Observation
by digby
I’m listening to Sarah Palin right now and she no longer has an accent. She’s not droppin’ her gs (she didn’t even say “workin’ instead of working) or talking in the strange cadence that makes her sound like a combination of Lawrence Welk and Annie Oakley.
Why, if I didn’t know better I’d say she’s forgetting who she is.
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Election Protection
by digby
We’ve all heard a lot about vote fraud, vote suppression and are expecting some activity at the polls tomorrow. luckily, there are organizations out there to help tomorrow if you see something weird or have a problem. The Election Protection coalition has put together a free hotline and a web site dedicated to tracking voting irregularities.
Make a note:
1-866-OUR-VOTE
This is from their blog today:
Yesterday alone, the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline received over 8,000 calls from across the country. Some key issues:
To search Election Protection’s voter database, visit www.ourvotelive.org.
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An Observation About Changeling
by tristero
I hope Dennis won’t mind my straying yet again onto his beat. I just saw Changeling, the new Clint Eastwood film starring Angelina Jolie and I think it’s one of his best films – not on the level of Unforgiven, to be sure, but still an excellent movie. I’d be curious to get his take on it (Dennis, have you reviewed it? I couldn’t find anything).
I was curious about the story behind the movie so I tried a google. The ways in which it differs from the actual true story confirmed some thoughts i had about some of the subtexts Eastwood works with.
The rest of this post is now under a Severe Spoiler Alert. Please see the movie first.
The story probably came to the attention of Eastwood and/or his collaborators from this article in the LA times from February 7, 1999. Eastwood and Co. then filled in more details regarding the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Here’s one link to that piece of the story and here’s Wikipedia.
To simplify, Eastwood went far further than he had to in order to sanitize the story. Partly, that’s because what really happened was so ghastly it comes close to Ed Gein territory and that, for Eastwood’s audience today, wouldn’t work commercially. Gone, of course, are unnecessary complications, like Collins’ jailbird of a husband (complete with a perfectly serviceable red herring that her son was kidnapped by an ex-con seeking revenge on her husband). But Eastwood also dramatically cleaned up the sordid tale of the Northcott mudererers, eliminating, for example, Gordon Stewart’s mother, who, unlike her son, actually was convicted of the murder of Walter Collins. (Stewart was convicted of other murders). Also missing from the film is the sexual abuse and the tortures of the poor children. And to top it off, Eastwood further cut a stomach-churning tale of incest as well as other family perversions including a truly insane level of pathological lying.
By eliminating most of the uniquely bizarre details of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, Eastwood went further than needed, I think. After all, this is Dirty Harry and the producer of the lurid Tightrope. In Changeling, however, he stripped the murders of nearly all of their fascination for us morbid voyeurs. True, they don’t become exactly generic slasher murders, but they don’t stick in the craw the way, say, the murders in Zodiac do. Tamping down our interest in seeing/hearing about unique ways to perpetrate atrocities enables him to place the main focus of the film on Christine’s story, as she desperately calls the cops and becomes victimized by what passed for law enforcement in Los Angeles at the end of the 20’s.
And that’s when things get interesting, because in a very real sense, Changeling becomes a film about a corrupt, violent, law-ignoring government, contemptuous of those it rules, manufacturing fake feelgood stories to deflect criticism and investigation of its abuses. It is also the story of a compliant, lazy press far too eager to print those stories: they easily fit standard sentimental journalistic narratives of how a “tough love” law-and-order government should behave. Should you dare to question the government and/or the press accounts of their behavior, you risk being publicly declared insane and disappeared. Finally, it is only through the incessant, nearly obsessional rants disseminated by a new, relatively inexpensive, but very powerful alternative mass media that the torture, corruption, and incompetence of the rogue government is exposed and denounced.
Sound familiar?
Now, Eastwood is far too sophisticated a filmmaker for anyone to claim that the Bush administration is all that Changeling is about. The serial killer angle is more than just a huge Maguffin (btw, Eastwood quotes at least once from a Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent: check out the umbrellas on the steps). The film fits in easily to the genre of LA noir – Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, to name two examples – and that is certainly the main focus of the film, its principle narrative and plot.
