[EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
George Korbel
korbellaw at hotmail.com
Mon Sep 17 15:34:42 PDT 2012
Alas Mr. Bopp, you misunderstand still. Or perhaps you protest to strongly.
It is you who encourage government intrusion into our affairs. Carry a picture ID in order to vote you demand. Oh I know that you say it is to protect the system. The purity of our ballot. The sanctity of our elections and the holy water of our nationalism. But I have lived in Texas a long time. I certainly understand that that what people say is often not what they intend
And so I ask what do you really want. Seems to me that you want all of us to carry a government identification card. You masquerade as a conservative but are the true socialist here.
I do not question your right to advocate for a national identity card so why not come out and say it. It is a good debate to have. We share a Constitutional right to free speech. Lets us not beat around the proverbial bush.
Finally I say that the historical perhaps classical connotation of progressive really defines you more than me. Though not to a tea.
From: JBoppjr at aol.com
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:18:01 -0400
Subject: Re: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
To: korbellaw at hotmail.com; larrylevine at earthlink.net; rhasen at law.uci.edu; lminnite at gmail.com
CC: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Regarding:
well Mr. Bopp you just don't get it.
you forget or perhaps never knew about the fear that the poor have of dealing with the government.
LOL. Actually the government scares the hell out of me. That is why I don't want it to be big, intrusive, socialist, in charge of our political speech and our lives, etc. That is why I am a conservative, not a liberal -- opps, I mean a progressive.
So why then do you want the government in charge of everything, as it appears? Jim Bopp
In a message dated 9/17/2012 3:53:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, korbellaw at hotmail.com writes:
well Mr. Bopp you just don't get it.
you forget or perhaps never knew about the fear that the poor have of dealing with the government. There may be unpaid traffic tickets or even parking tickets. A couple of those could run a grand with penalties. The person may be driving without a license. The wife, husband, child/brother sister parent, grandparent or friend(s) who are living with the voter may be undocumented or have one of those tickets. There may be child support in arrearage. They may owe money on their cell phone, or master card and the bill collector will certainly have told them that they would go to prison if they didn't pay. They might not have reported all of their income and would be in fear of loosing their medicaid and SSI. Or there may just be fear that one of these could be a problem.
The idea of being unable to read is often combined with the language issue and fear of dealing with looking dumb at the DPS office. And frankly. when I took my child to get a DL a couple of years ago it was a multi hour effort in a hot smelly room. I lost my license a year ago and it was almost a full day. And the thuggish officers who were around even bothered me. I could not remember if I had paid all my parking tickets.
And then there is the trip to the DPS Office. In many rural counties it is a bulti multi hour journey to the nearest DPS office with the risk that it is not open that day or that the officers are out dealing with a cattle truck or hazardous waste truck turned over. At one point all of the solid waste from New York city was shipped to West Texas. Now that is highly toxic hazardous waste
In the cities the problem is even more acute. If one does not have a car, one travels by public transit. Our transit systems in our urban areas are very inefficient. For me to go from the West (Hispanic) or east (AfAm) side of san antonio to where the DPS Offices are I would have to walk several blocks or even longer and wait for and take at least one bus down town and then transfer at least once to get there. With the wait time and the transfer time this could be a multi hour effort. I had a nanny from the east side of San ANtonio and it took her an hour to get to my house in the morning and when I dropped her off it took me about 15 minutes to get to her house. Then there would be this multi hour wait in the hot smelly room to get to see an examiner only to be told I did not have the right documentation to get the state ID. They would likely ask me for a picture id to prove who I am.
And then there is the actual voting itself. This last couple of elections I said I did not have my registration and it took significantly longer to vote. I had to show my IDs and then they began wrighting down the ridiculously long number. A very small number on the DL and I was very uncomfortable when they asked for for more identification. i do not carry my passport and so I used my AMEx card and they began to write down that number too.
