Tagged: voting rights

Posted: December 12, 2012 at 8:15 am

If at First You Don’t Succeed

If at first you don’t succeed, claim the rules don’t apply to you.

That’s what the Montana Republican Party tried to do this week. The party which formerly claimed to stand for fiscal responsibility had hoped to force taxpayers to cough up the cash for a recount in the state superintendent race. In spite of the fact that their candidate had lost by too great a margin to qualify for a taxpayer funded recount, they went to court.

Sandy Welch, the GOP candidate, asked a judge to grant her an exception to the rules. She thought fancy out-of-state lawyers could convince a judge that there were special circumstances which would justify making you and me pay for her increasingly futile pursuit her own political ambitions.

Republicans also probably wanted the recount it in the news while they try to pass new laws that restrict voting rights, like same day registration, early voting, mail voting, etc. They were hoping they could use your money to create a climate for passing voter suppression laws in Montana.

Welch had tried to force the recount to be conducted right before the Christmas holiday–much to the dismay of county officials and their employees. The grinch-like demand wasn’t lost on internet pranksters, prompting a brief grinch mini-meme of sorts with pics like this making the rounds.

Thankfully, the GOP failed on both accounts. A judge said they had to live by the same rules as everyone else and must pay for the recount.

But when it came time to put up the money, Welch said she didn’t actually have it–revealing some inconsistencies with her previous statements.

First, Welch had said that the national republican party would pay for the recount, but when it came time to pay the money wasn’t there. The national Republicans refused to comment.

The GOP wouldn’t say how much they had raised, if anything. And instead of accepting the fact that the voters decided against the right-wing education policies the GOP was peddling, they tried to blame the Secretary of State for Welch’s loss.

There were other inconsistencies in Welch’s statements. As the Billings Gazette reported. “Welch said [Citizens United attorney James Bopp] is the lawyer hired by the Republican National Committee to work on the case, but another attorney from his firm, Anita Woudenberg, delivered arguments Friday.”

Perhaps all this talk of national money and famous lawyers was Welch was trying to color her race with some kind of national importance. Whatever the reason, somebody wasn’t telling the truth. Either that or intelligent life is just not found on this particular planet.

Posted: December 6, 2012 at 8:35 am

Sandy Welch, and the Ruse

The GOP is asking for a recount in the state superintendent’s race, for what appears to be part of a high-intensity push to create a climate for passing voter suppression laws in Montana.

The Associated Press reported this week that the national Republican Party gave Sandy Welch (who ran against popular dem Denise Juneau) $100,000 to pay for the recount and another $100,000 to hire GOP lawyer behind Citizens United, James Bopp to sue for a recount (one she can’t win).

Bopp is an infamous national GOP lawyer who has been called “Public enemy No. 1 for fair elections,” and has worked for dozens of extreme-right groups. He appeared on the recent Frontline expose of dark money groups in Montana, saying he is working to eliminate or significantly loosen campaign spending limits and to eliminate donor-name-reporting requirements.

Here’s what’s odd: Welch can get a recount without her costly lawsuit, for a $100,000. She is allowed by law to buy a recount, in essence. But she admitted yesterday that she’s now invested $200,000, half on the fancy lawyer and lawsuit, and half on the recount cost. In the lawsuit, she is asking to get her recount cost refunded if she wins. But that still leaves a grand total investment of $100,000. So why the lawsuit?

Because the GOP wants it in the air, while they try to pass new laws that restrict voting rights, like same day registration, early voting, mail voting, etc

The GOP’s future, given the trends, is looking bleak. Not just a more liberal electorate, but a wild gang of libertarian voters defecting at a rate of anywhere from 4 to 7 percent in statewide elections. The Rs are now seeing that they must find a way to balance the scale. So they will try to minimize votes from elderly, Indians, poor, young and other voting blocks.

To do that, they’ll need to convince the legislature that there were “irregularities.” Part of this will involve deceiving the press and the public that the last election was fraught with problems and “fraud.” Hence the $100,000 lawyer.

As the Billings Gazette reports, Welch already alleges

numerous examples of alleged vote-counting errors across the state on Nov. 6, including ballots jamming in electronic counting machines, re-marking of ballots that were run through the machines multiple times, failure to give voters new ballots to replace spoiled ballots, and ballots that weren’t officially stamped.

The recount will allow the GOP to paw through every single ballot cast, to find examples of what they’ll call “fraud.”

Perhaps the Montana GOP is taking a cue from Florida Republicans, who admitted last week that the voting restrictions they passed after the 2008 elections were specifically designed to keep Democratic turnout low:

Wayne Bertsch, who handles local and legislative races for Republicans, said he knew targeting Democrats was the goal[....]

