Friday, May 19, 2017

"The Bennan Center for Justice" has released a report about gerrymandering.

...This report focuses (click here for "Extreme Maps") on one of the most egregious of these abuses: the manipulation of district lines to give the party drawing the map a share of seats grossly at odds with statewide election results, thus ensuring that one party is over represented and the other underrepresented in a delegation....

The degree these maps are skewed, they are ignitable. The recent Supreme Court Decision should back up such extreme maps.

May 15, 2017
By Vann R. Newkirk II

North Carolina (click here) voters probably won’t have to worry about a return of strict voter-ID tests any time soon. Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear arguments in North Carolina, et al. v. North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, et al. That case was petitioned by Republican state officials, including then-Governor Pat McCrory, after the Fourth Circuit court found last year that a package of 2013 voting reforms, including the establishment of a strict voter-ID requirement and restrictions on early voting and same-day registration, “were enacted with racially discriminatory intent.”...

There are other states I am fairly confident the Trump campaign is also examining for his re-election. These are the states that went for him only through their electoral college vote AND where tens of thousands of people were rejected or disheartened in their resolve to vote. Wisconsin was one of those states.

May 14, 2017
By Christina A. Cassidy and Ivan Moren

Milwaukee — State Sen. Mary Lazich (click here) was adamant: The bill Republicans were about to push through the Wisconsin state Senate, requiring that voters present identification at the polls, would do no harm.

“Not a single voter in this state will be disenfranchised by the ID law,” Lazich promised.
Five years later, in the first presidential election held under the new law, Gladys Harris proved her wrong.

By one estimate, 300,000 eligible voters in the state lacked valid photo IDs heading into the election; it is unknown how many people did not vote because they didn’t have proper identification. But it is not hard to find the Navy veteran whose out-of-state driver’s license did not suffice, or the dying woman whose license had expired, or the recent graduate whose student ID was deficient — or Harris, who at 66 made her way to her polling place despite chronic lung disease and a torn ligament in her knee.

She had lost her driver’s license just before Election Day. Aware of the new law, she brought her Social Security and Medicare cards as well as a county-issued bus pass that displayed her photo....