstream society, but they’re still affected by it. Gang members get arrested, incarcerated, shot by police.

It sounded as if @popobawa4u was referring to people setting up alternate governments, but short of some eccentric pseudo-secessionist and independence movements, that just isn’t happening in the US.

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They’re incredibly surmountable. The issue is largely one of time.

Congressional districts, which hold down ballot, are set up based on the census. But the census is only done every 10 years. So you only get a real opportunity for a reset of those districts every decade.

Current GOP gerrymandering was conducted over the last 2 decades based on the last two censuses. First establishing and then expanding a disproportionate control over number of Congressional districts (and there by house and state offices). They’ve engaged in so called “court packing” where by under Bush they shoved through as many ideologically and party loyal judges they could. And under Obama used obstruction to prevent any but the same hitting the bench. Big chunks of the federal and even state level benches are badly under manned. Seats simply left vacant where they can’t be filled with GOP partisans (the bullshit over Garland for the supreme court is just the highest profie\stakes vrerson of this).

So with courts disinterested, or unlikely to do anything but back GOP redistricting tactics. And the GOP largely embedded enough at the state level to keep the gerrymandering up. There was little hope in rolling back any of this shit. Or doing anything about right wing obstruction.

Which is where 2020 comes in. New census means new districts. And we are\were unlikely to see much of a shift in power in either the House, or state to county offices until then. New census, with a hard fight over redistricting from 2020 onward. Offered the best long term plan on that. There have been serious demographic changes in the last decade, and even more since 2000. Changes predicted to favor the left\dnc ( and that already seem to be based on electorate changes the past decade).

So really this election. And the strategy for breaking up the GOP’s undemocratic lock on so many offices. Was to hold the white house, extant state down offices, and maybe pick up something in the senate. Clench your ass for 4 more years of unprecedented, butt hurt, obstruction. Then do your best to crack this up come 2020.

This year is changing that a bit. Trump is a disaster. He’s likely to lose badly. He’s already having a negative effect down ballot. With states and seats coming unexpectedly into play. Scalia is strict constructioning with angels now. So the top court is instantly less willing to allow games with districts, and the lower courts seem suddenly emboldened to slap this kind of bulshit down.

If Hillary wins, and if there’s even a slightly larger than expected shift for other seats. The left is in a much stronger position to make progress on the subject than expected. A Democrat’s appointment to the supreme court means the courts can practically be used to attack this stuff early. And even slight shifts in the disposition of state legislatures create a stronger position for non-biased districts once they start getting redrawn.

That said with the situation as it is we’re unlikely to see serious loss of GOP control of the house or state legislatures this year. Its just not all that possible the way things are currently drawn. But if Trump does as poorly as many hope (or fear YMMV) then we’ll we serious progress in 4 to 6 years rather than 8. And if we get some nice court decisions maybe even by the midterms. I suspect we might see some cases being brought after the election. Once its absolutely certain Obama or Hillary will be placing the next supreme court justice.

Should trump prevail? Well aside from all the other garbage the courts become a really bad avenue for reform on this front.

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You’re right that gangs are still subjected to certain elements of society, but gangs can grow to become something more if the disenfranchisement runs deep enough or they grow powerful enough to corrupt local officials, or beyond if the government is sufficiently weak as in Mexico or Russia after the fall of the USSR. There’s a point where gangs can become the mainstream of society. However, as you say, the US is not at that point, or even close to it, but should the divide continue to grow…

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Do you have any reason to expect the GOP-dominated (because gerrymander) state legislatures to do their district-drawing job any more honestly in 2020 than they did in 2010?

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We can’t rely on them. We’re going to have to go down to their offices and demand to hold their hand as they draw up the districts.

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Hence the courts. Lawsuits over gerrymandering have a deep history. Typically resulting in restrictions on who can redistrict how and when, and the imposition of independent boards drawing clean districts based purely on geography, or federal oversight.

Previous to this year the approach would be to make small gains where you could, allowing leverage for small changes to enable further gains. And so forth. Combined with a push for new federal rules/legislation to foster or force the creation of those clean geographic districts. Hoping to have enough impact/leverage by the next round of redistricting to wind up with a level playing field.

Now there’s the possibility that those small gains might be less small and that they will come early. That opposition to federally imposed reform can be lessened or defeated. And critically the courts have become a cleaner pathway to rolling back what’s already been done, and preventing it from happening again. Rather than waiting to start over.

With Scalia there was a not insignificant chance that a gerrymandering case pushed to the Supreme Court would result in a totes fucked up ruling that legitimized the sorry state of affairs we’re in. And made it next to permanent. That’s pretty unlikely now. And the last year has shown an increasing number of judges, including GOP placed ones, push back heavily against discriminatory laws. Particularly on “religious liberty” laws, abortion restrictions, and voter suppression. This sort of shit is why they packed the bench in first place, and it’s still going upside down on them.

All possibilities though. But we’re already seeing a court based push back on voter id/supression this year. That’s much earlier than I expected it to happen. And before last year it didn’t really seem like anyone was expecting it or planning for it.

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I’m less encouraged by those rulings than some are. To me, most of them seem to be along the lines of “you introduced laws A, B and C; they are all obviously intended to suppress the minority vote, and your justification for B is prima facie bullshit. But you have a semi-plausible excuse for A and C, so we’ll let you keep those”.

The end result is that all of the GOP states end up with in-force voter suppression laws that go right to the edge of legality. The voter suppression effect is somewhat lessened, but it’s still there. They don’t need to stop every Democrat from voting; just enough to tip the balance.

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And since the Supreme Court hasn’t weighed in they can be challenged again. Where conservatives lose they won’t risk escalating to the highest court for fear of a decision that totally blocks all such legislation nationally. Where liberals lose they can now appeal without fear that such laws will simply be rubber stamped into federal law.

It’s a chip away at it kind of thing, and we’re looking at a near total reversal of the dynamic. There’s been very slow movement from the left on whole hosts of constitutional challenges. Largely down to fears that the pretty obviously partisan, right skewing court would totally sand bag them. With Scalia dead that’s gone. That’s why Congress is blocking the SC appointment. Cripple the court, hope to hold it up till Donny can fill the gap with a Scalia clone. Get back to manipulating the courts to embed your policy positions.

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I wish they would jump into the shark…

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Ugh, go back to lying!

I guess their voters are more than comfortable electing racist, anti-democracy, liars who seem to want to emulate China’s one-party system…

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Nobody spoke about altruism and it shouldn’t even enter the conversation. Rather, what’s legal and what’s unconstitutional.

Voter expansion is legal. Getting a legitimate voter to vote legally is good. If it’s done without any coercion of the voter in any way, it’s moral and even enlightened.

Voter suppression aimed at certain legitimate voters is blatantly immoral. It is discriminatory and racist if the target is a race or demographic, it is certainly not only illegal, it’s unconstitutional. And it’s electoral fraud, misrepresentation and an affront towards the genuine fight against voting fraud.

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It’s not only unconstitutional, it’s blatant fraud! Curiously enough, against the genuine effort to combat voting fraud.

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Separate and different. Perhaps they should head in a different direction. What’s that in Afrikaans again?

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