The bad faith party has to have its cake and eat it
If it wasn’t for bad faith, our conservative adversaries wouldn’t have no faith at all, to borrow from the famous blues song.
If you live in one of the states above — well, maybe not New Jersey (timing issue) — residents who are potentially eligible but unregistered to vote in your state may have in the last week or two received a postcard from their secretary of state or state board of elections. The postcards will suggest ways anyone unregistered at that address can register to vote if eligible. (Ask your neighbors.)
Member states of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC, formed in 2012 with assistance from The Pew Charitable Trusts) send out the postcards ahead of each general election to a list the voter list maintanence organization provides.
ERIC has replaced the now-defunct Interstate Crosscheck system once championed by former Kansas Secretary of State, Republican Kris Kobach, as a way of promoting the notion that voter fraud is widespread: dead people on the voter rolls, people registered in multiple states, etc. The error-prone Crosscheck was sued out of existence. By most accounts, ERIC maintains the lists better.
Not that Republicans actually want maintaining voter lists done better:
Wisconsin voters filed a legal complaint against the state’s elections commission on Thursday, accusing the body “and its members of violating the federal Help America Vote Act by its contracted use of [the] Electronic Registration Information Center [ERIC].”
Filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, the complaint alleges that “in violation of the federal Help America Vote Act, the Wisconsin Election Commission [WEC] has contracted with Electronic Registration Information Center, Inc. to maintain and implement WisVote” and that the “delegation of this government function to an outside entity has enabled the potential rigging of Wisconsin’s federal elections towards particular federal candidates.”
Does that sound like the independent state legislature theory to you? Just asking.
The unregistered are “off the grid,” so to speak, and difficult to identify. ERIC makes it easier than accosting random passersby on the streecorner to ask if they are registered. Republicans really dislike the idea of mass outreach to unregistered persons.
That’s not all from Wisconsin conservatives:
A conservative law firm is challenging the use of a federal voter registration form in Wisconsin, saying it doesn’t meet the requirements laid out by state law.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a lawsuit on Sept. 15 asking a judge to declare the National Mail Voter Registration Application illegal in the state and order the Wisconsin Election Commission to withdraw its approval for the form because it doesn’t ask for all information required by state law.
Many states are required by federal law to use the form, which is provided by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, but Wisconsin isn’t subject to such an obligation because the state allows voters to register at the polls on Election Day.
The federal form and same-day registration are far from the only ways people in Wisconsin can register to vote. Residents can also register online, at their municipal clerk’s office or by mail with a state form, which is available in English, Spanish and Hmong on the election commission’s website.
There’s a pattern here. Give Republicans what they say they want — cleaner, more accurate voter rolls with fewer bad addresses, fewer dead voters, fewer registered in multiple states — and they grouse even louder. They won’t take yes for an answer. They don’t want people to vote. You know why.
Over the weekend, CNN’s Daniel Dale pointed ou the GOP’s “open borders” complaint is bullshit. It’s important for people to have their facts straight, says Dale. But it’s only important to people who care about having their facts straight. Those more concerned about changing the subject of this election from abortion to immigration do not.
Liberal pundit Maria Cardona made a point of telling Scott Jennings that migrants entering the country through ports of entry and seeking legal asylum are not “illegal.” Migrants apprehended at the border are not entering the country through open borders. But that story doesn’t sell fear.
“You can’t have it both ways,” Cardona said, reiterating my point. “if the border was open, they would not be apprehended.”
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