However, what I’m suggesting is that Eastwood is much too subtle an artist in his late period to make a film “just” about LA lowlife anymore than Kurosawa was making movies only about samurai (and yes, of course, Kurosawa’s the greater filmmaker). The barely hidden subtext in Changeling is our present time and its hero a strong, even shrill, voice who fights the powers that be with everything she’s got. Why? Because they are complicit in failing to recover her “angel,” a deliberate verbal link by Eastwood to the illusion of a benign “City of Angels,” and a (police) force for good.
Like another great recent movie by a serious director – Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution – there is no mistaking the conscious effort in a period film to confront the opening of the gates of Hell over the past eight years. Eastwood’s film is more conventional than Lee’s, but that isn’t necessarily a criticism (although I have to be honest and admit I think Lust, Caution is the better film). Eastwood is making Hollywood movies with all the constraints on content that large budgets and a star like Jolie demand (by the way, I thought she did a wonderful job), the tradeoff being that he reaches a far wider audience than Lee ever will (at least in the US). Pace Adorno, all art is about constraints as much as it is about freedom and expression. In this discussion, popularity is, to a great extent, just one more factor an artist weighs when creating a work. (And yes, while one’s payday is another factor; for a variety of reasons, I think Eastwood would have made a vastly different film if raking in big bucks was all he had in mind.)
I gather Eastwood endorses McCain. Odd. If so, you’d never know that from seeing Changeling. I truly think the anti-rightwing themes here are deliberately played up to bring up parallels with movement conservatism of the kind the modern Republican party, including McCain of course, practice. (It goes without saying that nothing goes into his films that Eastwood isn’t aware of: I’m certain lefty writers didn’t sneak this stuff past him.)
Again, this is a film to be seen.
Not About Options
by digby
My pal Bill sent me this article about how African American churches doing HIV outreach have problems with the use of condoms:
In Tampa’s black neighborhoods, the statistics scream: black family disease. More blacks have HIV than any other ethnic group. One in 85 blacks in Hillsborough County is infected. That is more than four times the rate for whites. The disparity is more pronounced among women. One in every 92 black women in Hillsborough is infected. That is 11 times the rate for white women.
This black family disease — that’s what Favorite calls it — preys on even fathers and mothers in the pews, children in Sunday school.
He wants the full gamut of services for his vulnerable congregation, and he wants it based in his landmark church, one founded in 1865 for freed slaves. He wants a partnership with the Health Department similar to one initiated by Florida’s black AME churches. AME’s Florida bishop has committed to providing a church for HIV screening in every county. They’re halfway to their goal.
But pastors whose beliefs are biblically founded get caught in a moral paradox. If they base an HIV prevention program on abstinence alone, they’re bound to fail. If they provide the common medically recommended option — condoms — they’ve compromised their principles. Religion has never been about options.
This, of course, plays into the problem we have with gay rights, specifically with the Prop Hate campaign here in California. A lot of black churches are socially conservative — like most of the southern based religions. It causes some dissonance. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m really not a big believer in faith based government programs replacing the secular ones. There has to be some place for “science based” solutions to social problems and a lot of these faith based organizations just can’t do that, evidently.
I’m not holding my breath on that:
Blitzer: But did she make a mistake Donna by going to that fundraiser at the home of the woman who professes that there is no god?
Brazile: You know Wolf there are a lot of believers. I’m one of them. And there are people who just don’t believe in an existence of a god. I don’t know why because clearly there’s strong evidence that there’s a god but I believe that you serve all the people. Not just those that profess to have faith but those with little or no faith. That’s how you convert them.
There you have it. You serve all the people (even the heathens!) so you can convert them. I think that perfectly makes the case against faith based programs.
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Newspapers Ignore Corddry’s Law And Readers Bid Them Adieu
by tristero
You do know the great Rob Corddry’s famous law? “Reality has a clear liberal bias,” he memorably intoned once on The Daily Show. A truly hilarious line has never, ever, been less of a joke, (I wonder: Did he write that?).
