Lawyering Up
Election By Litigation
By California Yankee Posted in 2006 — Comments (41) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The New York Times reports hundreds of the 7,000 lawyers working on the election for the Democratic National Committee are being sent to Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio and 13 other states. The left-leaning Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the N.A.A.C.P., and the People for the American Way Foundation are despatching 2,000 lawyers to 20 states.
To hold off that juggernaut, 150 lawyers will be sent by the Republican National Committee to help hundreds of local lawyers in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee and other states.
Read on.
About 800 Justice Department lawyers will be in troubled polling locations in 20 states to referee and ensure voting rights laws are obeyed.
The Republican lawyers are outnumbered at the state level as well:
- In Maryland, the Democratic Party has 400 roving attorneys.
- In Michigan, the Democratic Party, is dispatching 800 lawyers statewide.
- In St. Louis, Missouri, the Democrats are trying to obtain credentials for 300 lawyers to work as poll challengers.
What is it that these legions of lawyers are supposed to do? The same thing we saw in 2000 and 2004. The Republicans want to deter vote fraud by guarding against ineligible people trying to vote. The Democrats, of course, take the opposite position fighting voter suppression by trying to allow everyone who shows to vote, regardless of qualifications.
It all comes down to two sides of the same coin. One lawyer's fight against fraudulent voting is another lawyer's fight against voter suppression.
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I thought it was supposed to be this HUGE BLUE WAVE?Why do they need so many liars er lawyers?
Lawyering up for one last gasp. Dead voters. Don't want to show ID at the polls, MSM on the attack etc. The democratic party is one desperate party. Should they gain a majority in the congress; Then what? The Iraqi war won't last forever. Then they'll have to fall back on their disasterous domestic/fiscal policies to go along with their suicidal foreign policies. Let's face it, with no war, they would be looking at getting demolished in a historically bad time for incumbents, the mid terms during a President's 2nd term. I wish the American people would also notice that because there's a war, we haven't been bothered here since..oh...about...Sept 11, 2001. At worst, we will have a gridlocked congress for a couple of years with them explaining going into 08 how ending tax cuts will help the middle class worker and other not so bright ideas.
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us - Voltaire
The dems have been working themselves up to industrial level election stelaing since they got caught and stopped in Florida. They depend on it in Pa., Mo., and Wa.. They ahve already interfered with eleciton law enforcement in Texas this year. They are of ocurse against all ballot security and voter ID. Since they got busted for their South Florida election theft attempt they have been trying everything. And the fact that their hysterical demands for electronic voting were met has only been replaced by their hysterical assertions that electronic voting is not really what they wanted. It makes me think that the missing 'smart cards' in Tenn. are no accident, but rather insurance to make sure that Ford,jr. gets the seat his daddy wants him to have.
This election has it all for the dem's perfect theft: The traditionally low turnout of midterms, their control of so many judges, the high noise level they have generated by their continual carping and whining. And the fact that they have an army of attorneys only helps.
Just as we tend to try to live up to and mimic the ideals of Reagan, Eisenhower, and Reagan, the leftists saw what worked to bring success to their heroes and have copied it over, whether it be domestic electioneering (JFK) or from their heroes abroad (Chavez, Noriega, Ortega). I'm rather put off my the idea that "imitate Marxist thugs in Latin America" is becoming a serious form of political strategy for the Democrats, to be honest.
"I could explain, but that would be very long, very convoluted, and make you look very stupid. Nobody wants that... except maybe me."
That second Reagan should've been Lincoln... one of those times where the brain went on vacation, and spell check doesn't do much of anything WRT repetition.
"I could explain, but that would be very long, very convoluted, and make you look very stupid. Nobody wants that... except maybe me."
realize in the right state with the right judges they can actually cheat their way to victory.
