Apparently calling it ‘voter fraud’ is the easiest way to circumvent that whole ‘guaranteed right granted by the Constitution’ thing. To find out more about voter suppression and your voting rights, go to http://letamericavote.com/action for more information.
We will get to that in a moment, but a little background;
Jackson County is spending one and a half million of your tax dollars (not their local dollars, but yours, South Dakotans!) to keep Lakota people in Wanblee and other Indian communities from enjoying similar access to early voting as white folks near Kadoka enjoy. Dennis Olson, chairman of the South Dakota Public Assurance Alliance that is footing the bill for Jackson County’s racist resistance, calls the Lakota lawsuit for a satellite early voting center “frivolous†and “just one of those things you have to put up with.â€
Don’t tell O.J. Semans that fighting for Indian voting rights is frivolous. Semans, the executive director of Indian voting rights advocacy group Four Directions, takes issue with Olson’s seeming disdain for Indian voting rights
See, they are taking this lawsuit money from the Assurance Alliance (Sioux Falls taxpayers are the biggest contributors to their funds) to fight giving voters in Jackson County around $20K in HAVA funds that already are sitting in an account at the SOS office. Sounds pretty idiotic? Right? Unless of course you are someone who doesn’t like Native Americans and don’t think they should vote, you know like a lot of those West River Teabagging Republicans. So you ask ‘where does a good Democrat like Mayor Huether fit in to this picture?’ You would think as an upstanding member of his party he would put his foot down and tell the SD Public Assurance Alliance to drop the suit because Democrats across the state believe in voter equality. But I’m sure you are asking, why would the SDPAA listen to him? Gee, I don’t know, because he appointed two of the Board Members to the Alliance; Mike Hall, Director of Risk Management for the City of Sioux Falls and Secretary of the Alliance and Tracy Turbak, Director of Finance for the City of Sioux Falls. The mayor has a little (a lot) pull in these matters.
Some may say, “Well maybe the mayor has tried to intervene, or at least try to get his appointments to intervene.†I don’t know. Maybe he has, but it doesn’t seem he has been to successful if that was the case. Then there was a certain ‘incident’.
See, when this all started, O.J. Semans asked to have a meeting with the mayor to discuss the case and to see if the mayor would speak with the Alliance about dropping this silliness. After not being able to get an appointment, O.J. did what every good determined person does when dealing with government officials, he showed up in person to the mayor’s office asking to have a few minutes with the mayor, assuming of course he knew why O.J. was there. Seems like a pretty big deal? Right? Why wouldn’t the mayor just hear him out for at least 5 minutes? After a back and forth with the Mayor’s secretary, O.J. was still refused the meeting. So back to square one.
So apparently our good (Democratic) mayor thinks it is more ‘prudent’ to blow $1.5 million of tax dollars on a frivolous lawsuit they will lose then to give already set aside Federal dollars to a couple of satellite voting sites in Indian Country.
The West River Teabaggers are either elated or really confused.
Good question. I guess if I had to answer, in the capacity of our current mayor, I would say the city clerk in cooperation with the school district. But in all reality it was SOS Gant’s idea to push the E-Poll books (because the people who supply the equipment and software are big SD GOP campaign contributors). And the city clerk and school district along with the county auditor, ate it up, hook-line-and-sinker.
It doesn’t only surprise me that the mayor didn’t know the answer to this question, but the answer is detrimental to the SD Dem party. Voter suppression, the key to the GOP domination in SD. You know the old saying, ‘Follow the Money’. Our super precincts and E-Poll books are the epitome of voter manipulation. While this young buck understands how the system works, I also understand how the system could be easily hacked and manipulated. How easy would it be for John Doe to vote at every single precinct?
The April 8th election results will be very telling, even if our mayor doesn’t understand the process.
FROM CITIZENS FOR INTEGRITY:
Super Precincts are designed to keep people from voting under the guise of streamlining the process of voting. We no longer have places in our neighborhoods a person can walk to vote.
The voter now must have transportation to reach the voting booth. Just another way to block the free and unencumbered access to the polls.
On March 14, 2014 Mayor Huether shows how little he cares for the average person’s access to voting.
The City Clerk has been before the City Council explaining this process promoted by SOS Jason Gant.
Super Precincts or Vote Centers can become a poll-tax for the elderly, disabled, poor and rural voters — because of the additional travel, time, missed work or physical stress of waiting in long lines to vote. Voters can no longer walk or travel a short distance to vote. For disabled, the voting location is no longer in a familiar neighborhood, and may be in a busy crowded facility. Election officials have to rely more on expensive and error prone technologies such as electronic poll books and touch-screen voting machines. When equipment crashes or fails to work, greater numbers of voters are simultaneously disenfranchised. Denial of service attacks affect larger portions of voters. (More eggs in one basket)
Think of it this way, when the aforementioned can’t make it to the polls, the privileged are the only voters.
Don’t forget to vote in Tuesday’s School Board Election, May 21. The school district will once again be using super precincts and you can vote at ANY location OR at the county administration building, absentee.