As much as the rightwing and their enablers in the press try to ignore it, laws are laws and it’s come back to bite them, bigtime in many ways, from the ghastly to the farcical. However, Glenn notes that WaPo’s ombudsperson hasn’t yet figured that out:
Deborah Howell, today wrote a column claiming that one reason that The Post and other papers are losing money is because they are “too liberal”; have had “more favorable stories about Barack Obama than John McCain,” and “conservatives are right that they often don’t see their views reflected enough in the news pages.” To mitigate newspapers’ financial problems, Howell decrees: “the imbalance still needs to be corrected.” She adds: “Neither the hard-core right nor left will ever be satisfied by Post coverage — and that’s as it should be.”
What if the actual facts — i.e., “reality” — are consistent with the views of “the hard-core left” and contrary to the views of the “hard-core right”? What if, as has plainly been the case, the conservatives’ views are wrong, false, inaccurate? What if the McCain campaign was failing and relying on pure falsehoods and sleazy attacks, and The Post’s coverage simply reflected that reality? It doesn’t matter. In order to sell more newspapers, according to Howell, The Post’s news coverage must shape itself to the Right and ensure that “their views [are] reflected enough in the news pages” (I don’t recall Howell complaining when her newspaper — according to its own media critic — systematically suppressed anti-war viewpoints in its news pages and loudly amplified pro-Bush and pro-war views).
In Howell’s view, The Post shouldn’t determine its news reporting based on what is factually true. Instead, it should shape its coverage to please this discredited, failed political movement — in order to sell more papers. That corrupt formula is, of course, what is now meant by “journalistic balance” — say what both sides believe and take no position about what is true — and it is precisely that behavior which propped up this incomparably failed and deceitful presidency for so long. The establishment media bears much of the responsibility for what has happened during the last 8 years, and amazingly enough, the lesson many of them seemed to have learned is that they didn’t go far enough (“we’re too liberal; we need to accommodate the Right more”). If there is an Obama presidency, watch for them very quickly to re-discover the long-dormant concept of “adversarial behavior.”
Yep.
Blue America Down To The Wire
by digby
Howie is doing all the heavy lifting, gathering information and putting together the pre-election round up over at his place. If you’re a Blue America donor this cycle and want to know how it’s going for our candidates, be sure to check in with him over the next couple of days and after the election for the full round up.
Yesterday, he wrote about Blue America’s media work in this cycle:
As I mentioned on Thursday at a story on how the Inside the Beltway Democratic Establishment is cynically using the “free trade” issue to win votes while already plotting to betray the voters they are wooing, Larry Kissell is not a man that will ever be brow-beaten by some corrupt corporate shill like Rahm Emanuel into selling out his constituents’ interests. For North Carolina voters, dramatically hurt by the job-killing trade policies of Bush and Emanuel, “fair trade” is a do-or-die issue.
Blue America decided to run a few thousand TV ads in North Carolina that addresses the issue head on. Take a look at the ad which, I’m told, has been hard to avoid for anyone in the district who watches cable TV:
While Jacquie was busily buying up every single available spot that Elizabeth Dole hadn’t already grabbed for her ad accusing Kay Hagan of being “godless,” she came up with another idea. “Why not run the ad on broadcast TV?” she suggested. She managed to get us a great deal for a few Sunday NASCAR and college football spots on ABC-TV. I hear a lot of people in NC-08 watch those programs.
Blue America also bought TV spots– different ads– to remind people what awful representatives Dave Reichert, Mean Jean Schmidt, Dana Rohrabacher, David Dreier, Charlie Dent, Joe Knollenberg and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have been. We were depressed when we looked at the pricing of ads for NJ-05, where Dennis Shulman is in a close battle with one of the most heinous members of Congress, Scott Garrett. Look at the confirmation we got in the mail for a few of the spots we ran in Mean Jean Schmidt’s district just east of Cincinnati:
A 30 second spot on CNN costs $20 between 7pm and midnight and between 9am and 4pm, it’s $13. NJ-05 is in the most expensive media market in the country. A single 30 second spot for Dennis on CNN between 6pm and midnight costs $2,167 (and between 10AM and 6pm, $1,084).
This came through the Blue America SayMe campaign, which is the innovation of the future in online organization. It’s so good, I’m sure there will be many people clamoring to take credit for it down the road, but it was Howie Klein and Blue America — and all of you — who pioneered it in this election.
Stay tuned for more at Howie’s place. We are poised to bring some better Democrats to congress this time and all of you who donated to Blue America and our candidates over the past year or so can take a look in the mirror and be proud that you helped elect some real progressives to Washington. It’s not as sexy s Obamamania, but it’s important.
