Perhaps the most breathtakingly obscene aspect of American society is our absolute and utter refusal to deal with the murderous gun violence that lays its awful blanket of blood and sorrow across the families of thousands upon thousands of victims each and every year.
The Co-Chairs of the Massachusetts Special Joint Committee on Redistricting today issued a report reviewing their accomplishments and their recommendations on issues they discovered while redrawing the Massachusetts district lines.
In early October, billboards began appearing saying "Voter Fraud is a Felony!" punishable by up to 3 1/2 years in prison and fines of $10,000. The billboards only appeared in low-income, minority areas.
Requiring people to show government issued photo identification in order to vote is unnecessary, discriminatory and has the potential to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people.
Even though the ads are gone and the election season is over (for now), the distorting impact of all that ad money permeates our entire political process.
The right to vote is just that – a fundamental right which is the cornerstone of American democracy. In the 2012 election, that sacred value was challenged in a way we have not seen in a couple of generations.
Despite President Obama’s important, even landmark, accomplishments, by the time November 6 arrived, many Americans were disappointed with his first term. They expected him to be a “transformational” president who would somehow, single-handedly, change Washington’s political culture.
Of course, no one should attempt to vote if he or she is not legally registered, but documented cases of actual voter fraud are rare. True the Vote is aiming to train as many as one million poll “observers,” and the scope of that effort far exceeds any real problem of illegal voting; instead, it seems intended to intimidate voters. As True the Vote’s top organizer reportedly told recruits during a training session in South Florida, their job is to make voters feel as if they are “driving and seeing the police following you.” This isn’t a civics lesson.
WASHINGTON -- More than half of the nation's 400 richest citizens have contributed money to help elect President Barack Obama or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to the White House. These members of the Forbes 400, who boast a combined net worth of $1.7 trillion -- more than 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product -- have donated more to affect the outcome of the presidential race than ever before.
5. Will old-school voter intimidation and suppression come into play?
This refers to all the steps that have been taken by the GOP in recent years to complicate the voting process, discourage participation and scare off new voters.
Several developments in the past three years suggest that the case for upholding section 5 against constitutional challenge has been strengthened compared to the situation in 2009.
Lorraine C. Minnite, a Rutgers University political scientist and a senior fellow at Demos, a liberal think tank, looked for a turnout effect in a 2009 paper she co-authored with Columbia University political scientist Robert S. Erikson. They didn't turn up definitive evidence, concluding, "our data and tools are not up to the task of making a compelling statistical argument for an effect."