The Corruption Is Transparent

The video below indicates as minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives Stacey Abrams did relatively little to promote progressive values. Moreover, she appears to be just the vice-president a Democrat would not want negotiating with a senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

However, after leaving the state legislature and losing an extremely close gubernatorial race, Abrams founded Fair Fight 2020 to combat GOP voter suppression efforts. And she can been in the puff interview below noting (at :53)

Voting rights serves as the conduit to which all other change is possible. You cannot tackle economic insecurity, you cannot fight for better climate change legislation, you cannot protect access to criminal justice reform.The things we want to see become real become so because of voting.

So if any politician had made the following statement before Donald Trump swallowed the Republican Party, it would be his most significant lie. And for this President, still in the top 10% is his tweet (since deleted)

Breaking: Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!..

This didn't go unnoticed:

1. Michigan sending absentee ballot applications not ballots to voters

2. @JocelynBenson one of best Secretaries of State in country & has authorization to do so

3. Threatening to block funding to sway election outcome exactly what Trump impeached for https://t.co/okDRAgc6uV

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) May 20, 2020

Not deleted, however, is

State of Nevada “thinks” that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for the State and the U.S. They can’t! If they do, “I think” I can hold up funds to the State. Sorry, but you must not cheat in elections. @RussVought45 @USTreasury

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2020

Obviously, Trump is setting the predicate for declaring that his defeat (if it occurs) in November is a "rigged election"- and worse.  The armed mobs supporting him will follow.

Not quite as obvious is the more immediate motive.   The President is sending a message about mail balloting to secretaries of state throughout the USA. Do it my way, he screams, or your state can forget about receiving funds from the federal government- not unlike his message to Ukraine.

The American people are deeply cynical about government, one of the reasons they didn't resoundingly throw Donald Trump onto the ash heap of history, or back to the gutter he came from, when he shot his mouth off about the upcoming 2016 election being "rigged."  Organizations like those of Abrams and Eric Holder's National Redistricting Foundation should be supplemented by a narrative which would serve to counter Trump's continuing project to portray himself (and his party) as a victim.

It's not sufficient for Democrats to insist they believe in democracy and access to the ballot box.  the incumbent is intent on stealing the election, they should argue.  That would not only be a reasonably effective counter-narrative; it also would be accurate. Donald Trump has told us so.

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Give Him No Platform

And that's when I knew I was wrong.

On March 23 I wrote

Broadcast live, these task force briefings are more partisan political affair than informative news event. They should be televised only on delay, shown only after Daniel Dale and other fact-checkers have had an opportunity to vet remarks by such political actors as the President, the Vice-President, and the Surgeon General. As remarks are heard, a script at the bottom of the screen would indicate results of the fact check.

Since then, it has become clear to me, as it had to a few others by then, that these are campaign events, a mix of the President's personal resentments, strategic invective, and lies.  Responding to Tuesday's briefing:

Daniel Dale is amazing at this: but isn’t this kinda fact checking the barn once the horse has run out? The President said all these things—on live tv. Platforming lies is a mistake. But media does it daily. I don’t get it. https://t.co/k5m51brTVg

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) April 8, 2020

Donald Trump's periodic lies about "voter fraud" are the most insidious because the truth is not simple and the specter of voter impersonation fraud are at the core of GOP electoral strategy.

The "autopsy" the Republican Party performed on itself in 20013, in the wake of yet another defeat in a presidential election, prescribed support for "comprehensive immigration reform" and outreach to African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, and gay voters.

Then Donald Trump came along and won the presidency with a vigorous anti-immigrant message and  emphasis on ethnic bias, and the earlier prescription was shelved.  Following the direction of Senate Majority Leader McConnell, whose wife was selected for the President's cabinet, the party would be all in for Donald Trump.  The President would lead the party and brook no dissent.

The effort to squash voting in heavily Democratic Milwaukee is only the latest manifestation of the GOP's electoral strategy. Republicans know that if a lot of people vote, it is blacks, Latinos, and young people, who traditionally have a low turnout, who will turn out in higher numbers than normal. 