Another GOP consultant, who did not want to be named, also confirmed that influential consultants to the Republican Party of Florida were intent on beating back Democratic turnout in early voting after 2008.

[...]A GOP consultant who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution said black voters were a concern. “I know that the cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day was one of their targets only because that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves,” he said.

Posted: November 1, 2011 at 7:41 am

Flathead County Republicans: Renters Aren’t Real Citizens

In the United States of America today, it would be illegal to allow only wealthy property owners to vote. So the Republican Flathead County Commissioners have done the next best thing.

They sent out a survey to the ‘doughnut’ residents (people who live in a ring around the outer edge of the city of Whitefish) asking who they prefer to manage planning and zoning, the county or city of Whitefish. Instead of mailing surveys to the registered voters in the area in question, they sent the surveys only to corporations and property owners.

The the lack of transparency seems to be an issue here is well, though the county claims that, “the survey is not a voting ballot measure,” [GOP County Commissioner Jim] Dupont said in the Flathead Beacon. Commissioners also apparently believe it “doesn’t require a public notice process” either.

It’s just a “tool in the toolbox” in the effort to bring clarification to an issue in need of it.

Over at the Informed Whitefish forum, word is that some sixty surveys went to a single Whitefish address (one for each parcel of land the individual owns in the area) while others expressed outrage that many of the surveys were mailed to out-of-area addresses – including Texas, California, Canada, Switzerland and England.

In fact, some say most of the surveys that the County mailed went to owners who do not live in Whitefish: Forty percent of the survey votes were actually mailed out of Montana. Flathead County surveys our Canadian neighbors to the north 300 times. Texas gets 70 votes, Missoula 60, and California got nearly 160 surveys.

Here’s Commissioner Jim Dupont explaining the merits of the GOP-ers’ plan:

“Then we’ll have exactly what the people in the doughnut think because I don’t know – I hear so much one way or the other,” Dupont said. “I don’t know why anyone would want to complain about it. It’s a simple answer.”

Perhaps next the Commissioners can throw out any surveys from women and people of color. Whitefish is 45 percent renters, Flathead County is 27 percent and Montana is 31 percent.

Posted: May 16, 2011 at 6:48 am

GOP Nationwide Voter Suppression Campaign

Montana knows all about GOP leadership’s voter suppression campaigns. Former GOP Executive Director and current GOP political consultant Jake Eaton was forced to resign over the scandal to make it more difficult for 6,000 Montanans to vote.

After what we saw this legislative session, it should be no surprise that Republicans in state legislatures around the country are rewriting voting laws to make it harder for some of us to vote.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), Republican legislators have introduced bills that would diminish access to the voting booth in over 40 states. All of these Republican proposals focus on one apparent goal: restrict ballot access and shrink the electorate—often in ways that would decrease Democratic votes.

Many of the proposals are in the form of voter ID legislation, which would require potential voters to present specified forms of identification in order to cast a ballot. This is the kind we saw in Montana. Republicans supporting these measures claim they’re necessary to prevent “voter fraud.”

As Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch explained, this bill went far beyond the voting restrictions passed under George Bush.

“Montana is a fiercely independent state, and it is rare to see a measure that increases burdens beyond those that have been imposed by the federal government.”

GOP legislators are going around invoking a specter of supposed “fraud” to make voting more difficult for constituencies not known for voting for Republicans. (In Montana, Native Americans would no doubt be targeted.)The Advancement Project just released study results, with some very telling facts about groups included in the 11 percent of Americans without a current government-issued photo ID:

• 25 percentof African American voting age citizens

• 15 percent of those earning less than $35,000 a year

• 18 percent of those age 65 and above

• 20 percent of young voters 18-29

The Democratic State Legislative Campaign Committee has been tracking what’s going on across the U.S.

Posted: May 9, 2011 at 8:58 pm

Legislative Attack on MT Voting Rights Spurs National Campaign

Montana has defeated several bills aimed at suppressing the vote, thanks in large part to vetoes by Governor Schweitzer. In Montana, citizens have the right to register and vote at county clerks’ offices on Election Day and the preceding 30 days, and Schweitzer vetoed HB 180, by Rep. Champ Edmunds, which would have cut off this right starting after 5pm on the Friday before the election. Schweitzer also vetoed HB 152, by Rep. Ted Washburn (R-Bozeman) which would have placed severe restrictions on the types of identification that voters could show in order to register to vote and cast a ballot.

Unfortunately these bills would have become law if the GOP had it’s way, and Schweitzer’s vetoes make Montana one of only a few states in a position to combat a concerted Republican plan to make voting much more difficult in states across the country.

In a New York Times editorial from last week, the Advancement Project, a civil rights advocacy group, described this rash of Republican-sponsored legislation as “the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.”

