The 2016 United States Presidential Election

More irregular stuff in Nevada:Two native American tribes sued Nevada earlier this month because its members had to travel one hundred miles from the reservation in order to get to an early voting location. After the state declined to help them, a court ordered that the tribe members be accommodated by setting up a satellite voting station.After the decision, tribes who were required to travel in excess of two hundred miles requested the same accommodation but were turned down by the state who claimed that it was now too late to accommodate them.https://thinkprogress.org/...-denial-7e0315de3810#.pqf3kcco4

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On Wednesday, Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said no.
Given that your letter reached the Office of the Secretary of State less than 24 hours prior to the scheduled two week period for early voting, we regret that we are unable to accommodate your request, she wrote in an October 26 letter to Vinton Hawley, the chairman of the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada.

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Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fix quote box.

We have this same thing going on in Canada - governments tearing out their hair at the idea that some people who want to vote may be ineligible.I say, if people want to vote, let them vote. I'd rather see a thousand illegitimate votes than prevent one legitimate one.In Canada, we used to vote without even showing ID. Now you practically have to give a DNA sample. No wonder voter turnout is declining.

And of course, wait for the last minute to do anything about it.

also:Texas
Nebraska
North Carolina
Florida
Ohio
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Colorado
Arizona
Maine
Georgia
New Hampshire
Tennesseeall have implemented state laws and local level tactics targeted to suppress voter participation by college, black, latino, asian and other minority and progressive communities.Surprise, surprise! These are all Republican controlled states.Can't have liberals, progressives and all those others voting when they are demographically known to prefer Democrats over Republicans.Can anyone show any like efforts in Democrat-controlled states to disenfranchise any segment of American voters?Yes, the fix is in.

Locally there is a very active and seemingly successful effort to register college and first time voters particularly in the Hispanic community. Voting itself is electronic and in either English or Spanish and when I went to early voting the polling place had absolutely no signs of active on site marketing, few posters evident anywhere on the grounds, polite bilingual staff, more machines than voters present, no line but a continuous stream with regular turnover and the biggest issue was the machine that printed out the labels to put in the register ran out and had to get a new roll inserted. That took over a minute.The ballot itself was set up to allow straight party voting as well as individual selection within each race. One nice feature was a selection for large type display for the visually impaired. First time I had seen that option.I must say it was the most hassle free voting I have experienced in the over 50 elections I've experienced.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin One not OnEdited by jar, : Fix sub-title.

Reference(s) please. While the Republicans might have too much power in the legislature, we do have a Democrat governor and executive branch in general.Moose

Another state is Alabama......closing all the DMV offices in poor areas so acceptable IDs are difficult or impossible to obtain.The GOP is so classy......they can't win with out cheating.

Excellent. I, as well, had quite a relaxing experience voting this year as I stopped off at a neighbor's for conversation and coffee after dropping my ballot in the mail.So, it can be done.The question is why can't this be the experience of all American voters regardless of race, creed, color, location, education or shoe size? Why are so many forced to jump through bureaucratic hoops wound in red tape deliberately designed to foil their attempt to exercise their franchise?The answer appears to be: Republicans.Why is this allowed in this country? Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Every state that has gerrymandered districts is using their power to stay in power, which is basically what this kind of rigging is all about.So Massachusetts would be an example for you. And the system is rigged to maintain the existing status quo power structure.Republicans are getting more and more desperate though, because they are losing and time is against them: demographics are changing to more liberal populations.Enjoy

Actually, the answer seems to be "the party in power". Democrats have been every bit as guilty as Republicans when they are the party in power. Liberals have been every bit as guilty as Conservatives of creating barriers to the democratic process.The difference right now is that power to control and influence the Democratic Process is held by a group of super conservative Republicans.But I remember the Democratic South and the Democratic political machines in Chicago and Texas and also the Liberal Weatherman and Students for a Democratic Society and the Days of Rage and "The Elections Don't Mean ShitVote Where the Power IsOur Power Is In The Street" and the Democratically controlled police in Greensboro that held the police back while labor organizers and voting registers and Doctors and members of the American Communist Party were gunned down.The answer is that our courts have failed to support democracy and instead allowed things like you describe to continue; but it is not anything new and not limited to Republicans but rather seems a characteristic of US democracy in action.

I am going to disagree in part with this summary. It is true of course that Democratic politicians are no more or less evil than their Republican counter parts. However the tactics employed by the two sides over the last 40-50 years, a time which includes both parties having their times at the top, suggests that one party can legitimately claim to have most of the high road. Over that time, the Republican party has consistently been the party of white folks only, and the Democratic party, has for the most part, not played the game of trying to prevent white folks from voting. Yes Democrats have gerrymanded when they have control of state legislatures, but they have not actively attempted to prevent folks from voting using anything like the tactics that Republicans currently use. Instead they have generally relied on things like voter registration drives that result in more folks voting rather than fewer. They have attempted to put in place early voting, and easy registration. If I recall correctly, the Texas Republican Party platform expresses opposition to 'motor voter' registration in which folks get registered at the same time that they get their driver's licenses or carry out other state business.Not denying the history jar cites, but it simply is not correct that during current times, each of the parties in power repress voting with equal alacrity. Republicans are fairly tarred with that brush. Only one group of folks refuses to restore voting rights to former felons because they are afraid of who they will vote for. Only one group of folks refuses to allow representation of folks in DC because they are largely democratic voters. I understand that the reasons for that difference are not altruistic, but the battle of tactics of impeding voting versus the tactic of trying to include more folks presents one side, and one side only, in a poor light.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I might be convinced if you dropped it down to the last 10 years or maybe even 20 years but cannot swallow a span of 40-50 years.

Were not all of those incidents you cited things that occurred on the order of 40 years ago? I might yield to you ten years of the difference, but certainly not 30.

jar writes:

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I might be convinced if you dropped it down to the last 10 years or maybe even 20 years but cannot swallow a span of 40-50 years.

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Have you forgotten the Civil Rights Era? Have you forgotten Nixon's Southern Strategy?When you claim: You are deliberately distorting history. Yes, the Dixiecrats were a significant part of the disenfranchisement of minorities in the US.And they all went to the Republican party.In short:Logical error: False equivalency.Try again.

An unlikely and unplanned event dictated the flow of political power in pre-WWII Germany. Might this latest email revelation be as fateful as the destruction of the Reichstag? A little alarmist, I know, but the parallels *are* alarming: a populist demogogue with contempt for true democracy who is willing to mold the institutions of government to his will takes advantage of circumstances to achieve complete power. True, Trump has much more of the ignorant buffoon about him, but he's a determined and persistent buffoon who's proven very effective at getting his way.--Percy