Calling Out to the Florida Groups That Get Amendments On Ballot: I Got Ideas.

Okay, so I wanna get three amendments on the ballot for 2016 here in Florida.

• First, if we can get an amendment that requires any Florida election for local, state, and federal offices to remain open for balloting until at least 55 to 60 percent of registered voters can submit their ballots.  Voter turnout sucks otherwise.
• Second, if we can get an amendment that puts a None Of The Above option on each local and state elected office, and require that if the NOTA gets the most votes that a special run-off for that office be held with brand new candidates (and that NOTA remains on the ballot even for the do-overs just in case the parties decide to try to nominate someone worse).
• Third, if we can get an amendment that guarantees every legal resident of Florida has a right to vote unimpeded by these -ssholes running around screaming 'voter fraud' when there's no f-cking voter fraud.  Okay, so the wording on this one needs to get cleaned up a bit...

It's doable under the Initiative Petition system.  The state allows an outside group - an established non-profit that can hold petition drives - to gather a certain number of signatures across the state (has to be state-wide, not all from one area) within a set time period (deadlines are a b-tch) for submission and approval by the state's State dept. (with approval/oversight by the courts to ensure the wording is easy-to-read and fits within legal parameters).

Thing is, I'm looking for the groups who are most capable and active in getting these initiative petitions going.  I think I find them on the websites but when I try to contact or send email, there's no reply back.

I tried FIVOrg but haven't heard back... if they emailed me I hope it didn't get filtered to the Spam folder, lemme go check...  And for that "None of the Above" option there was a Floridians for Political Choice group from more than a decade ago, but that's CLOSED probably defunct...

I might not be looking in the right places.

So if any of these petition groups are surfing the Intertubes and they come across this blog entry, can I just say DUDES AND DUDETTES CALL ME I GOTZ IDEAS.

If not, I'm gonna need to see if any of the kids I knew from high school that became lawyers can help out set up a PAC...

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Update on the Gerrymander Court Decision, and How It Affects Voting for Florida

The judge in that gerrymandering case is ordering the state legislature to convene a Special Session to redraw the illegal districts into something legal by August 15th.  I thought he'd wait but apparently he didn't: worse, it took him a month to make up his mind to order this done.

Because what this does is throw the entire voting calender into chaos:

...The practical effect is that lawmakers must convene a special session in the next two weeks to meet the map-fixing deadline. Lewis would then decide when and if special elections would be held for the districts whose boundaries have been modified.

Candidates would then have to qualify again, election officials would have to modify precinct maps, and the costs of the elections could rise...

While I'm all for making the Florida Legislature's collective life miserable for making these illegal gerrymanders in the first place, I dunno if this is the way to go. What's going to happen is that the election cycle - the primary at the end of this month, and the general election in November - is going to get thrown off-track. By messing with the dates we can have these elections, we're risking the likelihood most residents won't know when to really vote.

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Voter turnout has been, continues to be, the great unspoken scandal of our age.  It's not voter ID fraud that's the problem, it's the 39 percent turnout of the extremists.  We've got this high population count in Florida - 18 million give or take 450,000 illegals - and 11 million registered voters making it 61 percent of the residents able to vote... and then just 5 million or so actually showing up to vote, with 6 million sitting at home for some reason or another.

Why that 6 million no-shows?  Partly due to apathy, partly due to disgust with the ballot being filled with unwanted choices, a good amount due to people just unable to get in line at their precinct to vote because of work or family or other conflicts of time.

A lot of our poor turnout is due to confusion over where and when to vote.  Our system of using precincts as polling places spreads out across the counties to where people are uncertain which is theirs to use.  One street can get assigned to a polling spot five miles away, yet those homes could be five blocks away from another polling spot for a neighboring precinct.  And our rules make it so that you HAVE to vote at that precinct, due to how districts at all levels are drawn out.  The most frustrating thing for voters is to show up at a precinct only to be told they got to keep moving up-road to ANOTHER place they might not be able to find...

