“Hiding From Town-Hall Hollering”: GOP Now In Awkward Position Of Disappointing Far-Right Activists They Worked So Hard To Rile Up
About a month ago, the House Republican Conference produced “exceptionally detailed” guides for their members on how best to survive the lengthy August recess. Party officials offered some rather remarkable advice in the “planning kit,” including “planting questions” so local events remain on message.
Of course, that assumes lawmakers will actually host local events in the first place. The New York Times reports today that this summer, many members of Congress have suddenly lost their interest in town-hall forums.
Though Republicans in recent years have harnessed the political power of these open mic, face-the-music sessions, people from both parties say they are noticing a decline in the number of meetings. They also say they are seeing Congressional offices go to greater lengths to conceal when and where the meetings take place. […]
With memories of those angry protests still vivid, it seems that one of the unintended consequences of a movement that thrived on such open, often confrontational interactions with lawmakers is that there are fewer members of Congress now willing to face their constituents.
A unnamed Senate Republican aide told the NYT, “Ninety percent of the audience will be there interested in what you have to say. It’s the other 5 or 10 percent who aren’t. They’re there to make a point and, frankly, to hijack the meeting.”
I don’t want to sound unsympathetic. I’ve never worked for a member of Congress, but I imagine it’s quite frustrating when you go to the trouble of organizing an event and “planting questions,” only to see some local troublemakers derail your plans.
Of course, I’d remind these lawmakers that democracy can be messy, and that hiding from constituents doesn’t seem especially healthy.
The Times piece doesn’t quantify the observation, so it’s hard to say with confidence whether there’s been a significant drop in the number of town-hall discussions or if this is just something “people from both parties say they are noticing.” Once the recess ends, it’d be interesting to see an official tally to bolster the point — counting up all of the meetings held by all of the members, and comparing the totals to previous years.
But if the argument is based on a real trend, it’s worth considering in detail why, exactly, members who used to love town-hall meetings suddenly changed their mind.
It’s easy to blame annoying loudmouths who show up and cause trouble, but I find it hard to believe this is a new phenomenon.
Rather, I think there are two other angles to this. The first is that the Republican Party base is starting to push for things Republican Party lawmakers don’t want to deliver — a government shutdown, national default, impeachment, hearings into the president’s birth certificate, a special committee to investigate Benghazi conspiracy theories — and town-hall forums put GOP officials in an awkward position of disappointing the far-right activists the party has worked so hard to rile up.
The second is the flip-side: the Republican Party base is pushing for extremism, many Republican officials are going along, and invariably someone catches this on video.
Note, for example, that three GOP members of Congress have embraced the birther conspiracy theory in the last two weeks — and in each instance, they were speaking at a town-hall forum, being egged on by birther constituents.
In other words, we’re looking at a dynamic in which Republicans (a) will be pressed to say something stupid; or (b) will go ahead and say something stupid.
Is it any wonder so many members are hiding?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 13, 2013
“Welcome To The Post Civil Rights Era”: Gov Rick Scott To Launch New Purge Of Florida Voter Rolls
Gov. Rick Scott will soon launch a new hunt for noncitizens on Florida’s voter roll, a move that’s sure to provoke new cries of a voter “purge” as Scott ramps up his own re-election effort.
Similar searches a year ago were rife with errors, found few ineligible voters and led to lawsuits by advocacy groups that said it disproportionately targeted Hispanics, Haitians and other minority groups. Those searches were handled clumsily and angered county election supervisors, who lost confidence in the state’s list of names.
“It was sloppy, it was slapdash and it was inaccurate,” said Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards. “They were sending us names of people to remove because they were born in Puerto Rico. It was disgusting.”
The state’s list of suspected non-U.S. citizens shrank from 182,000 to 2,600 to 198 before election supervisors suspended their searches as the presidential election drew near. “That was embarrassing,” said elections chief Jerry Holland in Jacksonville’s Duval County. “It has to be a better scrub of names than we had before.”
Election supervisors remain wary of a new removal effort, which the U.S. Supreme Court effectively authorized in June when it struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act. That ruling nullified a federal lawsuit in Tampa that sought to stop new searches for noncitizen voters, and Scott quickly renewed his call for action.
“If there’s anybody that we think isn’t voting properly, from the standpoint that they didn’t have a right to vote, I think we need to do an investigation,” Scott said the day of the high court decision. Last fall, Scott joined the Republican Party in a fundraising appeal that accused Democrats of defending the right of noncitizens to vote.
Scott’s top elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, is now creating a new list of suspected noncitizen voters by cross-checking state voter data with a federal database managed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Detzner’s director of elections, Maria Matthews, sent a letter to election supervisors Friday, promising “responsible measures that ensure due process and the integrity of Florida’s voter rolls” and vowing to include supervisors “in the planning and decision-making.”
Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, chairman of the Florida Hispanic Legislative Caucus, said Detzner told him the state would resume its purge of potential noncitizens within 60 days. “I’ve been told that they will go slow,” Garcia said. “I’m completely confident that the process will work.”
Hillsborough County halted its purge last year after several voters on a list of 72 flagged by the state proved their citizenship.
A voter whose citizenship is questioned has the right to provide proof of citizenship in a due-process system that includes certified letters and legal notices.
If the next list is anything like the last one, its burden will fall most heavily on urban counties with large Hispanic populations, notably Miami-Dade.
“Ineligible voters will be removed when their ineligibility is substantiated by credible and reliable data,” said Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley.
Townsley and a half-dozen county election supervisors interviewed across the state were emphatic that anyone who is not a U.S. citizen should not be able to cast a ballot. But they also say the state must meticulously document any case of a suspected ineligible voter and share all data with the counties — including access to the federal database known as SAVE.
Some supervisors remain irked that Detzner’s office still has not granted them access to the database after promising to do so last fall.
Okaloosa County election supervisor Paul Lux said the state’s questionable data damaged relations between the state and counties last year.
“We said then, ‘If you can’t give us good data, why should we kill ourselves vetting it?’ ” Lux said.
Relations have improved, but Lux said he’s not hopeful that the SAVE database will be much better.
“If the federal government is as good at collecting data as they are with doing other things, then I’ve got to wonder about the quality of this data,” Lux said. “If we get the information sooner, we can get started and have plenty of time to do our own due diligence.”
Maria Rodriguez, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, which opposed previous purge efforts, said the state’s motive is to remove poor and minority voters who are less likely to vote Republican.
“For every voter they purge, we will nationalize and register many, many more,” she said.
Voter purges aren’t necessarily a bad thing, said Myrna Pérez, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.
She said many states require voter-list maintenance efforts to prune the rolls of voters who are no longer eligible or who have died, but purges close to an election should be avoided. “They offer lots of opportunities for eligible voters to get improperly removed because they frequently happen in a rushed, haphazard manner behind closed doors,” Pérez said. “And the data is usually flawed.”
On Twitter, Pasco County’s election supervisor, Brian Corley, said: “Info from FL SOS [Secretary of State] must be credible & reliable! Integrity of voter rolls is paramount!”
By: Steve Bousquet and Michael Van Sickler, The Miami Herald, August 4, 2013
“A Frightening Step Backwards”: What “Conservatives Gone Wild” Looks Like In North Carolina
Guest host Ezra Klein noted on the show last night that some key legislative fights were “down to the wire” in North Carolina, as the state legislative session neared its adjournment. After the show aired, there were some important developments, so let’s take a moment to recap — and explain why this matters in the larger context.
First up are the most sweeping voter-suppression efforts seen anywhere in the United States in generations, which, much to the disappointment of voting-rights advocates, garnered the support of literally every member of the Republican majority in both chambers, who voted to keep more North Carolinians from being able to participate in their own democracy.
As lawmakers rushed to adjourn for the summer, lawmakers gave final approval Thursday to drastic changes in how voting will be conducted in future elections in North Carolina.
After more than two-and-a-half hours of debate, the House voted 73-41 on party lines late Thursday to agree with dozens of changes made by Senate Republicans to a bill that originally simply required voters to show photo identification at the polls. It was approved by the Senate earlier Thursday, 33-14, also on party lines.
As we’ve discussed, the proposal is remarkable in its scope, including a needlessly discriminatory voter-ID provision, new limits on early voting, blocks on voter-registration drive, restrictions on extended voting times to ease long lines, an end to same-day registration, new efforts to discourage youth voting, and expanded opportunities for “vigilante poll-watchers to challenge eligible voters.”
How many North Carolina Republican lawmakers supported these suppression tactics for no apparent reason? Each and every one of them.
State Rep. Mickey Michaux (D-N.C.), who fought for voting rights in the 1960s, told the GOP majority, “I want you to understand what this bill means to people. We have fought for, died for and struggled for our right to vote. You can take these 57 pages of abomination and confine them to the streets of hell for all eternity.”
And then, of course, there are the new limits on reproductive rights.
Late last night, they were approved, too.
The state Senate has given final legislative approval to a bill that imposes new regulations and restrictions on abortion providers.
Senators voted 32-13 Thursday evening, sending the measure to Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican who has said he will sign the measure as it was passed.
For his part, the Republican governor, just six months into his first term, promised voters as a candidate last year that he would oppose any new restrictions on women’s reproductive rights in the state. Now, however, McCrory is prepared to sign this bill anyway — his public vow apparently came with fine print that voters might have missed
The result is a new regulatory measure, known as a TRAP law, that will likely close 15 of the 16 clinics where abortion services are provided.