I think this is the saddest legacy of 2000, I doubt we will ever have another election where there aren't lawyers involved.
or greater than terrorism in an existential sense. On e of the main miracles achieved by US was exemplified best firstly by Washington voluntarily stepping down, Adams ceding power to another party and Nixon refusing to contest the 1960 election. That tie that binds was broken when Gore retracted his telephone concession to Bush in 2000 and filed lawsuits for partial recounts in selected Florida counties. That behavior and subsequent waving of the bloody shirt despite the fact that all recounts show that Bush won Florida coupled with the inability of the Left to face the end of the vacation from history from 1945-2001, 1952-2001, 1973-2001 and 1992-2001, has driven the dem party to utter juvenile madness to the point that a large plurality of our fellow citizens are in a state of suspended self imposed delusion that is quite uncomfortable for the rest of us who exist in the real world. I literally am at a loss at the sheer stupidity of so many of my otherwise intelligent friends.
http://gamecock.townhall.com and www.race42008.com
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
I also agree with Vladimir. The raw thirst for power that the Dems are exhibiting is frightening. It's as if they've decided that being in opposition is unacceptable to them. They may believe that our democracy is no longer responsive to compromise among competing groups with different priorities. That is confirmed by their historically-unprecedented refusal to set aside political differences in time of war.
The "Democrat" party is the party of the super-wealthy and the culturally-elite. We should all be deeply afraid that if they succeed in the next couple of elections, they will start to prove the irony of their name.
so fascinating, as they did Stalin and Mao. They lust for that raw power to exert their will on us un-enlightened masses. This same motive explains their resort to the courts to make law. They are truly a dangerous force.
One note of optimism. The MSM will advance the notion that any dem takeover of either house as a historic event rejecting conservatism. It won't be. This is a year 6 election. Bush and the GOP have made history in gaining seats 3 elections in a row, and the American people are still getting more conservative everyday. One silver lining from a dem victory could be for the populace to get to see libs be libs again when it affects their paychecks and to hear their leftist world view rhetoric during increasingly frequent drops of the mask they try to hide their true views behind, The echo chamber of msm sycophants causes them to often forget that most Americans reject their liberal non-values and world view.
http://gamecock.townhall.com and www.race42008.com
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
Despite the cries of "Diebold"-this and "voter-intimidation"-that, it is plain to see that the Democratic Party sees watering down the integrity of the ballot box (and the voter rolls) as an electoral strategy.
Albert Jr. did our democracy a great disservice by casting a shadow on every future close election. Having every election decided in the courts (and in the hands of corrupt/corruptible judges) will be the death knell of our system of government.
look historically at failed states and fascists takeovers they began with 1)demonizing opponents and then 2) underming confidence in the electoral process, ending with 3) lack undermining legitimacy of the state itself.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
The government already has their hands on your wallet and know every personal bit of data about you and your family.
It gets uglier as the government and courts get more and more power over our lives and our assets. The result is politics gets uglier because the stakes rise.
We've already had one civil war .......
in the interest of fairness of course, I mean if they're really interested in fraud. In the meantime would it be asking to much to suspend this group's federal funding?
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
I remember seeing a report on the nightly news (so this must have been 15 years ago or so, when network news outlets were all that was available - I haven't watched them since). Anyway... it was a report on a national election in Honduras or Guatemala or some other Central American country where Former President And Nobel Peace Prize Recipient James Carter likes to pass judgment on the fairness of elections.
The poll-sitters had three ring binders with the voting rolls, just like we have when I go to the polls in Louisiana. The difference was: beside each name was a laser-printed photo of the voter.
As technology has proliferated, why we can't have a similar system here? Why is a simple voter ID card, for example, is suuuuuch a big deal? Why there are howls of protests when dead people are purged from the rolls, and why it is that Republicans are the only ones who ever initiate even this simple measure?
As I said above, election fraud has become a core electoral strategy of the Democrats, and the Republicans rarely muster the stones to fight back. We're funding ACORN, for pity's sake, to rig elections. We tolerate corrupt judges in St Louis holding polls open till "enough" people have voted. We make jokes about vote buying and dead people voting.
In Louisiana, the favorite electoral-manipulation trick for the Party of Edwin Edwards is to make sure there is a casino gambling-related issue on the ballot in Orleans Parish; the casino interests then throw around the "get-out-the-vote" money to jam the polls with reliably favorable votes (at $5 to $10 a pop). Of course, the neighborhood organizations that manage these shennanigans skew liberal Democrat, and so do the purchased votes. Am I right, Mary Landrieu?