I waited 2.5 hours today in rain and hail (and a mask and gloves) to vote in Milwaukee because @wisgop and @scotus would rather risk lives than have a fair election. Instead of 182 polling sites, we had 5. #VoterSuppression #WisconsinPrimary pic.twitter.com/9F8xKwciOX

— Trudy Harwood (@TrudyandPierre) April 8, 2020

On March 30, the Present had called in to Trump TV's Fox and Friends and "dismissed a Democrat-led push for (voting) reforms" by stating "The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again."

That should have been obvious. However, the President thought it necessary to tweet on Wednesday morning

Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason,  doesn’t work out well for Republicans.

Still, aside from fact-checker Dale, Soledad O'Brien, and a few others, there was still little little of Trump's intent, and even less indication that people appreciated the implication. The President of the United States has made it very clear- he does not want people to vote and he's going to do whatever it takes to make sure they don't.

Fact-checking as Donald Trump spews a string of fabrications is more difficult than I understood, even recently. Moreover, it takes context for independent-minded voters to understand the damage and danger in the  distortion and lies characterizing virtually every appearance the President makes.

Refusing to show these dog-and-pony shows will enrage the President; good. They will undermine his obsession with being the center of attention at any and all times. They deprive him of at least one platform to disseminate propaganda.

It is irresponsible to give Donald Trump the forum to promote his campaign and various prejudices with reckless disregard for truth. Though there is no perfect remedy to the evil embodied in one man, media organizations must recognize- as they do- that the briefings are only campaign events, and dishonest ones.  Deciding not to tilt the election toward the incumbent by broadcasting them is the least which should be expected of them.

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Black Lives Matter- Sometimes

A forty-three-year-old black mother, Crystal Mason of Tarrant County, Texas, has been sentenced to five years in prison for voter fraud, though her attorney now has filed an appeal. BET explains she

was on supervised release for tax fraud after serving nearly three years in federal prison. While she was on her release, her mother insisted she exercise her civic duty of voting in the crucial election, the Star-Telegram reported.

However, Mason was unaware that convicted felons are not allowed to register to vote in Texas, and voting their rights can be restored only after the sentence, including a supervised release, has been completed.

When Mason arrived at her polling place, the workers could not find her name on the list of registered voters, so a poll worker handed her a provisional ballot.

The poll worker gave Mason an affidavit listing the conditions required to vote. Mason signed the document and voted.

A poll worker later reported problems with Mason’s ballot which prompted an investigation, the district attorney's office spokesperson Samantha Jordan told the Dallas Morning News.

Mason, who was originally served time for a 2011 conviction for inflating returns, said she has “owned up” to her crime and she would never intentionally put herself in a position to go back to jail.

"I inflated returns," Mason told the Telegram. "I was trying to get more money back for my clients. I admitted that. I owned up to that. I took accountability for that. I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. ... I didn't even want to go vote."

As BET notes, several people, including but not limited to a superb news host and the president of the NAACP, tweeted about Mason, in some instances drawing a contrast to a white Republican woman sentenced to probation for trying to vote twice for Donald Trump in Iowa.

But one organization is glaringly absent from the individuals and groups righteously outraged at this effort to depress voting and imprison someone up for something relatively innocuous.

That would be Black Lives Matter, the first page of whose website includes

The Black Lives Matter Global Network is a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

Apparently, the Network does not want to interfere with the "violence" or discrimination inflicted by the state of Texas. It continues

We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.

Evidently, their network does not center on blacks whose votes are being suppressed. Their rant continues

We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.

We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.

The oppression they affirm does not include oppression of the right to cast a ballot.

Despite President Trump finally shutting down Kris Kobach's fraudulent voter fraud commission, GOP efforts to abort voting rights continues, and would be a concern to any organization truly dedicated to black empowerment.

So, too, would unusually punitive criminal justice practices in specific states. As with much of the effort among politicians and others toward criminal justice reform, among politicians and others, Black Lives Matter seems blissfully unaware that not all states, unlike people, are created equal. Both law enforcement and courts vary from state-to-state, and it is no coincidence that Crystal Mason was abused in Texas (video from 1/23/17).




Inarguably, black lives matter. Arguably, Black Lives Matter shouldn't.




