The Many Faces of US Politics...

[whitey]

J70...I understand and appreciate people's outrage toward Trump

But how you guys can idly sit back and not be similarly outraged with what the Democrats  pulled off with the phony dossier, is as outrageous  as anything that Trump has ever said or done

[RadioGAAGAA]

J70...I understand and appreciate people's outrage toward Trump

But how you guys can idly sit back and not be similarly outraged with what the Democrats  pulled off with the phony dossier, is as outrageous  as anything that Trump has ever said or done

Even if the dossier were true - it pales into comparison to what Trump has done.

How on earth can you be so blind as to not see that?!?

[Eamonnca1]

"The year after the photo identification law took effect, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency announced that it would close 31 driver's license offices, one of the primary places where Alabamians could obtain photo identification. The closings were in response to budget cuts, but there was a clear racial pattern.



Of the 10 counties with the highest percentages of African-American voters, eight lost offices. Of the 10 counties with the lowest percentages, only three lost offices.

A federal investigation found that the closings caused "a disparate and adverse impact on the basis of race." Alabama reopened the offices and agreed to increase their hours in several majority-black counties."

Seven Ways Alabama Has Made It Harder to Vote

[Eamonnca1]

In fact here's the full article:

Seven Ways Alabama Has Made It Harder to Vote

Five years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act. Since then, Alabama has enacted a slew of restrictive voting laws and policies.


Five years after the Supreme Court invalidated the Voting Rights Act's requirement that certain states get federal approval to change their election laws, there are few places where the results are clearer than in Alabama, where the lawsuit began.

Alabama has enacted a slew of restrictive laws and policies, many of which disproportionately affect African-Americans, Latinos and other marginalized groups. In this, it stands out only in degree, not in kind: All over the country, state legislators are making it harder to vote. State officials say the voting measures are intended to prevent election fraud.

Here is the landscape of voting rights five years after the lawsuit, Shelby County v. Holder, through the lens of the state that started it.

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2013
1. A photo identification law moves forward.
Within 24 hours of the Supreme Court's ruling, Alabama announced that in 2014, it would start requiring photo identification to vote under a law passed in 2011 but stymied by the Voting Rights Act. The number of states with similar laws has since ballooned.


Unlike some other states, Alabama accepts student, tribal and some employee identification, which minority voters are disproportionately likely to rely on. It also offers free photo identification to people who don't have any. A district court judge noted this in upholding the measure in January, concluding, "It is so easy to get a photo ID in Alabama, no one is prevented from voting."

Experts found, however, that among registered Alabama voters, blacks and Hispanics were more likely than whites to lack photo identification. An appeal of the district court ruling is in progress, but the law remains in effect.


Secretary of State John Merrill said in an interview on Wednesday that this and other laws had not suppressed the vote in Alabama. He said that more than a million new voters had registered since he took office in 2015, and that a record 2.14 million Alabamians participated in the 2016 election — though as a percentage of registered voters, turnout was slightly lower in 2016 than in 2012.

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"Clearly, people are entitled to their own opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts," Mr. Merrill said. "We've broken every record in the history of the state for participation. It's clear what has occurred."

2015
2. Driver's license offices are closed in black areas.
The year after the photo identification law took effect, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency announced that it would close 31 driver's license offices, one of the primary places where Alabamians could obtain photo identification. The closings were in response to budget cuts, but there was a clear racial pattern.


Of the 10 counties with the highest percentages of African-American voters, eight lost offices. Of the 10 counties with the lowest percentages, only three lost offices.

A federal investigation found that the closings caused "a disparate and adverse impact on the basis of race." Alabama reopened the offices and agreed to increase their hours in several majority-black counties.

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2016
3. Officials push for a proof-of-citizenship mandate.
In January 2016, Alabama received permission from a federal election official to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in state and local elections, though a judge later blocked the change.

If enforced, this requirement would create a dual system in which the criteria to vote in state and local elections would be stricter than in federal elections, where proof of citizenship is not required. Only one state, Arizona, currently enforces such a system, but several other states have tried. Just this week, a federal district judge struck down Kansas' proof-of-citizenship law.


