Cholly Atkins & Fred Astaire couldn't hold a candle to you, kb.

Those 'barriers' can be remedied easily enough (not to mention that they qualify as, shall we say, 'outliers') and with a modicum of effort an absentee ballot can be submitted, even by poor li'l ole Ms. Preiss & Ms. Steele.  Melodrama is not an argument - you've yet to make an affirmative case for allowing any and every breathing body that shows up (or asks for a ballot) to vote, no matter whether a citizen or not, no matter whether they've previously voted or not, no matter whether they're actually alive or not.  If you have one, I'd be glad to hear it.

And adjudication, as you say, has yet to occur.

i think the term is "appeal to emotion"... trying to bypass logic and common sense with emotionally charged stories and melodrama.

Also, you have not shown any connection between not being able to show proof of citizenship a person's race, remember your argument was that they are doing it to stop blacks from voting because they are evil racists.

of all the many issues raised since the beginning of this new century, there are few more aptly described or accurately characterized by your statement quoted above than the one being discussed in this thread.  

when you finish reading this sentence, please browse back to my comment #24 to read (or perhaps reread) the information i excerpted from a study conducted by a group (truthaboutvoterfraud.org) operating in assocation with the brennan center.  from what i've observed of you here, i believe you very likely know the difference between say .017 and .017% or .0002% and 2%--so please be sure to note the numbers and percentages they use in summing up the results of what appears to be the most extensive investigation of this 'problem' to date.  

if you're willing to risk challenging your assumptions, i'd recommend following this LINK and perusing the document from which those few paragraphs were gleaned. 

i believe i've pointed out--several times--nearly 200,000 registered voters in georgia were deemed ineligible during the first three months of 2009.  because that number is so ridiculously high, almost--if not all--of those invalidations are the consequence of applicant or clerical error and should be reinstated.  according to the doj, a higher percentage of the rejects appear to be hispanic or black. georgia's secretary of state is doing nothing to ensure those errors are considered, much less corrected.

draw your own conclusion.

you can make statistics say ANYTHING that you want. The bottom line is that many whites are denied voting too, this is not a race issue as you make it out to be.

Oh noes, the stupid people filled their forms WRONG and got denied! RACISM! RACISM![/sarcasm]

Seriously, how can applicant error be blamed on racism? and people can be reinstated, if anything this is an argument to modernize the system to make it QUICKER so that people could correct errors like that in time to vote.

The link you posted:

1. Defines voter fraud as an INDIVIDUAL impersonating ANOTHER individual for the sake of voting to defraud an election. They have other definitions for other things, including "fraud" which is when a voting machine has been tampered to tally incorrectly.

2. Does not take into account that maybe the reason voter fraud is rare (according to them) is exactly BECAUSE we have voter registrations and anti fraud systems in place.

3. I am all for IMPROVING the METHODS of anti voter fruad... I realise that not all "security" is secure. Just like when the airport staff asks "did you pack your own bags" or "are you a terrorist?" (they ask foreign nationals on entery, I know because I had to answer NO to that question many times coming into the US.)

There are certainly ASPECTS of voter "security" that do not actually do anything to prevent fraud and are thus useless. But that does not mean that all voter ID efforts, especially not PRE-Clearance, should be halted.

That's still not an affirmative case.   And I believe there were elections, let's see in 1960 & in 2000 I believe, where the margins were small enough for vote fraud to matter, just to mention two.  Never mind Minnesota in 2008.  See talt's #29.

KB, my cousin was Roy Wilkins, I doubt you have heard of him but at one time he was Chairman of the NAACP. That was background not bragging. Do your history my friend, who was playing those games you write of? If I remember correctly it was the democrat party in the south, the same party that freely accepts KKK members into their ranks when it helped keep them in the majority. The purpose of voter registration is to ensure that every American has the ability to exercise their right to vote. My wife is a naturalized citizen but my daughter is not so only one of the two can vote. There is a reason we have those laws, yes laws! The same type of laws that say non-citizens are not allowed to contribute to a candidate. ACORN is under indictment in 17 states for voter fraud. This news comes to you via the right wing media, New York Times. We have people that want to be elected and they don't care how. The rules are in place so it is fair for all. You have to check a box that says under penalty of perjury you affirm that you are a legal citizen of the United States.

Please don't tell me you have not seen results of election fraud, the 125% of the registered voters voting in a county. The dead voting in Chicago, that famous phrase, vote early and vote often.

The cynical phrases "Vote early -- and often" and "Vote early -- and vote often" are variously attributed to three different Chicagoans: Al Capone, the famous gangster; Richard J. Daley, mayor from 1955 to 1976; and William Hale Thompson, mayor from 1915-1923 and 1931-1935. All three were notorious for their corruption and their manipulation of the democratic process. It is most likely that Thompson invented the phrase, and Capone and Daley later repeated it.