And Mr Bopp don't say that poor and minorities who live in Texas should not be fearful of these things or afraid of embarasing themselves or too poor to pay the 20$ for a birth certificate or not able to take a day away from minimum wage work to take the long bus ride to get a identity card. These are cold hard facts i deal with every day.
And I could go on and on but you get my drift.
It is easy for someone to say that these are insignificant but but to the poor--- they really are not insignificant.
And so should we, you ahd I, be concerned about the poor. I say that if one is a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or even a Baptist or some other religion there is mandated concern for the poor. It is at the heart of the human condition that is religion.
And remember that we are living in a time of enormous social and ethnic change in the United States. Better that the poor be a part of the system now. Because their children and their children's children will certainly be the system soon. They will be the elected officials that our children and grand children will deal with.
just saying.
But then I digress.
From: larrylevine at earthlink.net
To: jboppjr at aol.com; korbellaw at hotmail.com; rhasen at law.uci.edu; lminnite at gmail.com
CC: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2012 11:52:36 -0700
And claims of massive voter fraud with no evidence of any more than a handful. I’m checking out of this thread now. No one is going to change anyone’s mind. Ever notice how these things erupt on Sundays?
Larry
From: Jboppjr [mailto:jboppjr at aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2012 11:22 AM
To: larrylevine at earthlink.net; korbellaw at hotmail.com; rhasen at law.uci.edu; lminnite at gmail.com
Cc: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
So we have deja vu all over again. Millions claimed to be disenfranchised but not one live person identified in court. Jim Bopp
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note™, an AT&T LTE smartphone
-------- Original message --------
Subject: Re: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
From: Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net>
To: 'George Korbel' <korbellaw at hotmail.com>,rhasen at law.uci.edu,lminnite at gmail.com
CC: Re: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
So, shall we invite the U.N. and other nations to come in and oversee the election the way we do it in other countries where we don’t trust the electoral process? Should we give some international body the authority to void the election if it finds sufficient irregularities? Or should we just wait for the disenfranchised to rise up in revolt?
Larry
From: George Korbel [mailto:korbellaw at hotmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2012 8:40 AM
To: larrylevine at earthlink.net; rhasen at law.uci.edu; lminnite at gmail.com
Cc: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
an ode to a passing effective effort.
Well I think we are watching this election turn into a train wreck in slow motion.
Nothing can really be done to undo the problem before the election. Even if the Courts rule in favor of the plaintiffs and enjoin the identification statutes et al, the harm is already done. People are confused and frightened
This is the strategy that Karl Rove used to take over Texas. I have lived through this movie before. Texas was a nominal Democratic right of center state until the late 198os and early 1990s. Rove used felons lists and signs warning blacks that they could be arrested if they voted. Press conferences were announced in the Rio Grande Valley announcing that the US Attorneys were launching investigations into election fraud. Never mind none was ever found. Local election officials were told to purge the polls. On election day Republican Poll watchers slowed down the lines in minority areas by challenging everyone to produce ids Sound familiar. Minority boxes ran short of ballots and were delayed in getting the supply supplemented. Never mind that we litigated most of these things and had the enforcement enjoined. It scared the minority and the voters. It was all to scare the minority voters. And it worked and mark my word it will this November in the rust belt and in the other close states.
It is easy to point fingers. Some say that the Department of Justice has taken some dives on this sort of thing-- read Georgia. Or that the Democratic party was too busy to make plans to deal with them Or that Minority organizations were slow to litigate these things. In sum, true or not and however else the minority the poor voters are intimidated and the numbers will reflect it.
Sad commentary on our election system--when to win one tries to intimidate the minority and the poor and then professes that he or she is a Christian of the first water. This too will pass. But not soon enough.
Just saying.
