Brett Kavanaugh Is a Lie, Senate Dems Need to Stop Vote by Any Means

Opponents of Brett Kavanaugh rallied outside the Untied
States Supreme Court last night. "Are you ready for a fight,"
said Bernie Sanders. Yes, America appears ready for a fight
that may dwarf the 1987 Bork nomination by comparison.

Kavanaugh and Bork Are Two of a Kind

"He looked, and talked, like a man who would throw the book at you — maybe like a man who would throw the book at the whole country," said Tom Shales, media critic at the Washington Post, commenting on the Robert Bork confirmation hearings in 1987, cited in the exhilarating book, Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America, (W. W. Norton), by Ethan Bronner. [Pick a copy of Bronner's work if you have even a passing interest in the biggest political event since 2016, stopping the Kavanaugh nomination.]

Bronner chronicled a landmark breaking point in American political history when the people rose and the United States Senate listened, defeating the Bork nomination 58-42. The vote led to the nomination and confirmation of Anthony Kennedy, a corrupt justice responsible for the among worst decisions in American judicial history: Bush. v. Gore (2000), Citizens United (2010) and Shelby County v. Holder (2013), among them.

Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) publicly warned the zombie-like Senate Dems to assume war footing against the Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh who is even worse than Kennedy.

Defeating this radical corporatist-statist Kavanaugh presents problems vis a vis the radical corporatist-statist Bork.

First among the challenges is the current composition of the Senate — 51 (R) to 49 (D), (115th Congress).

In 1987, Bork faced a Senate controlled by Democrats 55 (D) to 45 R), (100th Congress).

In 1987, six Republican senators voted against Bork, (Los Angeles Times).

In 2018, only a fool would count on any Republican senators rejecting the Christian fascist nominee.
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Bork was a public relations disaster on a superficial visceral level.

Kavanaugh came across as a blend of Jimmy Stewart and Matt Damon, who above all loves his family and likely says nice things about your mother.

Kavanaugh's unmistakably appealing image is a lie. The visible malice of Kavanaugh as a younger man has melted into the kind visage we watched last night.

Kavanaugh comes prevetted by the radical, anti-civil liberties Federalist Society, armed with a jurisprudence that is savage and hateful.
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Trump is a malignant clown, but whatever delusions from which Trump suffers, he knows how to unite the right into a fascist, corporate, Christian state that animates the political animal Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh will vote to further degrade civil liberties and target women, minorities, immigrants, gays and elevate corporate power, executive branch power and any level of law enforcement over everyone in the name of god-almighty.

Our rights mean next to nothing.

The Republican Party and Kavanaugh will use the Supreme Court as a means of decimating the rights of the citizenry and any competing political opposition.

Make no mistake Kavanaugh is ambitious, vicious and deceitful. A woman's right to her body is gone with Kavanaugh on the Court.

Plan A should be no hearing, no vote until the Congress convenes in 2019.

Stopping Kavanaugh and Trump is doable.

We have the anti-Trump infrastructure in place, public opinion and mid-term elections. Trump and Republicans in Congress enjoy consistently low levels of approval.

We need determination and political competence.

This is the time of Bernie Sanders and it is the time of us. Our rights depend on what we do in the next six months.

As Stephen Macedo writes in The New Right v. the Constitution:

When conservatives like Bork treat rights as islands surrounded by a sea of government powers, they precisely reverse the view of the Founders as enshrined in the Constitution, wherein government powers are limited and specified and rendered as islands surrounded by a sea of individual rights.

Think of the younger generations, because the country we are leaving them will not be recognizable — a society of diminished rights, and people living as tools to power, tightly constrained, with little legal recourse.

A democracy without rights is tyranny.

Do we trust the future of our democracy to these six senators? Not on our lives:

Susan Collins.
Lisa Murkowski.
Heidi Heitkamp.
Joe Manchin.
Joe Donnelly.
Doug Jones.
If you live in Maine, Alaska, North Dakota, West Virginia, Indiana or Alabama WE ARE ALL COUNTING ON YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS NOW to tell them you oppose #KavanaughSCOTUS (202) 2224-3121 ☎️

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) July 10, 2018

Wisconsin Voting Rights Supporters Hit GOP Suppression Action in Madison

Madison, Wisconsin—Wisconsin Republicans have implemented an offensive against voters through the GOP-led Dept. of Transportation's planned closing of two accessible DMV centers that will be consolidated into a new complex sited on the far-west side of the city.