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Serious Political People
by digby
It’s amazing how so many of the architects of the Bush debacle are now on television spouting off about what a terrible failure he is and nobody ever mentions their role in making him one. I guess being a villager means never having to say you’re sorry.
Former Bush advisor Matthew Dowd is a particularly egregious example of this slimy shape shifting. He’s everywhere these days, extolling the virtues of bipartisanship and centrism, saying that people are just darned sick and tired of all the polarization and partisanship. He never mentions this, though:
A former Democratic consultant, Matthew Dowd was the chief campaign strategist for Bush-Cheney 2004 and director of polling and media planning for Bush-Cheney 2000. Here, he describes how, even as the Florida recount was progressing, he and Karl Rove were already thinking about a re-election campaign in the event that Bush won. Dowd tells FRONTLINE that while most of the resources in the 2000 campaign were devoted to trying to win over independents, his post-election analysis showed that only 6 to 7 percent of the electorate was truly “persuadable.”
Here was Dowd shortly after Bush’s triumphant reelection:
Let me go back to 2000 for just a minute. … Where did this idea of a base strategy come from? And was it as revolutionary then as it was reported as being when we all look back? When did you first hear about it? Is it your idea?
Well, it’s interesting. Obviously, as you looked at 2000, approached 2000, motivating Republicans was important, but most of our resources [were] put into persuading independents in 2000. One of the first things I looked at after 2000 was what was the real Republican vote and what was the real Democratic vote, not just who said they were Republicans and Democrats, but independents, how they really voted, whether or not they voted straight ticket or not. And I took a look at that in 2000, and then I took a look at it, what it was over the last five elections or six elections.And what came from that analysis was a graph that I obviously gave Karl, which showed that independents or persuadable voters in the last 20 years had gone from 22 percent of the electorate to 7 percent of the electorate in 2000. And so 93 percent of the electorate in 2000, and what we anticipated, 93 or 94 in 2004, just looking forward and forecasting, was going to be already decided either for us or against us. You obviously had to do fairly well among the 6 or 7 [percent], but you could lose the 6 or 7 percent and win the election, which was fairly revolutionary, because everybody up until that time had said, “Swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters.”
And so when that graph and that first strategic imperative began to drive how we would think about 2004, nobody had ever approached an election that I’ve looked at over the last 50 years, where base motivation was important as swing, which is how we approached it. We didn’t say, “Base motivation is what we’re going to do, and that’s all we’re doing.” We said, “Both are important, but we shouldn’t be putting 80 percent of our resources into persuasion and 20 percent into base motivation,” which is basically what had been happening up until that point, because of — look at this graph. Look at the history. Look what’s happened in this country. And obviously that decision influenced everything that we did. It influenced how we targeted mail, how we targeted phones, how we targeted media, how we traveled, the travel that the president and the vice president did to certain areas, how we did organization, where we had staff. All of that was based off of that, and ultimately, thank goodness, it was the right decision.
Three years later, the man is saying this on Bill Maher:
I think everybody, including Bill Clinton himself, said that the mistake he made when he first took office was that he governed way too far to the left when he started and that after the Republicans took the house in 1994 he moved more to a centrist policy. that’s when his numbers went way up, that’s when he preserved his reelection. And if Barack Obama starts the same way Bill Clinton does that is a huge problem, I think.
It’s good for the Republican party if he does that. But I think Barack Obama is going to have to govern to the center which is where the majority of the country is.
This is more of the “serious people” disease we have seen and discussed ad nauseum in foreign policy, now asserting itself in politics. These are all essentially conservative villagers who are wrong nearly all the time about nearly everything, but who maintain some bizarre hold on the conventional wisdom in spite of the fact that they are consistently full of shit.
This isn’t entirely partisan. There are as many “serious” wankers of this type on the Democratic side, as we saw in the Iraq debate. But this is a moment of clear and present danger for progressives because these “serious” political types are busily setting the terms of this potentially big Democratic win as a victory for centrism. And they’re doing it exactly as Dowd does above, by going back 16 years to prove it, while ignoring the epic conservative failure of the past eight. (Ask yourself why Dowd didn’t use Bush’s overreach on Iraq or Schiavo as an example — and why nobody on that panel thought to bring it up.) The “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” example is always used to show that a president must govern from the center, but here we have a hugely unpopular president who ran and governed explicitly as a conservative for eight years and nobody makes the same connection. That’s not an accident: they actually believe that he’s unpopular because he was too liberal!