People are still registered to vote that are dead, ACORN was getting people to register as many as seven times with different addresses so they could vote as many times as they could for their candidate. The rule is one person one vote. How about the 2000 election when a democrat was caught in Miami with a voting machine and blank ballots in his trunk? Seattle July 2007 Felony charges filed against 7 in state's biggest case of voter-registration fraud.

New York Times May 5 2009 Acorn submitted 91,002 completed forms in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, of which 23,186 turned out to be valid new voters who voted in November, according to data provided by Mr. Miller’s office.

Mr. Miller investigated Acorn at the behest of the Clark County registrar of voters, Larry Lomax, who noted a high number of forms turned in featuring the names of famous football players and cartoon characters.

You say you are well informed yet you never heard of any of this? If a person is elected fairly then I support that winner until they are out of office no matter which party they belong, if I believe they won by cheating then I want them out of office.

The congressional investigation against them was just dropped, the congressman in charge of the investigating commitee said "the order came from the top".

the top of what? The news article stated that Mr. Conyers from Mi asked for the investigation and later changed his mind. There is no record of it going any further than that.

Love those Chicago styled politics. Did anyone really expect an angel to emerge from the land of gangsters? Many politicians are shady, but when one elects a person from a place that is renown for its corruption and back-door deals what should one expect?

I expected exactly what we got. How is that hope and change working for you?

Also the department of justice has ordered the case against black panthers who intimidated white voters dropped... AFTER their conviction.

So does this mean you are not hoping for change?

I am SEEING change... change to the worse, change I have seen before in other countries.

I didn't vote for him, but I didn't realize he was THAT bad (although I figured he was pretty bad), but all my hope was dashed earlier in his presidency...

The president's real power is:

1. Commander in cheif.

2. Figurehead and maybe leader of his political party in congress (only matters if they are in power and support him)

Obama is a weak man who lives in fantasy and our enemies see him as such, he is terrible as the commander in cheif, all he does is weaken our defenses. he is also not loyal to our ideals of freedom and democracy.

As for figurehead, he actually succeeds in this greatly, he is a demagogue, great at aquiring support from the sheeple. And a democratic congress is going along with his every whim, it is THEIR job to write laws, yet they pass laws he just springs on them without having possible had enough time to even READ what they are signing. They are giving him a blank check by just voting yes on everything he desires instead of doing their own damn jobs.

you've made that claim in the past.

lil bit presumptious on your part, no?  hell, i mighta heard about a whole lotta people douglass to dubois to little to lewis and jordan.

yup.

i dunno what it was, but i'm hoping for your sake, you're not trying to suggest that roy wilkins would support georgia republicans' use of hysterical fear-mongering to promote policy that's as flawed as it is unnecessary at risk of disenfranchising and discouraging voters of that state.

if i remember correctly, it was democrats truman and humphery who took on the racists in their own party in their efforts to end american apartheid.  democrat lyndon johnson who--no matter his other failings--was the driving force behind the 1964 civil rights acts.  and it was nixon who courted thurmond to make the republican party a welcome place for racism and reagan who confirmed it by his speech in philadelphia mississippi. 

Not at all. I am saying it out right! Because it is not fear mongering. There are genuine issues with voter fraud and this policy might help limit it. The only people allowed to vote are American citizens and only some of them not all of them. In some states if you are a felon you lose your right to vote. Purging the voter rolls of felons and non-citizens would be a good thing if we could do it nation wide. I have seen illegal immigrants with drivers licenses, and voters registration and Mexican consulate ID. Do those people vote in our elections? I don’t' know, but the potential is there. ACORN gets people registered to vote but who does the voting? Clear the decks to make the elections fair and honest. What is wrong with that?

You see, Mr. Wilkins was a former republican and would be again today because of the trash pulled by the liberals in the democrat party. They seem to only want a win and power that goes with the win, They have not done anything for colored people except pay lip service and we have 60 years of proof to back it up.

The direction this country take is based on who we elect, they take that margin of victory as a mandate for their beliefs and policies. If you believe in man made global warming and that we should destroy our economy in order to reduce this warming by .006 of a degree over the next 100 years then you are in the minority. But those are the people in power today and they are making laws to make it happen. Cap and Trade has passed the Congress, the results will be five dollar a gallon gasoline. The price of food will go through the roof because of it. Jobs will be lost because of it and no sane person agrees with it. If it becomes law we are going to be worse off than we are today. Possibly because of voter fraud. Mr. Obama won the election partially because of fraud. When you have 105% of registered voters voting in a county there is fraud. You can not have more people voting than you have registered voters but some how this was ignored.