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Imagine An Undocumented Alien

As activists reach for effective code words as tools of persuasion, objectivity and accuracy take a whacking. We're reminded by Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Jeff Gammage that words matter. He observes

“The correct term is ‘illegal alien,’ ” Hans von Spakovsky wrote in the conservative magazine National Review. “The politically correct term ‘undocumented immigrant’ … is a made-up term used by progressive groups and media sources to extinguish the line between legal immigrants and illegal aliens.”

This sort of thing does not sit well with advocates of illegal immigration- uh, er, illegal immigrants (video below from 2/17). Gammage notes

“I’m a human being,” said Maria Sotomayor, who immigrated from Ecuador and is now deputy director of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, an advocacy group. “A human being is not a crime.”

Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel famously said that no human can be illegal. Pope Francis refers to “migrants” and “refugees” and “our brothers and sisters.” And last year, the Library of Congress dropped “illegal alien” from its subject headings — angering conservative lawmakers who claimed the library had bowed to liberal pressure.

I hate to argue with Elie Wiesel and anyone named "Sotomayor" (no indication whether Maria is related to that other Sotomayor), but they're roughly as wrong as von Spakovsky.

Admittedly, no human being can be illegal- or legal, for that matter.  However, the term "illegal immigrant" describes someone who has immigrated illegally. (If this sounds easy to understand, kindly inform Wiesel and Sotomayor.) Moreover, in this phrase, "illegal" is an adjective modifying "immigrant"- not person.

Thus, an individual may be an "illegal immigrant" just as she may be a "lousy carpenter" or "good carpenter," which is not an evaluation of her value as a person, but only as a carpenter. Similarly, she may be an "inadequate pastor," one who is insufficiently effective as head of a church, though possibly a great woman.  Or she may be a great mentor, impressive at mentoring, or a great athlete or great mother or conversely, a bad athlete or mother.

Hans von Spakovsky, a leading light of the voter suppression movement, is also off-base.  The term "illegal alien" lacks the symmetry necessary if there are aliens who are "legal." If there are "illegal aliens," there must be "legal aliens," a term absent from anyone's lexicon. If instead there is no such thing as a "legal alien," the phrase "illegal alien" is redundant and thus must be discarded.

There may be insidious motives to the word "alien." It is intended either to offend as many people as possible, to rile critics, or both. Additionally, when I hear the word "alien," I can't help but think- and probably am expected to think- of this sort of creature:

So go ahead, activists. "Illegal immigrant" isn't as sexy as "alien" or "undocumented," but at least it's accurate.










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Surely, Everything Is Just Fine

Democrats are in federal court this week to prevent voter intimidation by the Republican Party in Ohio, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.   The Chicago Tribune reports that a federal case in New Jersey, however, involves a consent degree obtained in 1982 when

The consent decree was created after Democrats alleged that the RNC helped intimidate black voters during New Jersey's 1981 gubernatorial election. The RNC and New Jersey's Republican Party allegedly had off-duty law enforcement officers stand at polling places in urban areas wearing "National Ballot Security Task Force" armbands. Some had guns visible.

The RNC admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to the decree to settle the case. The decree only regulates work done by the RNC and is scheduled to end next year. The Democratic National Committee wants it extended another eight years, but needs to convince a judge that the RNC has violated the 34-year-old rules.

The Democratic Party is a little nervous, facing a presidential candidate who on October 1 told supporters in 96% white Mannheim, Pennsylvania

You’ve got to go out. You’ve got to go out. And you’ve got to get your friends. And you’ve got to get everyone you know. And you got to watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania. Certain areas. I hear too many bad stories, and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about.

So go and vote, and then go check out areas. Because a lot of bad things happen. And we don’t want to lose for that reason. We don’t want to lose, but we especially we don’t want to lose for that reason. So go over and — watch. And watch carefully.

Not surprisingly

Joshua Kaul, an attorney representing the Democratic National Committee, told the judge in Newark, New Jersey, on Friday that Trump has "repeatedly encouraged his supporters to engage in vigilante efforts" in the guise of ferreting out potential voter fraud. Kaul said the RNC is participating.

Bobby Burchfield, an attorney for Republicans, told the judge that party volunteers are engaging in normal poll-watching and that Democrats haven't found one instance in which someone was intimidated or prevented from voting.

Not even one? Off the top of my head- and not even in the six states in which the Democratic Party is litigating- we learn from The Huffington Post

A man wearing a Donald Trump shirt and carrying a weapon stood outside a voting location in Loudoun County, Virginia, on Friday. Authorities in the nation’s richest county are apparently OK with that.