I would like to see the Republican Party forge a brand identity as the party of ballot box integrity. To hell with making voting "easy"; if it is not worth someone's effort to drag their sorry a** to the polls to vote, for free, or to go out of their way to secure an absentee ballot, then their vote shouldn't count anyway.
Yeah, it's an issue with me.
The answer is simple. Voter ID cards, or any form of identification ipacts the poor more than it impacts the rich. You see, whereas the poor in Guatamala have no difficulty in coughing up the pesos (whatever the monitary term is in Guatamala) necessary to ensure a fair election, our American (and especially urban) poor are just unable to find the resources for such an expensive item.
And don't start clamoring for free government issued IDs, because most of our urban poor are understandably afraid of their own government! That government might, after all, cut off their welfare or other assistance of they find out that they are legally voting!
our illegal citizens are confused by id cards and our deceased voters don't take good pictures.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
after all, all black people look alike to white Republicans anyway.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
that would be a great way to keep the integrity of the election. And technology is such that this could be done, although I am sure somebody will declare it some kind of poll tax equivalent.
I would be satisfied if a picture ID was required.
You have to remember that ALL black people in America were born in log cabins in the woods and don't have birth certificates. And they don't have driver's licenses, since they don't own cars. And they don't have ANY kind of ID because the racist, white-supremicist establishment keeps them from getting one because they charge money for them!
Clear now?
I want a national ID card. I don't CARE what anyone says anymore about it. It's time. It' needed now.
You should to have a national ID card with your picture and fingerprint on it. You would have to have it and show it to register to vote, to actually vote, to register your kids in school, to apply for a job, to be hired, to get any kind of federal or state license for anything such as hunting or practicing medicine...in short, I want to make sure you are who you say you are for everything.
We are no longer in the 19th century. We are no longer a "yeoman republic" of frontiersmen who can reject state authority. Those days are long past and will never come again.
In today's climate of fear and terrorism, we need to know that Joe Blow is Joe Blow, that he lives where he says he lives, and is who he says he is. This is true in voting, hiring, working, boarding a plane, a train, or entering a building.
I know a lot of conservatives will object to this. Sorry, but your objections were overruled on Sept 11, 2001. It's time to move into the 21st century.
than have to write my SS# on everything in the world.
I am more concerned about the proliferation of my SS# being on everything than whether or not the fed's want me to have another picture ID. The thumbprint wouldn't bother me any, but I am sure the libertarians out there would find it all horrifying.
We already have a defacto national ID in our driver's licenses. They are already required to participate in any meaningful way in society. They just aren't consistent across the country, making them easier to forge, and more importantly, they don't show the person's citizenship. We have plenty of illegals running around with 100% legit driver's licenses and state IDs.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
It's really too bad about the Libertarians. I am close to Libertarian in my beliefs about many things, but in the era of computers and mass databases, we need to be realistic and move on.
Your SSN should be for SS purposes only. It was never meant to be a national ID.
Mexico has a voter card with photo and fingerprint. Believe it or not, they actually have fair elections. We can too, but we need to move beyond the endless whining from the Dems that po' ol' Bessie Mae can't vote because she was born on the farm and had no birth record.
There are plenty of ways to deal with this. In my work, I accept census records that show a child in the household in 1948 or whatever as proof that Bessie Mae is who she says she is. And in a few more years, there will be NO excuse for anyone to not have proof of birth. (Sorry about you hippie kids born on the commune with no record. You'll just have to pay for your parents stupidity).
You know, when I hear that the GOP is only putting up 150 lawyers against the DNC's 2000 lawyers I think that the DNC is outnumbered.
I recall a terrible Chuck Norris movie (sorry guys, Chuck is great, but some of his movies...) In the movie Delta Force Chuck asks a subordinate something like, "How many terrorists are guarding that plane" and the commando replies something like "12". So Chuck says something like, "Then send three of ours".
