A Very Dangerous Law

Crawford v. Marion County Election Board
"Let's not beat around the bush. The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by folks believed to skew Democratic."
Judge Terence Evans, 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Dissenting Opinion, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board



On Wednesday, January 9, 2008 the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case captioned: William Crawford et. al. v. Marion County Election Board et. al. and the Democratic Party of Indiana et. al. This case was initiated by the Americal Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) along with the Democratic Party of Indiana in response to an onerous law passed by the Indiana State Legislature which requires that each and every voter show a government issued photo ID before casting a ballot (see: Indiana Public Law 109-2005). This may on its face, seem like a reasonable request, but it is problematic for at least two reasons: 1) the class of voter that would most likely to be burdened by this law is overwhelmingly poor, elderly, and more than likely a member of a minority group - all indicators that point to a demographic that historically has voted Democratic, and 2) the fraud that this law is meant to avoid has never been recorded nor observed in the entire history of elections in the Hoosier state or for that matter anywhere in the country.

Help America Vote Republican Act of 2002

Unfortunately the right-leaning Supreme Court gave every indication that that they would not only uphold this burdensome law, but may also sanction the party that brought the lawsuit (See: Justices Indicate They May Uphold Voter ID Rules, NYTimes, January 10, 2008). What can we do? Must we wait until someone is actually turned away at the polls and then file a lawsuit. This is the scenario that Justice Ginsburg was imagining when she made the following comment during oral arguments:“The reason they are bringing a facial challenge is because the horse is going to be out of the barn. They will have the election, and just what they are afraid of could happen — that the result will be skewed in favor of the opposite party.”

Why Elections Matter

This provides even more evidence of why elections matter. It was, after all, the Supreme Court that ended the vote counting that would have no doubt revealed that Al Gore was the true victor in 2000 and handed the presidency to George W. Bush. And the addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito have further skewered the court to the right, further politicizing the branch of government that arguably should be the least politicized branch of the three. Justice John Paul Stevens is still there - realizing that the balance of the court hangs in his retirement or god-forbid his death, but thankfully the Democratic-controlled Senate should be able to stave off an appointment to the High Court should Justice Stevens be unable to continue for any reason (see an earlier post on this blog: Long Live Justice John Paul Stevens).

This is just another important reason why we all need to work like hell to elect Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or John Edwards - in other words, whoever the Democratic nominee is, to protect the judicial branch from becoming a tool of one party rather than the rarified and esteemed bench that it was intended to be.

See NYTimes Letter to the Editor: Should Voter ID Be Required?

For a complete list of links to all documents filed in this case, please see: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/indy-dems.php.

Beyond Iowa & NH - A War Rages On...

Excuse me for not celebrating this morning, I am not really all that excited that Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary. I still maintain that Hillary is not electable and that nominating her will set the country up for at least four more years of GOP horror, and it is that ongoing horror that I would like to remind readers of this morning. Billions of dollars are still going to Iraq on a daily basis, Iraqis are still dying, U.S. soldiers are still dying, and there is NO END in SIGHT.

Meantime back here in this country, we are deliberating and in many cases celebrating a primary victory of a candidate who voted not only to send troops to Iraq, but has never missed an opportunity to vote to fund the war, and to add insult to injury, this same candidate voted for the Lieberman/Kyl amendment - a most unhelpful piece of legislation that labels the Iranian Guard a terrorist organization (nothing provocative about that, is there?). Anyway, before we all decide that we prefer experience over a real change in leadership, let's consider what this experience has brought us so far. It has brought us an endless war that Ms. Clinton cannot even promise will be over after she has been in office for four years (that remark alone should give every good Democrat pause before they cast their lot with another Clinton). Speaking of another Clinton - I think that the Bush - Clinton - Bush - (Clinton?) line-up needs to be shaken up. Twenty-eight years of essentially a two-family-rule sounds downright un-American, and I think every voter should seriously consider whether continuing this tit for tat presidential carousel should be perpetuated.

This is not the end of the war in Iraq nor the political war here in this country. I'm hoping that the real war (Iraq) ends sometime soon, because no true reconciliation can even begin to happen here at home without addressing conflicts/differences in a more constructive way abroad.

See AlterNet's article: Beyond NH: Campaign Promises Are Empty Until the War Ends.

Exporting Democracy - Bush/Cheney Style

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, about Chile, prior to the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende, 1973.