The "when to vote" is the other sticking point: people still can't get used to the idea that elections can be held on a Tuesday, in the middle of the week.  There may have been reasons to doing that back in the 1800s, but in this day and age there's little reason to keep doing that.  It doesn't help that primaries are held inconsistently over election cycles: while the general elections tend to be the first Tuesday of November, primaries are sometimes held in March... or August... nowadays January for the Presidential primary... maybe May... sometimes Y.

Forcing a delay on this year's primaries and general election, at least for the congressional offices, is going to make it harder to get the voters fully informed on when they'll need to get their votes in.  It'll make it harder in terms of knowing or learning who's on the ballot anymore.  It also depends on how disruptive the redesigning of the gerrymandered districts will get: It will clearly affect all of the connected congressional districts - about 7 or 8 of them - and could conceivably cascade across the entire state anyway.

While normally that might be a good thing - fix ALL the districts to be fairly based on population density and not partisan protection - this might not be the time to do it.  It may be better to wait after this election is done, and then get the districts redrawn so that by 2016's election cycle they'll be in place and the county elections offices are prepped and ready.

Of course, we voters can make this all academic by keeping alert, checking our county elections office websites for updated information, and especially by GETTING THE VOTE OUT AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE so that we don't have to worry about wrong precincts or getting lost or not showing up on time.

That said, here's the current Early Voting directory by county.  I know where to go for Polk County now... and I'm still miffed at Pinellas County only having three (THREE?!) early voting polling spots, none of them in North Pinellas.  Dudes.  DUDES!  You got how many people in Tarpon Springs, Palm Harbor, Ozona, Crystal Beach, East Lake, Oldsmar, Dunedin that have to drive down to Clearwater?!  Just find a spot in Tarpon or Palm Harbor or Oldsmar to host and GET IT DONE.  Sheesh.  I swear, growing up in North Pinellas felt like being in Siberia cut off from the rest of the county... and we're one of the smallest geographic counties in the state (with the most population!).  Mutter grumble getting old grumble etc.

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Meanwhile in Florida, Another Gripe About Gerrymanders

(update: hello to the readers visiting via Crooks and Liars.)
I mentioned on my last post I had several things worth blogging, and this was one: a follow-up of sorts from the Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano about the gerrymander trial and a realization he made about how screwed up our electioneering is:

...Nearly one-third of the candidates for 140 Senate and House seats are running unopposed. You think that sounds bad? Pffft, that just scratches the surface.

Dozens of other races offer only the appearance of competition with write-in, third-party and no-party affiliated candidates on board. No disrespect intended to those folks, but it has been decades since anyone booked passage to Tallahassee via that route.

All of which brings us to the bottom line:

There are a grand total of 57 races out of 140 that include both a Republican and a Democrat. Fifty-stinking-seven!

That means nearly 60 percent of the legislative races in November are slam dunks. And only a handful of the other 40 percent will actually turn out to be competitive.

In other words, your American Idol vote will probably carry more weight...

This is what gerrymandering does in the pursuit of creating "safe" districts. Enough of these districts are so skewed to favor one party that the opposing major party doesn't even want to waste the resources to challenge the incumbent that's usually sitting in said district.

More from Romano:

The maps are drawn to have predetermined outcomes in elections. Republicans have given themselves enough safe districts to ensure they will remain in power, and they have given Democrats just enough safe districts to keep them from complaining.

So who loses?

You.

Instead of getting multiple choices of candidates who have a legitimate chance to win, you are stuck with take-it-or-leave-it elections.

The bigger problem is you have already made it clear you were tired of this sham. Florida voters overwhelmingly approved constitutional amendments that forbid the Legislature from just this kind of district stacking when maps were redrawn for 2012.

And yet the problem is only getting worse.

In 2010, the last election under the old maps, 51.7 percent of the races failed to field both a Republican and a Democrat. In 2012, the first year of new maps, that percentage rose to 54.3. Right now, barring anyone dropping out, it's 59.2 percent.

So that means the legislative leaders who were specifically instructed to redraw maps to make them more competitive may have actually made them more lopsided.

Which is easy to believe if you listened to the testimony of deleted emails, consultants being invited to the table and a phantom map falsely submitted under a student's name...

Just on those points alone, the judge overseeing this case ought to dump the GOP's redistricting maps (and for good measure hold each of the con artists responsible for it for contempt).

