Until 9pm EDT.  Talking about Injustice.

100.9 FM in Tower, MN

I will be on KCMO in Kansas City Monday morning in the 8am hour to talk about Injustice with Greg Knapp.

In a previous post, we discussed the merits of Colorado counties sending absentee ballots to inactive voters.  Inactive voters were placed on the inactive list for a very good reason: because they failed to vote in a number of election cycles, failed to respond to mailings, or there were mailings (even ballots) returned to the elections office as undeliverable. In some cases, the post office notifies election officials that the individual has moved to another jurisdiction with a forwarding address where the voter may be entitled to vote.

So, it is interesting how very wrong the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, Elections
Subcommittee can get an elections-related
issue involving absentee ballots to overseas military voters, and then demagogue the issue ~ alleging *gasp* voter suppression.  In a nutshell, the press release states:  “Gonzalez Condemns Move to Deny Ballots to Military Voters.”  It is ironic that a Texas Congressman would condemn a Colorado Secretary of State Gessler considering the former actually participated in hearings and presumably voted for the MOVE Act that essentially did the same thing for which he now condemns Gessler, except on a national level.  Just as he failed to read the health care bill, he apparently didn’t read or understand the MOVE Act.     

The voting reforms of the MOVE Act removed the senseless previous requirement to send absentee ballots to overseas military voters for up to two federal cycles, regardless if a past ballot sent to the voter has been previously returned as undeliverable or some other reason the voter would not ordinarily receive a ballot (i.e. registration made inactive, or some other state requirement for an updated absentee ballot request.)  As a member on the Committee on House Administration itself, Gonzalez should have been aware that election officials actually requested that this section of the military voting law be modified for the overall good of the voter and efficient election administration.  The Congress agreed. 

I am sure the goal of the Congressman Gonzalez is not to suppress the vote of military voters by sending useless ballots to the last known undeliverable (but wrong) address of an military voter with little to no chance of return, thereby disenfranchising the voter.  Instead, the mutual goal (we hope) is to correctly update the outdated address of the overseas military voter which allows him or her to fully participate in the election.  In the end, Congress listened to the experts and made this prudent change in the MOVE Act. 

While some unfairly guess at Gessler’s motive to bring uniformity to Colorado, the facts and the fundamentals favors Secretary of State Gessler in his decision to stand by the plain reading of the Colorado law requiring the mailing of absentee ballots only to active voters.  Mailing ballots to inactive voters is unnecessarily expensive and a waste of resources, as very few are ever returned.  The practice of sending a ballot to an inactive voter also provides an heightened opportunity for absentee ballot fraud where there is already an indication that the person has moved to another jurisdiction and may not be entitled to vote.  To allow the sending of ballots to addresses that are undeliverable or to inactive voters is setting the system up for abuse and, unfortunately, the next headline that undermines voter confidence.  All experts agree that the absentee ballot mailing system is already more susceptible to fraud than other
methods of voting so why would anyone want to increase the possibility of problems.  As they say an “ounce of prevention”….

Individuals are placed on inactive lists because they have not participated in elections for a lengthy period of time or have had mailings sent to them and returned as
undeliverable or with a forwarding address.  Sometimes the postal service notifies the election office that the person has moved to another jurisdiction, but the individual has not personally requested to be removed from the rolls, thus delaying any prompt list maintenance process.  These are all indications that the voter
has moved and not entitled to vote in the election.  However, their presence remains
on the voter rolls for years as dead weight, artificially inflating the true number of registered voters in
the jurisdiction.  While federal law requires inactive voters to stay dormant on the rolls for years, the high number of inactive voters on the Colorado voter rolls is a unfortunate failure of counties and the state to conduct systematic list maintenance activities.

In Colorado, it is apparent that most counties agree with Gessler’s interpretation of the statute; however, there are always one or two counties that just have to do things different by sending ballots to inactive registrants ~ they are convinced they care more, but the truth is that they are hurting more voters.  The lack of uniformity between counties is the issue that reared its head in Florida 2000.  When each county goes its own way with such issues, its always ends badly. 

This video simply must be seen to be believed.  This is the Atlanta version of the “Occupy Wall Street Movement” (aka Crash the Air and Space Museum Movement).  “Senator [sic] Lewis” gets chased off by a crowd of crackpots and their weird cult-like methods.  Had the Civil Rights Movement in the 50s and 60s been this far out of the mainstream, or even out of the normal way of speaking, it would have gone absolutely nowhere.  If you do nothing else today, click the video link.

You can get a free chapter of the new bestseller Injustice at this link.

Some apologists for DOJ have told the media how much faster and easier it is for states to submit plans to DOJ for approval under Section 5.  They do this to create political pressure against the other option, going straight to court for approval.  These folks know that the DOJ process is more politicized than is a federal court process.  Texas in this pleading provides lots more reasons why it is better to go to federal court than to DOJ.

At this Heritage forum.

At the link, once again we see another state, this time South Carolina, go to the U.S. District Court for an objective analysis of its senate redistricting plans rather than put up with the ridiculous questions and black maximation policies of the partisan lawyers in the Voting Section. 

“State Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell has announced the S.C. Senate will file a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking a declaration that the State Senate Redistricting Plan conforms to the requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act…In a letter the agency sent to the Senate on Monday, the Justice Department asks about District 17 which now serves voters in Chester, Fairfield, Union and York counties. The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that the district could be drawn with a black majority. But the Senate rejected that argument”

Apparently, the Feds (that would be left wing attorneys in the DOJ Voting Section) had questions on one senate district in the South Carolina State Senate plan.  It just so happens their concerns were related to the very same district where the ACLU wanted to force a new black majority district.  What a coincidence! It also appears that DOJ is “inconsistently” using black maximation policies rather than the proper retrogression analysis under the law.  Even more concerning is that the black maximation analysis is only rolled out depending on who is proposing the lines.  With so many states opting for court, DOJ has become just another party in a lawsuit, certainly not the final word in redistricting. It is apparent with Georgia and South Carolina going to court, that absolutely none of the states who deal with DOJ on voting issues actually believe the attorneys in the Voting Section are following the law or being objective in their analysis. Their actions indicate they almost uniformly believe the Voting Section is simply carrying water for the Obama WH and DCCC.

In Arizona, a link describing the aftershocks of the so-called “compromise plan” which takes a red state majority and flips it to Democratic majority status.  These compromise lines in a state where Democrats fail to occupy any statewide office, Senate office and Republicans maintain veto-proof red margins in the state legislature.