Erika Cotti encountered the man when she went to vote at the county’s registrar’s office, she told The Huffington Post. Virginia doesn’t have early voting per se, but voters can cast in-person absentee ballots for a host of reasons, like if they’re going to be out of the county or city on Election Day.

“I had my 9-year-old son with me. I felt intimidated,” Cotti said. “And I had to explain to my 9-year-old why a man with a 357 magnum is standing outside the polling station.”

Cotti said the man offered her a Republican sample ballot, which she declined.

“He’s like, ‘Who are you going to vote for, crooked Hillary?’ And I was like, that’s really none of your business,” Cotti said, adding that the man was standing in the sidewalk outside of the office when they left and blocking their path. 

Judy Brown, Loudoun County registrar, confirmed that the man was standing outside her office in Leesburg and handing out GOP literature.

“There is a gentleman standing outside the office with a holstered gun,” Brown told HuffPost. “According to law enforcement, because Virginia is open carry, he’s allowed to have it.”

Brown noted that the man was “being nice” to people, and that he appeared to respecting the observed 40-foot no-canvassing zone outside of the entrance. 

“They said that there’s nothing they could do, that he was well within his rights to be carrying his weapon,” Brown said.

The county registrar called the county GOP, "which got the man to agree to pull his Trump shirt over the weapon so people couldn’t see it." Yet this was (presumably,) no fascist or psychologically deficient Trump supporter, for

Loudoun County Republican Committee Chairman Will Estrada told HuffPost that the man was a former law enforcement official and veteran with a concealed carry permit.

“’We don’t want to startle anyone,’” Estrada said he told him. “He felt really bad, he pulled his T-shirt over it, and I think everything was fine after that.”

Couple that with the remark this morning of RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer to CNN's Michael Smerconish, a steadfast advocate of bipartisan comity. Asked whether he'd accept the results of the presidential election- one which most polls currently indicate will be decided within three percentage points- Spicer responded "assuming that there's a clear and decisive victory, sure" (a reply which went over Smerconish's head).








Short term, the best antidote to the GOP's challenge to representative democracy is the big victory- both in the popular vote and electoral college- which most observers believe highly unlikely. Even then, Donald Trump, most of his supporters, and a huge chunk of one Party wil lnot accept the election as legitimate.

The viability of the Republican Party depends on obstruction and suppression. In the mid- and long-term, the Democratic Party will have to fight tooth and nail to establish the right of American citizens to vote.






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Rigging Not Easy, Even For GOP

Josh Levitt of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles found that of approximately one billion ballots cast in federal, state, and local elections from 2000 to 2014, there were 31 instances of possible voter impersonation fraud.   And he believes

some of the 31 will end up debunked: a problem with matching people from one big computer list to another, or a data entry error, or confusion between two different people with the same name, or someone signing in on the wrong line of a pollbook.

But facts are for losers and some Democrats. Politico's Kyle Cheney reports

Interviews with more than two dozen members of the Republican National Committee reveal abiding fears of Democratic voting fraud and widespread belief that at least part of the process or outcome is rigged....

Not all of the RNC members who spoke with POLITICO believe the election is rigged. Some contend Trump is wrong about the scale of the conspiracy he describes and others believe he should be targeting his ire at the media, which, they believe, are indeed conspiring against him.

But rather than knock down Trump’s claims, most lauded his focus on ballot integrity and pointed to instances of what they say is fraudulent voter registration as proof that he may be onto something.

With numerous anecdotes embedding themselves into the paranoic virus infecting Republican brains

Only a handful of RNC members expressed confidence in their own states’ ability to police voter fraud or noted that overwhelming evidence suggests such fraud is rare and inconsequential.

If there is any rigging going on, it's not likely it's the Democratic Party. Think Progress' Josh Israel notes

In all, 29 states have GOP-controlled elections processes, representing 302 electoral votes. 17 states and the District of Columbia have a Democratic-controlled process, representing just 173 electors. The remaining 4 states, with a total of 63 electoral votes, have bipartisan boards.

