Indiana Voter ID Law Upheld by USSC
Jeez, was my post yesterday freaky or what? TalkLeft has all of the gory details and since IANAL, better go to the source for the interpretation. No doubt the excellent Nina Totenberg will have more to say about this later today on NPR.
But seriously, guys, this law hits poor, transient, minority and especially women very hard. There is a little over a week left before the primary and the Clinton crew is going to have to scramble to make sure all of its voters can vote next Tuesday. And while I don’t want Obama to pull out a victory in Indiana, I am very concerned for any minority voters in Indianapolis and other urban centers there. Sometimes, we have to think beyond ourselves. There’s a principle involved here.
Expect challenges at the polls. On the other hand, it’s very likely to spread to other states before the fall. And if that happens, many more Democratic voters may be shut out of the voting booths by poor documentation. Let’s think about how we’re going to solve this problem.
More info:
It’s still possible to vote early in Indiana. If you’re going to encounter a problem, you can find out in advance. Here is a link to Indiana early voting from Hillary’s site.
The Indiana Secretary of State has a site where you can check out what kind of requirements you must meet to vote and what name formats are acceptable. You might want to take a copy of this with you to the poll in case the poll workers give you a hard time.
If you’ve been married/divorced lately, take your official documentation (probably needs that little $5 gold sticker) to the DMV and get your license updated to match your voter’s registration card. Here’s the Indiana DMV page detailing what you need to bring with you. Here is the pdf that tells you all of the acceptable documentation.
Filed under: General
I sure hope the word gets out ASAP.
This decision makes me so sad. I agree RD, it may actually hurt Obama more than Hillary, but it is not an advantage that I want to have. “Voter fraud” is a Republican talking point, there is not evidence that is it a real threat to fair elections.
New SUSA poll:
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=fbedb864-ec9d-47ab-87f2-c41203a87585&q=45558
Clinton: 52
Obama: 43
Women: 52%
Men: 48%
From what I can tell, the lowest primary with female to male ratio was California - 55-45%. Will Indiana be different? I think the gender number should at least be 55-45.
Yep, I agree. This is bigger than Clinton/Obama. We have to stand for this regardless of how it impacts our preference in this particular election. And hats off, Goldberry. You saw this comin’ down the pike.
When contemplating the challenges on this, I remembered the local Lyndon LaRouche people. They were all college kids and they would stand on the street corners and just harass people. The entire thrust of what they were doing was to create a paradigm where they came out of every encounter feeling intellectually superior to whomever they had just assaulted with their cynical pablum (weight, but I don’t know how else to describe it). They functioned in a nearly identical way to many, many, many of the Obama supporters we see online.
We can thank the Bush Maladministration for their dismantling of the DOJ, specifically the Voting Rights Div . All the good people were driven out by the political appointees. And the so-called Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is another one of those cruel, ironic names; similar to No Child Left Behind, Clear Skies Act, etc.
Today’s NYT had an article about Florida’s new voting laws. It says that independent election law experts say it makes voting in fla harder than almost any state in the union. And will keep tens of thousands of potential voters off the rolls, many of whom are poor, Black, or Hispanic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/us/politics/28voting.html
When Barry and his minions were up to all their nonsense and manipulations at the caucuses, it really got me worrying that this stuff will only fuel the repuglicans’ zeal for these horrid laws in the states.
Time for Barry to drop out
It irks me how decisions like this can be made with so little outside input. Court rulings like this often end up becoming more important than any amount of talking we can do here. This is a step towards disenfranchisement; I just wish that there was something that we could do about it (for those without the knowledge or knowhow to update their info).