Maher comes right back in Dowd’s face, as only the comedians and bloggers are allowed to do, and says that he’s wrong, that the country need radical change. That’s true, but I would be shocked if it gets it. The best we can hope for is a discernible shift to the left, and even that will precipitate a backlash and hissy fit among the villagers that will twist the Democratic establishment into pretzels trying to prove, again and forever, that they aren’t crazed hippie freaks who have a bizarre and out of the mainstream agenda.
If Obama wants to deliver change, the first thing he has to do is figure out a way to either co-opt of vanquish the village elders. And congress is a wild card. If they play nice, Obama may be able to roll over the village. If they decide to play “who’s the boss” then we’ll have a different scenario. Hopefully, they will have learned the real lesson of the Clinton years, which is to not enable Republicans by stabbing your president in the back every time he tries to do something even slightly liberal. I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Update: Chris Cilizza on MSNBC just issued the same warning about Clinton and reassured everyone in the country that the Democrats have likely learned the important lesson that they need to ignore the crazy morons on the left who don’t understand the “process of governing.” He brought up 2006 as an example of the hippie freaks expecting waay too much — but Grover Norquist strutting around saying that the Democrats were neutered farm animals after the 2004 election has been forgotten.
Bush has been successfully disappeared.
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Inevitable
by digby
They are going back to their roots. I would look for this in Arizona and New Mexico, but it could crop up in any of the western states and Florida too.
——– Original Message ——–
| Subject: | Stop Obama’s Aunti and 10 Million Illegal Alien Voters |
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| Date: | Sun, 2 Nov 2008 11:54:37 -0600 |
| From: | MinutemanHQ |
National OMinuteman Poll Watch 2008Stop Obama’s Aunti and 10 Million Illegal Alien Voters Report Voter Fraud |
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ALERT: All Minutemen, Minutemen Supporters and Patriots Operation “Poll Watch 2008” We Need Minutemen at your Local Polling Places Tuesday, November4th – All Day and Night Call Your Local Campaign Office TODAY Ask Them if Obama’s Aunti Is Registered to Vote? Tell to Keep Illegal Alien Away for the Polls as You Will Be Watching Is Obama’s Illegal Alien Aunti Zeituni Also A Registered Voter?
 According to the AP story : ‘Obama aunt from Kenya living in US illegally’ By EILEEN SULLIVAN and ELLIOT SPAGAT, Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as “Aunti Zeituni” in Obama’s memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judg e who denied her asylum request. I must ask the question – If experts believe there could be more than 10 million such illegal immigrants in the United States – does that also mean that 10 million illegal votes could be cast as a result of incompetence and or blatant fraud? I have received so many positive responses to our call to civic duty – as Minuteman poll watchers. We discover we have many Minuteman volunteers who are officially inside the polls as watchers and many others who will be positioned outside the 75-100 ft. neutral zone that surrounds polling locations. Just as a neighborhood watch, civic minded Americans will be working to keep our polling locations safe and secured to those who have the right to vote in our elections. Along with illegal alien workers who display blatant disregard for our laws to enter the U.S. we also know that last year alone in the just the Tucson sector of Arizona over 46,000 arrested and convicted murderers, sexual predators, drug dealers and violent criminals re-entered our country after they committed crimes in the U.S. and were removed by deportation. Could they have also cast a vote in your state? We know millions of illegal aliens who have stolen identities of U.S. citizens could also be casting illegal votes. Not only should we stand vigilant to ensure the rights of all who have a legal right to vote to do so in safety and assurance of the integrity of the system. When you vote, please insist that your poll worker asks for and checks your I.D. The right to vote is precious and the future of our democracy hangs in the balance. Protect yourselves with video cameras and spend a few hours at your local polling places and be vigilant to document anything that may be out of the ordinary or suspicious especially the busloads of people who will arrive at many locations around the country. Please wear your MCDC hats and shirts and follow the SOP – no verbal contact, just quiet and vigilant observation and documentation. Remember that in 2004 the Columbus Dispatch reported that illegal alien Nuradin Abdi—the suspected shopping mall bomb plotter from Somalia—was registered to vote in the battleground state of Ohio by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a left-wing activist group. Also on the Ohio voting rolls: convicted al Qaeda agent Lyman Faris, who planned to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge and had entered the country fraudulently from Pakistan on a student visa. [“Long gone but still registered Ohio’s Election Day rolls include people who couldn’t—and shouldn’t—vote, October 24, 2004, Jon Craig The Columbus Dispatch”]