Many voters seeking the Republican-approved photo voter IDs would have to obtain this Republican-prescribed qualification to vote at the relatively inaccessible, new DMV building.

The City of Madison, voting rights groups, and Dane County legislators have all condemned the GOP plan, (Wisconsin State Journal).

The Republican move is part of a long Republican voter obstruction project aimed at suppressing unwanted voters.

Wrote Brook Soltvedt, president, League of Women Voters of Dane County in Madison.com:

Transit-dependent citizens must visit the Division of Motor Vehicles to obtain a Wisconsin ID card for voting.

Who are our most transit-dependent? Students, the elderly and disabled, racial minorities and economically challenged citizens.

A study from the UW–Madison Center for Elections Research showed that about 17,000 registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties were deterred from voting in the November 2016 election because they either did not have a valid ID, or believed that they did not have one -- even if they did.

Meanwhile, on the national Republican voter-obstruction front, a federal judge has ordered an end to the 35-year-old consent decree against the Republican National Committee's 'ballot security' activities implemented to intimidate minority citizens from casting votes.

Below is the text of the letter from Dane County legislators to Secretary Dave Ross, Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
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Secretary Dave Ross, Wisconsin Department of Transportation
Hill Farms State Transportation Building
4802 Sheboygan Avenue
Madison, WI 53705

Dear Secretary Ross,

As you know, on January 3, 2018, the City of Madison filed a civil rights complaint against the Wisconsin Department of Transportation over the decision to cease providing Division of Motor Vehicle Services at the Sheboygan Avenue and Odana Road locations and to consolidate those offices in a new location at 8417 Excelsior Drive.  As members of the Madison area legislative delegation, we share the concerns of the City of Madison and urge you to take steps necessary to resolve the issues the city raises in its complaint.

While the Odana Road and Sheboygan Avenue locations are readily accessible by bus, public transit near the proposed Excelsior Drive location is very limited. It is not reasonable to expect a person without a car to spend over two hours for bussing and transfers and up to an hour waiting for the arrival of a bus to take them home. Additionally, most service utilizes a bus stop nearly half a mile away, posing challenges for individuals with disabilities or those traveling with children. Due to the move and consolidation of locations, a simple errand to the DMV could take substantially more time and effort to complete for people residing in neighborhoods predominantly comprised of the elderly, racial minorities, and lower income families.

Additionally, the Excelsior Drive location is not pedestrian or bicycle friendly. Both the Odana Road and Sheboygan Avenue locations are served by a number of safe and accessible routes for pedestrians and bicyclists. However, the Beltline Highway will serve as a barrier for individuals who accessed the former locations on foot or by bicycle.

Given the current state voter ID law, reduced accessibility to the DMV is particularly alarming. In this case, those who lack transportation to get to the new location are likely to be the same individuals who are most likely to be disenfranchised.  For low-income individuals, minorities, and disabled individuals who rely on public transportation, this move will increase barriers to accessing the facility and various DMV services.

As we had similar concerns to those raised by the City of Madison, staff from Representative Subeck’s office contacted your office earlier this fall to inquire about plans for the move and to share our concern that access to services could be diminished because the new facility is underserved by public transportation. Since that time, your office has never been back in touch with us about the move until we received your January 2 press release. Perhaps if the Department had engaged legislators after we contacted your office, the problems raised by the city could have been addressed before now.

We want the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to recognize that the complaint filed by the City of Madison has merit. Corrective measures need to be taken to ensure Madison residents in need of a driver’s license or state identification card do not face unnecessary and sometimes costly barriers.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Lisa Subeck                            Terese Berceau                        Jimmy Anderson
State Representative            State Representative            State Representative
78th Assembly District          77th Assembly District          47th Assembly District

Chris Taylor                            Melissa Sargent                         Fred Risser
State Representative            State Representative            State Senator
76th Assembly District          48th Assembly District          26th Senate District

Mark Miller
State Senator
16th Senate District
#

Richard Posner Blows Whistle on Federal Judiciary

Readers note persuasively that career-changing federal appellate Judge Richard Poser blew the whistle on the federal judiciary as a whole as intellectually dishonest pols pursuing results in federal litigation.

