throw a newbie a bone? why is the voting issue not civil rights?

[gmoses]

i'm looking at the San Francisco coalition that will appeal to Sen. Boxer, and at the pattern of civil rights abuses involved in the voting scams, and it just seems to me quite obvious that we have a civil rights issue here, so please some of you DU vets, please clue me in. What's up with the evasion of "civil rights"?

[karlrschneider]

1. It seems clear to me that it's a 14th amendment issue, but after what the

USSC did in 2000, who can say how that would play out? I have no clue.
Welcome to DU anyway. :toast:

[Undercover Owl]

2. here's a bone

What's going on in CA elections?
Sorry, I haven't lived in SF for over 5 years.

[babylonsister]

3. What's up with the MSM evading

any of this (hopefully) unfolding drama? All kinds of rights have been violated.

[proud patriot]

4. Very little has changed since the voting rights act

I watched the video of the Ohio lines and problems
and cried and cried .

It is a civil rights issue .

[msgadget]

5. It IS a civil rights issue, imo

but even the dems are loathe to bring up civil rights these days, maybe because of this administration's colorful cabinet. Corporations are doing the same thing, putting minorities in high positions, contributing to manageable causes and then doing the same ol', same ol'.

http://www.votecobb.org/recount/history/">History of Voting Rights in America

The Movements of the 1960s and 70s
The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, enacted thanks to the pressures of Dr. Martin Luther King and a powerful civil rights movement, banned literacy tests and provided federal enforcement of voting registration and other rights in several Southern states and Alaska.

Five years later, the Voting Rights Act of 1970 provided language assistance to minority voters who did not speak English fluently. Asian Pacific Americans and Latinos were major beneficiaries of this legislation.

Current Issues
Thanks to a movement led by differently-abled Americans and their supporters, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was passed. It provided for ballot and poll access for those with disabilities. Enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and other laws continued.

After the 2000 election, the nation was confronted with over a million ballots never being counted, and numerous allegations of fraud in Florida and elsewhere. The courts forced the recount in Florida to stop, and it was only months later (right after the September 11 attacks, so few were listening)that recounters hired by major news organizations found that if all the valid, machine-rejected votes had been counted, the man occupying the White House would have lost the election...

[ashmanonar]

14. its funny...

we really SHOULDN'T have ever needed literacy tests...why isn't everybody in our country educated enough to be able to comprehend political issues? (rhetorical...)

its sad, really...

(by the way, i really do know why they had literacy tests...its just another strike against our country that the bigots in control back then could control voting that much...)

[autorank]

6. Welcome to DU!!! RIGHT, it is first & foremost ***A VOTING RIGHTS ISSUE***

[Solon]

7. The biggest problem is that we have no voting rights in the Constitution.

All the Constitution says is that you may not discriminate against people based on Age, Sex, Religion, Race, or Country of Origin. That's it, if tomorrow, the Republicans decide that all people making less than $30,000 dollars a year cannot vote in federal elections, regardless of those other qualifiers above, then it is perfectly Constitutional. It is done on a state by state basis only. We have no Constitutional right to vote, we should push for it.

[babylonsister]

10. If that is true, than who the

hell are we to demand democratic elections elsewhere, in any form?
We also need to get our country together in terms of having every state do the same thing during an election. Without those lyin' machines and lack of a paper trail.

Edit to clarify

[Solon]

13. Indeed, who are we to demand such things...

Remember, back after the the Constitution was Ratified, only those who owned land, were White, and male, could vote. We have only added a total of 3 amendments after that that extended voting rights, and there are still gaping holes that could theoratically be exploited. Why do you think we have that many amendments extending voting rights at all?

[gmoses]

8. thanks DU vets, just as I suspected, there is no good reason

and yet the evasion continues? what's up with that?

[whalerider55]

9. a civil rights issue?

how could it be? why isn't the Ohio Sec'y of state, well... black?

oh, sorry. That's Blackwell.

you don't need no bone, newbie. You got the tiger by the tail. Welcome, y'all!

whalerider55

[Hekate]

11. It is a civil rights issue & the Cong. Black Caucus knows it

First and foremost -- civil rights. I'm old enough to remember the Civil Rights movement in the South, brought into my family's living room on black & white TV and via Time and Life magazines, even though we lived several thousand miles away. Those in the Congressional Black Caucus lived it in person.

We -- all of us -- are incredibly lucky to have them representing us -- all of us -- now.

Let me remind you: People have DIED for the right to vote.

Every step of the way from 1770 onward, people in this nation literally have died for the right to vote and to have their votes count. Women died during the women's suffrage movement, make no mistake about it -- they were tortured, jailed, and some of them died. African-Americans were tortured, jailed, and some died for this right as well -- and some of their white allies did also, lest we forget.

This is a civil rights issue. Never forget it.

Hekate

[IndyOp]

12. Excellent, Excellent must read article from the Black Commentator --

No Holiday for Vote Theives
<http://www.blackcommentator.com/119/119_cover_vote_thieves.html>

"What is too often ignored in the conversations surrounding the 2000 and 2004 elections, is the fact that laws already in existence have been violated.

In every other arena of criminal justice it is standard procedure to entangle suspected perpetrators in their own lies, and in the lies of their co-conspirators. Yet somehow, this practice does not obtain when Black voting rights are criminally violated. It is as if no crime has been committed, at all, just mere voting “irregularities.” “Get over it,” say the corporate media. Concentrate your energies on “reforms” from the next Congress, or the one after that, say others, including some people who claim to be “progressive.” Such responses are maddening, outrageously racist at their very core, the product of a profoundly Jim Crow worldview that denies African Americans their full measure of dignity as human beings, that treats our victimization as a matter of course whose resolution – but never redress – can always be put off to another, more convenient day. To paraphrase the infamous U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney’s 1857 Dred Scott decision: “African American voters have no rights that the larger society is bound to protect.”

It is these rights that are at issue, Black human and citizenship rights. The outcome of the presidential election is secondary."

Also for a pretty thorough review of voter suppression tactics in Ohio (and other issues relating to fraud), check out "The Case for Election Fraud in Ohio" at < http://www.bpac.info >

:kick:

[babylonsister]

15. Kick for ... just read.

[babylonsister]

16. So many reasons... will anyone

recognize this?

[oasis]

20. kick again.

[proudbluestater]

17. When I write my senator, I have to choose the topic of my letter

and I always choose civil rights. I believe the disenfranchisement of millions of black voters is indeed a civil rights issue.

[gmoses]

18. new story from Van Zandt County Texas

One thing that "civil rights" allows us to do is connect many, many activities across space and time, for example this note from the Democratic Chair of Van Zandt County, Texas (East of Dallas):

The GOP election judges there were essentially doing everything they could to prevent African Americans from voting. Two judges and I nearly got in a fight, I called one a racist, and it was very ugly.

Among other things, they accused an African-American woman of fabricating a driver's license. Her maiden name was on the license, but her married name in the poll book. Address, middle name, all else, were the same. Refusing to call the County Clerk as prescribed by law, they tried to force her to vote a provisional ballot. I argued with them for over 20 minutes, during which time the entire line was held up. The woman was finally allowed to vote an actual ballot, but after tremendous problems.

http://www.texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=145

[gmoses]

19. doesn't civil rights speaks to who we are as dems?

both in terms of the issues we can stand for and the voters who are being disenfranchised--we are a civil rights coalition, of that we can be proud, and for that we can expect elected dems to stand up. Wouldn't this way of framing the issue be more compelling?