Tag Archives: voting

Gerrymandering and the Supreme Court

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The Supreme Court has taken up a Wisconsin gerrymandering case, Whitford v Gill, in which some Liberal plaintiffs claim the State’s Republican legislature went too far in gerrymandering the State’s state legislature districts.  The plaintiffs are centering their beef on the idea that Republicans are overrepresented in the State’s legislature compared to State-wide voting tallies; Democrats didn’t get their “fair share” of the seats.

The plaintiffs are targeting Justice Anthony Kennedy in what is likely to be a sharply divided court, and some of Kennedy’s remarks at oral argument are, indeed, troubling.

[A]s Justice Kennedy noted in League of United Latin American Citizens v Perry the Constitution doesn’t require proportional representation, which would mean representation according to voter population.

It’s more than “doesn’t require,” and it’s bothersome that Kennedy seems not to understand this.  The Constitution prohibits proportional representation by requiring equal representation of each citizen.  This is in two Sections of the 14th Amendment.  Section 1 has this on the matter:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Equal representation at the polls is both a matter of privileges and immunities and of equal protection of the laws.  As all citizens are alike in the eyes of the law, so are all members of a subset of citizens—voters—alike at the voting booth.  There can be no other demarcation of voters, one from another, much less one group from another group, and preserve that identity.

Section 2 makes the thing explicit, with the sole modification of the 19th Amendment, which extended the franchise to women:

[W]hen the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

This is the only place where proportionality is permitted, and it’s permitted only in the relation of disenfranchised individuals to the whole of the eligible-to-vote population of individuals.  Party affiliation proportionality, the center of the present case, is both utterly absent in the Constitution and entirely illegitimate as an apportion criterion under the Constitution.

By design.

The Supremes need to uphold Wisconsin’s districts as they currently exist.

Election Fraud vs Election Hacking

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Certainly these are different from each other in method and often (but not always) in purpose, but is there an important difference were these successful in altering our election outcomes or in raising doubt about those outcomes?

I didn’t think so.

Why, then, are so many who should know better so obstructive of the Federal effort to understand the method and extent of election fraud?

There were nearly 150,000 attempts to penetrate the voter-registration system on Election Day 2016, State Election Commission says

That’s the subhead of Sunday’s Wall Street Journal piece on US Election Hacking Efforts. Illinois was hit as badly:

…hackers were hitting the State Board of Elections “5 times per second, 24 hours per day” from late June until Aug 12, 2016…. Hackers ultimately accessed approximately 90,000 voter records, the State Board of Elections said.

Accessed, not simply trying to, as was the case in South Carolina, the state with those 150,000 hack attempts.  In all, at least 21 states (I say “at least;” the WSJ just cited the 21) were targeted, and the intelligence community’s consensus is that the Russians were behind most of the attempts.

That should give an idea of the extent of the hacking at/into our election system.  Isn’t election fraud—another version of influencing or altering our election outcomes at least as serious?  Domestic defrauding of our elections, in some senses, would be even worse; it would be a betrayal by our own.

But so many governors refuse to cooperate with Federal efforts to characterize election fraud.

Go figure.

Of What are they Afraid?

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President Donald Trump has formed his commission to look into national-scale voter fraud, as promised, and that commission has asked each of the several States for a potful of voter roll information.  Even though the commission has asked for a broad range of data, it has emphasized that it wants only the data that are publicly available according to the respective States’ laws.

Nevertheless, a significant number of States have chosen to refuse to supply the data.  Virginia Governor Terry McAuliff (D), for instance, wondered with a straight face “what voter fraud?  Who—us?”

I have no intention of honoring this request. Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia[.] … At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla also has refused.

…not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally.

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes:

Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country[.]

Look who’s prejudging the outcome of an investigation that’s just getting underway.

I fail to understand why these folks want to obstruct the investigation.  After all, what better way to shut down Trump than to show, via his own commission, that his voter fraud beef is bogus?  Unless the beef is valid, and these guys have something to hide.

Naw.  Couldn’t be.

The Debil Made Me Do It

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At least Flip Wilson’s routine was funny.  The Democrats’ and their Party’s comedy, though, is just sad.

In no particular order, it’s been low-information voters who didn’t get the message that caused Democrats to lose seats in Congress and ultimately caused Hillary Clinton to lose the Presidential election.  Or it was that we’re just too dumb to understand their message.  Or it was FBI Director Comey who spiked her campaign.  Or it was the Russians who rigged our election.  Or it was President-Elect Donald Trump who’s in cahoots with the Russians.  Or it became Republican Electors who need to do their moral duty and not vote for Trump.  Or it was a mendacious press that had it in for Clinton.  And the latest: Bill Clinton’s racist and sexist rant: it was all those angry, white men who didn’t vote for Hillary.

Now it’s Huma Abedin’s fault.  She was an enabler of Clinton’s decision to isolate herself from the public and from the nature of her campaign.

“The real anger is toward Hillary’s inner circle,” a Clinton insider told Vanity Fair for a Wednesday feature on Abedin. “They reinforced all the bad habits.”

Because her role—created by her boss (that would be Hillary Clinton for those of you following along at home)—as personal advisor and Deputy Campaign Chief meant her advising should have been taken seriously.  But it was only advice: the decisions were always those of the MFWIC (Clinton again).  And it was Clinton’s bad habits, no one else’s.

And she was too enamored of her role.

“She was enjoying the red carpet and enjoying the photo spreads much too much in my opinion,” one Clinton insider told Vanity Fair. “She enjoyed being a celebrity too much.”

Yeah, she enjoyed the spotlight on her caused by Anthony Weiner’s behavior.  Gotta be it.

It couldn’t possibly be that Clinton had no message on policy, no coherent argument on why her plan to continue, even extend, President Barack Obama’s (D) policies that have been a failure these last eight years was a good idea.  It couldn’t possibly be that in conjunction with that, Clinton simply has been a terrible campaigner.  And that she’s entirely untrustworthy in the eyes of too many Americans.  No, all of that would be Clinton doing something with her personal responsibility more concrete than just talking about taking it.

No, it’s never Democrats’ fault, and it’s never Clinton’s, either.

Obama Has Threatened Russia

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Or so he says, while continuing his partisan and petty attacks on his opponents.

The US will “take action” against Russia for alleged cyberattacks on Democratic officials, President Obama warned Thursday, hours after his spokesman claimed that President-elect Donald Trump “obviously knew” about the breaches and leaks that critics say propelled him to victory in last month’s election.

President Barack Obama’s (D) tough talk about retaliatory action against Russia comes against the backdrop of his Vice President Joe Biden’s threat to retaliate against Russia for its cyber invasions and his own threat of retaliation regarding Syrian use of chemical weapons.

Obama’s tough talk about what Trump knew and when he knew it comes against the backdrop of his refusal to let his intelligence community Directors let Congress know the same things he claims Trump already knew.

Obama in his own words:

I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take action.  And we will—at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.

Sure he will.

I’m reminded of what bully wannabes on the playgrounds where I grew up used to chant: “Boy, oh boy, when I get you.”