We had a very enlightening conversation with The Nation’s Ari Berman, straight out of the courtroom in North Carolina, on today’s KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast.
Ari is in NC covering this week’s hearings in federal court challenging what we’ve described as “the nation’s most restrictive voter suppression law”, as enacted by state Republicans just days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act last summer.
This case — and NC’s law — are really amazing. Most importantly, the results of this challenge, and the way the VRA must now be used to fight to protect voters from discriminatory laws, will be very important to similar challenges now pending across the country. In other words, this fight is important to NC, but it’s arguably even more important to the entire nation.
Next up, we discussed the Rightwing stooge “reporter” Matthew Boyle, responsible for the fake 2012 story about a U.S. Senator and Dominican prostitutes, and my run-in with that same fake journalist back in 2011.
Then, Desi Doyen joins us for a few thoughts on Kentucky’s genius climate change denying state Senator Brandon Smith and, as usual, for the latest Green News Report.
As a listener noted on Facebook tonight: “What a heavy duty broadcast today’s was!”, before adding: “It. Was. Awesome. And scary.” Well, thanks! And you’re welcome!
Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]…
The BradCastwith Brad Friedman7/9/2014Challenging ‘The Nation’s Most Restrictive Voter Suppression Law’ and More: KPFK ‘BradCast’ | GUEST: Ari Berman, live from North Carolina... · · · · · Challenging ‘The Nation’s Most Restrictive Voter Suppression Law’ and More: KPFK ‘BradCast’ | GUEST: Ari Berman, live from North Carolina...0:00 0:00
This is absurd. There is not a single aspect of the new election law in NC that is unique. Eliminating Same Day Registration and Voting puts NC back into the vast majority of U.S. states that do NOT allow this fraud-friendly “mechanism.” Also, reducing the number of early voting days from 17 to 10 (while keeping the 100 hours of poll-open time as was previously available)is no hardship compared to many liberal states where NO early is allowed, let alone 10 days. How can that be discriminat5ory in NC, but okay in NY, MA, RI, MI, IL and other so-called “blue states?”
John Pizzo @1 writes:
Can you, Mr. Pizzo, point to a single case in which someone was convicted of voter fraud as a result of same day registration?
Can you, Mr. Pizzo, point to a single case in which someone was convicted of voter fraud as’ a result of same day registration?
>>> Absolutely. That, AND voting “dead people” AND people who like to vote in multiple states in the same federal election, AND illegals aliens who find their way onto citizen voting rolls…..
Before you ask me any more questions, answer one for me: “Why did you delete my prior comment?
Plus, I am saving and sending screen shots to show what lying phony you are….just like the guy in the WH and his employees at the IRS, NSA, EPA, and others.
John Pizzo asked inappropriately:
Please do. We deleted no “prior comment” of yours. We do not do that here. We have a very few rules for posting comments at The BRAD BLOG. The only comments we delete are commercial spam and, on occassion, when someone who has violated the rules, has ignored several generous warnings about it, and then somehow slips around the moderate filter to post again. Even then, however, we tend to post a note that we’ve removed a comment as a place holder (other than in cases of absolutely egregious spamming).
I’ll hope you have better evidence for those other claims you offered about “voter fraud” than you do for the claim you just leveled against The BRAD BLOG. But you’ve yet to post any.
As to your other suggestions, you’re right, NC was more progressive in its voting laws than some of the state’s you mentioned. But, as in Prop 8 in CA, rights granted cannot be taken away — or abridged as the U.S. Constitution describes — without a compelling governmental reason.
Without evidence that removing the rights of NC voters is necessary — such as to prevent fraud (the state has offered ZERO evidence to that effect) — the removal of those rights would seem in violation of the Constitution, as well as of the Voting Rights Act, since clearly they are meant to be discriminatory.
How amusing! When asked whether he can point to a single case of someone who was convicted of in-person voter fraud as the result of same day registration, John Puzzo @3 says, “Absolutely,” and then fails to either link or point to a single case in which that occurred!
Indeed, Puzzo goes on to resurrect the “dead people” voting myth.
Here’s a piece of fact-based reality, Mr. Puzzo:
Case Closed: ‘Dead People’ STILL Not Voting in SC According to 18-Month Law Enforcement Probe, an article that begins:
They hadn’t, of course, and the claim was little more than a transparent ruse to try and “stuff the ballot boxes” in support of polling place Photo ID restrictions meant to disenfranchise largely minority, poor, elderly and student (read: Democratic-leaning) voters.
Unsatisfied with actual facts and stuff at the time, state Republicans tasked the State’s Law Enforcement Division (SLED) with investigating the matter and, what do you know — despite claims happily aired by Fox “News” from every Republican in the state, from the Governor to the AG to the party apparatchik last year — it turns out zombie voters are still not voting in SC, no matter how many times the pretend claims are investigated.
Sorry to upset your right wing inspired fantasies, Mr. Puzzo, but here, at The BRAD BLOG, we deal in an evidence-based reality!