Let’s also not lose sight of the context for this radicalism. For the first time since the Reconstruction era, Republicans control the state House, state Senate, and governor’s office, and as we recently talked about, GOP officials had an opportunity to govern modestly and responsibly, making incremental changes with an eye on the political mainstream.
What the state has instead seen is what Rachel described as “conservatives gone wild.” North Carolina Republicans gutted unemployment benefits despite a weak economy; they imposed the most sweeping voting restrictions anywhere in the United States; they cut funding for struggling public schools; they blocked Medicaid expansion despite the toll it will take on the state hospitals and poor families, they repealed the Racial Justice Act; and then they closed nearly every women’s health clinic in the state.
And really, that’s just a partial list.
It’s a microcosm of a national political crisis of sorts — North Carolina, a competitive state perceived as a burgeoning powerhouse with some of the nation’s finest universities, became frustrated with a struggling economy, so it took a chance on Republican rule. The consequences of this gamble are proving to be a frightening step backward for the state.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 26, 2013
“Like Thieves Covering Their Tracks”: North Carolina Republicans Push Extreme Voter Suppression Measures
This week, the North Carolina legislature will almost certainly pass a strict new voter ID law that could disenfranchise 318,000 registered voters who don’t have the narrow forms of accepted state-issued ID. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the bill has since been amended by Republicans to include a slew of appalling voter suppression measures. They include cutting a week of early voting, ending same-day registration during the early voting period and making it easier for vigilante poll-watchers to challenge eligible voters. The bill is being debated this afternoon in the Senate Rules Committee. Here are the details, via North Carolina State Senator Josh Stein (D-Wake County):
If anyone had any doubt about the bill’s intent to suppress voters, all he/she has to do is read it. The bill now does the following:
*shortens early voting by 1 week,
*eliminates same day registration and provisional voting if at wrong precinct,
*prevents counties from offering voting on last Saturday before the election beyond 1 pm,
*prevents counties from extending poll hours by one hour on election day in extraordinary circumstances (like lengthy lines),
*eliminates state supported voter registration drives and preregistration for 16/17 year olds,
*repeals voter owned judicial elections and straight party voting,
*increases number of people who can challenge voters inside the precinct, and
*purges voter rolls more often.Meanwhile, it floods the democratic process with more money. The bill makes it easier for outside groups to spend on electioneering and reduces disclosure of the sources. It also raises the contribution limits to $5k per person per election from $4k and indexes to amount to rise with inflation.
The bill even eliminates Citizens Awareness Month to encourage voter registration, notes Brent Laurenz, executive director of the nonpartisan North Carolina Center for Voter Education. Because God forbid we encourage people to vote! The proposed bill eliminates nearly all of the democratic advances that made North Carolina one of the most progressive Southern states when it comes to voting rights and one of the top fifteen states in voter turnout nationally, guaranteeing that there will be longer lines at the polls, less voter participation and much more voter confusion.
The legislation is likely to be deeply unpopular. For example, 56 percent of North Carolinians voted early during the 2012 election. Blacks used early voting at a higher rate than whites, comprising a majority of those who voted absentee or early. According to Public Policy Polling, 78 percent of North Carolinians support the current early voting system and 75 percent have used it in the past.
In addition, over 155,000 voters registered to vote and voted on the same day during the early voting period in 2012. “Voters expressed their satisfaction and gratitude that North Carolina had a process that afforded citizens with more opportunities to register and vote,” said a 2009 report from the state board of elections.
Republicans in North Carolina have taken abuse of the democratic process to a whole new extreme: they’ve won elections with the help of huge corporate money, they’ve gerrymandered the legislative maps to resegregate the state and drastically limit the representation of their political opponents, they’ve passed a slew of extreme right-wing bills in the past few months to benefit the top 1 percent and harm everyone else—and now they’re going all out to prevent those opposed to that political agenda from exercising their democratic rights. “There’s a certain evil symmetry to the proposal,” writes Rob Schofield, director of research for NC Policy Watch. “After having spent months passing scores of regressive and destructive proposals into law, state leaders are now, like thieves covering their tracks, doing everything in their power to make sure they’re not caught or punished for their actions.”
In the final depressing twist, North Carolina no longer has to clear these voting changes with the federal government, since the Supreme Court invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Nevertheless, it’s almost certain parts of the legislation—if enacted—will be challenged under the state constitution or other provisions of the VRA, and could very well spark a major backlash among North Carolina voters. In twelve weeks, more than 900 North Carolinians have been arrested for peaceful protest as part of the Moral Monday movement. Recently, Senate Rules Committee Chairman Tom Apodaca boasted that North Carolina would no longer have to go through the legal headache of complying with Section 5 of the VRA. Responded Rev. Barber of the North Carolina NAACP, “If you think you can take away our voting rights, you’ll have a headache.”
[UPDATE, 3:22 pm, July 23: The bill passed the Senate Rules Committee this afternoon, now goes to full Senate and then to House.]
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, July 23, 2013
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