There are many more documented accounts of rampant voter fraud from Wisconsin to Florida but thankfully not here in Arizona, voters made sure of that by passing prop 200 in 2004. However in many other states fraud is actually encouraged and many organizations will likely aggressively oppose basic ID requirements at the polls. And they have legions of attorneys standing by to protect people potentially voting illegally from election officials who ask for proof of I.D. who will be accused of harassment and intimidation. They will be accused of disenfranchising the poor and the minorities—never mind the damaging effect of unchecked voter fraud on law, order, and the integrity of ou WHERE: On Duty at Local Polling Locations in Every City and Town in the United States. Our Government is still NOT DOING ITS JOB! On November 4th Minutemen will be on duty to be sure you get to vote. YOU can make a REAL DIFFERENCE. So, for your sake, for the sake of your children, your grandchildren, and for generations to come, please help MCDC continue its fight to protect and preserve the United States of America and defend our Constitution. Select Here to Donate to the November Operations Support Fund https://secure.conservativedonations.com/minutemanhq/? a=1854 Sincerely for these United States, |
Registered Voter By Birth
by dday
As the last of the lawsuits against ACORN gets laughed out of court, and as Republican Secretaries of State grumble about having to reinstate voters to the rolls, it’s clear that, no matter what happens in the election, this insanity around voter registration and zombie lies about voter fraud has to stop. Exhibit A is the fact that John McCain’s own head of his “Honest And Open Election Committee” can’t name any evidence of voter fraud.
But Ronald Michaelson, a veteran election administrator and member of the McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee, said in an interview that he could not name a single instance in which this had occurred.
“Do we have a documented instance of voting fraud that resulted from a phony registration form? No, I can’t cite one, chapter and verse,” he said […]
Asked for specifics about the dangers of fake registration, Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, provided links to 13 news clips and a 2003 Missouri state auditor’s report. Eleven of the cases did not involve registration fraud. Two recounted how felons appeared to have cast illegal votes under their own names. The lone example of a forged registration leading to an illegitimate vote comes from The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, who in April 2006 wrote that a community organizer had improperly registered a noncitizen, and “someone eventually voted in [the noncitizen’s] name.”
Michaelson, who served for 27 years as executive director of the Illinois Board of Elections, said the sharp exchanges over registration fraud have undermined voters’ confidence in the electoral system.
“The fact that so many of these illegal registrations are being made public raises a perception in the minds of people,’’ he said. “That’s more of a general concern. You don’t want to perpetuate the idea that our election process is lacking integrity.”
Asked whether his own party was responsible for fostering that perception, Michaelson said, “Well, it doesn’t help. It has captured the attention of a lot of people.” Why do it, then? “Maybe it’s because there’s nothing else to talk about,” he said.
Boy, he is part of a committee with the word “honest” in it, isn’t he?
This is one of those “problems” that actually has a solution, a very smart and nonpartisan solution that would be simple to implement and would eliminate a lot of unnecessary labor. Rick Hasen asks for America to nationalize voter registration.
The solution is to take the job of voter registration for federal elections out of the hands of third parties (and out of the hands of the counties and states) and give it to the federal government. The Constitution grants Congress wide authority over congressional elections. The next president should propose legislation to have the Census Bureau, when it conducts the 2010 census, also register all eligible voters who wish to be registered for future federal elections. High-school seniors could be signed up as well so that they would be registered to vote on their 18th birthday. When people submit change-of-address cards to the post office, election officials would also change their registration information.