Something struck me as I lay in bed this morning listening to NPR and it begin to grow into a potential post after I heard stories about apparently stolen elections in Kenya and Georgia, and it struck me as obvious that the state of democracy around the world has been marred by stolen elections and outright power grabs (I'm talking about you, Vladimir Putin). In all fairness, the 2000 election was not the first election ever stolen on American soil - there was the 1876 "Fraud of the Century" in which Republican Rutherford Hayes beat out Samuel Tilden, Democrat, by one questionably earned electoral vote (Tilden had clearly won the popular vote), but here in the 21st century, there are most certainly the Bush vs. Gore and four years later the Bush vs. Kerry contests that bring to mind stolen elections. This seems to be a pattern not only here in the United States, but also abroad - see references to Kenya, Georgia, and Russia. So where did all of these despots get the bright idea to rig an election? Well, we need not look any further than our last two elections here in this country to see where this idea may have taken root and flourished.

Granted, the United States did oversee the coup that unseated and murdered Salvador Allende and put in place the despot, Augusto Pinochet, back in 1973, but the memory of the world is short, and we are firmly ensconced in the 21st century. So I believe that the 2000 and 2004 elections here in this country hold enormous sway over elections in the rest of the world. I am not saying that the United States sets the standard for democracy around the world, rather I think we lost that claim in large part because of our stolen elections in 2000 and 2004. We are clearly not living in a functioning democracy, rather we are all living in an imperial kleptocracy, but we have a chance, one that comes along every four years, to return our country to something that may more closely resemble a democracy. That is, if all of the votes are counted and the office is awarded to the person who gets the most votes.

One of the obstacles to achieving this straightforward goal is one that we have faced every presidential election since the founding of this country and that is the Electoral College. The Electoral College is an arcane institution that should go the way of prohibition and other outmoded institutions. The electoral college makes a mockery of the one person/one vote claim that is the foundation of our democracy. There are those who may want to remind me at this point that John F. Kennedy would not have been elected president had the popular vote held sway, but that would miss this digression for the distraction it truly is. It is neither here nor there as far as my argument goes today. Rather it is the aim of this post to point out obstacles to our democracy that face us here and now and beyond the electoral college. It is the very nature of our system of voting that provides the biggest hurdle to the United States reclaiming a measure of democracy in this next election. It is the false flag of voter fraud rather than wholesale election fraud that should be foremost in our minds. I recommend that readers check out BradBlog.com or Greg Palast's excellent post, Fear of Chavez is Fear of Democracy.

Why are we not all out in the streets screaming that Diebold voting machines (which have been hacked with ease by high school kids) be banned? Probably for the same reason we are not all out in the streets demanding an end to this god-awful occupation in Iraq. Is it that we lack conviction? I don't think so, I know how strongly fellow Democrats believe that this election must bring about a sea change of leadership or, or, or, what? We will all move to Canada or the Netherlands or Costa Rica? Why don't we all get on the phone tomorrow and call our local election board and find out how our vote will be recorded on November 4, 2008. And if the answer is that the vote will be counted on an electronic device that can be programmed or hacked or otherwise manipulated, then file a complaint and demand paper, verifiable ballots.

This may seem like an odd post on the heals of the delightful Democratic victory in Iowa (and please remember, kids, that Iowa was an overwhelming victory for democracy and Democrats) - the numbers alone bear this out (see Rolling Stone, Iowa by the Numbers). This is all to say that the race is the Democrats to lose and believe you me (a curious expression that I picked up from my grandmother who died over 30 years ago), I will not breathe a sigh of relief until January 20, 2009 when the new (Democratic) president is inaugurated into his/her office. I am not an optimistic type who thinks that the Dems will have a cake walk to the White House, nor do I put it past the devious and dastardly republicans to try to steal another election, but as the idiot-in-chief said in one of his more famous bungles "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, well, you can't get fooled again..." Wanna bet?

BTB, did anybody else notice the way that Hillary was sizing up Bill Richardson during the debate last night - think he might be on the short list for VP? Just wondering...

Mother Jones Article on our broken voting system.

NYTimes Op-ed piece (January 7, 2008) on the need for a paper trail when we vote.

Check out Jeffrey Toobin's article in the New Yorker on the Supreme Court's review of an odious Voter ID Law (out of Indiana).

See the New York Times Magazine, Can You Count on Voting Machines?.