Meanwhile Trump's people do the dirty work...

[GMDino]

Quote:[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]Trump’s voter fraud commission is ‘laying the groundwork for voter suppression’
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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.44)]Vice chair Kris Kobach plans to use Kansas’ disastrous voter purge as a national model.[/color]
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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6)]Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, right, carries paperwork as he is greeted before a meeting with then President-elect Donald Trump at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse in Bedminster, N.J. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File[/color][/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]By Kira Lerner and Joshua Eaton
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[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach confirmed in a letter Thursday that the single objective of President Donald Trump’s commission on voting is to find evidence to corroborate the president’s lie that voter fraud impacted the 2016 election.[/color]
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Kobach, who serves as co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, asked all 50 secretaries of state to provide him with “publicly-available voter roll data” including voters’ full names, addresses, dates of birth, political party, last four digits of social security numbers, voter history, felony convictions, and other identifying information.[/color]
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The letter does not say how Kobach or Vice President Mike Pence, the commission chair, plan to use the information or how they will keep it secure.[/color]

[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]In Kansas, the secretary of state’s office has used an arsenal of intrusive methods to find alleged non-citizen voters, according to an internal document obtained exclusively by ThinkProgress in April. In one case, Kobach’s office compared voter rolls to a list of temporary drivers licenses issued to non-citizens. It also commissioned two outside firms to poll non-citizens about their voting habits using drivers’ license information and other data, and it asked the Department of Homeland Security to compare a list of suspected non-citizen voters against its list of naturalized citizens.[/color]
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The extensive voter data Kobach is now requesting from secretaries of state across the country raises the possibility that the commission will use those same methods to probe these voter rolls for suspected non-citizens or for people registered in more than one state, with huge potential to disenfranchise many legitimate voters.[/color]
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Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill (D) raised those concerns on Thursday, saying her state would share the requested information but would withhold protected data. In return, she asked Kobach to share any memos or additional information from commission meetings because the group has not been open about its mission.[/color]
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“This lack of openness is all the more concerning, considering… Kobach has a lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas,” she said in a statement. “The courts have repudiated his methods on multiple occasions but often after the damage has been done to voters. Given Secretary Kobach’s history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this Commission.”[/color]
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In his May executive order, Trump said the commission would be bipartisan and would look into both voter fraud and suppression. But major voting groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, urged Democrats not to participate in a body they claim will turn into a witch hunt for fraud with the goal of passing more suppressive voting laws.[/color]
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Instead of enlisting prominent Democratic election experts, Kobach and the commission found low-profile people, like a West Virginia county clerk and a former Arkansas state legislator who told ThinkProgress he wasn’t sure himself why he was chosen.[/color]
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Other Democratic commission members, including Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap and New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, said they hoped the group would also examine Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The letter makes no mention of those plans.[/color]
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The letter also makes no mention of the large and growing number of voter suppression laws that have swept across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center have warned that the commission will be a distraction from these laws, which they say are the biggest voting-related problem of our time.[/color]
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What happens to democracy after you gut the Voting Rights Act, in one map[/color]
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This year marks the first presidential election in 50 years without a functioning Voting Rights Act — and it’s not…[/color]thinkprogress.org[/url][/color]
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Kobach has been called a chief architect of those laws. He is the only secretary of state in the country with the power to prosecute people for committing voter fraud. He also enacted a system in Kansas in 2015 that [url=http://www.npr.org/2015/10/12/448059227/in-kansas-a-bid-to-scrub-some-incomplete-registrations-from-voter-rolls]suspended tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls.[/color]
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“It’s no big deal,” Kobach once said, according to The New York Times Magazine. “Nobody’s being disenfranchised.”[/color]
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By requiring states to provide the commission with examples of voter fraud, Kobach will be able to push the false narrative that fraud is prevalent. Once he sends that report to the president, he will push for a federal voter registration system similar to the one that disenfranchised voters in Kansas.[/color]
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It’s a plan he’s been working on for years, but has not had the opportunity to act on until now.[/color]
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“My hope is that Kansas will be to stopping election fraud what Arizona is to stopping illegal immigration,” he told The Kansas City Star in 2011, when Arizona has one of country’s strictest anti-immigration laws still in effect.[/color]
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UPDATE: On Wednesday, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sent election officials in some states a request for policies and procedures about how they maintain their voting rolls—part of its enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act:[/color]


