Voting is a right--gun ownership is not

Just remember that they want you to vote against your interests--and we have already had one party admission from you lot that you do it. Thanks for not being as "brite" as you lot think you are.

Republican Desperation

via Bark Bark Woof Woof 

ALEC on the right to vote

ALEC treasurer Chip Rogers' argument for voter ID laws:

"ALEC treasurer Chip Rogers' argument for voter ID deserves to be quoted in full: "If I were to go to Wal-Mart and I were to attempt to buy a bottle of beer, I would assume that Wal-Mart would ask me for identification. I would hope that most Americans cherish the right to vote a little more than they do the right to buy a bottle of beer."

Funny, but they require ID to vote, but aren't too keen on strong background checks for firearms purchases. That sort of thing doesn't offend the Second Amendent according to Heller-McDonald:

Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Heller at 54-5

Never on a Sunday? Or maybe we should......

Cross posted from Penigma

When I first kicked around writing about this topic -- I didn't know why we voted on Tuesday either. But I like history, I had heard of this bill and this movement, so I became curious. Blogging is where you all get to see the outcome of what makes me curious. But this video is a better explanation than anything I could write:

There is an organization that intrigued me, mentioned in the above video, Why Tuesday. I am very proud that Minnesota has such a consistently good voter turnout, relative to other states - we are usually in the top couple of states, along with Wisconsin for voter turnout.
I have participated in get out the vote efforts, in phone banks, calling people to remind them to vote, to encourage them to vote, to help them find where they should vote. And by 'where they should vote', I mean where they REALLY should vote, not like Republican efforts to suppress voter participation. FYI, I have done that for all voters whom I have spoken with, not just those voting for a candidate I support. I think this gives me the moral high ground over conservatives who use every means possible to suppress voter participation for other candidates, by calculated bad legal means and outright illegal means.
For this post, I looked up our turnout for recent elections.  In 2008, it was 77.8% per the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.  I won't post the excerpt, because it runs long, but it addresses our region as well as our state, and I encourage readers to follow this link to it.  It notes reasons for why we are typically the highest voting turnout state, including our same day registration laws -- the kinds of laws that conservatives want to gut.

In 2010, we were still the state with the highest voter turnout in the nation, at 55.4% of eligible voters, per this City Pages report, which noted the National Average was 40.3%.  Only 32% of  New Yorkers voted.  The Council of State Governments web site had a more in depth analysis of voting patterns - voting patterns our Republican government wants to change - and not for the better:

For policymakers looking to improve voter turnout, no state offers a better model than Minnesota.
At least so says George Mason University professor Michael McDonald in a paper examining the 2010 midterm elections and historical voter turnout data.
“Make it easy for people to vote, educate your citizenry and hold interesting elections,” McDonald writes. Using that formula, Minnesota had a turnout rate of 55.5 percent, highest in the nation.
McDonald calculates the rate by dividing the number of votes cast for highest office by the total voting-eligible population. Eight other U.S. states had turnout rates in 2010 of 50 percent or more, including Iowa, South Dakota and Wisconsin. North Dakota had the region’s fifth-highest rate.
With the exception of South Dakota, McDonald notes, these five Midwestern states have at least one thing in common: they allow Election Day registration. (Only nine U.S. states permit it, and they all fall above the national median for turnout.)
High-turnout states also tend to have larger percentages of residents who have at least attended some college classes. There is some evidence, too, that the use of mail ballots has a positive effect.
“The two states that conduct all-mail ballot elections — Oregon and Washington — are in the top five,” McDonald writes.

The group Why Tuesday had this interesting information, comparing us - a nation that prides itself on being a democracy, the first national democracy, a model for world wide democracy.  OUR voter turnout rates are embarrassing, in contrast to other democracies in the world.

Our last national election, Minnesota was number 1; we turned out fewer voters than Jamaica turns out.
Instead of trying to make it harder to vote, instead of wasting $18,000 of tax payer's money on defending a very poor Voter ID Amendment that should never have been passed in the first place because it is a bad, big government over-reach solution to a non-problem -- the much ballyhooed voter fraud in the Franken /Coleman hotly contested election for example, was one guy  WHO VOTED FOR the Republican candidate COLEMAN  -- we should have a bi-partisan effort to support weekend elections, and getting more legal voters out to the polls to vote.
from the PiPress:

The Legislative  Coordinating Commission, acting on behalf of the Legislature,
voted Thursday to hire an outside law firm to file a motion to intervene in the
case. The cost is $18,000.