In some states, the GOP throws its weight around. Three months ago, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down a North Carolina law which, The Washington Post explained at the time, included "requiring residents to show identification before they can cast a ballot, the law also eliminated same-day voter registration, eliminated seven days of early voting and put an end to out-of-precinct voting." The judges

found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. "This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)," the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. "With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans," the judges wrote. "The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess."

In particular, the court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. "This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)," the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. "With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans," the judges wrote. "The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess."

Voter identification requirements are particularly popular among GOP politicians and the base but

The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina's 17-day voting period. So lawmakers eliminated these seven days of voting. "After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days," the court found.

Most strikingly, the judges point to a "smoking gun" in North Carolina's justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic," and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

The federal court sitting in Richmond, Va. clearly observed

the primary purpose of North Carolina's wasn't to stop voter fraud, but rather to disenfranchise minority voters. The judges found that the provisions "target African Americans with almost surgical precision."

“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places- SAD," Donald Trump has tweeted.  However, the only sad thing is that Trump sees a broken system (image above from Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2012, that below from Nationald Election Defense Coaliton) and blames the victims, rather than the victimizers- which is one of the things his campaign is about.  

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The Right To Vote, As Long As It's For Trump

On Tuesday night in Wisconsin, Donald Trump gave a speech covering a grab bag of issues in a remarkably superficial fashion.  (The only transcript available seems to be the one prepared for delivery, and given the candidate's penchant for going off-strip, any quotes may not be identical to his words as delivered.)   Trade, education, and Islamic terrorism also were trotted out for a cameo role.

It also was a highly partisan speech, in which Grump claimed

The Democratic Party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin. 

They've ruined the schools.

They've driven out the jobs.

Most of all, crime must be attributed to Democrats, and primarily to his opponent because "Hillary Clinton-backed policies are responsible for the problems in the inner cities today, and a vote for her is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime, and lost opportunities."

Grump was short on facts, long on generalities and short on specifics, though he did complain about conditions in "inner cities,"  which is nowhere an official designation, unlike cities, towns, townships, boroughs, etc. But for voters over the age of 50 it is translated as "black"  and sounds like a dogwhistle out of Frank Luntz's bag of rhetorical dirty tricks.

It's not surprising that a candidate who has warned "We're going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study make sure other people don't come in and vote five times" had his eyes on the votes of white supremacists as he gave a speech pretending to be concerned about minorities.

No one can say for certain whether Grump in his shout-out to vigilantism was referring to illegal immigrants, obviously a particular scourge to him, or blacks, who make up the dominant voting bloc for Democrats in Pennsylvania.   But Trump has charged the system is "rigged" and supporters have portrayed him as willling to challenge both Democratic and Republican members of the Establishment.

Yet, he didn't mention the effort underway in many states, led invariably by Republicans and typically opposed by Democrats, to prevent blacks from voting.  Were it not intentional from a man who throughout his speech ignored the structural barriers to equality of opportunity in American society, it would be only an egregious oversight.

The GOP tactic of suppressing the vote of blacks and Latinos is no mere oversight, and belies any expression of concern for either group.  In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down a voter idenification law in North Carolina because

The photo ID requirement, which applies only to in-person voting and not to absentee voting, is too narrow to combat fraud. On the one hand, the State has failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina. On the other, the General Assembly did have evidence of alleged cases of mail- in absentee voter fraud. Notably, the legislature also had evidence that absentee voting was not disproportionately used by African Americans; indeed, whites disproportionately used absentee voting. The General Assembly then exempted absentee voting from the photo ID requirement.

Speaking in Virginia twelve days later, Trump was clear in his support for voter disenfranchisment, remarking

You know, and I just left a great place, North Carolina. And they just had a tremendous loss. Voter ID. Voter ID. They lost voter ID. How do you lose voter ID? You mean, you don’t have to show identification? You don’t have to show that — hey?

Hey? Hey, voter identification fraud is nearly nonexistent, Donald:

Requirement of voter identification is a great way of depressing the vote, and waiting times at polling places varies significantly among ethinic groups, as indicated by the chart below:

In recognizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Senator Barbara Boxer in 2003 wrote "Without a meaningful vote, there can be no equality before the law, no equal access, no equal opportunity." Donald Trump may buck his Party in varied and superficial ways and plead for votes of African-Americans. But promoting voter suppression, as he and his Party are most anxious to do, make clear that Donald Trump's GOP has little interest in the black community.