[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]There’s no indication the DOJ request is related to the separate request from the Election Integrity Commission, but the National Voter Registration Act is at the heart of two federal lawsuits challenging a Kansas law, drafted and championed by Kobach, that requires residents to show proof of citizenship before they can complete their voter registration.[/color]
[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]In one of those cases, Kobach has successfully fought to keep drafts of proposed changes to the National Voter Registration Act confidential.[/color]

https://thinkprogress.org/voter-fraud-letter-97dcfc51eb48

[*wildcats forever*]

Once upon a time in a land call The United States, citizens were allowed to cast their votes in an election in secret so that no one could punish or threaten them because of the way they voted. Then one day..........

[Belsnickel]

Where are the states' rights folks on this one?

[GMDino]

(06-30-2017, 04:02 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Where are the states' rights folks on this one?

Cleaning their guns in case the government comes for them? 

[Belsnickel]

(06-30-2017, 04:12 PM)GMDino Wrote: Cleaning their guns in case the government comes for them? 

I heard a libertarian make a joke about an ideological conservative/Republican the other day: the greatest confusion for a Republican will be when the police knocks on their door and says "I am here for your guns."

[GMDino]

(06-30-2017, 04:38 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I heard a libertarian make a joke about an ideological conservative/Republican the other day: the greatest confusion for a Republican will be when the police knocks on their door and says "I am here for your guns."

[SunsetBengal]

That entire article reads like a total propaganda scare piece. Can you find one on the topic, from an unbiased source?

This whole issue could easily be solved by providing free I.D.s to all who do not have them, non-citizens IDs should have an identifying mark that clearly distinguishes them from eligible voters, like a red stripe across the bottom, or something.

[Bengalzona]

(06-30-2017, 05:59 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: That entire article reads like a total propaganda scare piece.  Can you find one on the topic, from an unbiased source?  

This whole issue could easily be solved by providing free I.D.s to all who do not have them, non-citizens IDs should have an identifying mark that clearly distinguishes them from eligible voters, like a red stripe across the bottom, or something.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/29/534901343/white-house-panel-asks-states-for-their-voter-rolls?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170629

[SunsetBengal]

(06-30-2017, 06:18 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/29/534901343/white-house-panel-asks-states-for-their-voter-rolls?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170629

Thanks, that's actually a pretty good article.  I have no problem with reviewing voter rolls, so long as they do it right.  I'd hate to see anyone who deserves to vote accidentally lose that right, just as much as it pains me to think of the possibility of non-citizens, dead people, and people voting multiple times could be happening.

Either way, it's an ugly undertaking, but it needs to be resolved.

[Vlad]

(06-30-2017, 04:02 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Where are the states' rights folks on this one?

Don't stay up waiting. State rights folks are smart enough to know what is a state right and what is not.

You vote for the president of the United States, you play by the Federal Governments rules.

[Vlad]

And Trump keeps pressing on!

Voter suppression is a crock. Voter fraud is real. To the extent fraud is occurring I don't know.
Thats what Trumps gonna find out.

Well well, another democrat going to jail for voter fraud.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2017/06/27/untitled-n2347272

[Belsnickel]

(06-30-2017, 06:43 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Thanks, that's actually a pretty good article.  I have no problem with reviewing voter rolls, so long as they do it right.  I'd hate to see anyone who deserves to vote accidentally lose that right, just as much as it pains me to think of the possibility of non-citizens, dead people, and people voting multiple times could be happening.

Either way, it's an ugly undertaking, but it needs to be resolved.

But elections are handled by the states, per the Constitution.

(06-30-2017, 08:26 PM)Vlad Wrote: Don't stay up waiting. State rights folks are smart enough to know what is a state right and what is not.