What, they haven't spent enough tax payer money on outside legal representation with the $50k to defend against their own little horror, the poster boy for delusions of entitlement, Michael Brodkorb?
We should be finding ways to encourage legal voters to participate, we should be searching for common sense solutions to bring UP our voter participation rate, not make it even lower -- it is too low as it is.  And we should be spending more money to have an educated electorate, statewide and nationwide.  Instead our Republican legislature looks for more ways to engage in corrupt partisan politics that waste tax payer money, that would be far more costly to implement.
Don't take my word for it; there are many sources that have examined how much more costly elections become with voter ID.  The most comprehensive study that I could find can be downloaded for free here as a standard pdf.
The Cost of Voter ID Laws: What the Courts Say
Publications

By Vishal Agraharkar, Wendy Weiser, and Adam Skaggs

– 02/17/11

Based on a comprehensive review of every court case in which a photo ID law has been challenged, this paper examines of the costs states must incur if they decide to implement photo ID requirements for voters.

In a difficult fiscal environment, citizens may reasonably question whether there are more pressing needs on which to spend their tax dollars than photo ID rules, and state legislators should seriously consider whether photo ID laws are worth their considerable costs. In doing so, legislators should consider the myriad other measures already in place in their states to guard against voter fraud—which have been very effective at deterring such fraud —as well as less expensive measures to increase the security of elections, including voter ID laws that allow voters who do not have photo ID to demonstrate their identities at the polls by other means. Legislators who still wish to pursue photo ID requirements for voting must ensure that the laws provide for free photo IDs, ensure that IDs are reasonably accessible to all eligible voters, and include sufficient voter education and outreach programs and poll worker training.

We should be looking at the potential benefits to switching to weekend voting - like so many other nations in the world, including those voting on Sunday, June 17, 2012.  We should not be reducing our already low voter participation by voter suppression measures, like voter ID, reduced early voting, more stringent and restrictive absentee / mail in ballots, and eliminating same day voter registration.

Our voter participation is already TOO low.  Don't make it harder for legal voters to vote; don't support voter ID. Support instead a change from silly Tuesday voting to weekend voting.  Either we are the leading democracy in the world, or we aren't.  If we are going to give lip service to patriotism about freedom and liberty - vote, and do whatever it takes to encourage everyone else to vote as well, and to be informed and educated voters.  That might mean ending Tuesday voting.  It definitely means ending Voter ID laws  and bad voter roll purges.

Hooray!

I look forward to federal legislation that undoes these voter ID laws, excessive legislation that addresses a non-existent problem, a problem that is a right wing myth rather than fact.  The issues of myth versus fact, of ideology versus reality, is pertinent as it is reflected in other aspects of our nation, and our differences.

There have been things about the Obama administration which were disappointing; this is not one of them.

From Reuters and MSNBC.com:
law blocked by Justice Department

'Non-white voters' are 'significantly burdened,' department alleges

 By Jeremy Pelofsky

updated 2 hours 6 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday blocked a new South Carolina law that requires voters to have photo identification because of concerns it would hurt minorities' ability to cast a ballot.

Republican Gov. Nikki Haley in May signed into law a measure that says voters must show a driver's license, passport or military identification along with their voter registration card in order to vote.
Under the law, anyone who wants to vote but does not have a photo identification must obtain a new voter registration card that includes a photo. A birth certificate or passport can be used to prove identity.
The Justice Department said the requirement could harm the right to vote of tens of thousands of people, noting that just over a third of the state's minorities who are registered voters did not have a driver's license needed to cast a ballot.
"The state's data demonstrate that non-white voters are both significantly burdened" by the law and "disproportionately unlikely to possess the most common types of photo identification" needed, Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said in a letter to the state.
The state can appeal the decision at the Justice Department or in federal court. Attempts to reach a spokesman for Haley were not immediately successful.
Democrats have described the law as a "voter suppression" effort against minorities who historically do not always have photo identification cards. Republicans countered that their goal was to prevent voter fraud.

However, Perez said that South Carolina's submission to the Justice Department did not offer any evidence of voter fraud that was not addressed by existing law and that "arguably could be deterred by requiring voters to present only photo identification at the polls."
The Justice Department said plans by state officials to provide exemptions to the photo identification requirement were incomplete and vague. The state also has not finalized education and training materials.
If those issues were addressed, the Justice Department said the state could resubmit its plans and officials would consider revising its position.
The Justice Department move marks an escalation in the battle between the Obama administration and Republicans who control the legislatures in some states just 11 months before the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.
Obama lost South Carolina in the 2008 presidential race by a nine-point margin to his Republican opponent Sen. John McCain.
Under the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, certain states like South Carolina must seek approval from the Justice Department or the federal courts for changes made to state voting laws and boundaries for voting districts.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month said his team was reviewing changes to voting laws in other states including Florida and Texas and will challenge any that are discriminatory in violation of the federal voting rights law.
"The reality is that — in jurisdictions across the country — both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common," he said in a speech in Austin, Texas.
The Justice Department has also challenged a new election map drawn by Republicans in Texas, arguing that it does not fairly represent the exponential growth in Hispanic voters. Hispanics largely have supported Democrats in past elections.