Romano notes how the general electorate has grown disgusted by the gerrymandering, about how state amendments forcing better redistricting were passed in popular referendum, but that's not the only emotion these gerrymandered maps create.

These maps also create disillusionment and disinterest.  When voters tend to get confronted with elections that have no consequences or value, when voters are pretty much told they have no choices for them to make, they tune out and refuse to show up.  Voter turnout for these mid-term elections - where nothing is at stake in 60 percent of the districts - is hideous, barely topping out over 39 percent and sometimes barely getting over a quarter of all registered voters (when real competitive races take place like the Presidential ones, voter turnout at least breaks over the 55-60 percent mark).

At best 39 percent turnout, people.  That's not a majority of registered voters.  That's not enough residents in this state electing people to office who have the power to dictate business regulations, quality of schools, quality of the local roads and bridges, our environment, any kind of local or national jobs bills that could stimulate the local/national economy... and so on.

We're not ruled by majority vote, we're ruled by the extremists who are the only ones who care enough to vote no matter what.  And those extremists - especially the ones on the Republican side - don't care if government works or not, they just want their special interests protected at all hazards...

This is what gerrymandering creates: lack of honest-to-God representation of the majority's best interests.  It creates disgust in the entire political process.

Gerrymandering has to go if we have any hope of making government at the local, state, and federal levels work again.

That judge better rule against these maps and make certain honest, competitive maps get installed right quick.

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Is This The Time For a Constitutional Convention?

For any of the readers who've been following my political blogging since Day One, you might remember I started off with the idea of blogging over a specific issue: the need to reform our federal government through any number of amendments that would fix things.  I even had the address as reformamendment.blogspot.com...

Of course, that all changed: I ended up ranting about current politics and election woes (GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT) more often, so I re-named the blog (see the banner) and re-created a new address (that old reformamendment one no longer takes you anywhere).

But the interest in reforming/fixing our federal system of governance is still here, which is why I perked up when I saw an Atlantic article asking "Is it time for a Constitutional Convention?":

In January, Gallup found that Americans from across the political spectrum picked the failure of “government” as the top problem facing America today. The vast majority link that failure to the influence of money in politics. Yet more than 90 percent of us don’t see how that influence could be reduced. Washington won’t fix itself, so who else could fix it?

It turns out the framers of our Constitution thought about this problem precisely. Two days before the Constitution was complete, they noticed a bug. In the version they were considering, only Congress could propose amendments to the Constitution. That led Virginia’s George Mason to ask, what if Congress itself was the problem?...

Which lead to the alternative solution: allowing a 2/3rds number of states to call for a convention to submit amendments for consideration.  Which is the point the article writer - Lawrence Lessig, one of the major constitutional scholars out there - is getting at.  He's openly musing over the possibility of enough states getting together for the express purpose of fixing Congress through the amendment process.

I've seen other calls over the years - Larry Sabato has been relatively consistent on the matter - for amendments, and I've joined in on the cry every so often, but I've been reluctant more often than not about pushing amendments as a solution because of one thing: a lot of the proposed amendments are f-cking disasters waiting to explode.

Lessig's article links to another article in Slate, highlighting the movement going on within conservative-led states to get this convention idea off the ground.  One of the primary amendments being pursued is that damned monster known as the Balanced Budget Amendment.  You know, the amendment Republicans conveniently ignore when they're in control of all three branches of government (between 2001 to 2007) but then trumpet and proclaim as our salvation whenever there's a Democrat in the Oval Office (especially now with Obama as President).

I've railed against that damnable balanced budget amendment before: the damn thing is rigged the wrong way.  Every conservative suggestion for a balanced budget involves making it impossible to ever raise tax rates or even create new taxes to, you know, actually pay for sh-t government needs to spend on to make this nation work.  They require a supermajority to raise a tax, yet require a simple majority to cut a tax: they make it too hard to do one thing and too easy to do the opposite, essentially ensuring that the easy thing ALWAYS gets done while the hard (yet sometimes NEEDED) choice never even gets considered.  This doesn't balance anything: all it does is force the government to take different actions, such as massive spending cuts to achieve that "balance" in a false and painful way.