Judge Richard Posner announced his resignation from the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit earlier this month.

In an exit interview with Adam Liptak in the New York Times, Posner made comments implicitly and explicitly critical of federal judges, in response to Liptak's questions: 

'Judges are simply applying rules, and the rules come from somewhere else, like the Constitution, and the Constitution is sacred. And statutes, unless they’re unconstitutional, are sacred also.'

'A lot of the people who say that are sincere,' he said. 'That’s their conception of law. That’s fine.'

He said he had less sympathy for the second camp [of his critics]. 'There are others who are just, you know, reactionary beasts,' he said. 'They’re reactionary beasts because they want to manipulate the statutes and the Constitution in their own way.'

That judges at every level of the judiciary seek results over the law is obvious.

Judges because their actions matter to real people are a destructive and worrisome force, largely unexamined in American society, and actors whose duplicity is cringe-worthy.

Judge Richard Posner Quits Bench, Hits "Reactionary Beasts" as Unfaithful to Constitution

The sudden news this month that an intellectual is resigning from the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit should cause alarm about the future of liberty claims in federal litigation.

Judge Richard Posner announced his resignation as the federal judiciary branch is populated by ever-more brazen rightwingers and politicians.

Notes Adam Liptak in the New York Times this morning in a column on Posner's resignation:

In emphasizing social utility over, say, principles of fairness and equality, he gained a reputation as a cold and calculating conservative.

That changed over time, and his recent opinions on voter ID laws, abortion, same-sex marriage and workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation have been decidedly liberal.

Liberal as in recognizing the Constitutional rights of American citizens that used to guide consideration of litigation in the federal courts.

New York Times is worth a read this morning on the career and influence of this public intellectual.

Despite the self-importance with which the federal judiciary, and most judges, conduct themselves, Posner casts most judges as anti-intellectual, especially rightwingers of whom he says, "There are others who are just, you know, reactionary beasts. They’re reactionary beasts because they want to manipulate the statutes and the Constitution in their own way."

Gorsuch the Statist Activist Lies to Begin Day Two

"I am heartened by the support I have received from people who recognize that here is no such thing as a Republican or a Democratic judge. We just have judges in this country," intoned Judge Neil Gorsuch on Day Two of his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Wow. Gorsuch must be the real deal—an intellectual jurist who modestly wishes to ascertain the law and facts in hearing federal litigation.

Don't believe it. The hearings are a blunt exercise in partisan power as blatant as exists in American society. And federal litigation is a means of Gorsuch imposing his religious, authoritarian politics.

Gorsuch is a statist activist looking to degrade the liberty claims of Americans, and he has reproductive rights and the 14th and 15th Amendments in his sights, for starters. Gorsuch will receive the vote of all Republican senators, and face the opposition from nearly all Democratic senators.

Discrimination claims, claims for liberty against incursions by the police and all manner of government, the entrenched private power of the corporation against the individual, Gorsuch would repeal decades of legal protection for Americans as a hostile Trump administration looks to inflict trauma onto American citizens.

The Fourth Amendment looks to die a quiet death if Gorsuch wins confirmation.
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Consdier Justice Lewis Powell, writing for a unanimous Court in 1972, denouncing the Nixon administration’s electronic surveillance, warrantless-wiretapping program not just on Fourth Amendment grounds, but as a betrayal of the sovereign rights of citizens in a democracy to criticize their own government:

"History abundantly documents the tendency of Government - however benevolent and benign its motives - to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. ... The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society."
(UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972))

Gorsuch represents the ideological brand of statists who look at civil liberties claims with suspicion and hostility, and Justice Lewis F. Powell, (no civil libertarian), would today never have been nominated by a Republican president, so radical has become the anti-people party.

Voting Is Your Right, No Matter What Racists and Republicans Say

If you see voter obstruction, help your fellow voters

Wisconsin Republicans creating a hostile and obstructive voting regime at Wisconsin's 3,500 polling places is a scheme the GOP hopes bears fruit on Election Day. It's not just poll observes who want to obstruct your vote, it's poll workers.

After-all, Republicans seek to turn every lever of state and municipal government into de facto sub-units of Republican government. So, screening poll workers for hostility to voting rights and in the process taking over the voting place are naturals for voting-averse Republicans.

