Flap Your Lips Friday
Posted by Michelle Moquin on February 28th, 2014
Good morning!
I don’t know about you, but blogging on the LSOS yesterday has got me thinking a lot about the November midterm elections. Not to focus on fear, but just bring to light so that we are aware of the things that are happening, I want to continually remind my readers how important these coming elections are going to be.
I HOPE that all of you remember the last midterms and how disappointing it was that many Dems didn’t show up. I don’t think that is going to happen this time (Could Dems be so stupid and lazy again?!), but we’re still up against the LSOS repubs, who will do anything to prevent Dems from being able to get to the polls, and have their votes count.
Thankfully Obama has issued a series of recommendations that are going to help. However, these is still much to be done before November. It is not only making sure that people will get to vote, but that it is easy and accessible for them to vote, and that their vote counts. No doubt the repubs will stoop to whatever levels they need to, to make it difficult.
Here’s what’s happening so far – The write is from The Progress Report:
Hate to Stand In Line?
How to Improve Access to Voting, Everywhere
On election night in 2012, a newly re-elected President Barack Obama uttered an important aside in his speech: “I want to thank every American who participated in this election. Whether you voted for the very first time — or waited in line for a very long time — by the way, we have to fix that.” Sticking to his word, Obama went on to issue an executive order forming a nonpartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration to, in his words, “improve the voting experience in America.”
Almost a year later, that commission — chaired by the top attorneys from both the Obama and Romney campaigns — has issued a series of recommendations based on six months of study. Overall, the report calls for the creation of a new national standard: “no citizen should have to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.” The recommendations focus primarily on two categories of improving voter access: expanding access to the ballot box in an effort to reduce lines, and modernizing voting procedures and equipment.
Here are some of the more noteworthy specific recommendations offered by the commission, via the Huffington Post:
- An expansion of online voter registration by the states to enhance both accuracy of the voter rolls and efficiency;
- The expansion of voting before Election Day, recognizing that the majority of states now provide either mail balloting or in-person early voting and that voters are increasingly seeking these options;
- The increased use of schools as polling places, since they are the best-equipped facilities in most jurisdictions, with security concerns met by scheduling an in-service training day for students and teachers on Election Day;
- Recognizing and addressing the impending crisis in voting technology as machines bought 10 years ago with post-2000 federal funds wear out and require replacement with no federal appropriations on the horizon;
- To usher in this needed next generation of equipment, reforming the standards and certification process to allow innovation and the adoption of widely available and significantly less expensive off-the-shelf technologies and “software-only” solutions;
- Assuring that polling places are accessible to all voters, are located close to where voters live and are designed to function smoothly;
- Increasing and enhancing training and recruitment of poll workers, in the recognition that volunteer poll workers are voters’ primary source of contact during the actual voting process.
The commission also called for improving the data collected about election administration and voting machine performance so policymakers can better assess actual election administration performance against ideals.
The bipartisan commission stayed away from the most controversial issue surrounding voting: voter ID law. But many of these recommendations are an important validation of the work of many voting rights advocates. They are also an explicit rebuke to some conservative state governments that have taken steps to reduce voting access by decreasing early voting days and restricting the absentee ballot process.
The Commission’s findings complement a report that CAP Action released last week on voting access. Our report analyzes county-level data in seventeen 2012 swing states and ranks each county in those states on voter access. It highlights how there are wide discrepancies in a voter’s access to the polls not just based on which state he or she lives in, but also which county within the state.
If you live in a swing state and want to see how your county stacks up, check out the full CAP Action report HERE.
*****
Happy Friday! You know what to do. Blog me.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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February 28th, 2014 at 9:28 am
Michelle, I, too had the November elections come to mind. I agree with Ruth,SM that we need to be out there in huge numbers supporting Dems.
Some on the Right like to pretend that “Civil Rights” refers ONLY to the rights of Blacks in a predominantly white society.
MLK famously said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He marched for justice and equality for all, not just for people of color, but for all who were poor and powerless and oppressed.
February 28th, 2014 at 9:31 am
I am a gay business owner. Today’s laws make it quite illegal because of the Civil Rights Act for a gay business owner (such as myself) to discriminate against someone because of their religion.
But it’s still quite legal for them to discriminate against me because of their religion.
February 28th, 2014 at 9:39 am
I remember reading about our 17th President Andrew Johnson who took office after the assassination of Lincoln. In Johnson’s first speech as President he said ” this country is for white men as long as I am President, the black race are inferior to whites relative relation between God the creator.” Most whites still believe that today.
Even years later educated blacks were still considered inferior to uneducated whites. I remember in the 1965 when a black college grad went to his home of Alabama to register to vote. The clerk gave him the form with camera’s rolling. He asked the clerk a question and she said she could not read but called her boss.
A reporter asked why a person was hired as a clerk who could not read. The boss ignored the reporter and replied, “only people who can read can vote boy.”
Then the clerk who couldn’t read looked up and said I vote because I am white.
February 28th, 2014 at 11:24 am
We’re not exaggerating: In North Carolina ALONE, the Koch brothers have spent more than Democratic groups across every single Senate race COMBINED.
The Kochs’ $8.2 million has completely wiped out Democrat Kay Hagan’s 15 point lead — she is now tied with or trailing every single Republican challenger in North Carolina, which Nate Silver projects is the “tipping point in the Senate battle.”
We can’t match the Kochs’ endless spending dollar for dollar, but we have a plan to win. The New York Times called our Grassroots Victory Project the “largest and most data-driven ground game yet.” Modeled after the Obama campaign, it “runs through 10 states, includes a $60 million investment and requires more than 4,000 paid staff members.”
Before the FEC deadline in just 24 hours, we still need 2,500 grassroots supporters — including you — to step up and fill the funding hole in our Month One Budget. If you get us there, we’ll be able to place senior staff in critical battlegrounds RIGHT AWAY.