And that's not the only one: that Article V Convention movement - named after the provision allowing it to happen - is also focused on passing amendments allowing Congress to override Supreme Court decisions (and preventing the President from overriding that override with a veto), essentially killing off a checks-and-balance system between the three branches of the federal government; an amendment abolishing the 17th Amendment that provided direct election of U.S. Senators, essentially taking away an individual voter's right and something fully ignoring the corrupt history of state-nominated Senators; an amendment allowing up to 34 states to override any federal laws or regulations deemed "exceeding an economic burden of $100 million," effectively destroying the Commerce Clause under Article I and pretty much giving those states license to kill off FDR's New Deal, LBJ's Civil Rights and Medicare laws, and everything ever born from those two eras.

These aren't exactly the amendments we need: we need genuine reform in federal government such as putting an end to corrupt campaign finance laws that have basically given the uber-rich direct access and control of our elected officials; we need to set tighter limits on a President's power to wage unlimited war and waste trillions of dollars without oversight or accountability; we need an amendment granting us all better voting rights and protection from intimidation and refusal, especially making voting a universal given for all citizens and making it easier to vote period.

Lessig's argument that a state-pushed Constitutional Convention is weak tea: he's arguing for a movement that is not working in the best interests of the American people.  He may have an honest intent - any potential for reform that Congress is unable to even consider is an honest one - but he's backing the wrong damn horse, and he's siding with the wrong team here.  The team he's arguing for is looking to UNDO every genuine reform our nation's had since 1900.

There's an even better solution than this, Mr. Lessig: it's called voter turnout geared towards removing every obstructionist vote in Congress in both the House and Senate.  It's called throwing the damn Far Right Wingnuts OUT of Congress, period.  Every failure of government the last 10-15 years can be laid at the Republicans' doorstep: the refusal to balance their own damn budgets from 2001 until 2007, creating the massive deficits we live with today; the refusal to work with Obama, deciding on obstructing every effort he makes to force history to label Obama "a failure" forever; the failure to maintain ANY oversight of the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to massive human rights abuses along with literally billions of dollars vanishing into thin air by 2005.  With no-one from that tenure ever being held accountable for the fraud, theft, lies, murder...

We need to vote out a Republican leadership in Congress that DOES NOT lead.  That will go a long way to breaking the damn logjam giving us a broken Congress in the first place, where we won't need a constitutional convention to fix any of that.

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A Victory, But the Fight For Voting Rights Is NOT Over

In other news of Florida schadenfreude directed at Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott, his latest effort to purge the voter rolls yet again has been cancelled:

Once again, Ken Dentzer, Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) handpicked Secretary of State, has unsuccessfully attempted to mount a massive purge of Florida’s voter rolls. And once again, he has been forced to abandon this effort due to his lack of an accurate list of who is and is not eligible to vote.

In a memo, Dentzer told the state’s local election supervisors that the purge would be postponed until 2015. He plans to utilize a new federal database which he believes will be up and running by then and will provide more accurate data on who is and is not a U.S. citizen...

It's terrifying how constant the Republicans have been the last 20 years or so chasing after "voter fraud" by doing their damnedest to go after legitimate voters (who mostly tend to be minority, young, and/or Democrat).  This is me commenting in 2013... this is me in 2012, openly figuring Scott and his ilk were breaking the law doing what they did... And this push against "voter fraud" was something I argued could be solved by making voting more universal (easier to obtain) as far back as 2008.

I didn't blog about it then (didn't start until 2006), but Jeb Bush's tenure as governor was replete with voter purges: the 2000 election suffered it, and by 2002 the effort was documented and debunked.  While then-Republican Charlie Crist reformed the electoral process during his governorship (making it easier to vote) and improved efforts to let ex-felons re-apply for voting rights, he still took a hard stance on voter IDs matching to photo IDs or Social Security numbers that still put a crimp on state residents trying to vote.

It disgusts me that something as sacred as a right to vote could be so eagerly denied by one political party... but I'm not all too surprised considering the Republicans are losing membership strength by sheer demographics, and they've got no other recourse left but to cheat and skew the rules to make it harder for Democratic-likely citizens to vote at all.  Like I said before:

As the demographics turn against them, as their open hostility to women's rights and minorities worsen, as the party is starting to lose more of their base to old age, the Republicans are pretty much stuck with "cheating" as their primary method...
For a Party that's obsessed with the idea that their platform of God, Guns, and Tax Cuts is "beloved by all true Americans", the Republicans do a shitty job of selling that platform to all actual Americans when the time comes and rely more on mudslinging and false advertising to win elections. And now, denying hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans their civic right to vote.

And while this fight may seem to be over for now here in Florida, I guarantee Scott and his ilk are trying to figure out something else that wouldn't involve outraged county elections officials blocking their efforts.  And Florida's not the only state suffering this: Wisconsin's GOP hardliner governor Walker just signed in laws making it harder to vote in that state as well... and those damned laws are spreading everywhere else where the Republicans fear the future.

Just a reminder, the last sentence from that ThinkProgress article I linked to at the beginning of this blog:

Scott is up for re-election this November. Should he lose, his replacement would likely be able to appoint a new Secretary of State before any 2015 purge.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT and VOTE RICK SCOTT OUT!
/rage

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Anniversary: I Have a Dream And What It Means Today

Today is the 50th anniversary of the March On Washington For Jobs and Freedom that took place back in 1963 (seven years before I was born).  One of the largest protests formed in American history - with roughly 200,000 to 300,000 in attendance - it was a combination of two major issues: civil rights and economic rights.  .

When Reverend Martin Luther King Jr spoke, it wasn't immediately recognized in the papers even though the television coverage gave it a lot of attention.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! 

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. 

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: 

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring! 

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true...

And so where are we 50 years later?

In terms of social equality across the board, we're not there yet.

In terms of economic equality, given the Great Recession we're in, we as a whole nation - white, black, Hispanic, Asian, native, man, woman - are royally screwed if we're not in the upper 1 Percent bracket.

In terms of electoral equality, we as a nation and blacks and Hispanics and the college-age and a lot of women are well and truly screwed.  The Supreme Court just defanged the Voting Rights Act and a good number of states - North Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina and even Pennsylvania now for God's sake - where the social conservatives (aka Far Right Republicans) hold all the power are going out of their way to make it harder for people to vote using arguments about voting fraud that have no evidence.

In terms of day-to-day, the crime of Walking While Black has led to Fourth Amendment violations and in some cases open hunting season.

In terms of America becoming the great nation it keeps telling itself it can be, we're still stuck where we were 50 years ago.  Electing a black man to the Presidency seems like another country now, doesn't it.

We can be better than this if we as a nation can give up the hate and fear that's driving a lot of the wingnut bullsh-t.  We're living a dream that's all wrong, more nightmare than hope.  We as a nation have got to wake up from that.  It doesn't have to be a dream: it has to be just freaking common sense and decency.

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Posted With Comment: Rick "F-ck The State" Scott Is Gonna Try To Purge Voters AGAIN

When the Supreme Court killed off the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, I kinda knew this was coming:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott will resume the state’s purge of suspected non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls, now that a Supreme Court decision striking down a key part of the Voting Rights Act has cleared the way...

From Reuters:

...Advocacy groups called the review of non-citizens a thinly veiled attempt to disqualify Hispanic and African-American voters, who tend to vote for Democratic candidates. A disproportionately large number of those identified in 2012 were either Hispanic or black, the groups said.

Last year, Florida officials said they had drawn up an initial list of 182,000 potential non-citizens. But that number was reduced to fewer than 200 after election officials acknowledged errors on the original list. (Personal NOTE: they still can't prove there was any large-scale wave of non-citizens actually voting.  I think they caught one Canadian trying to vote, that was it.  Not exactly an army of illegals from Mexico, is it).

In identifying potential non-citizens, Florida officials sent their information to county election supervisors who then mailed letters to voters requesting proof they were U.S. citizens. If no response was received, the voter was dropped from the rolls.The effort, which angered some county election supervisors (NOTE: I'm pretty sure some of them are still pissed), was the subject of lawsuits from five voter protection groups and at least two individual plaintiffs.

Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he expected many county election supervisors to press the state to offer precise documentation that a voter may not be a U.S. citizen in any forthcoming review.

"If it will be a fairer process this time, it will be because the County Supervisors of Elections got burned last time and are more skeptical now," he said.

I've written about the need to make voting easier in our state (hell, our nation), above all by making sure EVERYONE gets the right to vote.  These voter purges do the exact opposite: they make it harder for people, especially the poor who can't afford photo IDs and tend to move often, making prolonged residency to establish a voting precinct an issue.  But then again, that's pretty much the only way Republicans have left themselves to be certain they can win any more elections.  As the demographics turn against them, as their open hostility to women's rights and minorities worsen, as the party is starting to lose more of their base to old age, the Republicans are pretty much stuck with "cheating" as their primary method.

For a Party that's obsessed with the idea that their platform of God, Guns, and Tax Cuts is "beloved by all true Americans", the Republicans do a shitty job of selling that platform to all actual Americans when the time comes and rely more on mudslinging and false advertising to win elections.  And now, denying hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans their civic right to vote.

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The March of History Isn't Supposed to Go Backwards

I was born in 1970.  Five years before, the nation passed a Voters Rights Act that ended a century of Jim Crow discrimination denying a sizable portion of our population from the God-given self-evident right to vote.

I didn't read up on history that much until high school, about 1984-85, around the 20-year anniversary.  They had it in the high school textbooks, which basically makes it ancient history to high schoolers.  For all I've known, the right to vote was meant to be as universal as possible regardless of race or gender (age being the only limiter with the 26th Amendment).

From all that I've studied on history - the slow, sometimes messy, march of ideas and ideologies towards an enlightened liberty and freedom of expression - I've rarely seen any situation where rights, once given, were later taken away.  The only times from what I saw was the Jim Crow era that took away the Black Man's right to vote for 100 years... and even then the VRA did away with that.  The rights came back, and it's been like that my whole life.

And now, I'm dreading that the rights are getting taken away again.  Something that shouldn't be happening.

The conservatives on the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that a key provision of the VRA - Section 4, which provided metrics on what parts of the nation (Deep South states and key counties) had to get federal pre-clearance on any drastic changes to voting laws - was unconstitutional.  It basically neuters Section 5 (the authority of the Justice Department to act) until Congress ever decides to draw up a replacement metrics system that would pass Court's approval.  And considering the wingnut-controlled House and filibuster-stalled Senate, that will not happen.

My online friends among the Horde are mostly up in arms.  I'm upset as well.  Having witnessed just recently the Republican-controlled Florida government doing their damnedest in 2012 to deny people the right to vote - taking away early voting days, shutting down precincts, trying to pass a strict voter-photo ID bill, forcing county supervisors to purge voter rolls - I am well aware of how close we are to having one of our key rights - the right to vote, as sacred a right as free speech and right to assemble - taken away.  And not just the minorities like Blacks and Hispanics getting denied the right to vote through some complicated redistricting gerrymandering designed to hit ethnics, but poor people of every ethnicity (and a lot of women to boot) denied because they can't afford a photo ID, or college students denied because they tend to relocate often without a primary residence from which to vote.

For all the bad times I've seen our nation go through in my lifetime, I have never seen a moment where the march of history stepped backwards.  We're back to 1950 now, fighting the same damn fight to get people their self-evident right of equality before the law, their self-evident right to speak up and choose their representation, their self-evident right to be Americans.  And if it keeps going like this we'll be back to 1850 and what that all entails.

I hope to God this has the adverse reaction the goddamn Far Right Wingnuts expect: I hope to God this brings out the moderate voters in droves this midterms - the ones who usually don't show up when there's no President to choose - to vote the goddamn Republicans out of office and vote in people who will actually make government work and vote a new VRA into place.

That still hasn't been taken away: getting out the vote.  Not yet.  So there's work to be done.  Getting people registered right now no matter what.  GET IT DONE, PEOPLE.  Get EVERYONE registered right fucking now.  And get the goddamn vote out against the goddamn wingnuts.  Pardon my Swedish.

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