I'm just saying. : )
"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe
http://gamecock.townhall.com and www.race42008.com
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
Just record the information at the time of voter registration, just like the Guatemalans apparently are doing. If you want to one-up them, issue a token at registration time which can be authenticated securely at the polling place.
This way, at no time is a voter required to do anything but a) register and b) vote, and further, the people at the polling place only have to verify that a voter is validly registered.
Messing with ID cards places a much greater burden on poll workers and adds elements of uncertainty. Let's just improve the registration process instead, and give people iron-clad proof of registration.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
You can still vote as many times under as many names as you wish. You can still vote when and where you aren't entitled to. I'm pretty sure every state in the union already records who is voting as they are voting and compares it to registrations... the problem is, all you have to do in most states is give a name (any name) to the poll worker. And if you aren't registered at all, you just have to bring a piece of mail or a "friend" to vouch for you. That system is so easy to cheat it would be laughable if it weren't so serious.
Messing with ID cards places a much greater burden on poll workers and adds elements of uncertainty.
Yea, lets stop asking people for ID when they get on a plane, or buy a house, or open a bank account, or get a job, or apply for credit, or when they want to buy cigarettes or alcohol, or when they want to gamble, or when they get arrested, or heck, even when they get pulled over for speeding. It just adds a greater burden on the people involved, and adds elements of uncertainty, whatever that means.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
The system I described places the burden on the registration system. If you don't trust the registration system to prevent invalid or multiple registrations, then how are POLL WORKERS going to prevent the above?
If we don't fix registrations, all else is window dressing.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
Registrations *and* voting. Even if you trust the registrations (and there is no reason to do so without the ID being required to register), you can't trust that the person standing in front of you is the person who claims to be registered under that name unless you see the ID again at the time of voting.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
If we wnat to be like those Guatemalans, some arbitrary third-party (to the registrar of voters) ID card won't suffice. You need the picture to be taken at REGISTRATION time, with the ID being the person's own face. 'Biometric identification' is that simple.
Simple method: Encode the photograph, name, and precinct on the registration token. At the polling place, the worker takes the card from the voter, sticks it in the little machine, which shows the poll worker the name, photo, and precinct. Poll worker asks the voter his name, checks that the photo matches, and is done.
Really simple. No new bureaucracy. No hassles except at registration time, when one must show up in person (no motor voter obviously), get a picture taken, and wait for the ID to arrive.
And no new official government storage of information.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
And how is any of that less of a hassle for anyone involved than just having to produce a driver's license or state ID that shows voting eligibility in addition to all the usual stuff? Why should everyone have to apply for, hang on to, and carry a separate ID for voting?
There is no advantage to this kind of system over simply adding citizenship checks to state ID cards and considerable disadvantage.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
Why can't we record a fingerprint at registration, and verify it at the polling booth. And if someone gets clumsy with a table saw, there's always the provisional ballot.
Retire Lindsey Graham. Support Thomas Ravenel for Senate 2008
Disenfranchishment! Disenfranchisement and vote suppression being advocated over here! What about those less fortunate that do not have the money for fingerprints? Or those whose fingerprints are already pledged for a car loan? This is the worst kind of bias and voter disenfranchisement that I've ever heard of. Women and minorities harmed most. This blog does not tolerate suggestions of disenfranchisemen or voter suppression.
John
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Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.
... Jean-François Revel
This is the worst kind of bias and voter disenfranchisement that I've ever heard of. Women and minorities harmed most.
Heck, most of the minorities and poor will already have their fingerprints on file! It will actually save money!
Proud to be "KerryDumb©"
John
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Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.
... Jean-François Revel
Commercial fingerprint readers are pretty easily fooled from what I've read.
And if you want to get ghoulish, the dead still have fingers...
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
My hometown of Spartanburg was named for the Greeks opposed to the Athenians due to their fighting prowess, despite fewer numbers, as they defeated the British at the battles of Cowpens and Kings Mountain under the leadership of Gen. Daniel Morgan. Zero lawyers
http://gamecock.townhall.com and www.race42008.com
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
http://gamecock.townhall.com and www.race42008.com
"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville