Pema Levy and Ari Berman at Mother Jones write—The Supreme Court May Be Poised to Green-Light Mass Voter Purges:
The Supreme Court may be poised to green-light a controversial Ohio program that removes infrequent voters from the state’s registration lists. During oral arguments Wednesday morning, several justices seemed more concerned with preserving the state’s ability to remove people who had moved or died than they were with protecting eligible voters from being purged from the voter rolls.
The high-stakes legal fight surrounding Ohio’s voter purge program is at the center of a larger battle over access to the ballot. If the court allows Ohio to continue to remove voters based in part on their past failure to cast a ballot, other states will likely follow suit and millions of Americans across the country could find themselves disenfranchised because they have not recently voted. Supporters of the Ohio policy say it’s necessary to prevent voter fraud, but voting rights groups counter that such fraud is exceedingly rare and that the state’s voter purges are both error-prone and unfair, because they punish citizens who choose to exercise a constitutional right not to vote. There is also substantial evidence that the state purges minority voters and those from Democratic-leaning neighborhoods at disproportionately high rates.
“You think there is a constitutional right not to vote?” asked Roberts.
But the court’s conservative justices did not appear worried about the program’s fairness or the rights of voters who choose not to cast a ballot. “You think there is a constitutional right not to vote?” Chief Justice John Roberts skeptically asked Paul Smith, the counsel for the plaintiffs opposing Ohio’s policy. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito seemed to endorse the idea that non-voting could be a way to identify people who have moved or passed away. He posited the idea of a policy that targets voters for removal if they had not voted in 20 years, as opposed to Ohio’s practice of going after voters who have sat out the process for two years, as a case in which failure to vote might be a tool to suss out ineligible voters. “Isn’t that enough even to spark an inquiry?” he asked. [...]
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QUOTATION
“If we human beings learn to see the intricacies that bind one part of a natural system to another and then to us, we will no longer argue about the importance of wilderness protection, or over the question of saving endangered species, or how human communities must base their economic futures—not on short-term exploitation—but on long-term, sustainable development.”
~Gaylord Nelson, These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands (1994)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2005—Time for chickenhawks to ante up:
Uh oh. We're being stretched thin:
Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist said the U.S. military is struggling to keep up the fight against insurgents who want to disrupt the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq for a new national assembly.
Frist, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," declined to say whether he would support extending the current 24-month tours of active duty for reservists and U.S. National Guard members. He said that might hurt recruitment.
"We are straining our Guard and reservist personnel," Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said of the part-time force that makes up 40 percent of the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
We need more troops, and where, oh where, can we find people who think the war is peachy, justified, and going great to help fill the ranks?
Atrios suggests the 101st Fighting Keyboardists, and that's a wonderful idea! I mean, they argue that things are improving, right? So they should have nothing to fear. How many war supporters in Congress and the White House have sons, daughters, and grandchildren aged 18-35? A bunch, I bet. And let's not forget the civilian leadership in the Pentagon.
And all those Bush voters who stood at attention when words like "freedom is on the march" were uttered? Time to ship out. Cause, really, Bush needs you.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter round it all up. The papers are back to normalizing The Dotard. The Fusion GPS testimony transcript is out, and Republicans are exactly who we thought they were. Net Neutrality to get a floor vote! CHIP and DACA still in limbo.
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