This change would eliminate most voter registration fraud. Government employees would not have an incentive to pad registration lists with additional people in order to keep their jobs. The system would also eliminate the need for matches between state databases, a problem that has proved so troublesome because of the bad quality of the data. The federal government could assign each person a unique voter-identification number, which would remain the same regardless of where the voter moves. The unique ID would prevent people from voting in two jurisdictions, such as snowbirds who might be tempted to vote in Florida and New York. States would not have to use the system for their state and local elections, but most would choose to do so because of the cost savings.
There’s something in this for both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats talk about wanting to expand the franchise, and there’s no better way to do it than the way most mature democracies do it: by having the government register voters. For Republicans serious about ballot integrity, this should be a winner as well. No more ACORN registration drives, and no more concerns about Democratic secretaries of state not aggressively matching voters enough to motor vehicle databases.
Finally, universal voter registration is good for the country, not only because it will make it easier for those who wish to vote to do so, but because it should end controversy over ballot integrity that threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our election process. If President McCain or Obama makes this a priority, we can have the system ready in time for the president’s re-election.
Of course, Republicans aren’t serious about ballot integrity, and their opposition to this would prove it. They just want something to carp about and undermine confidence in elections. In addition, there’s a credible concern, given how the current government has politicized the Department of Justice and the General Services Administration, that giving over voter registration to them might have dangerous consequences.
But of course, there are Republican Secretaries of State doing that politicization right now. And wouldn’t it be nice to create an election system where people don’t have to turn in a form or remember to vote at an old precinct if they missed the cutoff, a system designed to make voting easier instead of harder?
This is but one possible innovation in elections (like expanding early voting access, making Election Day a weekend or a holiday, instant runoff voting, a mandate for paper ballots, abolishing the Electoral College, etc., etc.), but it certainly would help to defuse this massive hissy fit we hear every four years like clockwork. I’d love to see Republicans oppose the concept of registering every American to vote.
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The Inmates Take Over The Asylum
by digby
They can’t control them anymore:
You’d think 21-year-old Kristi Burton would be feted by the pro-life establishment. Though she still lives with her parents in Peyton, Colo., and is only partway through law school, Burton has already succeeded where other anti-abortion activists have failed: Last month she got a proposed amendment to her state’s constitution on the ballot that defines a fertilized human egg as a person, the first in the nation. Amendment 48 allows a challenge to the very legality of abortion and has at least a chance of passing, thanks to Burton’s sheer single-mindedness. Last June she founded her own group, Colorado for Equal Rights, and recruited her parents as its first volunteers and donors. Burton spent 40-hour weeks canvassing at churches and garden shows. She needed 76,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot; she collected more than 130,000. The group now has eight staff members and more than $500,000 in donations.
Yet Burton has not received much support for Amendment 48 from her most natural allies—the country’s major pro-life groups. Heavyweights like National Right to Life and Americans United for Life are not backing it. “There are other ways to protect human life that we focus on because we believe they are the most effective,” says Clark Forsythe, president of Americans United for Life. Although pro-life leaders generally agree with Burton that life begins at fertilization, they fear a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade would ultimately be slapped down by the Supreme Court—still at least one vote shy of an anti-Roe majority—setting back the movement. “The established pro-life movement feels … we should stop trying to overturn Roe because the time isn’t right,” says Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative public-interest firm that has advised Amendment 48. “Then there is this huge grassroots movement saying it’s immoral not to try and save innocent lives.”
This young woman undoubtedly believes that most people agree that life begins at conception. She isn’t interested in the thorny problem of what to do with women who have abortions if the fertilized egg is considered a “person” — meaning the woman has logically committed premeditated murder. And she doesn’t care that challenging Roe may very well result in its being upheld. She believes she is doing God’s work and doesn’t see why she should pull her punches when the truth, as she sees it, is obvious.
I actually have far more respect for her than I do the smarmy, institutional anti-abortion careerists who have milked this issue for all its worth for over thirty years for political and personal gain. They have known from the beginning that they would never be able to satisfy their true believers because there was never any way in hell that the country would stand for prosecuting women for having abortions. And that is where the true believers’ principles inevitably lead them. It’s a scam.
Colorado is looking good for Obama and let’s hope that results in the defeat of this absurd proposition. But at some point, they’ll probably be able to get a case like this before the Supreme Court. And that, of course, is yet another reason why it’s so important to elect Obama.
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