Antagonistic-to-voters polling workers are pervasive, but compiling reports of their misconduct is difficult for non-profits. (It takes a major social-scientific investigation to quantify the phenomenon of voter obstruction.)

Instead we see warnings about election observers and voter obstruction laws omitting the misconduct of municipal and contract election officials stationed at the point of voting and working, (unlawfully), to suppress the vote.

All of this is carried out under the rubric of voter fraud, a lie, and hostility to civil liberties, a disgrace.

Concludes a New York Times editorial in September: "The scary thing is how many Americans have bought into this charade [about voter fraud]. It shouldn’t be surprising that the Republican Party’s standard-bearer, Donald Trump, has elevated the lie about voting fraud and 'rigged elections' to a centerpiece of his campaign."

It shouldn't be surprising. Alex Wagner has a compelling report out about the dangers Donald Trump poses to voting.

The rotten fruit of the now Trumped-up danger of voter fraud is right at your local polling place, abetted by observers, polling workers and municipal bureaucrats.

Stay vigilant, especially if you are brown or black.

Republicans Got What They Want in Wisc DMV Clerks Deciding Who Votes; Fight's Not Over

Thank you Ruthelle Frank and Eddie Lee Holloway Jr.
for sticking up for our rights in 2011 and beyond, (ACLU)

Wisconsin Republicans frustrated, confused and blocked voters: Mission Accomplished

Wisconsin is better than North Carolina in voting rights, but that's nothing to brag about.

For the some 300,000 registered voters without a Republican-approved voting ID, Wisconsin voting rights activists face a situation where DMV clerks, intrepid students of the Constitution, are making value decisions about who gets to vote.

The result and Republican Party objective is voter confusion, frustration and obstruction.

Writes EPWisco this weekend: "We hope DMV now following correct rules - u should be able to get ID w/whatever docs u have. Let us and @VoteRiders @votermolly know [if] u can't[.]"

From February 2015, consider the unthinkable state of affairs (also seen from 2011) we face today, we did not get here by accident:

[from 2015] If Republicans and Scott Walker get their way, [they did], DMV clerks will make the decision on whether 10,000s of Wisconsin citizens get to vote, exercising the clerks' "discretion in a constitutionally sufficient manner." [Frank v. Walker, p.36]

Election law expert, Rick Hasen [in 2015], says Wisconsin voting right activists make a persuasive case for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Wisconsin photo voter ID case, Ruthelle Frank v. Scott Walker and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of Wisconsin v. Barland.

Hasen notes the timing and disposition of the Wisconsin voting rights case facing the U.S. presidential elections next year, and the five-to-five split of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit pitting Judge Easterbrook's opinion with Judge Richard Posner's.

"This case comes to the Court with an extensive trial record, an exhaustive district court decision, and a pair of diametrically opposed Seventh Circuit opinions by Judges Easterbrook and Posner." [p.11 of 2015 Reply Brief]

If the Supreme Court does not grant cert, the GOP-passed bill signed into law by Scott Walker would become effective.

From Wisconsin voting rights activists' Reply Brief filed [in 2015]:

...The district court identified other problems with the saving construction [by the Wisconsin Supreme Court]. A voter applying for photo ID “must still provide ‘[w]hatever documentation is available which states the person’s name and date of birth,’ and then the [DMV] administrator, in his or her discretion, may accept or reject ‘such extraordinary proof of name and date of birth.’” App. 197a (quoting Wis. Admin. Code § Trans. 102.15(3)(b), (c)). To guide DMV clerks, the Wisconsin Supreme Court offered this cryptic instruction: ‘the administrator, or his or her designee, shall exercise his or her discretion in a constitutionally sufficient manner.’” Id. (quoting NAAC, 851 N.W.2d at 279). It is unthinkable that the right to vote could depend on the “constitutionally sufficient” exercise of discretion by a DMV clerk. See Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145, 153 (1965) (voting rights “cannot be obliterated by the use of laws ... which leave the voting fate of a citizen to the passing whim or impulse of an individual registrar”).  [p. 14]

Repulsive work by Republicans and bureaucrats.

Antonin Scalia—The Ben Tilman of the Court

The political world is awash today in canonizations of Antonin Scalia.

So passionate, so principled, iconic, a legal titan, a "formidable thinker" whose legal writings stand as "a Roman candle of sparkling jurisprudential theories leavened by acerbic witticisms," (Will, Washington Post).

