If you can't beat 'em, cheat 'em...

There's winning, and there's winning at any cost, including integrity and a respect for the rights of your fellow citizens.

You might be surprised that there is no actual "right to vote" in the U.S. Constitution.  The ability of a person to cast a vote in this country is regarded as a core value equal to freedom or religion, freedom of speech, etc., but it's not that simple in practice.  Only a handful of items in the Constitutional relate to your actual right to vote.

Several Amendments to the Constitution prohibit the denial of voting based on race, gender, or the use of poll taxes.  However, the 10th Amendment states that any power not given to the Federal government in the Constitution belongs to the states.

This last point is the key - as long as a state is not directly violating the Constitution, they have a lot of latitude in how they manage your ability to vote.
Voting locations & hours, paper versus touchscreen, receipt or no receipt, who handles the machines and the voting records - all up to the states. This also includes setting the terms for absentee voting, early voting and provisional voting.

The other key issue, which has become a battleground in courts, is the ability to states to define guidelines for what ID one must present in order to vote.

There are several states where the outcome is a toss-up, and in the ones with Republicans in control at the state level, all sorts of games are being played to steer the outcome Republican.

There isn't just one state or one issue to talk about, so see for yourself. Go to news.google.com and search on "voter access issues" (I'll make this a link later).

These are cynical games being played with your rights by people who can't offer candidates who can win cleanly and convincingly on merit.

Remember who's behind this, and vote accordingly when the time comes to keep them or replace them.

Truth as another storm-related casualty

As the recovery from Sandy began to wear on the nerves of the most affected in NJ, a story started making the rounds on the Fox News / Brietbart circuit saying that power-repair crews from Alabama were being turned away for not being union members or agreeing to affiliate with the unions up here.

Just in time for the upcoming election, this fired up a wave of resentment online for unions and everything union-related. Of course, a story like this would be salt in the wounds for the thousands sitting in the cold and dark, wondering if these crews would have made the difference between the lights being off and on for them. Journalists would make sure to fact-check a story like this to make sure that people weren't outraged without reason, and to prevent an unjustified backlash against the crews already at work restoring power.

But then I said this story was being pushed by Fox News, didn't I?

As you can guess by now, the reality is that no crews were turned away by anyone in NJ, and that the power utilities and unions here welcome any and all assistance in a crisis without preconditions.

The incident at the heart of this was a crew from Alabama being given paperwork that led them to believe they had to join or declare affinity with the electrical workers union in NJ before being allowed to help on site. The crew from Decatur traveled as far as Virginia before stopping to get clarification on the documents, and whether they would be allowed to work if they did not agree to union membership/affiliation. During that time other crews had responded at their intended destination in NJ, so they attempted to look for work in other areas. After being stalled in Virginia most of the day Thursday, they decided to return home. All that time, other crews from Alabama and utilities from across the country were showing up in the storm-damaged areas and helping to restore power.

Late Friday at a press conference, a representative of the Decatur crew's company said the documents triggering the confusion had actually come from Electric Cities of Alabama, a coalition of the state's municipally owned utilities.

To recap:

• This was a story about one crew having logistical problems, not a blanket policy affecting all helpers. 
• They never made it to NJ, and were never turned away by anyone. 
• The papers leading to the confusion came from other electric utilities in Alabama, not unions in NJ. 

A representative of the utility held a press conference to confirm all of these points, and the video is here for all to see.

Even Fox put out a quiet correction stating that other Alabama crews are at work in in New Jersey, but the original story was still being being spread.

The reality is that there have been crews from all over, union AND non-union, working hard around the clock to get everyone back. This is difficult, often dangerous work being done by professionals - they deserve our thanks, and not to be held up as scapegoats for rumor-based political attacks.

MediaMatters has a good recap a good recap of the story behind the story, but if you don't consider them credible, take a look at the WAFF story, straight from Alabama.

The bar is set really low...

I had posted an entry the other week asking why people would vote for Mitt Romney - not why they didn't want to re-elect President Obama, but why they considered Romney to be the better option.

Only one person responded, and his case made for Romney was basically that Romney appeared presidential in the last debate.  No actual policy specifics or comparisons.  Just a gut impression.

Then I came across this video yesterday, in which an interviewer asks supporters at a recent Romney rally in Ohio what they like about him.  No leading questions, no "gotcha" tricks.  Just an open mike and some pretty scary ignorance on display.

"Romney has a plan to fix the economy".  Except that the person has no idea what "the plan" is, so how does he even believe that there is a plan, or why he's in favor of it?

"He's a Muslim.  And an atheist."  That's an either-or proposition, lady.

Take a few minutes, watch the video, and be sobered that these people in a critical swing state are motivated voters, even though they are proving that they have no actual idea what they are voting for besides a name and the fact that the name's not "Obama".

It's also worth noting that these are the ideal target voters for politicians unable to run on substance, and that these politicians are overwhelmingly conservative.  It also explains why GOP politicians in conservative states like Texas are trying to eliminate critical thinking skills from their public school curriculum. 

But hey, if you feel that the people in the video are cherry-picked examples of ignorance, and that there are meaningful, fact-based reasons to support Romney as the best choice this Tuesday, please comment below and explain why.