Federal judge on voter suppression: Oops, these ARE bad laws

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHXdZ39pOezxMaYjoorO-YNlsUUAFY1jqpTC_epO0dahH3ZneFySSAz04RLKytu9YcaQg_cl_tzhqT0Ng28fw7daKJqv6LvDVbNN2Q5YOpMtZ3jbV6qCWzrvOBTH8HLk6Q7eQwgh7BjFh2/s1600/voter_suppression.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHXdZ39pOezxMaYjoorO-YNlsUUAFY1jqpTC_epO0dahH3ZneFySSAz04RLKytu9YcaQg_cl_tzhqT0Ng28fw7daKJqv6LvDVbNN2Q5YOpMtZ3jbV6qCWzrvOBTH8HLk6Q7eQwgh7BjFh2/s1600/voter_suppression.png" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Former federal judge <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Posner" rel="nofollow">Richard Posner</a> wrote a new book saying laws that suppress voting are a really bad idea.<br /><br /> Well that’s pretty obvious. But six years ago Posner didn’t think so. He wrote the majority opinion in a case defending voter suppression laws that use unattainable ID </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">requirements to disenfranchise working-class voters. Posner’s arguments in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawford_v._Marion_County_Election_Board" rel="nofollow">Crawford v. Marion County Election Board</a> unleashed a wave of strict voter suppression laws in states all over the country.<br /><br />Now Posner, a Reagan appointee, says <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/us/politics/judge-in-landmark-case-disavows-support-for-voter-id.html" rel="nofollow">he was very wrong</a>:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In a new book, “Reflections on Judging,” Judge Posner, a prolific author who also teaches at the University of Chicago Law School, said, “I plead guilty to having written the majority opinion” in the case. He noted that the Indiana law in the Crawford case is “a type of law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">In an interview last week, Posner was asked more bluntly if he had gotten the ruling wrong:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes. Absolutely.” Back in 2007, he said, “there hadn’t been that much activity in the way of voter identification,” and “we weren’t really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disenfranchise people entitled to vote.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">In other words, Posner said he didn’t realize how dangerous voter suppression laws could be. But plenty of other people did, including dissenting Judge Terrance Evans:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The dissent by Judge Evans, who died in 2011, began, “Let’s not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">T</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">here were many others making the same point. John Nichols at <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/176641/judge-who-framed-voter-id-laws-constitutional-says-he-got-it-wrong" rel="nofollow"><em>The Nation</em> writes</a>:<blockquote class="tr_bq">Judge Posner should have paid closer attention to the detailed amicus brief filed in 2006 by the Brennan Center for Justice, which explained how the Indiana law threatened to “<a data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.brennancenter.org/legal-work/crawford-v-marion-county-election-board" target="_blank">exclude many eligible voters from participating in our democratic process</a>.”</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Because voter ID requirements have been <a data-ls-seen="1" href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/voter-id" target="_blank">widely criticized as weighing more heavily of specific classes of voters</a>—people of color, students, low-income voters, the elderly—legitimate concerns have been raised about equal protection and a host of other constitutional concerns.</blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Crawford case was a gift to Republican extremists and groups like <a href="http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed" rel="nofollow">ALEC</a> that have been trying to block likely Democratic voters from the polls for years. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the heels of the Supreme Court gutting key parts of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965" rel="nofollow">Voting Rights Act</a>, extremist lawmakers have aggressively pushed voter suppression laws in states like Texas and <a href="http://teamsternation.blogspot.com/2013/08/nc-governor-signs-voter-suppression-bill.html">North Carolina</a>, citing the Crawford case to justify their schemes. While they claim the laws are aimed at stopping voter fraud, they <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/06/25/505953/pennsylvania-republican-voter-id-laws-are-gonna-allow-governor-romney-to-win/" rel="nofollow">can barely conceal their real agenda</a>, which is to use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_(United_States)" rel="nofollow">poll-tax</a>-like restrictions to rig elections they can’t actually win.</span><br /><br />As <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/10/14/voter_id_judges_shocking_admission_we_got_it_wrong/singleton/" rel="nofollow"><em>Salon</em> reports</a>:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">In Texas, according to the <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9177">DoJ’s analysis of the state’s own data</a> supplied to them, “Hispanic registered voters are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic registered voters to lack such identification.” In South Carolina, where the DoJ <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9007">blocked a similar law there last year</a> under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, they <a href="http://bradblog.com/Docs/Justice-Department-Letter-To-South-Carolina-Blocking-Voter-ID-Law_122311.pdf" rel="nofollow">found</a> that — again, according to the state’s own data — “minority registered voters were nearly 20 percent more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised” by the state’s new Photo ID restriction law.</blockquote>Even though the judge who authored the Crawford decision has now changed his mind, anti-worker radicals who support voter suppression certainly haven’t changed theirs. So the fight for voting rights continues.

supreme court voter ID voter suppression voting rights Federal judge on voter suppression: Oops, these ARE bad laws

Former federal judge Richard Posner wrote a new book saying laws that suppress voting are a really bad idea. Well that’s pretty obvious. But six years ago Posner didn’t think so. He wrote the majority opinion in a case defending voter suppression law…

Read more »

Today's Teamster News 10.14.13

<a href="http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1241573/negotiations-between-teamsters-and-cn-derail" rel="nofollow">Negotiations between Teamsters and CN derail</a>  Teamsters Canada   ...The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), which represents some 3,300 conductors, trainmen, yardmen and traffic coordinators at Canadian National (CN), are gearing up for a fight with the railway company...<br /><a href="http://dobetternissan.org/2013/10/compa-report" rel="nofollow">Report outlines how Nissan in Canton, Miss., is violating international human rights standards of workers who want to organize and bargain collectively</a>  Do Better Nissan   ...in the Canton plant, according to the report, Nissan has launched a campaign of fear and intimidation to nullify these rights...<br /><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-11/federal-workers-stretch-last-paycheck-until-shutdown-ends.html" rel="nofollow">Federal Workers Stretch Last Paycheck Until Shutdown Ends</a>  Bloomberg   ...The average federal employee earned an annual salary of $76,353 in 2012, and the lost income is exerting a drag on the economy as well as forcing employees who live paycheck-to-paycheck to figure out how to cover their bills until the shutdown ends...<br /><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/oct/09/worlds-wealthy-where-russia-rich-list?CMP=twt_gu" rel="nofollow">The world's wealthy: where on earth are the richest 1%?</a>  The Guardian   ...Amid a record high for average global wealth its figures reveal striking inequalities – such as 35% of Russia's riches in the hands of 110 people...<br /><a href="http://www.economicpopulist.org/" rel="nofollow">Don't Count on a 1.5% Social Security Increase, the Figures Have not Been Released Yet</a>  Economic Populist   ...The problem with this headline announcement by the press is the social security cost of living increase has not been announced yet and is highly dependent on government inflation statistics for September...<br /><a href="http://truth-out.org/news/item/19334-the-tragedy-of-greece-as-a-case-study-of-neo-imperial-pillage-and-the-demise-of-social-europe" rel="nofollow">The Tragedy of Greece as a Case Study of Neo-Imperial Pillage and the Demise of Social Europe</a>  Truthout   ...A public debt crisis has been used as an opportunity to dismantle a rudimentary social state, to sell off profitable public enterprises and state assets at bargain prices, to deprive labor of even its most basic rights after decades of hard-fought struggles against capital, and to substantially reduce wages, salaries and pensions, creating a de facto banana republic...<br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-the-nation-state.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0" rel="nofollow">The End of the Nation-State?</a> (opinion)  New York Times   ... though most of us might not realize it, “nonstate world” describes much of how global society already operates. This isn’t to say that states have disappeared, or will. But they are becoming just one form of governance among many...<br /><a href="http://electionlawblog.org/?p=55927&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electionlawblog%2FuqCP+%28Election+Law%29" rel="nofollow">Breaking: Judge Posner Admits He Was Wrong in Crawford Voter ID Case</a>  Election Law Blog   ..."we…. weren’t really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disfranchise people entitled to vote..."<br /><a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/why-ceo-pay-will-keep-rising-to-even-more-insanely-unjustified-levels-while-ordinary-workers-fare-worse.html" rel="nofollow">Why CEO Pay Will Keep Rising to Even More Insanely Unjustified Levels While Ordinary Workers Get Squeezed</a>  naked capitalism   ...Even casual scrutiny will tell you that the current ridiculous levels of CEO pay bear no relationship to anything other than their highly developed rent extraction skills...<br /><br /><br />

CEO Pay European debt crisis government shutdown Greece negotiations rail social security trade union busting voter suppression Today's Teamster News 10.14.13

Negotiations between Teamsters and CN derail  Teamsters Canada   ...The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), which represents some 3,300 conductors, trainmen, yardmen and traffic coordinators at Canadian National (CN), are gearing up for a fight …

Read more »

Moral Monday protests gain momentum in North Carolina

<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsWNwFDljhnwZTYe7PucGGLImGYLBdqQ4uJyIevjAS0YgfMAmxX4nsq50u40gaB3BYf5XixdGCqLUW6fr83Emqt9PgSvS4slVjsUyJ2EOq8abQpwIRpZSLfBxBQQMToy2XjIIT7Ezrtz4/s1600/9-16moralmonday1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="They marched around the governor's mansion in Raleigh." border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsWNwFDljhnwZTYe7PucGGLImGYLBdqQ4uJyIevjAS0YgfMAmxX4nsq50u40gaB3BYf5XixdGCqLUW6fr83Emqt9PgSvS4slVjsUyJ2EOq8abQpwIRpZSLfBxBQQMToy2XjIIT7Ezrtz4/s400/9-16moralmonday1.jpg" title="Students held signs protesting the policies of Gov. McCrory and the Legislature." width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Students took the lead on the march around the governor's mansion.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two Moral Monday events drew more than 500 people who protested North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and his legislative allies for curbing voting rights, slashing education spending and refusing federal dollars to expand Medicaid. The rallies held yesterday marked the 18th week since late April that North Carolinians gathered to protest the state</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> government’s actions. About 925 people were arrested during the demonstrations for nonviolent civil disobedience. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At a </span><a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/09/16/3202013/college-naacp-groups-bring-new.html" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">youth-led demonstration in Raleigh</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, some 250 people marched around the governor’s mansion to demand a roll back on </span><a href="http://www.teamsternation.blogspot.com/2013/07/teamsters-participate-in-largest-moral-monday-protest.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the voter suppression and education cuts enacted</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> in July. Some also carried three children’s coffins to honor the memory of four little African-American girls killed in a Birmingham, Ala. church bombing 50 years ago yesterday during the height of the civil rights movement in the South.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>College students from around the area came to the protest to show they are concerned about the state’s future. They held signs reading “We will fight for our future,” “Reinvest in public education,” and “Take your hands off our voting rights.” Dylan Su-Chun Mott, a member of the University of North Carolina’s Student Power group, said </span><a href="http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2013/09/moral-monday-0917#print" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">students need to stand up and be heard</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">:</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[The UNC-system Board of Governors] is trying to tell us that the only thing we are in school for is to get jobs. … More importantly, we are learning to be fully participatory citizens in this, our great democracy.<o:p></o:p></span></blockquote></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Meanwhile, </span><a href="http://www.news-record.com/news/local_news/article_8a8ab91c-1f3e-11e3-bf27-001a4bcf6878.html" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">about 300 people gathered in the small town of Wentworth</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> in north-central North Carolina. to protest education and Medicaid cuts. The event was held in the district of Senate leader Phil Berger.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rev. Nelson Johnson of Greensboro’s Beloved Community Center said that Berger and other elected officials have forgotten the main purpose of government:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"> Mr. Berger, government and our democracy is supposed to work for the people and not against the people.</blockquote> Week after week, North Carolina residents are pushing back on an agenda crafted by <a href="http://teamsternation.blogspot.com/2013/02/heres-billionaire-trying-to-destroy.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">state budget director Art Pope</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, a multimillionaire who helped underwrite the campaigns of Gov. McCrory and his cronies in the Legislature. It is largely modeled on the pro-corporate, anti-worker platform of the </span><a href="http://www.alecexposed.org/" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">American Legislative Exchange Council</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">McCrory says the changes will help everyone in the state, </span><a href="http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2013/09/12/your-handy-guide-to-the-seven-most-common-myths-from-the-gop/print/" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the numbers just don’t bear this out</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In fact, they show the state spent $100 million less on public schools, cut taxes only on out-of-state corporations and the wealth and made benefit cuts that hurt low-income citizens, not help them.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The </span><a href="https://twitter.com/ncnaacp" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">next rally is scheduled for Yadkinville</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> on Sept. 23.</span></div></span></div></span>

ALEC art pope education cuts Gov. McCrory Medicaid Moral Monday North Carolina voter suppression Moral Monday protests gain momentum in North Carolina

Students took the lead on the march around the governor's mansion.Two Moral Monday events drew more than 500 people who protested North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and his legislative allies for curbing voting rights, slashing education spending and r…

Read more »