The New Black Panther Party chairman undermines some arguments you might have heard. These arguments include:

 1. That the deployment of armed Panthers in Philadelphia wasn’t part of any nationally directed plan.

2. That the national New Black Panther Party wholly disapproved of the presence of weapons at the polls.

3. That the actions were renounced.

4. That the Philadelphia chapter was terminated and King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were kicked out of the national party.

 Pay close attention:  these are arguments still being promulgated in all corners as factual and important:

So, what does the video reveal?

1. That the deployment in Philadelphia was part of a nationwide deployment directed by the National Party.

2. That the brandished weapons were just “a little too strong” and a “little too black.”

3. That the National Party hardly seems to have renounced the actions, or at least not in a genuine way.

4. That the “termination” of the Philadelphia chapter was a ruse and King Samir Shabazz is loved and welcomed back and Jerry Jackson is also. So much for that all important termination of the Philadelphia chapter.

This is what happens when some people are receptive, for whatever inane reason, to the excuses of wrongdoers who would violate the civil rights of Americans. The irrational sympathies remind me of the sort of things “respectable” segregationists would say about their more nasty backwoods neighbors a generation ago: just a few crackpots, one might go too far on occasion, just “small potatoes,” we can’t do anything about those crackpots because we don’t really have any connection to their craziness.

And pay attention to this: As Malik Zulu Shabazz begins to defend the behavior in Philadelphia in the open, pay close attention to how closely his rhetoric and argument matches the defense made in presumably more respectable quarters, both online and elsewhere.

The Washington Post describes yet another proposal to take power over elections away from the states and let Washington D.C. determine requirements for elections.  This proposal is nicely packaged as a way to make the upcoming redistricting process more transparent.  The author struts out this false dilemma:  “Failure to provide for transparency and public participation should be recognized for what it is: an obviously self-serving act, placing the interests of politicians above the public interest.”  As if stripping power from elected officials and giving to someone else isn’t also “self serving.”  Just a different “self” perhaps.  Always beware when the “public interest” justifies alterations to long established electoral systems. 

In the case of redistricting, the electoral process in the individual states always provides a remedy.  If the public, in sufficient numbers, deems the elected officials insufficiently transparent or inadequately responsive, then all they need do is vote out the offending officials.  Stripping the elected legislatures of power to do redistricting and dumping it into a new body or a new oversight board is a bad idea. 

In my experience working with state legislatures all around the nation, I’ve found that they are so close to the people, that citizens can already get as involved in the process as they want to be.  Care about redistricting? Then roll up your sleeves and get busy.  Call up the chairs of the relevant committees and let them know you are interested.  Attend hearings.  Call staff.  Send letters.  Offer plans.  Write editorials.  Mobilize citizens. Watch, listen and act.  That’s what we do in America.   It is a cheap answer to citizen apathy to assume that a commission, or citizen panel will cure an absence of participation by citizens.  I’ve found that state legislators are extremely responsive to citizen involvement, especially involvement demonstrating even a minimal level of ability.  So the answer isn’t to change who does redistricting; the answer is for citizens to exercise their rights to be involved in the process. 

The allegations of voter fraud we reported on in Dillon County (SC) have moved from a county investigation, to SLED, the state law enforcement agency.  In my experience in S.C., this means either the allegations are more credible justifying state resources, or, it means there are local conflicts.  I suspect the former.  From WPDE:

“A 29-year-old Dillon woman, who asked that she not be identified, told us and police a man gave her $20 and a brand new dress in exchange for her vote by absentee ballot.  Police in Dillon have given state police her information.  And, a voter by the name of Willie Ruth Rowland says when she went to vote in the primary, voter registration officials told her she’d already voted. After some checking, Rowland learned her name had been forged on an absentee ballot.”

My latest  Pajamas Media article about instructions at DOJ not to enforce laws prohibiting ineligible voters from being on the rolls.

UPDATE:  If you want to see how academics excuse this sort of abrogation of legal responsibility, click here.  Explicitly refusing to enforce federal laws requiring that no ineligible voters be on the rolls becomes: “stressed using DOJ resources to further minority access.”   The unwillingness to bring Section 8 cases and only Section 7 cases when the Bush adminstration brought both becomes: “usual kind of shift of emphasis that comes from a change in Administrations.”  Naked instructions to ignore the law becomes: “differing philosophies on voting rights.”

Race.  Natural shifts.  And just an understandable different way of seeing things.  Like it says at the top of the screen – more red than the ivory tower.

The Sun reports:

“Six aides to Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon are scheduled to appear before a grand jury this week, as the District Attorney’s Office continues to investigate allegations that he lives outside the northern San Fernando Valley which he represents. . . . Alarcon, a veteran politician, could face felony charges for voter fraud if it’s determined that he illegally lives outside his 7th council district. . . . A neighbor across the street from Alarcon’s Panorama City home told media sources earlier this year that the councilman had not lived there for three years. Two other neighbors made similar comments.”

AADELF alleges voter intimidation and wants federal observers for 2009 election behavior.  The New York Daily News  has more:
“The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) is asking the Justice Department to investigate last year’s City Council election in District 19 and to appoint observers ‘to deter future discriminatory conduct and intimidation.’  That was the race where Republican Dan Halloran beat Democrat Kevin Kim, and which we wrote about during our limited-time-only election blog, Brawl For The Hall. At the time, AALDEF told us their observers saw Asian-American voters and volunteers for Kim’s campaign harrassed [sic] and even assaulted by whites. The Halloran campaign countered that vanloads of Asian voters from outside the district were brought in to vote, and that voters were encouraged not to support him because of his pre-Christian pagan religious beliefs. “

Pagan?  Ok, forget that part.  But Kings County is certified and this would allow the deployment of Federal Observers in the next election.

A excerpt of the article Who Runs the Country?:

“I’ve scoured the back streets of Philadelphia, Mississippi, hunting down the half-hidden memorial to James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three champions of the right to vote. They were slaughtered after being pulled over by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price. I wondered why the memorial was not at the jail where they were detained with sinister intent. It would make a more noble witness to what an unrestrained government is capable of doing to humans.

These places moved me to my core. I cannot even imagine how profound the election of Barack Obama would be to me if I experienced the evil injustice of segregation as a target.  I deeply respect the overwhelming joy following the election, even if I cannot understand it in the same way.

But foul history does not excuse foul impropriety.

Electoral euphoria does not justify a racially tinged announcement by a superior, in the presence of the United States attorney general, to her subordinates.”

John Fund on the Department’s lack of enforcement of NVRA 8 here.

I’ll be on CNN today talking about my latest Pajamas Media piece .  Sorry I don’t have a precise time right now.

Pollster John Zogby writes  an important criticism of the phony Daily Kos polls which have polluted our electoral and political discourse over the last decade.

A Note to Nate

By John Zogby

 To Nate Silver:

Congratulations to you. You have gained a lot of attention and are on the threshold of attaining even more. With these well wishes, from someone who has also achieved a good deal, be alerted to your new responsibilities. To date you have many fans. But the real scrutiny is just beginning and some fans are ephemeral. Here is some advice from someone who has been where you are today.

Don’t Create Standards You Will Find Hard to Maintain Yourself. You are hot right now—using an aggregate of other people’s work, you got 49 of 50 states right in 2008. I know how it is to feel exhilarated. I get the states right a lot too. But remember that you are one election away from being a mere mortal like the rest of us. We very good pollsters have missed some. They tell me you blew the Academy Awards and your projections in the 2010 U.K. elections were a tad squidgy. So be humble and continue to hone your craft. Be aware that some of your legions who adore you today and hang on your every word will turn their guns on you in a minute. Hey, I have been right within a few tenths of a percent—but you are a probabilities guy and even a 95% confidence level and a margin of sampling error are not enough for some.

Be Honest. You take other people’s polls, compare records for predictions, add in some purely arbitrary (and not transparent) weights, then make your own projections and rankings. But your efforts include more than just statistics. There is some edginess: you don’t like numbers when they don’t agree with your pre-conceptions. One night you took a one sentence comment I made to a Boston Herald reporter that my partial poll results showed President Obama with about a “50-50 rating” and you headlined your piece with “The Worst Pollster in the World”. Was that due diligence? Did you realize that less than a week later, as is often the case, most other polls were similar to mine?

Then there are your now famous rankings of pollsters based on 2008 presidential election “predictions”. Aren’t you even a little embarrassed that Zogby Interactive’s last national online poll was published on October 4—one month before the election? (And the numbers were right in the middle of the Real Clear Politics average). Or that the several states we polled online were published October 21? Most states were at or near the RCP average. What point do you need to make by using numbers so long before an election? Those of us doing this work for decades understand that so much happens in the closing weeks, days, and hours of a campaign. As many as 4% to 10% of likely voters tell us they make up their minds the day of the election. Some of my colleagues suggest that you are being disingenuous when you knowingly use this data; others say you have a personal axe to grind. But repeating these errors over and over will not make them true. (Apparently though, you did rate my telephone election polls in 2008 as one of the three most accurate in a speech to Fordham University).

Understand That There’s Much More to Being a Good Pollster. To the degree that we “predict” an outcome, the “prediction” must be based on results collected as close to the election as possible. But we pollsters are data-based problem-solvers. We work with clients to solve problems, plan the future, project trends, and test effective messages and models. This involves lots of people skills, a passion to get it right and do right by people who trust us. We are so much more than where we stand on election day. Your ratings come with and generate a lot of vitriol. How does that make our world a better place?

Appreciate Innovation. We have mastered polling by landline but today’s landline penetration is where it was in 1963. We, at Zogby International, have been testing and perfecting new models and methods for years. We did well in our national online polls in 2004 and 2008. In both years, as well as 2006, we slipped in only a few states—but were right on the money in most and we found where the errors were and continue to upgrade our sampling methods. We have had the courage to be the only pollsters to get it right (many times all alone) and to get it wrong (a few times). But remember, innovation is a necessity itself and an added value. Columbus never got to India. Roentgen studied physics and never expected to discover the x-ray. But they learned so much more. Interactive polling offers so many new opportunities for cluster sampling, image-testing, and reaching people we simply can’t reach by traditional methods. You may want to take a little time and learn about interactive polling and the industry.

Do Some Polling. Janet Maslin and Robert Bianco are terrific reviewers and critics but they never wrote or directed a movie or stage production. You are a statistician—a very good one but you are not a pollster. You should conduct some polls and learn that the rest of us good pollsters survey people, not statistics. The numbers tell the story; pre-conceived ideologies and fuzzy-math statistical models do not.

Just some advice from an old warrior. A mutual fan suggested I take you to lunch some time. Good idea. Let me know when you’ll be in Utica.