You vote for the president of the United States, you play by the Federal Governments rules.

Except, you know, you don't. Elections are administered by the states. How states conduct their elections is up to the states themselves with the exception of a handful of federal statutes.

[Vlad]

(06-30-2017, 09:36 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: But elections are handled by the states, per the Constitution.


Except, you know, you don't. Elections are administered by the states. How states conduct their elections is up to the states themselves with the exception of a handful of federal statutes.

 
You're right, but you would have to agree that it surely must be within the scope of the Federal Governments powers to assure that there are fair elections when it pertains to the election of a president.
Probably in those statutes you speak of.

If someone wants to assert that its none of the federal governments business on how states elect governors or other state officials, I'm not gonna argue.

[Belsnickel]

(06-30-2017, 10:35 PM)Vlad Wrote:  
You're right, but you would have to agree that it surely must be within the scope of the Federal Governments powers to assure that there are fair elections when it pertains to the election of a president.
Probably in those statutes you speak of.

If someone wants to assert that its none of the federal governments business on how states elect governors or other state officials, I'm not gonna argue.

Actually, I disagree entirely. The Constitution is clear that it is up to the state to decide how to choose their electors, and so it is entirely up to the states to oversee that process. If a state legislature gives that authority to the governor then that is completely acceptable according to the US Constitution, no vote necessary. The governor could choose all of the electors themself.

[Dill]

(06-30-2017, 10:35 PM)Vlad Wrote:  
You're right, but you would have to agree that it surely must be within the scope of the Federal Governments powers to assure that there are fair elections when it pertains to the election of a president.
Probably in those statutes you speak of.

If someone wants to assert that its none of the federal governments business on how states elect governors or other state officials, I'm not gonna argue.

Vlad stop guessing. Read the Constitution--Article II, section 1.

And many Republican states righters are pushing back against Trump's request for voter information, precisely for the same reason they object to widespread federal surveillance under Homeland Security.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/states-push-back-releasing-voter-data-fraud-commission/story?id=48380617

[Dill]

(06-30-2017, 08:57 PM)Vlad Wrote: And Trump keeps pressing on!

Voter suppression is a crock. Voter fraud is real. To the extent fraud is occurring I don't know.
Thats what Trumps gonna find out.

Well well, another democrat going to jail for voter fraud.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2017/06/27/untitled-n2347272

Except there is plenty of evidence for voter suppression, and little to none for voter fraud.

1.8 million registered voters in Kansas. 9 cases of voter impersonation.  Republican Secretary of State Kovach concludes it is "widespread."

http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article148434369.html

[JustWinBaby]

[Belsnickel]

(07-01-2017, 12:09 AM)Dill Wrote: Vlad stop guessing. Read the Constitution--Article II, section 1.

And many Republican states righters are pushing back against Trump's request for voter information, precisely for the same reason they object to widespread federal surveillance under Homeland Security.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/states-push-back-releasing-voter-data-fraud-commission/story?id=48380617

Well, constitutional law and statutory law are different. You are correct about the part ofthe Constitution, though. All (IIRC) of the federal statutory law on elections is regarding behavior of the campaigns themselves and what day the election is held on. Everything else is up to the states.

[Vlad]

(06-30-2017, 10:46 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Actually, I disagree entirely. The Constitution is clear that it is up to the state to decide how to choose their electors, and so it is entirely up to the states to oversee that process. If a state legislature gives that authority to the governor then that is completely acceptable according to the US Constitution, no vote necessary. The governor could choose all of the electors themself.

You're disagreeing with nothing that I disagreed with.lol
So your bottom line after all that...Assuming that there were widespread cases of voter fraud with significant numbers, are you saying any Federal government involvement would be unconstitutional?

States oversee their own law enforcement as well, but does not the FBI become involved when deemed necessary?
That is all I'm saying.
 

[Vlad]

(07-01-2017, 12:09 AM)Dill Wrote: Vlad stop guessing.

That's right Dill, I was making an assumption.

Me personally, I am more appreciative of a poster who makes clear he is assuming than one who thinks he knows it all.