> From: larrylevine at earthlink.net
> To: rhasen at law.uci.edu; lminnite at gmail.com
> Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2012 23:31:31 -0700
> CC: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
>
> Isn't that the state's purpose - to disenfranchise certain voters by any
> means possible, erect barriers to voting now and don't worry if they get
> tossed out by the court after Nov. 6. I understand the hair you are
> splitting, Rick, but it's just that. A voter who cannot vote because of an
> official action by the state that makes it more difficult to vote is
> disenfranchised. Those who are most likely to have trouble obtaining the
> required ID are the very same people who are most likely to not be made
> aware of the new rules put in place to keep them from becoming enfranchised,
> or in the case of those who have been voting for year, continuing to be
> enfranchised.
> Larry
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rick
> Hasen
> Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:39 PM
> To: Lorraine Minnite
> Cc: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
>
> I would say they would be disenfranchised by the failure of the state to
> explain and implement the requirement.
>
> Rick Hasen
>
> Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse typos.
>
> On Sep 15, 2012, at 9:32 PM, "Lorraine Minnite" <lminnite at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > One of the problems highlighted in the Pennsylvania case is that there
> > are people who think they have the ID, but in fact, what they have
> > would not comply with the state's new rules. According to the
> > Barreto/Sanchez survey results presented in court, 12.1 percent of
> > registered voters (or
> > 997,494 people) thought they had the proper ID, but actually do not.
> > If these people believe they are in compliance and they are not, when
> > they go to the polls, they risk disfranchisement. If they believe
> > they are in compliance, they are not going to do anything to obtain the
> proper
> > ID. If nothing happens between now and the election and these people
> > go to the polls and are turned away or don't get provisional ballots
> > counted because they can't produce the requisite ID in time, aren't
> > they disfranchised - at least in this election?
> >
> > On 9/15/12 11:47 PM, Rick Hasen wrote:
> >> If someone cannot read and cannot pass a literacy test, that person
> >> is disenfranchised by a literacy test.
> >>
> >> If someone cannot afford to pay a poll tax, that person is
> >> disenfranchised by a poll tax.
> >>
> >> There are other reasons to object to the use of these tests applied
> >> to others aside from actual disenfranchisement. For example,
> >> literacy tests and poll taxes might be seen as not rationally related
> >> to the exercise of the franchise. This is the position I take. The
> >> Supreme Court split on that question, upholding literacy test (in
> >> Lassiter in
> >> 1950) and striking down poll taxes (in Harper in 1966).
> >>
> >> In addition, literacy tests also were administered in racially unfair
> >> ways, and were often administered in an arbitrary way.
> >>
> >> Under my view, a person who does not have an i.d. and has to go
> >> through the hassle of getting the i.d. is not disenfranchised, but a
> >> person who does not have an i.d. and cannot afford the underlying
> >> documents to the i.d. is disenfranchised. There are be line drawing
> >> problems in deciding whether someone is too poor to afford the
> >> underlying documents, but there will clearly be people on the side of
> >> the line who could afford the i.d. and those who cannot.
> >>
> >>
> >> On 9/15/12 8:33 PM, Michael McDonald wrote:
> >>> By this logic, literacy tests didn't disenfranchise anyone, only
> >>> those who were unduly burdened because they didn't learn how to
> >>> read. Nor did poll taxes, since a poor person who wanted to vote could
> just skip a few meals.
> >>> And if you want to flip it around for contemporary Republican
> >>> constituencies, keeping in mind that literacy tests and poll taxes
> >>> were originally aimed at Southern African-American Republicans, our
> >>> military personnel in war zones were not unduly burdened by
> >>> registration laws that required applications to be notarized since
> >>> they could take extraordinary measures to get the notary.
> >>>
> >>> But, perhaps you have another word for "disenfranchised" that
> >>> describes people in these situations?
