DOJ FIGHTS TO PROTECT TEXAS VOTERS, by Louise Annarino, July 9, 2012
“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” … Thomas Paine
For over 20 years I worked the polls, taking a vacation day off work to help others vote. I considered it a civic duty. When I moved to Upper Arlington from Athens I started at the bottom again, sent from neighborhood to neighborhood to fill-in as needed. Within a few years I was posted to my own precinct, a republican precinct. The presiding judge was therefore Republican. I had been a presiding judge when posted in Democratic precincts because as an attorney, and after so many years working polls, I understood the ins and outs of election law. I recognized many of the voters. In primaries, they self-identified as Democratic or Republican voters in order to vote in their party primary. The republican judge consistently refused to issue provisional ballots, make name changes or address changes, or redirect voters to proper voting location to Democratic voters. When I intervened to do so I was told only she had authority to do so. I reminded her of the law, ignored her directive, and proceeded to assure every voter was helped to cast a valid vote within state and county guidelines.
She repeated this behavior at the following election. I reported our disagreements in our problem reporting booklet, for each voter she attempted to disenfranchise. I wanted a record indicating the validity of the voter’s right to cast a vote, and the need for my intervention to assure that vote was counted. Later, I discussed this presiding judge’s behavior with the Board of Elections trainer. She promised to look into the matter. Nothing changed. Following the next election, I not only documented the problem within the reporting problems booklet, I also wrote a letter documenting each charge against the presiding judge, and sent it to several parties, including the Board of Election and the Democratic Ward Leader who assigned me to that polling site. I called numerous times to review the matter with him. Each time he promised the matter would be looked into. The next election, there she was again, smiling at me as she told a Democratic voter they could not vote since they had moved, instead of doing an address change and redirecting and/or allowing a provisional ballot as the situation required. She made it clear she was not going anywhere, nor was she going to change. Voter fraud by appointed or elected officials is the real threat to our democracy. This is why each polling site has persons from each party working together, to keep one another in check, and to protect voters. This is why tallies are taken throughout the day and posted in the front windows where anyone who wants to check can see what is happening. This is why exit polls are so important, to measure against the posted vote tallies.
It was in Florida 2000 that we saw so intimately how party operatives can corrupt the popular vote, when republicans delayed and challenged every vote, forcing recounts that would have gone on long after the US Supreme Court declared George Bush the winner of the Florida presidential campaign, pushing him into the White House. “The reality, therefore, is that Mr. Bush’s victory in the most fouled-up, disputed and wrenching presidential election in American history was so breathtakingly narrow that there is no way of knowing with absolute precision who got the most votes. After all, there is no perfect way to decide which disputed ballots should be counted and rejected.”(see more at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/recount/12ASSE.html and http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/) Clearly,close elections are more easily subject to fraudulent manipulation, and less easily challenged.
Everyone can agree that voter ID is not inherently wrong. But It is wrong when it disenfranchises voters; and we have a system in place to assure only qualified voters can cast votes and that only those votes will be counted. It works so well there is no evidence of meaningful voter fraud by voters. Dead persons on the rolls? Sure. Dead persons voting? No. Voter ID adds nothing to help eligible voters; it does disenfranchise eligible voters. In Texas, SB 14 requires voters to show one of short list of government-issued documents, excluding Social Security, Medicaid, or student ID cards. Gun licenses, however, are acceptable.
Texas‘ own records estimate “a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification.” The DOJ found more than 600,000 Texans will be disenfranchised, most minority voters. Social security card? older voters disenfranchised. Student ID? students disenfranchised? Medicaid card? Poor and disabled disenfranchised.
Today, Texas will defend the law against Attorney Holder’s Justice Department, claiming it is needed to prevent voter fraud. “But the San Antonio Express-News reported that fewer than five ‘illegal voting’ complaints involving voter impersonations were filed with the Texas Attorney General’s Office from the 2008 and 2010 general elections in which more than 13 million voters participated.” (see more at http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/07/06/512245/texas-voter-id-law-which-accepts-gun-licenses-but-not-student-ids-challenged-in-court/). Texas is one of more than 2 dozen states the DOJ is investigating in order to protect the right of eligible voters to cast their ballots.
What can you do? Help neighbors, friends, relatives, and community organizations identify voters in need of ID, help them obtain the ID, update yours and their voter registration with name or address changes, then get them to the polls to vote. If the margin between candidates is small, voter fraud by officials and parties is easily manipulated. Only if the margins are fairly large can such subterfuge succeed.
Help at the polls,as a poll worker, a poll watcher. Start now and attend local Board of election meetings;let officials know we are watching them and recording their comments and activities. MAke it difficult for them to disenfranchise ANY voter.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University College of Law (see more at http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/truthaboutvoterfraud/) after exhaustive study has determined that voter fraud simply does not exist. Yet, an orchestrated movement to end that which does not exists has taken off thanks to a well-financed disinformation and legislative action campaign. The 2012 reelection of the scary black man is justification enough,it seems. The only believable explanation some people have for how he was elected in the first place is rampant voter fraud. These same people don’t believe racism exists despite hundreds of years of factual data; yet believe voter fraud exists despite no evidence. This movement is not about election reform. It is solely for election manipulation by denying qualified voters opposing one party’s candidates their right to vote. In evidence: Pennsylvania State Rep.Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) listed recent GOP accomplishments during his speech to Republican Central Committee members, including this one: “Voter ID, which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania. Done.” See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87NN5sdqNt8 “If you have to stop people from voting to win elections, your ideas suck,” responded Pennsylvania Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery.