He had friends not sharing his masquerading quest for truth, and he was even more caustic than is known.

Wow.

Enough of this nonsense.

Scalia was a corrupt member on the Court whose service to the Republican Party and the ruling oligarchies was unwavering, and his antipathy to racial justice is repellent to any American with a fleeting grasp of history.

He played with the liberties of citizens, far more often than not finding the liberty interest of people was not prominent in the face of whatever state power inflicted onto black, brown, immigrants, Native Americans and gay Americans, in particular victims of the criminal justice system and white supremacists.

Principled?

As noted by Judge Richard Posner, a decent and honest public intellectual:

Judges tend to deny the creative—the legislative—dimension of judging, important as it is in our system, because they do not want to give the impression that they are competing with legislators, or engaged in anything but the politically unthreatening activity of objective, literal-minded interpretation, using arcane tools of legal analysis. The fact that loose constructionists sometimes publicly endorse textualism is evidence only that judges are, for strategic reasons, often not candid.

Outside of D.C. in reality land, "This doesn’t get said enough: Scalia is an intellectual fraud who uses a phony methodology to get whatever judicial outcomes align with his political preferences ... , (Campos, Salon).

Or as The Onion puts it: "Justice Scalia Dead Following 30-year Battle with Social Progress."

Good riddance.

Wisconsin Greens Want Re-Investigation of Dontre Hamilton Killing

Black lives matter

by David Schwab

From Michael Brown in Ferguson to Eric Garner in New York City to Dontre Hamilton in Milwaukee, there is an epidemic of police violence against unarmed Black men in the United States. In Wisconsin in recent years, we've also seen white men like Michael Bell killed by police, and white vigilantes kill Corey Stingley for shoplifting in suburban Milwaukee. This systemic pattern of excessive force has caused a sense of fear among Blacks even in routine encounters with officers, eroding the trust in law enforcement that is essential to keeping our communities safe. The problem of police brutality is inextricably connected to Wisconsin’s runaway mass incarceration of people of color, showing an urgent need to reform our criminal justice system.

These deaths are preventable. Measures can be taken to solve this problem. Among them include:

• Truly independent investigations of police killings. Wisconsin law requires an independent investigation, but Dontre Hamilton's killing was investigated by retired Milwaukee detectives – from the same department they were investigating. We call for a new, truly independent investigation of Hamilton’s killing, and for rules to ensure the independence of all future investigations.

• A massive overhaul of Wisconsin’s justice system to address problems including:
  • unrestrained police and prosecutorial power
  • racial profiling and policies like “stop and frisk”
  • “zero tolerance” policies and mandatory sentencing, which erode judicial discretion
  • privatization of prisons and the resulting economic incentive to lock up more people
• Establish independent citizen review boards to monitor police behavior, with the power to press charges and issue subpoenas.
• Eliminate the sense of impunity that law enforcement officers and vigilantes enjoy when they commit harassment, assault, and extrajudicial killing of Blacks. We must put an end to a law enforcement culture where even routine traffic stops turn into incidents of abuse for which police are never investigated and held accountable.
• End militarization of local police. Stop training civilian police in military tactics and end provision of military equipment to police departments, resulting in actions like SWAT raids for minor violations.
• Stop the mass incarceration of people of color. Wisconsin has a higher percentage of Black men in prison and parole than any other state. At 12.8%, Wisconsin’s incarceration rate for Black men is almost double the national rate of 6.7%. Wisconsin also incarcerates a higher percentage of its Native American men than any other state.
• Every officer should wear a body video camera. While not a complete solution for these systemic problems, the use of body cameras would be a tangible first step to deter abusive behavior by officers.
• Legalize marijuana and end the “War on Drugs”. Criminalizing and incarcerating people for victimless crimes, like selling and using marijuana, has needlessly destroyed lives, wasted huge amounts of public money, and fueled organized crime. Systemic racism in the enforcement of “drug war” policies has been a key driver of mass incarceration and worsening relations between law enforcement and communities of color. We call for legalization and regulation of marijuana, and replacement of drug prohibition policies with a harm reduction approach

Happy MLK Day, A Dream Deferred

Martin Luther King speaks in Memphis for labor
the day before his assassination in 1968

Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day, 2015

"The Voting Rights Act of 1965 employed extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary problem. ... This was strong medicine, but Congress determined it was needed to address entrenched racial discrimination in voting, 'an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution.'" [South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 309 (Chief Justice Warren, 1966)] ....

There is no denying, however, that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions." (Chief Justice John Roberts, Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder et al (2013))

With these words Justice Roberts declared against that "conditions" caused by the the "insidious and pervasive evil," i.e.: racism, are no longer present.

What world do John Roberts and the Republicans Party live in?

Certainly not reality world.

The national party of de facto segregation today, openly hostile to civil rights and voting rights, maintains its war against ethnic minorities.

One hopes for a revival of the civil rights movement. (New York Times, MLK Day, 2015)

Wrote Justice Ginsberg in dissent in Shelby County, "In the Court’s view, the very success of §5 of the Voting Rights Act demands its dormancy. Congress was of another mind. Recognizing that large progress has been made, Congress determined, based on a voluminous record, that the scourge of discrimination was not yet extirpated. The question this case presents is who decides whether, as currently operative, §5 remains justifiable,¹ this Court, or a Congress charged with the obligation to enforce the post-Civil War Amendments “by appropriate legislation.” With overwhelming support in both Houses, Congress concluded that, for two prime reasons, §5 should continue in force, unabated. First, continuance would facilitate completion of the impressive gains thus far made; and second, continuance would guard against backsliding."

It's apt that the gutting of the Voting Rights Act should come in a case arising from rural Alabama.

The fight for equality live on. In King's words:

I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification’ -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

Not free this day in 2015. The struggle continues. From April 3, 1968 in Memphis:

Republicans Still Trying to Rig Elections in Wisconsin, Citizens Be Damned

Republicans say: Not qualified to vote

Update: Authoring Judge in Landmark Case Disavows His Former Support for Voter ID (Schwartz. NYT)

Doug Chapin, Rick Hasen and the Washington Post note new Republican efforts to micromanage Wisconsin elections right down to the poll worker, and continuing efforts to obstruct voters.

Republican legislative efforts to manage which voters get to vote were deemed unconstitutional in ongoing legal, civil rights fights that will likely continue for years across the nation.

Civil actions continue in Wisconsin state and federal courts, including two consolidated federal cases slated for trial on November 4.

Republicans will of course stick to the James Sensenbrenner-Scott Walker-GOP BS line that photo voter IDs are "common sense" measures to prevent voter impersonation fraud, though the GOP is fully aware no that virtually no voter fraud exists out of the 100s of millions of votes cast.

And potentially 100,000s of Wisconsin citizens could be disenfranchised were Wisconsin's voter ID law made operative in a high-turnout election like that in November 2014. That's in Wisconsin alone.

Chaos, confusion, voter frustration, long lines and anger are the predictable results, with voter disenfranchisement as the objective.

A voter presents a GOP-approved ID, two election inspectors (poll workers) check it for photo resemblance, date and signature and these new qualifications to vote are met.

Oh, sorry Carol, longtime neighbor, you left your license at work: No vote for you!

The One Day Voter ID Was Used in Wisconsin

Let's take a look at the one day, February 14, 2012, in Wisconsin when registered, constitutionally qualified voters were forced to present photo voter IDs when walking up to the poll books before casting their vote.

On February 14, 2012, primary day in Wisconsin, there were no statewide elections; the Wisconsin Government Accountability Office did not estimate voter turn-out because of this fact and the related fact of very low voter-turnout that informed observers guessed was about four percent statewide.

Republicans present this four percent February 2012 primary election is having proceeded swimmingly, and therefore high turnout elections (say 60 percent) will by GOP logic be just fine.

Wrong and wrong.

Reposted from February 2012:

Update III: Madison voters turned away at polls for lacking photo ID. "She was fairly recently in a car accident and couldn't make it to the DOT to get a Wisconsin ID," said Melanie Sax, the chief elections inspector at the polling location at Trinity United Methodist Church on Vilas Avenue. The woman, who does not drive, has neither a driver's license nor a state ID.

That woman is Marge Curtin—disenfranchised.