That’s why a Montana legislator, Rep. Ellie Hill, (D-Missoula) who is also the Vice President of the Young Democrats of America, is announcing a campaign this week focusing on ending this attack on young peoples’ voting rights.

Kudos to Hill for getting involved. You can sign up here to find out more. If we don’t protect our voting rights, we won’t be able to fight back by un-electing the politicians behind the GOP attacks on women and the poor.

Posted: February 11, 2011 at 7:17 am

“Race-based hate flames”

Montana TEA Party Republican Derek Skees, R-~~Whitefish~~ Kalispell penned a defense of his votes and comments against a popular vote-by-mail bill in the Whitefish Pilot this week. He ends the column with the shocking claim that racism and hate are actually perpetuated by people in “certain minorities.”

Here’s Derek Skees in his own words:

I have spent 12 years in the South and have seen racism in all its ugliness.

In light of my exposure, I must contend that when a few people in certain minorities view the world with the filter of race, difference and haves versus have-nots permeating their every perception, they see it in everything anyone else does. It is tragic and dangerous to assert it where it does not reside, and will only work to continue to fan the race-based hate flames that so many of us are trying to quell.

Posted: February 6, 2011 at 10:21 am

UPDATED:The Message of the Montana GOP’s Big Night

Anyone else find it odd that the party that hosts a dinner named after President Lincoln would be sponsoring so many “nullification” bills?

This party basically believes that when it comes to federal law, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to follow it. So what’s the deal?

As former Republican Secretary of State Bob Brown wrote recently on this topic:

“A system in which state laws have supremacy over national laws is a confederation, not a union…”

The statement makes the Montana GOP’s focus all start to make sense, as this is exactly what the Civil War was about. Even new GOP-TEA Legislator Derek Skees says the Civil War was about “states’ rights.” We don’t like what they have to say, we are no longer a part of it.

Like it had for the southerners during the civil war, “states’ rights” has as clear, more sinister meaning to the right wing base. Since nobody takes the Klan seriously above ground anymore, as it is so repulsive, all the racism of a certain wing of the GOP has all gone underground, and is trotted out through code words.

The Montana GOP dinner’s other namesake, Reagan, GOP “hero,” used to go down in the south during the 1980 primary and rile up the states about states’ rights, which he knew was pure racial code:

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Any of this sound familiar to those of you following the actions of Republicans in the Montana legislature? States’ rights, racial stuff, birtherism, restricting voting rights, and even votes against the King Holiday.

Plus anyone who has been around Denny Rehberg after he’s had a few drinks knows what he has to say about people who aren’t of his ilk. Anyone who has been in the state long enough has heard the stories.

Last night, Rehberg had no desire to talk about his record, a shockingly lame list of “accomplishments.” Out of four bills he passed, three were the naming of two post offices and a federal building. Not exactly the material of an inspiring message.

So he brings out the queen “states’ rights” tea-bagger, Michele Bachmann, to send a different message for him. And that message is coming through, loud and clear.

UPDATE: Guess what topic Rehberg has selected for his address to the Montana Legislature? “States’ rights,” of course.

Posted: January 26, 2011 at 6:14 am

TEA Party Republican Legislator Explains His Opposition to Improving Access to Voting

The Billings Gazette reported this week that the bill by Secretary of State Linda McCulloch to allow for statewide voting by mail is advancing with bipartisan support. But one Republican who voted against the proposal was Derek Skees (R-TEA ~~Whitefish~~ Kalispell).

In the House State Admin committee on January 24, Skees explained his opposition, which is transcribed below:

I’m all about getting out the vote, but I think getting out the vote is an educational component, not a easing down to the least common denominator and allowing everybody who is a procrastinator to vote. To vote is one of our sacred duties in this Republic, and it is something that those of us that consistently do it take it deadly serious.

We’ll make sure that our registration is up to date that our precinct numbers is up to date, and we’ll make sure that the county has our addresses up to date.

We’ll follow the issue, go to every single one of the forums and we’ll vet our candidates and have a really good decision before the primary and before the general elections.

Those are the people who should vote. We should educate everybody to think and behave that way because it is such an august responsibility for us to do it. All we’re doing is dropping it down to people who vote on one issue, and they are not fully informed on other issues.

And we’re making it easier for the less informed to vote. I would like to improve the less informed, but I think we should do it through education, not by dumbing down the electoral process. With that in mind, I intend to vote against this bill.

Mr. Skees, I hate to break it to you, but uninformed voters are the very folks who put you in office.

Other Republicans who voted against the bill include: Reps. Gerald Bennett of Libby; Joanne Blyton of Joliet; Dan Kennedy of Laurel; James Knox of Billings (by proxy); and Tom McGillvray of Billings.