Asked in an interview Wednesday whether his office had found any noncitizens on Alabama's voter rolls, Mr. Merrill said he was not aware of any.

4. Dozens of polling places are closed.
By November 2016, Alabama had at least 66 fewer polling places than it did at the time of the Shelby ruling in 2013, according to a study. Because only 18 of Alabama's 67 counties were examined, it is not clear whether there was a racial pattern.

Locally, however, there have been some damning moves. For instance, Daphne, a city of 26,000 near Mobile, eliminated three of its five polling places in 2016, disproportionately affecting one of two districts with a significant number of black voters. A Reuters investigation also found racially disparate closings in Georgia. 
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Nationwide, nearly 3,000 polling places closed between 2012 and 2016. More than 860 of the closings were in seven states, including Alabama, where some or all counties were subject to federal oversight before Shelby.

5. A get-out-the-vote group is hamstrung.
In September 2016, a federal appeals court upheld a 2010 Alabama law that banned money transfers from one political action committee to another.

The stated intent was to guard against corruption, but the law also hurt the state's largest black political organization: the Alabama Democratic Conference, which works to turn out black voters. Half or more of its revenue used to come from other political entities.

"It's cut down on money for advertisements, cut down on money on the ground, cut down on money to employ people," said Joe L. Reed, the A.D.C.'s state chairman. "It's just a whole lot of things we would do and could do, we can't do now."

2017
6. Voter rolls are purged.
In 2017, after mailing postcards to every registered voter, Alabama officials listed more than 340,000 voters as inactive, a precursor to removal from the rolls if they don't vote in the next four years.

Many states use a similar process to identify voters who have moved, but it can be unreliable. And while inactive voters who show up to the polls are supposed to be allowed to vote normally after verifying their registration details, workers wrongly forced many of them to cast provisional ballots in the U.S. Senate special election, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

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In fact, in the August primaries, at least two legislators — U.S. Representative Mo Brooks, a Republican, and State Representative Patricia Todd, a Democrat — discovered that they had been marked inactive, though both were able to vote after updating their information.

7. Felon re-enfranchisement is not publicized.
In 2017, Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation re-enfranchising thousands of people convicted of felonies. Alabama officials estimated that the change affected 60,000 people.

But Mr. Merrill refused to use state resources to publicize it, or to automatically register people who were turned away before it passed — and a district judge said he wouldn't order him to.

Advocacy groups worry that many affected Alabamians don't know about the change. Mr. Merrill's office has no statistics on how many re-enfranchised people have since registered to vote, but he said he had seen no spikes in weekly voter registration numbers.

2018
After five years, 2018 has been something of a lull in the storm of new voting laws in Alabama. But voting rights groups are bracing for 2019, when the state legislature will reconvene.



"We certainly expect there will be more coming," said Randall Marshall, executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Alabama.

[whitey]

J70...I understand and appreciate people's outrage toward Trump

But how you guys can idly sit back and not be similarly outraged with what the Democrats  pulled off with the phony dossier, is as outrageous  as anything that Trump has ever said or done

Even if the dossier were true - it pales into comparison to what Trump has done.

How on earth can you be so blind as to not see that?!?

One campaign fabricates a opposition research report and then feeds it to rogue FBI agents who wiretap the other campaign. That puts Watergate in the hapenny place

[sid waddell]

Acccording to the latest polling, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump 81-3 (eighty one - three) among blacks.

Usually, the margin of error with polls such as these is 3%, so it's statistically possible Trump could be on 0% with blacks.

Could anybody maybe try to explain why Donald Trump and the Republican party in general have such consistently terrible ratings among black people?

What are the reasons for this, like?

[J70]

J70...I understand and appreciate people's outrage toward Trump

But how you guys can idly sit back and not be similarly outraged with what the Democrats  pulled off with the phony dossier, is as outrageous  as anything that Trump has ever said or done

Even if the dossier were true - it pales into comparison to what Trump has done.

How on earth can you be so blind as to not see that?!?

One campaign fabricates a opposition research report and then feeds it to rogue FBI agents who wiretap the other campaign. That puts Watergate in the hapenny place

So it was FABRICATED by the Clintons now, is that the current allegation?

[sid waddell]

Ignore the raving lunatic living on Earth 2. We all know who I'm talking about.