Update II: 69-year old veteran Gil Paar was shocked when poll workers told him his photo I.D. from the V.A. wasn’t on the accepted list. ... “There’s a possibility that a veteran could have only this type of I.D., because he’s had a stroke, let’s say, up at the V.A. hospital. And because of that, he had his driver’s license taken away. So case in point, he would have only this Veterans Administration I.D. through the hospital.

“And they’re telling me I can’t use it, I couldn’t use it. this is not right. you’ve got a guy who serves, does his time in the Air Force, or Army or the Navy, and then he comes home and can’t vote? What the f—- did I go in for?” (Racine Jounral-Times)

Update: U.S. senators on Tuesday asked the Government Accountability Office to study what they called an "alarming number" of new state laws that will make it "significantly harder" for millions of eligible voters to cast ballots this November.

As an observer from the NAACP looked on, the 200-plus voters in one Fitchburg, Wisconsin voting district yesterday presented an electorate irritated with the GOP's new voter ID requirements.

Wisconsin's voter ID law was passed without any Democratic votes, and no dissenting Republican votes.

Rejected, per the new statute (Act 23), yesterday was an Army Reserve ID that did not include an expiration date.

Many comments from voters were made to election workers: Including "What's next, retina scans?" and "Here to pay my poll tax."

One woman who was inexplicably purged from the polls and tried to re-register objected to the voter registration process as too invasive.

Though the voter ID law, Republicans say, is intended to stop rampant voter impersonation at the polls, not one case of voter impersonation in Wisconsin has been prosecuted going back decades.

But Republicans remain optimistic they can stop enough Democratic-leaning citizens from voting to sway a close election, concentrating on suppressing college and tech students, the elderly and black voters in Milwaukee.

A research report by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute shows that over 177,000 elderly persons in Wisconsin aged 65 and older do not possess a driver's license or state photo identification.

Wisconsin Challenge to GOP's Photo Voter ID May Be Landmark

Update: Related piece in Post (Wilson) about Voting Wars in Wisconsin
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Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced the judgement of the Court in a landmark voting rights case in 2008, delivering an opinion upholding the constitutionality of state-mandated photo voter IDs as a precondition to vote under the United States Constitution.

The Republican Party was happy.

Crawford v. Marion County (Board) Election Board et al legitimized the GOP project to obstruct the vote of non-GOP-voting Americans, a project that went into crash mode as demographic trends signaled electoral trouble for the American White Party. 

Three developments signal an eventual  reversal of Crawford in cases challenging Wisconsin's Photo Voter ID law, slated for trial on November 4—Frank v. Walker, (Case 11cv1128), and Jones et al v. Deininger et al (Case 2:12-cv-00185) (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin), and likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.


Justice John Paul Stevens Succeeded by Justice Elena Kagan

Firstly, Justice John Paul Stevens (1975-2010), the author of the Crawford opinion, has been replaced by Justice Elena Kagan (2010-present), who is by all accounts sympathetic to civil rights against state obstruction.

That's one vote to overrule Crawford.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer each dissented from the Court's opinion in Crawford.

That's three votes.

Justice David Souter, who also dissented in Crawford, has been succeeded by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is sympathetic to civil rights against state obstruction.

That's four likely votes to overrule, and depending on this Court's custom sufficient to grant cert.

This leaves five remaining votes on the Court that ruled on Crawford:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Anthony M. Kennedy who joined Stevens' opinion; and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Anthony Alito who joined Scalia's concurring opinion.

Reads Scalia's opinion:

To evaluate a law respecting the right to vote—whether it governs voter qualifications, candidate selection, or the voting process—we use the approach set out in Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U. S. 428 (1992) . This calls for application of a deferential "important regulatory interests" standard for nonsevere, nondiscriminatory restrictions, reserving strict scrutiny for laws that severely restrict the right to vote. 

Use of Voter ID Laws to Severely Restrict and Discriminate Against Discrete Classes of Voters

Secondly, consider "nonsevere, nondiscriminatory restrictions." 

If one intellectually honest jurist of the Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito majority takes a look at the record accumulated in Frank v. Walker and Jones et al v. Deininger when these cases are petitioned to be heard before the Supreme Court, it will be clear, it will be striking, that severe, discriminatory restrictions are inherent and intended in GOP-written state photo voter ID laws.

Five years since Crawford have changed the minds of many jurists.