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Voter Identification And Lengthy Lines

On Sunday's commentary (video below), John Oliver summarized the problems with requiring voter identification: the difficulty in many states of obtaining I.D.; the disproportionate impact on black and hispanic voters; inapplicability of the remedy to anything but voter impersonation, which a study found occurred at most 31 times of more than a billion votes cast from 2000 through 2014; the evidence that it may be used as a partisan effort to elect more Republicans.

There may be only one pitfall in requiring voter identification which went unmentioned, and that possibly only because of time limitations.  The day before the last off-year congressional election, Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones posted an article detailing what she considers the most "subtle" means of disenfranchising black and hispanic voters: "polling places without enough voting machines or poll workers." She found

Nationally, African Americans waited about twice as long to vote in the 2012 election as white people (23 minutes on average versus 12 minutes); Hispanics waited 19 minutes. White people who live in neighborhoods whose residents are less than 5 percent minority had the shortest of all wait times, just 7 minutes. These averages obscure some of the unusually long lines in some areas. In South Carolina's Richland County, which is 48 percent black and is home to 14 percent of the state's African American registered voters, some people waited more than five hours to cast their ballots.

A recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice suggests that a big factor behind these delays was inadequately prepared polling places in heavily minority precincts. Looking at Florida, Maryland, and South Carolina, three states that had some of the longest voting lines in 2012 , the center found a strong correlation between areas with large minority populations and a lack of voting machines and poll workers. In South Carolina, the 10 precincts with the longest waits had more than twice the percentage of black voters (64 percent) as the state as a whole (27 percent).

When individuals have to wait to vote, they are tempted to turn around and go home, especially because in the vast majority of elections the likelihood of one vote (or even a few votes) deciding an election is virtually nill.  One study, Mencimer found, " suggested that roughly 130,000 would-be voters were turned away thanks to long lines" in Franklin County (home to Columbus), Ohio, in 2004. (Mencimer adds "Those missing votes would not have been enough to swing the state for John Kerry." Wrong. This way, too.)

Long waiting lines, most prevalent in urban and minority areas, discourage turnout, primarily of Democratic voters. Given the most common reasons for those lines, racial discrimination is not the primary motivation, though there is an obvious discriminatory impact.  Mencimer notes

Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied voting wait times, has posited that the problem is likely related to the poor provision of public service in minority areas in general. In other words, if you don't have good trash pick up, your polling station isn't likely to function very well, either.

Blacks and hispanics are those most likely to live in areas plagued by inadequate municipal services. They also are disproportionately unlikely to possess voter I.D., hence especially likely to be harmed by the requirement that identification be presented at the polls.  Additionally, the mere presentation of identification, along with verification (albeit a relatively brief process in most cases), lengthens the time required for voting. Lines inevitably are longer and some discouraged voters will return home without casting a ballot.

The impact on minority voters severely hampers Democratic fortunes. It should be a bigger issue in the presidential race, and would be if only there were a Democrat countering her opponent's campaign with a race-based appeal.

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An Isolated Incident- Or Not

In 1968, many Democratic activists and politicians urged New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic nomination for president. Believing challenging an incumbent would be an uphill battle, Kennedy demurred while the less well-known anti-war Senator, Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, took the plunge.

Following the New Hampshire primary, in which McCarthy did stunningly well (though losing), Johnson announced he would not seek re-nomination.  Soon thereafter, Kennedy reconsidered, declared his candidacy, and engaged in a hot-fought battle with Vice-President Humphrey before Kennedy was shot and killed after his victory in the critical California primary.

Humphrey was to be nominated at the Democratic convention in Chicago, which turned into a fiasco as anti-war and to a lesser extent, anti-Humphrey, protesters hit the street and in turn were hit by Mayor Richard Daley's police. The slogan of the left protesting, in part, the nomination of arguably the most progressive politician of his generation, was "the whole world is watching." The whole world may not have been watching, but the American voter was, and did not like what she was viewing. Humphrey's campaign got off to an understandably slow start and he was barely defeated by Richard Nixon in an election which at the time was the closest presidential race in history.