Yes, most of that is completely true. Mr. Truman was a member of the KKk, yet he publically fought against racism. Mr. Johnson was part of the southern democrats that supported racism and when Mr. Kennedy died he made it his goal to get all the policies passed the Mr. Kennedy could not. Keep in mind that the Democrats held the majority in the Congress both houses, yet he needed the republicans to get it passed even with all the arm twisting he did on his side of the isle. Democrats held the majority in both houses until Mr. Reagan’s second term in office. Republicans held a slim majority for 12 years and then they blew it. Senator Thurmond left the democrat party because it was not racist enough for him and he started a third party. Lost badly and came back as a republican. His racism was okay as a democrat, he had to renounce racism to get into the Republican Party and then all of a sudden the democrats noticed he was a racist. Yet, Senator Byrd has not been forced to renounce racism to stay in the democrat party. He is considered an honored statesman. Why is that? No matter that he was a high ranking official of the KKK, and any steps away from the KKK until its demise was done with a wink and a nod. So after 48 years of making laws in this country what have the democrats done for civil rights? They could not pass the civil rights act of 1864 oh wait that was the last time there was a republican majority. 100 years later they passed the civil rights act of 1964 but only because of the republicans. Funny how you missed that part of it.

Oh, and I will repeat. Up until the 1980's you could not be elected in the South unless you were a democrat and a member in good standing of the KKK.

I thought the person most celebrated for the civil rights movement was marthin luthar king... who was a republican fight against the democrats and their aparthide laws.

To call members of the KKK the force behind the civil rights movement is both absurd and insulting. 

We are talking about politics, a politician will go whichever way the political winds blow. When the tide changed so did the politicians. The KKK was a means for power so they were pro segragation in the late 70's that changed and so did they. Republicans were not as a group pro racism. Though there was an Illinoise governor that was a republican and a member of the KKK but he went to jail for attempted murder or murder (can't remember which) of his mistress. When family values became an issue then democrats were pro family values and religion in 2005. When that did not work to peal off some conservatives they stopped telling that lie and went back to paying lip service to blacks and then Hispanics.It is whatever will get them elected. That is their core belief.

it's purely speculation, of course, but wilkins was an intelligent man and certainly musta had cogent reasons for switching parties; in light of the republican party's shameful southern strategy (which was nothing short of employing racists like thurmond to draw in his constituency of hate-based voters) i sincerely doubt he'd have jumped back today.

that last sentence is so ridiculously ambiguous, it's impossible to determine who "they" are.   either way, you've pretty much summed up the rationale for nixon's southern strategy and offered a very accurate explanation as to how and why the party of lincoln became the party of lincoln rockwell.

Only on your part.

Or maybe it is your own prejudices and slavish bias that  blind you to the truth. “They” are the politicians that supported segregation like George Wallace, who before he was shot had a sudden change of heart because if he waned to get re-elected he needed the black vote. And of course “good Negros” voted him into office again. It is also how the South went from mostly democrat from the 1870’s to mostly republican in the late 1970’s How the stereotype of the redneck went from good old boy democrat, to racist redneck once the democrats no longer had control. Racism was suddenly bad and the South was full of racists. Yet in good liberal circles the racism never changed. When they could not get away with open racism they just became subtle. Women became a minority. A choice between hiring a black man or a white woman the black man had to go to the back of the bus. Women make up 50% of the population but suddenly earned minority status. When Harold Ford Jr. had enough votes to become speaker of the house, he was told it was not his turn because they needed to show support for women. This is how Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House of Representatives. Mr. Ford was slowly forced out of the party when the party failed to support his re-election. He tried to become Senator and again his support faded. Civil rights always takes a back seat to woman’s rights. No one screamed racism when Mr. Ford was eased out of office because they were just trying to make history and support women. You choose to forget that in the south you had to be a democrat and supported by the KKK to get elected, until the KKK lost its power. Them good old boys would not be re-elected once blacks were allowed to vote without fear.

about the kindest response i can offer is this:  you're either deluded or have no regard for truth. 

i'd prefer the former because i'm willing to accept your purported relationship to roy wilkins as fact and i'm pained by the thought of you dishonoring the memory of a member of your own family.

on one hand, we have your bizarre speculation; on the other, the authority of mr wilkins' own autobiographic record and words including this comment on the 1964 republican convention and its nominee: "a man came out of the beer halls of Munich, and rallied the forces of Rightism in Germany...all the same elements are there in San Francisco now."

wallace had that change of heart after being shot. 

if that's what it takes, perhaps stokely, h rap and huey were correct and i was wrong.

your cousin knew full well his allies (liberals from both parties who came together to enact the civil rights acts of 1957 and 1964) and his enemies (racists from both parties who did their damnedest to prevent their enactment).

referring to nixon's 1969 decision to delay the desegregation of mississippi schools--as a quid pro quo demonstration of what the gop's southern strategy was really all about--roy wilkins said: "it's almost enough to make you vomit"

he was wrong, of course. 

no almost enough about it.

although i maintain my license to drive, i've chosen not to own a car since 1994.  gotta great 10-speed and--unlike most southern californians--i don't mind availing myself of existing public transportation, sparse as it may be.  i prefer the back of the bus (more leg room & greater overal visibility).

this is the first i've heard bout anyone being hired to sit up front.