voter suppression

The Republican plan comes together

If the funds are not appropriated, State Board of Elections executive director Gary Bartlett has said counties would likely be forced to operate 100 fewer early voting sites than were available in 2008.

I thought I'd make my first blog entry of the new year, and my first one as a Blue NC frontpager, a look at the state of our state on two issues that I care passionately about: voting rights & LGBT equality. The first map refers to photo ID voter suppression laws, and the second map refers to marriage discrimination constitutional amendments. For both maps, gray means the bad measure has not passed. And for both maps you can see that NC stands alone in the South as we start 2012.

The Charlotte Observer thinks Pat McCrory is full of crap. So should you.

What Republicans are trying to accomplish is clear: The voters who are most likely to be affected by the voter ID law are low-income minorities, who tend to vote Democrat. It's the same motive that's behind Republican-led legislation across the country that restricts voting, including in North Carolina, where lawmakers are considering overturning Gov. Bev Perdue's veto of a voter ID bill. Some states are doing a particularly poor job of hiding their intentions, such as Texas, which rejected student IDs issued by state universities in its new voter ID law, but did give the nod to anyone with a handgun license.

You can't allow the people to take over.

As usual, Robin Hayes twists the truth to fit his anti-everything agenda:

“The reason why Republicans have fought to promote proper voter-identification laws is to prevent fraud like this from happening.”

Except, of course, that H351 wouldn’t have prevented "fraud like this" at all.

Apparently Laura's message isn't penetrating the depths of the Conservative communication network. This story hit the Tweetwaves last night, but stuff like this is still showing up:

Legislative Republicans hope to boast a long list of conservative accomplishments at the completion of their first 100 days in power. None would make them happier than the passage of a bill that will ensure that they can write a brand new "first 100 days agenda" every single year for the foreseeable future: Voter ID.

Well this has been a busy week. HKonJ on Saturday with Democracy NC. Equality NC's Day of Action earlier today, and if my schedule allows I'll be right there talking to my legislators again tomorrow for Democracy NC's Day of Action.

The Voter ID Bill aka Voter Suppression Bill threatens to cost the state millions, address a non-existent problem rather than focusing on jobs, and may disenfranchise many voters, especially those in vulnerable communities like students, the elderly, people of color, and the like. More details about the event below.

Cross-posted from the Institute of Southern Studies, by Chris Kromm.

Compulsively litigious not-gay Republican leader suddenly allergic to electronics:

"We cannot have an election where voters in counties where the machines are used have less confidence that their votes are being accurately counted than in counties where optical scan ballots are used," Fetzer said. "It's an incompetent situation at the State Board of Elections. We believe that they knew of problems with the calibration of these machines up to two months ago."

And you dipshits were aware of potential programming issues years ago, and went to great lengths demonstrating that "glitches" had absolutely no impact on race results, and folks who wanted optical scan/paper verification were to be ridiculed by the puppet-in-charge:

We may have a voter guide, and we may have an IRV task force, but sorry, no cigar! We still do not have IRV tallying procedures as of Sept 15, 2010. And the voting vendor seems more concerned about obeying the law than anyone else.

I contacted a member of the task force set up to devise procedures, he advise me on Sept 13 that

"there are still several options on the table and I do not know at this point what method we will end up with. I think we need to spend some time testing and evaluating the options before a decision is made. Might as well do it right the first time."

The vendor worries about the legality of using our voting machines for this process. Here's excerpt from Print Elect & ES&S letter to the NC State Board of Elections dated Aug 31 2010: