And I doubt you go back there to make a second vote for elections but your republican buddies like to use examples like yours as proof of millions of fraudulent election votes because you are registered in 2 states.
Trump is registered to vote in two states, voter fraud?
- Thread starter exGOPer
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And I doubt you go back there to make a second vote for elections but your republican buddies like to use examples like yours as proof of millions of fraudulent election votes because you are registered in 2 states.
The problem is using those IDs as a way to suppress votes, like how they did in Alabama, all this voter fraud concern is to reduce Dem voter turn out
Alabama Closes Driver’s License Offices After Implementing Voter ID Law
https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/alabamas-dmv-shutdown-has-everything-do-race
And I have stood up and clearly disagreed about them about this in the past.
However I do believe the voting rolls need to be cleaned up in the majority of states and counties, and better enforcement mechanisms need to be put in place when someone registers to ensure they are legally allowed to vote in the location.
Amusing.... I guess these people don't have picture ids for all the other things in their life the ids are required for.
Even more amusing is reading all the comments under the article that state the author "has no arguments to support his claim".
As well as the comment that pointed out "An individual seeking a voter ID can get a voter ID at the court house in every county in Alabama and it is free."
Let's take a look at the facts pointed out in one of the comments:
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This is simply not true. I don’t dispute that there have been serious efforts at voter suppression in Alabama, including the voter ID law. However, I do dispute vigorously the argument that the driver’s license closures office is an example of this suppression.
Everyone has seized on a comment made by John Archibald in an AL.com column that the closures affect all of the counties where 75% or more are registered voters are African-American. This is factually correct metric, though -- as I will point out shortly -- not an especially meaningful one. I didn't think much about its efficacy until I started reading far more misleading and downright false statements, such as a comment in a Boston Globe opinion piece that Alabama "is now closing 31 driver’s license offices that are predominately located in African-American communities."
I sorted through hard data that I personally downloaded from the state law enforcement agency and secretary of state websites and from the U.S. Census Bureau, and here is what I have found:
• 19 of the 27 counties where all driver’s licenses offices have closed are majority white
• The 27 counties taken as a group voted 57% for Mitt Romney in 2012
• The closures are pretty clearly correlated mostly with population
o 18 of the 19 smallest Alabama counties lost all driver’s license services
o The largest of Alabama's 67 counties losing all services is Tallapoosa (No. 31). In fact, Tallapoosa is losing both of its offices; it is the only county with more than one office where all offices are closing. (It is also more than 72% white in voter registration)
• If you look at total African-American voter registration numbers as opposed to percentages, it’s pretty clear there was no attempt to isolate blacks:
o The only closure in the top 8 counties ranked by African-American registered voters is a secondary office in Montgomery. Those 8 counties represent 61% of all African-American voters in the state.
o Among the top 20 counties ranked by African-American registered voters, only two -- Macon (No. 9) and Chambers (No. 17) -- are losing their only offices.
o 11 of the full closures are in the bottom 17 of Alabama's 67 counties as ranked by African-American registered voters
o 14 of the full closures -- more than half -- are in the bottom 24 of Alabama's 67 counties as ranked by African-American registered voters.
o African-American registered voters in the 27 counties losing all driver’s license services represent less than 15% of all African-American registered voters in the state
o The five counties where African-American registered voters are 75% or more of the total represent just over 5% of the state's African-American registered voters.
But let’s look at the 75% figure anyway. I would argue that if you were trying to suppress the black vote your lowest priority would be small counties where the voter registration is overwhelmingly black. Consider:
• Even if you severely reduce voter turnout in a county where the black vote is 75% or greater, it’s pretty obvious that the black vote would still decide the outcome of any countywide election.
• Depressing the black vote in a small county gets you very little in a statewide election. The state’s smallest county by population is Greene (No. 67 out of 67), one of the five counties that is more than 75% black. Bullock is No. 65 in population, and Lowndes is No. 64. The largest of the five is Macon, which ranks No. 47
• A competent voter suppression effort would be aimed at counties where (1) the voter registration was fairly close to 50/50 – either by race or party – and/or (2) the African-American vote is large. But again, out of the top eight counties in African-American registration, the only county affected is Montgomery with the closing of one of two offices.
All this said, there most certainly is a legitimate policy controversy here: The state’s obligation to serve rural communities. Four counties – Jefferson, Madison, Shelby and Walker – have two offices but didn’t see either close. Of course, since Jefferson is No. 1 in total black registration and Madison is No. 4, closure of one of those offices also would have prompted an outcry and, I would argue, more legitimately so.
My point is not to defend Alabama’s race record. I can’t honestly do that. I just object to using false – or at the very least highly misleading – information to do so. I believe the closures represent bad policy for a host of reasons, not the least of which is the failure of lawmakers to perform their duties in a way that would have prevented the need for the closures in the first place. But they were not an attempt to suppress the black vote. Only a group of people very bad at voter suppression would have done it that way, and I think we can all agree that this is not a group of people bad at voter suppression.
I would trust actual reporting over anonymous comments
So I made a crude digital version of my colored paper map and published it here. My colleague John Archibald looked at census and elections data and found more ugly facts. In the 10 counties with the highest proportion of minorities, the state closed driver's license offices in eight. The other two remained open because it might be too much to explain, I suppose, for Alabama not to have driver's license offices in Montgomery or Selma.
Maybe the governor didn't intend to target minority citizens with the closures, but ultimately his intent is beside the point. The effect was the same, and the reaction was as swift as it was predictable. Alabama again became a national embarrassment. The NAACP sued and the United States Department of Transportation investigated.
Last month, the latter of those two legal actions concluded.
"Based on its investigation, DOT has concluded that African Americans residing in the Black Belt region of Alabama disproportionately underserved by ALEA's driver licensing services, causing a disparate and adverse impact on the basis of race," the department said.
ALEA had already buckled and reopened many of the offices but for fewer hours. However, under an agreement struck between the state and federal agencies, ALEA agreed to add more hours of service to the Black Belt offices.
Maybe now that everything has been put back the way it was before, there's no longer any harm. But we shouldn't forget that all of this was avoidable.
And what was the cost? The legal fees alone will diminish -- if they haven't already exceeded -- any paltry savings.
All of this was predictable. All Bentley had to do was look at a map.
http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/01/as_it_turns_out_bentleys_drive.html
The article has the details
Seeing that the closing of driver license offices was put into gear years ago as a cost saving measure well before voter id became an issue -- this is a non-news story. Except by those who attempt to twist it into a news story.
Alabama is closing DMV offices for the same reason NC is - declined population in rural areas. It does not make sense to keep a DMV office open only to serve two people per day.
The comment you quoted itself said that voter suppression was an issue and 'cost saving' makes no sense given the savings were minuscule but heavily impacted 8 of the 10 counties with minority population. It wasn't a coincidence.
I think you need to read the comment in context. It makes no sense to target these counties where the races are not close for local/state offices, and they account of a tiny percentage of the state population for national (presidential) / state executive (governor, etc.) races.
If deliberate voter suppression via DMV closures was been attempted, it would be better to close DMV offices in counties where the races were close.
It was political
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According to Sharman's report, former ALEA head Spencer Collier understood Mason's intentions were to have the plan "rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Government Bentley's political allies."
Collier, according to the report, claims he then reported the closure plan to then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's office because he was concerned about a Voting Rights Act violation.
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