Giving up Freedom without a fight

[Eagle732]

moose "Eagle732, Democratic Governments did not try to suppress voters either Democrat or Republican, therefore your voting rights (even if voting Republican) was protected. I also had no problem being in a rural area, which was more Republican then Democrat and having a mixed government, although other things were attempted.. So cry me a river.."

 

Ah, you didn't notice the little smiley face?

Get a grip!

[moosetracker]

No, it is proven by the ultra long lines caused. Those people should have been able to go to vote with a line less than one hour long. Suppression is not only beating people up who go to the poll booth, it is about finding ways to discourage turnout by the group you don't want to vote..

 

Turn out should have been accommodated and handled efficiently, with enough polling places & booths for the population being serviced. It was purposely shrunk to not be able to do it, with court battles to deny more early voting days, when everyone could see the bottleneck coming, the only difference was just GOP wanted it, and Democrats wanted to avoid it.

 

It's elementary why the bottleneck would happen more in the city polling booths then rural areas, even if the long ballot was in both places. Rural areas had more polling places / polling booths for their smaller populated areas.

 

It is easy to figure out how to accommodate for the population in the area.. All the states with Democratic Government was able to do it.. Some of the Republican ones did. I do have to give kudos to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey for how he handled elections with the loss of power and polling places due to Hurricane Sandy. Basically it was only Republican Government in swing states that seemed to have a problem handling voter turnout in their metro areas.. Strange, coincidence isn't it? NOT!

 

[moosetracker]

Sorry 732 - I have been arguing with boneheaded Republicans too long to notice a snarky smiley face, accept when boneheaded snarkiness is attached to it.. So sorry if I did not see the joke you intended it to be.

[Eagle732]

More voter suppression? Isn't the election over yet?

[moosetracker]

Sure the election is over with. It's an Old tired fight. It is just Republican supporters feel that since their efforts to suppress the vote failed in this election, they can claim that it never happened.. Failure doesn't mean it never happened, otherwise our jails would not be so full of people who failed to get away with murder, robbery, drug dealing etc.

[SSScout]

 

I was an Election Judge here in Murlun. To so serve, I had to "vote early" , so as to be available all day that tuesday. I came home from a IOLS training that sunday, said to myself, this is a good day to vote, and went to one of 5 early voting centers in my county, at about 3 in the afternoon. The line to enter the center , up to the registration table, was one hour long. I asked the folks working there, and they said it had been like that when they opened at 8am, and had not abated. They said it was reported to be like that at all the other centers, too.

The center had 38 (!) voting machines working. The ballot took me 12 minutes to work thru and cast, and I had studied my choices and had the sample ballot with me. This, as you may remember, was afew days before Sandy came thru the east coast.

On the first tuesday after the first monday in November, I helped set up my polling place at 6am. We were ready to open for voters at 7am, and we had 60 (! I counted them as I left) in line already. I returned at 5pm for my evening shift and to "close out" the polling place. My colleagues said there had been a steady stream of voters all day, without letup, sometimes with 20 or more in line. We had 12 machines, busy all day. One had a stuck color choice (it was green on yellow, for some reason) but we used it still.

We had a sit down machine for wheelchair folks. We had a Braille capable machine. Both were in use all day, constantly. Rarely did we have any machine vacant for more than a few minutes. Even in our semi-rural area, we had folks voting for the first time, elderly with "helpers", parents who wanted their kids (under 16 allowed in the booth with the parent) to see it happen. Some were quick (5, 6, 7 minutes?) some took awhile to vote.

In previous years, I remember coming in to the same polling place (this was my first year as a ballot worker), and NEVER seeing this kind of backup or interest. This year, unlike previous years, according to "veterans", there was NO slack period.

Loss of freedoms? Perhaps. Gain of freedoms? Ask my friends of color. Lack of demonstrations of disatisfaction with our system? Well, I haven't seen much passionate reaction about the various (various!) wars our government is persuing around the world such as we observed in the VietNam war era.

Still don't see any reason to move to elsewhere.

[Basementdweller]

voter suppression is fact in my state.

 

Republicans in ohio redrew the boundaries more than a few years ago and they control the allotment of voting machines and their placement.

 

I live in a primarily Democratic district and we share our polling place with a primarily republican district. the last two presidential elections I walk in to vote huge lines at my districts tables and machines. the republican district had none.....The republican district had 6 machines to our 3.

 

The first Obama election people were still voting at the democratic districts after midnight....keep in mind the polls close at 7.

[Basementdweller]

Besides.......

 

Anyone who knows anything about local politics or the local police chief understands that laws are not for the wealthy or politicians.

[moosetracker]

Basement, I never knew you lived in Ohio! Don't know why, but always thought you were in NY city.. But, yep.. Considering the inner city kids you discuss working with, if you were in Ohio, you felt the voter suppression.. Let your scouts parents know that to me anyone who voted under the circumstances you had to deal with are all heros to me.

