Froth Slosh B'Gosh

Ruminating....

Pam Iovino defeats D. Raja in a special election for a South Hills State Senate seat. The district was gerrymandered by Republicans in 2010 to maximize a Republican's chances to win, and has historically been an "R" seat. And while I commend Allegheny County Republicans for nominating an immigrant and a person of color for seat, I have to wonder if the national Republican Party's racism and xenophobia cost Raja the election? Did many Republican or Republican leaning voters not turn out because they weren't willing to vote for an immigrant, or an Indian?

Democrats Flip State Senate Seat

Pam Iovino wins special election!

Just a couple more seats to flip and the state Senate turns blue!

GO VOTE!

So let me tell you about my little town. We have a population of just under 2,500 people. In the 2016 election, 1,748 were registered to vote, and 1,291 did so, an excellent turnout of over 70%! Today I voted just before 4:00pm, well before the after work crowd shows up, and nearly 700 had already voted, and one gentleman was processing a big pile of absentee votes. So it looks like in an off-year election, we're going to have about the same turnout as in a presidential year.

And yes, we were Blue in 2016.

Pennsylvania Has Early Voting???

So everyone is talking about Newt Gingrich accusing Megyn Kelly of "being obsessed with sex" but what caught my ear was something early in the exchange:

GINGRICH: Well, look. The next two weeks are a contest of two parallel universes. I just listened to that report. First of all, I used to hang out with Charlie Cook when he would explain that Donald Trump was hopeless and would not get the nomination. I like Charlie. That doesn't mean he's infallible. But let's take the report we just got. Republicans are actually outvoting Democrats in Florida, they're outvoting Democrats in Pennsylvania, that's unprecedented. They've cut the Democratic leads --  

KELLY: You predict a win in Pennsylvania.  

GINGRICH: I think they might.

KELLY: Really? You think Trump is going to win Pennsylvania?

GINGRICH: Look, all I can report you right now is they're outvoting the Democrats in early voting which is also true in Florida which is unprecedented.

OK, so Newt says Republicans are outvoting Democrats in early voting in Pennsylvania?  That's rather interesting, as Pennsylvania doesn't even HAVE early voting. While you can cast an absentee ballot, Pennsylvania's rules are rather draconian on who is allowed to cast one.  You essentially have to prove that you will not be in the state on election day, and they won't give you a ballot if you're out of your precinct voluntarily, such as on a vacation.   So if Newt thinks Republicans are out polling Democrats in early voting in Pennsylvania, well, then he really is living in a parallel universe, or perhaps a bizarro one.

 

Still Unconstitutional

Pennsylvania's odious Voter ID law struck down.  Again.

Governor-Bought-And-Paid-For can appeal to the PA Supreme Court, but I strongly suspect that the attempt to disenfranchise voters via photo identification laws is quite dead.  For now.

Voter ID Law Struck Down

What I expected.  Frankly, ever since the 2012 election, it seems the Corbett administration has shown little interest its little voter-supression effort.

A Commonwealth Court judge on Friday ruled the Pennsylvania voter ID law  violates the state constitution by imposing an unreasonable burden on voters,  dealing the controversial requirement its most serious blow in nearly two years  of litigation.

Judge Suspends PA's Voter Supression Law....Again

I wont be surprised by a permanent injunction at this point.

Pennsylvania voters will not be required to produce identification to cast ballots in November.

A Commonwealth Court judge has barred enforcement of the state's 2012 voter ID law until he makes a final determination in the case challenging the legislation.

In his ruling Friday, Judge Bernard McGinley said while poll workers asking for ID was not itself disenfranchisement, a hardship was created for voters by the state's misleading or nonexistent information on the new law's requirements.

Of course, misleading an innnacurate information is a feature, not a bug, when the intent is to try and keep as many people as possible from voting.

VOTER FRAUD!!!

And once again, its the GOP that perpetrated it.  From The Brad Blog:

With these 300 fraudulent votes created by one Republican candidate alone, that's 300 more fraudulent votes than have ever been created by ACORN or anybody who has ever worked for them.

But, of course, you're unlikely to hear that, or even this story itself, from the tenacious Fox "News" "voter fraud special investigative unit" or the GOP clowns who help them disinform American voters.

As I've noted before, photo ID laws do nothing to prevent this kind of fraud.  As I've noted before, impersonating another person at the polls is so incredibly rare, and so easily detected, trying to stamp it out by disenfranchising thousands of legitimate voters is a fool's errand.  And as I've also noted before, if a Republican is complaining about something, you can bet that he or she is neck deep in the activity at the root of the complaint, be it voter fraud, teh gays, or whatever.

UPDATE:  I still cannot post in comments but Lefty points us to a similar story recently adjudicated in Ohio involving a Democratic poll worker that I was unaware of.  The point is, of course, that voter fraud simply doesn't occur in person, when it happens it is by manipulation of the process by insiders, usually via absentee ballot abuse.  Voter ID laws do not, and in fact the cannot, address those problems.  So again, what is the point other than an attempt to supress turnout?

 

PA GOP Boss Admits Voter ID Suppressed Democratic Turnout

ACORN!!

Only it isn't Acorn, it is, once again, a Republican. 

A Martinsville man pleaded guilty in Augusta County Circuit Court Tuesday to fraudulently putting voter signatures on petitions to get former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on the Virginia Republican presidential primary ballot last year.

Adam Dustin Ward, 28, of Martinsville, pleaded guilty to 36 counts of voter fraud and foregery, according to a report by NBC 29.

Ward collected thousands of signatures with similar handwriting with addresses that could not be confirmed.

I've come to the conclusion that because Republicans commit so much voter fraud and voter suppression, they just cannot comprehend that Democrats aren't doing the same.  As I've often typed, if Republicans accuse Democrats of doing something wrong, you can bet that they're doing exactly what they're charging Democrats with, only 100 times worse.