I feel that Schorzman and Reiter will bring fresh ideas to the school board. Joshua wants to have monthly informational meetings for the public, something the City Council does on a weekly basis. Reiter is a young mother who is very well-informed when it comes to public education in our community.
I don’t really have a position on Leedom, except that Joshua and Carly seem more qualified. As for Alberty, it time to retire his Homan Rubberstamp. School Board members should be watchdogs of the Administration, not lapdogs.
A sorry movement has been growing over the last couple of years at a feverish rate. The people have voted against FAUX News and Rove even after the vote fix was in. Something must be done. Consider what is happening in Pierre and other state capitals as the elected and appointeds work to figure out how to roll our nation back to the 1800’s. Senator Stan’s Adelstein’s proposal to have direct primary nomination election of constitutional candidates in South Dakota is a throwback to the Progressive Era our current ‘leaders’ wish to destroy.
DWC – Pat Powers’ recent rants to continue his destruction of all things related to Senator Stan. We must not forget Pat’s job loss was a result of last May’s expose’ of SOS Jason Gant and his ethically challenged / legally questionable activities. South Dakota was in the center of the nation’s Progressive movement. Much of what we currently have as average Americans is in no small part because of what happened in Sioux Falls and South Dakota. Governor Lee, Peter Norbeck, Governor Tom Berry through Abourezk and McGovern were prairie progressives who believed in the average person. Only the rich, selfish or wish to be selfishly rich have fought the ideals of expanded rights for all people.
So when I read about more idiots who wish to roll back the Progressive Era advancements, the more I want to remind everyone of our collective history. The absurd right has it wrong on all counts, how can we go back to something that never existed in the first place? So we have reactionaries like Pat Powers who lost his job to save a leader of South Dakota RSLC – ALEC. Jason Gant had to be saved. Jason has funneled funds and support to many of the right people to make sure Keystone XL pipeline destroys the ecology of South Dakota. The John Birch Society controlled RSLC – ALEC will never let the common person have any say in the affairs of governing. It is not in their plan. Pat Powers is only a mouthpiece. A person who proudly boasts either way, he makes money. Remember this, he is a mouthpiece for the rich, selfish or wish to be selfish rich. Here is another example of what ‘conservatives’ want to do for voters;
National Review Blogger Calls for Repeal of Women’s Suffrage
By Amanda Marcotte
Wednesday, February 20, 2013 9:15 ESTThanks for getting arrested, but since your forebears chose to use their rights to get more rights, all rights have to go.
Michael Walsh of National Review Online called for the termination of women’s right to vote last week:
Nevertheless, you’re on to something I’ve been advocating for years now. And that is the repeal of all four of the so-called “Progressive Era†amendments, including the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th, which were passed between 1911 and 1920.
One of those has already been repealed—the 18th amendment, which ushered in Prohibition—which Walsh admits. That’s not really what he’s on about anyway:
The income-tax amendment was a self-evident attack on capitalism and led to the explosive growth of the federal government we currently enjoy today. (Without it, there’d be no need for a Balanced Budget Amendment.) Direct elections of senators has given us, among other wonders, the elevation of John F. Kerry to, now, secretary of state. Prohibition was directly responsible for the rise of organized crime and its unholy alliance with the big-city Democratic machines. And women’s suffrage . . . well, let’s just observe that without it Barack Obama could never have become president. Time for the ladies to take one for the team.
I suppose we’re supposed to imagine it’s a “jokeâ€, because he takes a jovial tone for the last one. But if so, it doesn’t make sense. He’s dead fucking serious about the other two—three, really, because he only seems to be against Prohibition because he believes it gave Democrats a leg up, which is one of those deaf-to-historical-change moments that lead Republicans to imagine that Lincoln would have anything to do with the modern version of their party—so, as a joke, it falls completely apart. If he hadn’t rolled it up with the other amendments initially, the “joke†defense he clearly has in his pocket would be an easier sell. Something like, “I’ve long advocated for the repeal of 3 of the Progressive Amendments (though one has already been repealed), and hey, ladies, sometimes you make me wish to repeal all four.†It would still be a misogynist joke, but easier to sell as a joke, even if not a very funny one.
As it stands, it’s clear he’s doing what Al Franken calls “kidding on the square“, where you say something you mean but pretend it’s a joke so you don’t have to take responsibility for it. Franken has some fun with it in his books, calling himself out for it and therefore turning a typically unfunny bit of passive-aggression into a for-real joke, but I’m guessing you all know that because of course you’ve read his books. Kidding on the square is a favorite tool of sexists, who want to say sexist things, but are too cowardly to say them directly. Walsh is just a particularly obvious example. And no, none of the other National Review bloggers argued with him on this point.
I’m trying to imagine the shitstorm that would erupt if a feminist dare say men should forsake their right to vote until they shape up and start voting correctly. It certainly wouldn’t slide under the waters, like this did.