27 August 17 PM
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Charles Pierce | This Week in Voter Suppression
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "Let's begin in the failed state of Kansas, whence has come Kris Kobach, the chairman of the president's Potemkin voter-fraud commission, leaving behind him a long trail of bright neon clues as to what he's really all about."
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Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "Let's begin in the failed state of Kansas, whence has come Kris Kobach, the chairman of the president's Potemkin voter-fraud commission, leaving behind him a long trail of bright neon clues as to what he's really all about."
READ MORE
This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.
et's begin in the failed state of Kansas, whence has come Kris Kobach, the chairman of the president*'s Potemkin voter-fraud commission, leaving behind him a long trail of bright neon clues as to what he's really all about. From the AP Out There:Only six states, "all among the top 10 in population," discarded more votes during the 2016 election than the 33rd-largest state of Kansas, according to data collected by the bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that certifies voting systems. Kansas' 13,717 rejected ballots even topped the 13,461 from Florida, which has about seven times as many residents. Critics of Kansas' election system argue its unusually high number of discarded ballots reflects policies shaped over several elections that have resulted in many legitimate voters being kept off voter rolls in an effort to crack down on a few illegitimate ones.
You have to give the man credit. He uses every club in the bag very well. Every glitch, an opportunity.
Some Kansas voters "although the exact number is unclear" even went to the polls incorrectly believing they had legally registered, misled by erroneous confirmations the online registration system generated. Emails Kobach's office provided to The Associated Press under an open records request show problems with the online system dated back months before the general election, although state officials did not recognize it as a systemic glitch until the month before the election. The office explained it didn't tell the public about the problem because it had received only "occasional reports of a few people." Instead, county officials were told to only count the ballots of unregistered voters who produced a computer printout of the online confirmation. Anyone without such proof received a provisional ballot, but those were later discarded.
Let's skip on up to Idaho and check out the manner of congressional candidate with whom the unsuppressed voters of that state have been blessed. Step on up, Michael Snyder. And what do you have to perform for us today? From Right Wing Watch:
As well as his work for Charisma, Snyder runs a prepper website called The Economic Collapse and has written a few books, including "The Rapture Verdict," which allows readers to be on the "cutting edge of what God is doing in these last days"; a prepper handbook called "Get Prepared Now"; and a novel set in a post-apocalyptic "near future" containing "explosive truths" that "could literally change the world." In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Snyder called Hillary Clinton a modern-day Jezebel and insisted that the election was God's "final test" for America. In October, he warned that the "elite" might launch an attack on Donald Trump and his family and blame it on a lone wolf, or create a "false flag" event or "some type of event so that they can cancel or suspend the election."
Everybody should have the chance to run for something. It's one of the glories of democracy. But guys that believe they have "explosive truths that could literally change the world" at least should be required to put those truths in their campaign spots. It's only fair.
In April, Snyder took to Charisma to warn of a vision that he said a nine-year-old boy had seen of an asteroid hitting the Atlantic Ocean followed by a nuclear war. "Yes," he wrote, "the most challenging times in all of human history are coming. But for the people of God it will be the greatest chapter of all as multitudes come into the Kingdom even in the midst of all the shaking." Just yesterday, Snyder wondered if an injured bald eagle found in Washington was sent by God as a warning about things like government regulations destroying American freedoms.
Wait. There's going to be a nuclear war after the asteroid hits? Who's going to launch it? Bacteria? And the idea that God is randomly snuffing bald eagles because of the EPA shakes my faith with a great shaking, indeed.
Meanwhile, as we slide across the great divide and into California, we find once we get there that the state's beleaguered Republican Party is eating itself with great gusto, and that the L.A. Times was at the next table, taking notes.
Mayes was one of eight Republicans, seven of them in the Assembly, who helped extend California's premier program on climate change. He defended his decision as a necessary step to increase support for Republicans in a state where voters overwhelmingly back taking action against global warming, but he angered conservative members of the party who viewed the legislation as bad policy and bad politics. Harmeet Dhillon, one of two of the state's representatives to the Republican National Committee, said Mayes had failed to protect "the integrity of the party's position on taxation and overregulation in California."
Of all the state Republican parties that could go cannibal on itself over the climate crisis, California's is the one you'd think of last. Wildfires, mudslides, and on and on. Along with Louisiana, it's one of the American index patients for an ailing planet. Of course, there are always earthquakes, which would make the whole thing moot.
Speaking of Louisiana, Governor John Bel Edwards is actually trying that whole "criminal justice reform" thing that was supposed to be the glory train to bipartisanship, back before we handed the Justice Department over to the likes of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. As the Times-Picayune tells us, the process is achingly slow.
The 16,000 prison terms being reconsidered are for nonviolent offenses only and many will likely remain unchanged, said Jimmy LeBlanc, secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections. For example, some inmates who are serving sentences for multiple offenses won't be affected. Also, the majority of people whose sentences are affected won't necessarily be getting out anytime soon, LeBlanc said. Still, there will be an initial surge in releases from prison right after Nov. 1. About 3,000 to 4,000 of the 16,000 sentences being reviewed could be changed to make inmates eligible for release before the end of the year.
There are also a number of factors unique to Louisiana that complicate the process.
The bulk of Louisiana's state inmates are actually not housed in state prisons at all. About 55 percent of them -- 19,500 inmates -- are kept in local parish jails by sheriffs that get paid by the prison system to house them.
This sounds strange to me. I can't imagine that, if the state prisons are that bad, then the parish jails must be infinitely worse. Then again, it's Louisiana.
And we conclude, as is our wont, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Gravel Dowser Friedman of the Plains brings us yet another tale of how making government smaller makes it…smaller. From Tulsa public radio:
Despite eliminating 480 teaching positions since last year, Oklahoma school districts have 536 teaching vacancies right now. As a result, three in four districts will use more emergency certified teachers this year, and the state is on track to approve a record 1,400-plus emergency certificates by the end of the week. Hime said districts end up investing additional time and money on remedial training for teachers without an education background — and there's another common problem…More than half of districts have increased or will increase class sizes for this year. "And then eliminating fine arts, activity classes or even advanced courses that they can't find teachers in those areas," Hime said. "It's very difficult to find upper-level physics and science and mathematics courses."
Wait. You cut teachers and, suddenly, there are fewer of them? I don't think we need an upper-level mathematics course to figure out how this works.
This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.
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