[sid waddell]

The answer is no, obviously.

[whitey]

J70...I understand and appreciate people's outrage toward Trump

But how you guys can idly sit back and not be similarly outraged with what the Democrats  pulled off with the phony dossier, is as outrageous  as anything that Trump has ever said or done

Even if the dossier were true - it pales into comparison to what Trump has done.

How on earth can you be so blind as to not see that?!?

One campaign fabricates a opposition research report and then feeds it to rogue FBI agents who wiretap the other campaign. That puts Watergate in the hapenny place

So it was FABRICATED by the Clintons now, is that the current allegation?

It was paid for by the DNC and Robbie Mook, Clinton's campaign manager got the invoice, but I'm sure you won't believe it because it's not on CNN or the NY Times

https://www.google.com/amp/s/truth4freedom.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/huge-clinton-campaign-attorney-mark-elias-admitted-in-testimony-he-sent-the-bill-from-fusion-gps-for-dossier-directly-to-campaign-manager-robbie-mook-the-gateway-pundit/amp/

[sid waddell]

Pretty appropriate summing up of the last poster.

[whitey]

The answer is no, obviously.

Romney/Ryan beat Obama/Biden in the same county by 42% in 2012

Rick Scott beat Nelson by 53% in 2018 Senate Race

https://www.libertyelections.com/m/Results-Statistics/Election-Results


But the bad orange guy somehow must have stolen the election.


And McCain/Palin beat Obama/Biden by 45 points in 2008

https://mobile.twitter.com/magnameter/status/1122566351674122240/photo/1

Maybe the people who register as Democrats are actually Republicans,  who vote for the worst Democrat candidate  in the Democratic  Primary and then trounce then in the general election. I've done this a few times myself

[screenexile]

Biden ahead by 8 points on the Fox News poll... he's basically doing a Boris and hiding while his opposite number makes all the mistakes.

The calibre of politicians these days leaves a lot to be desired!!

[J70]

J70...I understand and appreciate people's outrage toward Trump

But how you guys can idly sit back and not be similarly outraged with what the Democrats  pulled off with the phony dossier, is as outrageous  as anything that Trump has ever said or done

Even if the dossier were true - it pales into comparison to what Trump has done.

How on earth can you be so blind as to not see that?!?

One campaign fabricates a opposition research report and then feeds it to rogue FBI agents who wiretap the other campaign. That puts Watergate in the hapenny place

So it was FABRICATED by the Clintons now, is that the current allegation?

It was paid for by the DNC and Robbie Mook, Clinton's campaign manager got the invoice, but I'm sure you won't believe it because it's not on CNN or the NY Times

https://www.google.com/amp/s/truth4freedom.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/huge-clinton-campaign-attorney-mark-elias-admitted-in-testimony-he-sent-the-bill-from-fusion-gps-for-dossier-directly-to-campaign-manager-robbie-mook-the-gateway-pundit/amp/

You said "fabricated".

[whitey]

J70...I understand and appreciate people's outrage toward Trump

But how you guys can idly sit back and not be similarly outraged with what the Democrats  pulled off with the phony dossier, is as outrageous  as anything that Trump has ever said or done

Even if the dossier were true - it pales into comparison to what Trump has done.

How on earth can you be so blind as to not see that?!?

One campaign fabricates a opposition research report and then feeds it to rogue FBI agents who wiretap the other campaign. That puts Watergate in the hapenny place

So it was FABRICATED by the Clintons now, is that the current allegation?

It was paid for by the DNC and Robbie Mook, Clinton's campaign manager got the invoice, but I'm sure you won't believe it because it's not on CNN or the NY Times

https://www.google.com/amp/s/truth4freedom.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/huge-clinton-campaign-attorney-mark-elias-admitted-in-testimony-he-sent-the-bill-from-fusion-gps-for-dossier-directly-to-campaign-manager-robbie-mook-the-gateway-pundit/amp/

You said "fabricated".

Eh...the information in the dossier was fabricated by by Steele and Fusion GPS, leaked to the media and the FBI. Was then used by the FBI as the basis for FISA warrants (where the FBI then perjured themselves and forged documents to hoodwink the FISA court)