We must protect every voter: Democratic, Republican, Independent, or Libertarian. We must protect all voters or no voter is protected. We do not fear the vote of our opposition. We know President Obama’s ideas are good ones. We believe he can win this election.
annarino writes 
BORN IN THE USA, Part 1
I was born 2 years after Dad returned home, after serving in the US Navy. He enlisted after high school graduation. A first generation Italian-American he was un-hireable. He hitch-hiked to the Great Lakes Naval Station with a nickel in his pocket and enlisted. Dad was a brilliant man, one of the first electronics experts. While his ship the USS South Dakota ( the most decorated battleship of WWII) was in dry-dock for repairs after being towed back to New Jersey from the South Pacific, dead in the water after a fierce battle with the Japanese, he taught electronics at Yale. Once the ship was seaworthy, he returned to battle.
At the Harry Truman Museum a replica of his sister ship, the USS Missouri, is on display as it is the ship where the Japanese surrendered. Dad showed me his firing position inside the cramped and overheated turret. As he continued his explanations his stories drew a crowd, asking more questions. I watched my Dad enthrall over one hundred visitors for more than two hours, offering them a true account of why war is always hell.
Dad first escorted munitions to Great Britain as The US lend-lease effort. Many in the United States did not see the need to oppose Hitler and aid Europe. There was no NATO, nor United Nations yet.They soon learned the short-sightedness of such America First policy when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Dad was there, but the South Dakota was out on training maneuvers when the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor occurred, one of two ships not damaged nor destroyed that day. Within hours those two ships headed out to the Pacific to engage the Japanese.
As an infant I sat on Dad’s lap as Mom served food and drink to his fellow servicemen returned from war. As I become a toddler, I sat silently at his feet, listening to their stories, feeling their angst, learning their wisdom. As a young girl, I sat quietly listening in the next room. Some Had fought on land, others at sea or in the air. One freed a concentration camp. Others fought the jungle and suicidal enemy soldiers. Dad explained that when the kamikaze pilots attacked by diving onto the ship it was not a single plane but as many as 9 or 10 planes hurtling to the deck during a single battle. He felt like he was on fire inside the turret, as sailors put out fires caused by the crashed planes.
I watched as they placed mementos of their war experience on the table, each with a story. I recall Nazi helmets, German Lugars, even a Samurai sword. I still have a “lion dog” one soldier was given by a Japanese family who housed him during the American occupation of Japan following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They treated him like a son of the family as they came to know one another. So many lessons learned through these artifacts.
These warriors appreciated that bomb and I struggled to understand how after hearing them describe the destructive force and damage caused by the nuclear blast ( far less powerful than the nuclear bombs we now have ready). They explained that there could have been no surrender without it. They said many more would have died and suffered if the war had continued on. When Americans built underground bomb shelters in case we were attacked by Russia, my Dad said it would be better to die in the attack than survive and suffer the results of nuclear exposure. My Dad told his little girl this. He told me war is always hell. He did not want his children to suffer hell on earth; better that they died immediately.
Such are the difficult decisions made during war. Every single man at our kitchen table agreed there should never be another war. In fact, WWII was billed as “The war to end all wars.” If only, Soon my godfather would be sent to Korea. Later my brother would be involved in the Viet-Nam War. Next a nephew fought in Iraq. Afghanistan after 9/11. Now, a great-nephew has been sent to The Border in Brownsville, Texas. Other soldiers are being prepared to make war in Minneapolis. My country has made war on VenezuelaIa. It threatens war against Mexico, Greenland and Canada. Remember that there was a Japanese delegation in Washington D.C. protesting American tariffs and a trade war between our nations when Pearl Harbor was bombed in a sneak attack.
It seems I have only ever known war. Yet, I have never known war. War has been visited upon others in my name. Until now. War is now showing its face, if not its full vengeance, in American cities. The Civil War happened before my family emigrated to the United States. I was so relieved my family had never participated in enslaving others. Later, I understood I was participating as policies underlying enslavement continued within institutional racism. There is no escaping racism. It is akin to being an alcoholic in a 12 step program. We Americans, even those with the strongest will and opposition to racism, must fight it one day at time, one step at a time; always alert to the impulse which drives us to use it. Like alcoholism, a drink may be an immediate solution; but only leads to more misery. And such misery continues to be visited upon people of color. The murder of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti may have finally alerted white Americans to the misery visited upon all of us, when visited upon any one of us.
After Dad’s war buddies left I would question my Dad. I asked if it was hard to kill someone. Watching the war documentaries in between the Saturday double-features at the Midland Theater I could not understand how people could do such evil to one another, especially the death camps throughout Europe. Much later, I learned of the Japanese internment camps in my own country. The mother and father of a friend had been interred in such a camp and described the suffering and loss they had endured, sobbing out stories with great grief. Dad explained how such evil can happen. He told me that it is incomprehensible to a sane person to kill. The method used is to dehumanize the enemy so one no longer sees the person as a fellow human being; not merely someone different, but someone less than human. A German becomes a Kraut. A Japanese becomes a Jap. A Vietnamese becomes a gook. An Iraqi becomes a towel-head. A Jew becomes a K..e. An African-American becomes a N…..r. An immigrant, asylum seeker or refugee becomes the worst of the worst criminal rapist and murderer. Not just different but less. Now, we have our own concentration camps after our WWII soldiers fought to free concentration camps in Europe. I know what the men at our kitchen table would say. They understood the propaganda that white men are not only superior, and all others are less. The men at our table knew better.
I asked why it took Pearl Harbor for the USA to join the war effort. He explained the appeasement of “old man”Kennedy and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain failed to assess the true danger posed by Hitler and Mussolini. Kennedy lost a daughter and son to the war; and a second son injured during a heroic effort. I wonder if later he could see his folly. I wonder if Heritage Foundation appeasers can see theirs. I wonder if voters will admit their folly in electing people ready to put their Superior policies into action.
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