As Souter wrote, joined by Ginsburg:

The statute is unconstitutional under the balancing standard of Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U. S. 428 (1992) : a State may not burden the right to vote merely by invoking abstract interests, be they legitimate, see ante, at 7–13, or even compelling, but must make a particular, factual showing that threats to its interests outweigh the particular impediments it has imposed. The State has made no such justification here, and as to some aspects of its law, it has hardly even tried

Five years have yielded an abundant factual record showing voting impediments and barriers, and virtually no showing of voter impersonation fraud out of 100s of millions of votes cast. And that's without Wisconsin's trial not yet begun.

Judge Richard A. Posner Recants His Crawford Opinion

Finally, the author of Crawford in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit which will hear the likely appeal of Frank and Jones, Judge Richard A. Posner (1981-present), has publicly recanted his Crawford opinion he authored, saying, "We judges and lawyers, we don’t know enough about the subject matters that we regulate, right? And that if the lawyers had provided us with a lot of information about the abuse of voter identification laws, this case [Crawford] would have been decided differently"

Can states eliminate the right of suffrage for discrete, otherwise constitutionally qualified voters?

The intent and effect of the flurry of GOP voter ID laws, and Wisconsin's law in particular, suggest their anti-voting project is unconstitutional as it erects discriminatory barriers that violate Section Two of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

As John Schwartz writes in the New York Times: "Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an expert on election law, said an admission of error by a judge is unusual, and 'gives to Democrats an ‘I-told-you-so’' argument on voter identification issues.

More significant, he said, it reflects what he called a recent shift. Previously, cases were decided largely along party lines, but then 'you started seeing both Democratic- and Republican-leaning judges' reining in voter identification requirements"

If say in 2014-15, the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Frank and Jones, Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans will have made history just not in the way they intended.

WTMJ Goes Soviet

WTMJ - On your side, comrade

From Pravda, make that WTMJ:

TODAY'S TMJ4 and Newsradio 620 WTMJ discovered that several members of our staff signed the recall petitions for Governor Walker. Some of those employees play a role in our news-gathering and editorial process. Several of them also work on-air: One at TODAY'S TMJ4; four at Newsradio 620 WTMJ. ... [M]any employees told us that they felt signing the recall petition was not a political act, but instead felt it was similar to casting a vote.  WTMJ does not agree. ... [W]e want to assure you, our viewers, that we are taking measures to make sure all of our reporting is fair, balanced and to ensure something like this does not happen again.

So another one of the Party organs takes exceptions to its employees exercising the Wisconsin Constitutional Right of Recall (Article XIII, Section 12). Wonder what measures WTMJ will take.

Journal Communications Chairman, President, and CEO: Steven J. Smith is a board member of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC), but I guess their activity is properly sanctioned by the Party.

Funny how progressives and liberals fight for the rights of all citizens; and rightwingers like WTMJ, the Wisconsin State Journal and other GOP organs police unsanctioned political activity of their employees.

From the Capital Times [leebrals in Madison]:

The same constitutional amendment that protects the right to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and the right to assemble — the essential underpinnings of democratic life — also protects the right to petition for the redress of grievances.

To tell an American that it is wrong to sign a petition, any petition, is to our view the equivalent of telling people that they cannot speak their opinion, publish their views or worship as they choose.

Conservatives and liberals have long agreed that nothing smacks more of totalitarianism than to tell a citizen what he or she cannot say, to tell a publisher what he or she cannot print, or to tell a believer how he or she should worship.

Yet in recent days there has been a flurry of debate about whether citizens of Wisconsin — judges, journalists, elected officials, public employees — should be sanctioned for signing petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch or members of the state Senate.

When Scott Walker was for recalling the Milwaukee County executive, Herb Kohl, and Russ Feingold, WTMJ didn't police its employees for unsanctioned political activity.

Back when he was a state legislator, Walker was an enthusiastic proponent of recall elections. In fact, he was one of only a handful of state legislators who aligned himself with—and ultimately took money from—a group that was seeking to recall US Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl.

Walker got even more enthusiastic about recalls in 2002, when he became the favored candidate of the group seeking to remove Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament. After Ament resigned, Walker was elected to replace him. When he ran for governor in (2010), Walker talked up the recall drive of 2002 as an exercise in democracy—celebrating the recall as a tool for holding errant officials to account.

Wonder why the different treatment by WTMJ between then and now.