 

I can see some future movie (might not be until a time we can look back on it to point out the wrong side of history Republicans were on).. Where your line stances are part of the tale.. Might be in the retelling of the first black President, might be just in the story telling of politics during this era.. But, I see those who came out and stood in line as a grand statement in the movie.

 

So were you in an area where the constant visits by Romney and Obama, turned your driving commutes into a nightmare? Though we were a swing state and kept each party guessing which way we would swing right up to election day, our measley 4 electorial votes keeps us from getting much attention, which I am thankful for. Not totally ignored, but not a state in a political tug-of-war.

 

[Stosh]

Gotta love all these tug-of-WAR politics going on in our country. Where is the freedom on a place wracked by constant war/battles.

 

Just a couple of thoughts:

 

For those who are "Christian" - "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the Children of God."

 

For those who like old music - "Listen people to a story, that was written long ago.... When they rolled the stone away, 'Peace on Earth' is all it said."

 

"When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?"

 

How can we be viewed by others as people interested in Peace when we have so little to offer with our war-mongering ways?

 

In war one is in bondage to winning. In peace, everyone has freedom. So they say, I've not seen much of it in my lifetime.

 

Stosh

 

Stosh

[Basementdweller]

Commuting was horrible, rolling roadblocks during rush hour. Even surface streets were blocked with city trucks providing a secure perimeter....

 

I disconnected my home phone for a month and gave anyone that mattered my cell number. The robo calls were one every 5-10 minutes.....Moral of the story, don't put your phone number on the voter registration card.

 

The political adds were crazy.....It did create some interesting discussions with Son and some of his friends.

 

 

There is poverty everywhere if you take the time to look for it. I live in the same home I bought as a starter 25 years ago.....The area was different, white flight and the landlord property flipper people have destroyed the neighborhood one home at a time....... So do I throw in the towel and run for the doors like all of the other folks and let the folks have da hood, or do I put my foot down and make a stand. There are other circumstances that were at play, but moving was not an option.

[Stosh]

I live in a "depressed" area of town. Property values are lower than other part of the city. The home right across the street from me is abandoned. Vandalism is all around with gang symbols, and windows broken, cars egged, and the list goes on. On the the other hand, no one has ever bothered me or my house.

 

I don't accept the situation that I live in and I spend a lot of time sitting on my front step saying hi and being pleasant to the kids walking by. I pick up their garbage and have a bench for them to sit on in my front yard. I have never complained about them to anyone or said a negative word about them. I show respect and I get respect. What goes around comes around.

 

Stosh

[Brewmeister]

In 2012, 13% of the vote was cast by blacks, up from 11%. 10% was Latino, up from 8%. 19% was cast by voters under 30 years of age, up from 17%. Those old white GOP-ers are doing a bangup job of "suppression," eh?

 

Simply repeating something over and over and imagining it to be true does not make it so.

 

But perhaps I'm too "boneheaded" to make the leap necessary to believe it...

 

[CalicoPenn]

Over the past 20 years or so, I've found that there is reality and their is Fox News fed, right-wing, tea-party, GOP "reality" which wants nothing whatsoever to do with facts and figures. To deny that there have been, and still continue to be, very real threats and attempts to suppress the vote, is akin to claiming the sky is green.

 

To say that three black guys standing outside a single polling place, one of them holding a stick, is about vote supression while denying that voter ID laws, eliminating early voting days, eliminating same day registration, eliminating motor voter laws, and not staffing or equipping polling places appropriately to avoid hours long lines in multiple jurisdictions, and robo-calls by GOP operatives to try to convince folks that they vote on a Wednesday or their vote from the primary will carry over so they don't have to vote is the sign of someone not in touch with the real world.

 

That one can spout statistics showing an increase in votes by minorities doesn't prove that voter suppression wasn't taking place - what it proves is that voter suppression failed in a lot of respects because the people rose up against it.

 

To eliminate the long lines, we should be allowing internet voting. Of course that scares the bejebus out of Republicans because the ones that are going to embrace internet voting the most are going to be the 18 to 32 age group. We should also require, for Presidential elections, that each polling place be equipped with one machine for every 88 voters registered in a precinct. I came up with this figure using an assumption of the polling place being open for 11 hours, and an average of 15 minutes per person to cast a ballot, and an assumption of a 50% turn-out per precinct - it will take 44 people 11 hours to cast their votes. (If you have 100 people show up to vote and only 1 machine, with an average time of 15 minutes, it will take 25 hours to get everyone through).

 

[Sentinel947]

Basementdweller, if you don't mind me asking, what city in Ohio are you from? You sound to be describing either Columbus or Cincinnati. I live in Cincinnati.