Healey’s ‘Solution’ Number Two:
Require voters to present a valid ID at eh polls to prove citizenship-
“…This will prevent non-citizens form voting…”
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Well Ms. Healey-
This just in from the Associated Press:
Voter ID law is blocked
9th Circuit grants injunction, bars its use on Nov. 7
By Paul Davenport
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHOENIX A federal appellate court on Thursday blocked enforcement of a 2004 state law requiring Arizona voters to present identification when casting ballots and to submit proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
Witthout comment, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a motion by critics of the law for an injunction that bars enforcement of the law’s voter-identification requirements during the Nov. 7 general election.
It also bars enforcement of a requirement that people produce specified proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Howard Dean just got finished telling anyone who’ll listen that non-citizens DO NOT VOTE! It’s hard enough to get citizens to bother registering to vote. You think the undocumented immigrant is going to risk everything to go register with the State to vote? The only reason the Republicans are pushing this all over the country is to drum up more fear and hate against immigrants. It’s race-baiting. Just like Healey’s new ads and her robocalls about quotas. Phil Johnston was totally right.
are making me wait in those really long lines to vote….
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Oh, wait, no:
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In a sad way I guess it is good news.
Some states do require photo ID’s now, but it has nothing to do with illegal immigrants. It’s to prevent poor, and usually minority, voters from voting, as they usually vote Democratic.
Not saying you’re wrong about this connection, whether it is the specific intent or not, but:
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Are minority people less likely to have a driver’s license or non-driver ID? Why is it so hard to get one? Why does nay problem just affect minorities?
In the case of urban poor, I would tend to think many of them don’t own cars and never have, especially in cities with adequate public transportation (which, though this is pure speculation, may be somewhat correlated with being more liberal-leaning), and non-driver’s-license photo IDs are things even many car-owning middle-class suburbanites don’t know exist. Not to mention that for many of the very poor, the time (possibly as much as several hours) waiting at the RMV and the fees for the test and license may be more than they can afford (for example, someone who works two full-time minimum wage jobs to make barely enough money to scrape by supporting a family). And driver’s licenses are mailed from the RMV; that tends to exclude the homeless. Now, getting a different sort of photo ID might be an option, such as a state liquor ID or some such, but I don’t know much about the process for those, which might very well be almost as onerous as getting a driver’s license (not to mention that 18, 19 and 20-year-olds can’t get them!). So, although I haven’t seen any actual numbers, and I’m not sure what proportion of these groups of people do vote, or would if it were easier, though I’m pretty confident that it’s more than 0 and less than 100%, I can certainly see that requiring photo IDs to vote could be a distinct hardship that would prevent people from voting who had a legal right to, and the people it would impact most would be the poor.
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The problem doesn’t just affect minorities, by any stretch of the imagination, but minorities are disproportionately represented among the poor, especially the urban poor, so it does look like it hits them hard.
Speaking in broad generalities, the urban poor are usually minorities, while the rural poor are usually white. This is not true in all cities or for all people, but it is definately a national trend (remember the national shock at Boston’s white “underclass” because everyone in the inner city is supposedly black?). The urban poor have no need for, and oftentimes no access to (car insurance is much higher in cities), cars, and therefore no need for and maybe even no access to a driver’s license.
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Meanwhile, the rural poor are predominately white (again, we’re talking broad generalities), politically conservative, and have cars because they’re, well, rural and have to get around somehow.
Let’s see….
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Attack your opponent — who, unlike you, has actually worked in a courtroom — because he believes that the state has an obligation to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt under Article V.
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Check.
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Endorse a proposal grounded in a false proposition that illegal immigrants are flocking to the polls — and which one court after another has found to be in fact an attempt to disenfranchise minorities and the poor.
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Check.
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Endorse the Bush Administration’s efforts to suspend the right to habeus corpus — a concept dating back to the Magna Carta and enshrined at Article I, Section 9.
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Check.
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Belong to an administration which has repeatedly vetoed budget provisions required to fund the Committee for Public Counsel Services and allow indigent persons accused of crimes which they may not have committed to have access to justice.
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Check.
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Belong to an administration which, despite tough law-and-order talk, has vetoed budgetary provisions required to raise the salaries of assistant district attorneys and allow them to concentrate on the cases they need to prove instead of taking second jobs as waitresses and bartenders to make ends meet.
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Check.
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Belong to an adminstration which has routinely underfunded the state’s forensic laboratory — so that the right to a speedy trial is sacrificed while the samples wait for testing, and the district attorney’s need to present accurate information is compromised.
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Check.
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All these provisions endorsed by a woman whose vaunted experience as a criminologist consists of being a part-time consultant to a contractor for the the Justice Department and teaching one course in criminal justice (per Janet Wu’s report on WCVB tonight).
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That’s rich.
And make this a full diary. I’ll gladly recommend it. This is great stuff, and it’s exactly what the infantry -us- needs to be getting out as an alternative to Healey’s cop-killer rapist-lover bullsh.t.
I’ll report and add further comment.
Here’s a free cite. Worcester Magazine writes this week about how the DA race here has hopefully resulted in a medical examiner’s office here in Worcester again. The last one was closed in 2004 on the Romney/Healey watch, and it has resulted in police and families of the deceased having to wait with corpses for several hours at times.
Here.
Rollbiz — I have edited and reposted my comment as a full diary.
Anything like the circuit judge who said the word ‘God’ had to go from the Pledge of Allegiance?
Unless you’ve got an issue with having three independent branches of government, balance of power, and all those kinds of old-fashioned American values, I’m not sure what your point is. Are you only OK with judges that rule to your liking?
Or have his thoughts on that changed since he left the DOJ?
I am very sensitive to the reasons people oppose the requirement of an ID when voting. It absolutely has a de facto discriminatory effect on lower income individuals, plus it makes the process take longer.
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On the other hand, not requiring an ID makes voting fraud much easier. It would be very, very easy for me to vote many times on November 7 without getting caught. All I’d have to do is find a few of my male friends or coworkers around my age who aren’t planning to vote (easily discerned through conversation) and show up at their polling places claiming to be them (and providing their addresses).
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So, like most political issues, it’s not a black-and-white thing. Both requiring and not requiring an ID affects the integrity of the democratic process, just in different ways.
of voter fraud is a real concern. To have an effect on the outcome of most elections 100’s of people would have be willing to engage in this conspiracy. When a conspiracy requires so many people to be actively involved it is likley to fail. You only need one person to spill the beans. This type of fraud is called “voter integrity fraud” and is usually carried out by someone who is registered to vote in two places. Not via the means you described.
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The much more common type of voter fraud is “voter-access” fraud, which occurs when a legally registered voter is illegitimately denied the vote or their legitimately casted vote is not counted. ID’s do nothing to stem this type of voter fraud. This includes such things as having your name on a felons list when you are not, or the distribution of pamphlets stating that Dems vote on one day and Repubs on another.
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Unless ID’s are free and readily availible (easy access for obtaining them by urban poor) then an ID is a type of poll tax.