History probably is not repeating itself, though that would not be a safe assumption. Hillary Clinton is the presumptive nominee of the Party but is being effectively challenged from the left by Senator Bernard Sanders, whom no one believes has a shot at the nomination- unlike Senator Elizabeth Warren, who rejected entreaties for herself to run.  (By the way: Warren is from Massachusetts. Kennedy was originally from Massachusetts.)

That is not the only echo of 1968. Time's Sam Frizell reports

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley was midsentence when the chanting began. “What side are you on black people, what side are you on!” rang the chorus of around four dozen mostly black protesters streaming into a convention hall in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday.

A woman named Tia Oso grabbed the microphone as the protesters stormed the room.

“We are going to hold this space and acknowledge the names of black women who have died in police custody, and then Governor O’Malley we do have questions for you!” Oso said as the former two-term governor and his interviewer, Jose Antonio Vargas, watched helplessly. “As leader of this country will you advance an agenda that will dismantle structural racism in this country?” Oso asked.

“Yes,” O’Malley managed to answered, before he was drowned out again.

O’Malley was speaking at Netroots Nation, the country’s largest gathering of progressive activists when the proceedings broke down in a cacophony of boos, cheers and heckles on Saturday. Shortly afterward, Bernie Sanders, another Democratic candidate for president, was also silenced on the same stage by the group of Black Lives Matter protesters. Chanting, the activists shouted out the names of black women who have died in police custody and peppered the candidates with questions about their civil rights records.

A sea of mostly white progressives, including unions, laborers, bloggers, activists and musicians sat watching the drama unfold.

It was a moment that spoke to the tumult on the Democratic left and surprised even the organizers of the nine-year-old annual event. As the Democratic party increasingly coalesces around a progressive wish list like expanding Social Security and reining in Wall Street, the growing Black Lives Matter movement is calling loudly for the left to focus on racial injustice as well.

The two presidential candidates found themselves at the center of the chaos, both caught off guard and unable to answer the protesters.









Understandably, the Democratic contenders (with O'Malley, above) were caught off guard. Frizell continues

“Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter,” O’Malley said to boos and jeers.

After O’Malley exited, Sanders took the stage and flashed with annoyance. “If you don’t want me to be here that’s okay,” he said. “I don’t want to out-scream you.”

(All lives matter.... a racist, warmongering thought, if there ever were one.)

There are three major Democratic candidates. (Sorry, Lincoln and Jim.)  "Sanders," Time's Frizell notes, "has proposed a massive jobs programs and raising the minimum wage, and O'Malley has discussed reforming policing and enhancing civilian review boards, among other measures."  Even Wall Street's favorite candidate, Hillary Clinton, "who was absent from the Phoenix conference- has called for automatic voter registration and fundamentally reforming the criminal justice system."

All three individuals have spoken in favor of reforming the criminal justice system, the need which inspired the "Black Lives Matter movement." Automatic voter registration would go a long way to blunting the GOP's voter suppression movement aimed at, more than anything else, keeping blacks and Hispanics from voting.

Still, they shouted and prevented their political allies from fully presenting their case. Primary fault lies with organizers of the event, who should have anticipated this at least as a possibility and provided security accordingly.  Alternatively, Sanders and O'Malley could have spoken up, thereby ending their campaigns, given that the news media would in showing Democratic discord while from other quarters charges of racism were leveled. (Honestly- you know that's true, don't you?)

Republican audiences know how to end this sort of rudeness. Chants of "USA! USA!" are hokey, obnoxious, superficial, and disingenuous.  (This is the Party which tried to force the USA into bankruptcy by refusing to raise the debt limit.)  But they are effective- and because they are effective, the mainstream media has no trouble with them. They also imply a unity within the GOP, which is another way to impress the Fourth Estate. (Do you remember the incident recorded below? Neither do I. That's the point.)









So of course these folks didn't approach any gathering of the Repub Party, the organization inimical to their interests and which would do almost anything to keep them from even voting. They sensed weakness and went after the Democratic Party. It would be in their (selfish and/or misguided) to continue this behavior until it is effectively confronted. The Democratic Party had better figure out to do it, or the American people, who are not partial to weakness, will put the Democratic Party out of its misery. Otherwise, notwithstanding the declining concentration of whites in the electorate, expect defeat to be snatched from the jaws of victory.





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