> >>>
> >>> ============
> >>> Dr. Michael P. McDonald
> >>> Associate Professor
> >>> George Mason University
> >>> 4400 University Drive - 3F4
> >>> Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
> >>>
> >>> 703-993-4191 (office)
> >>> e-mail: mmcdon at gmu.edu
> >>> web: http://elections.gmu.edu
> >>> twitter: @ElectProject
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Rick Hasen [mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu]
> >>> Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 11:12 PM
> >>> To: mmcdon at gmu.edu
> >>> Cc: law-election at UCI.edu
> >>> Subject: Re: [EL] Up to 1 Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement
> >>>
> >>> Based on a conversation with a voting rights activist last week, I
> >>> think part of the issue here is definitional. I define a person as
> >>> "disenfranchised" by a voter id law if that person literally cannot
> >>> vote because of the law but who wishes to cast a valid vote. The
> >>> most important cases would be: (1) a person who cannot get the
> >>> underlying documentation needed to get a state issued i.d. (such as
> >>> there are no birth records); (2) a person who cannot afford to get
> >>> the underlying documentation or get to the location to get the i.d.;
> >>> and (3) a person who has a physical impairment or religious
> >>> objection which prevents getting the i.d.
> >>> I would not include within this definition people (many, many people
> >>> in Pa., apparently), for whom getting the i.d. would be a big
> >>> hassle, and who may be deterred by this hassle.
> >>>
> >>> While the numbers show that there are many people who currently lack
> >>> the i.d., it is actually very hard to find many actual people who
> >>> (1) lack the i.d., (2) cannot get the i.d. because of the reasons
> >>> listed above;
> >>> (3) cannot vote some other way without i.d. (such as an absentee
> >>> ballot for need in PA); but (4) want to vote in the election. If
> >>> this is our universe of "disenfranchised" voters, it is clearly much
> >>> smaller than 1 million voters in PA.
> >>>
> >>> If you count as disenfranchised those other voters for whom getting
> >>> the i.d. would be a big hassle, and who may deterred from voting by
> >>> this hassle, then the numbers are undoubtedly higher (and my sense
> >>> is that Democrats are much more concerned about this group than the
> >>> much smaller group of the people i would consider disenfranchised by
> >>> a voter id law). But I don't count these voters are actually
> disenfranchised.
> >>>
> >>> To be clear, I don't support the idea of putting voters through this
> >>> hassle on the state level given the paltry evidence of the law's
> >>> supposed anti-fraud benefits. But that's a different question from
> >>> the number of "disenfranchised" voters.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 9/15/12 7:35 PM, Michael McDonald wrote:
> >>>> Not sure who the "we" is. The 1 million number is consistent with
> >>>> what was presented by plaintiff's expert witness, Matt Barreto.
> >>>> With approximately
> >>>> 9.5 million eligible voters in Pennsylvania, and if the survey
> >>>> evidence is correct that 10% do not have the forms of id required
> >>>> by the state, you
> >>> get
> >>>> a number of up to 1 million disenfranchised.
> >>>>
> >>>> Perhaps what Rick means is that, well, the turnout rate among those
> >>>> individuals is exceedingly low, so they have already
> >>>> disenfranchised themselves by not registering and voting. This is
> >>>> what I find to be most pernicious about the district court's logic
> >>>> and weighing of the evidence, that it is acceptable to erect high
> >>>> barriers to voting among those with
> >>> low
> >>>> turnout rates because they already do not vote. The judge, for
> >>>> example, dismissed Barreto's survey because the sample frame was of
> >>>> eligible
> >>> voters,
> >>>> not registered voters.
> >>>>
> >>>> ============
> >>>> Dr. Michael P. McDonald
> >>>> Associate Professor
> >>>> George Mason University
> >>>> 4400 University Drive - 3F4
> >>>> Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
> >>>>
> >>>> 703-993-4191 (office)
> >>>> e-mail: mmcdon at gmu.edu
> >>>> web: http://elections.gmu.edu
> >>>> twitter: @ElectProject
> >>>> "Could Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Help Romney Win Race? Up to 1
> >>>> Million Voters Face Disenfranchisement"
> >>>> Posted on September 15, 2012 5:37 pm by Rick Hasen Here is a link
> >>>> to a Democracy Now! program. I haven't had a chance to listen to
> >>>> the program but the 1 million disenfranchised voters seems quite
> >>>> high and not supported at all by what we know.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Law-election mailing list
> >>>> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> >>>> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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