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If you’re into that sort of thing, I thought the President gave an excellent if a bit stentorian speech last night, weaving in plenty of different themes we should look for in a second term. But the most important part of this was a throwaway line that was probably not in the prepared text, something David Kurtz caught as well. The prepared remarks attempted to make a virtue of the arduous task of voting in this country, and the ad-libbed comment actually reflected the absurdity of the fact that voting should be so hard.
I want to thank every American who participated in this election. (Applause.) Whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time — (applause) — by the way, we have to fix that. (Applause.)
“We have to fix that.” It was a small, inconsequential line, but it spoke volumes to not only a path to success for the future, but the fundamental rights that must be secured for every American.
When people can vote, liberals win. I think that’s one of the major takeaways of the night. Take a look at the historic victories for marijuana legalization, a blow against thirty years of the war on drugs. The measure passed in Washington and Colorado. What’s the unifying thread? Washington is 100% vote-by-mail, and Colorado has enough vote-by-mail and early voting options that 80% of the electorate voted before Election Day. Marriage equality and LGBT rights got validated at the ballot box for the first time ever in four states. What’s the unifying thread? Maine and Minnesota have Election Day registration. Washington, as noted before, is 100% vote by mail. Maryland has ample early voting. Expanding the voter universe with online voter registration completely changed the political landscape in California.
This isn’t fully determinative: you can raise opportunities for voting and still have a working conservative majority. But expanding the voter universe doesn’t just have an interest-group goal. It has a civic goal of expanding participation in democracy. There’s plenty more to do than voting, but it’s a good first step. And the war on voting in Republican-led states this year, which was successfully muted by an outstanding judicial-based effort (including from the Civil Rights Division of Obama’s DoJ), was unconscionable.
It should be noted that millions LESS people voted, in all likelihood, in the 2012 election, relative to 2008. So there’s ample room for increases in voter participation, as well as snuffing out the immoral limits on voter participation.
Determination on election reform from a President, who wants to leverage the now-common voting horror stories into a mandate for change, is very important and should not be forgotten. There’s plenty we can do at the federal level, well beyond the Help America Vote Act, to ensure access to the franchise. This is a completely necessary component to our democracy. And throwaway line or not, we need to return to it and hold the leader who vowed fixes accountable.
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I caught that too. But what can Congress do realistically? They can’t tell states how to run their elections. What are the ideas that are floating around out there?
I was less impressed with the speech overall. Too much talk about how we have the most powerful military in the history of the world, etc. Try to be all things to all people. In other words, typical Obama.
Obama WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.. the sell-out starts today :–(((((
Minnesota also will continue to have the best voting laws and system in the nation, thanks to the efforts by the state’s county elections officials to spread the word about the tremendous expense the ALEC-inspired amendment would have put on cash-strapped local governments.
Extend the Voting Rights Act monitoring to Northern and Western states. Expand out from the old Jim Crow South.
I’m sure he’ll get right on that.
This from the tool who put banksters in charge of the economy that the banksters had just wrecked.
Shorter Obama: “HAVA 2 – The Sequel!”
I say let’s start with prosecutions of all of the people behind the Republican dirty tricks and vote suppression efforts. Let’s begin with Ohio’s John Husted and go from there.
“By the way” was one of Bush’s favorite phrases. It’s a common tell for lying.
Hey, there’s a reason they call them “throwaway lines.”
Obama COULD shame these Republican clowns into reform. But a bully puppeteer OR a progressive he is not.
Very true, however, that the face of US politics would undergo significant change if the poor turned out in numbers to vote, consistently.
OT, Krugman says preznit should do nothing rather than make a “grand bargain” with lying-ass Republicans.
Will put this in the news roundup also.
The line he dropped from his Victory Speech was ‘restore our democracy,’ which I had taken the night before as code for ‘election finance reform.’ Maybe we’ll get a few more early voting days, but I doubt we’ll get any push to Amend the constitution to declare that money isn’t speech.
Motor Voter and 18-year-olds-voting are two reforms Congress made to the American voting landscape, based on the Constitutional provision that Congress shall make laws for electing their own members. Presumably any reforms to early voting, more voting by mail, absentee voting, expanded hours on election day, or making election day a federal holiday would come under that rubric.
And the money for same, by the way.
pardon my ignorance, but why don’t more people vote by mail-in ballot?
Krugman:
Oh, but this time … This time will be different. You just wait and see how different it will be. This time the President will stand firm. Oh boy, will he stand firm. You’ll be amazed how firm he’ll stand.
Change we can believe in …
Where I live the voting system is perfect and virtually fraud proof.
I get a ballot in the mail. It only comes to me. I can return it by mail, or drop it off at a polling place, which I did. In and out in a minute, no waiting.
Because my signed envelope is kept after the ballot is removed, there exists a signed receipt and a paper trail that I voted. The ballots being counted must match the number of signed envelopes they came in, making it impossible to change the number after the fact. If there is any question, the voter can be asked whether it is indeed a proper signature. The ballot itself has circles that are darkened so they can be read optically. It is a physical ballot that can be counted by hand if necessary, not a bunch of electrons that can be messed with.
To recap, I get the ballot at my PO Box, so only I can get it. When I return it, my signature is on the envelope, proving for recount purposes that my ballot was accepted and that it came from me.
How simple is that? Too simple for Florida, apparently.
I agree with you on being unimpressed by Obama’s speech, but why would you assume that Congress can’t tell states how to run elections, especially elections for federal offices?
Does your post mean that you are okay with Democratic vote suppression efforts, or that you assume that they don’t exist?
Obama’s speech was not impressive. For one thing, I could not believe that he is still re-cycling the “not red states or blue states” line from his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention. I guess Axelrod was too tired to come up with new catch phrases?
But, the least impressive aspect of Obama’s speech is that we have come to know that his words are empty and/or parsed out of all significance. That two years from now, we’ll be hearing things from the Obamabots like “He never said he would fix elections in time for the next midterm.” and “He never said he would make elections suit every pony lover’s pesonal schedule.”
As far as waiting on line: All my life, I have lived in blue states. However, I have never lived in a state with early voting and I have always waited on line for hours to vote. In my early voting years, I just assumed things were like that everywhere. I never minded.
What I really do mind:
(1) standing on line for hours without confidence that every vote will count.
(2) Democrats pretending to care so very much about allegedly stolen elections, but never passing laws with very stiff penalties for election fraud, tampering, throwing away voter registrations, etc.
As far as voter IDs, they can pass federal laws about voter IDs and federal elections, too. And/or, they can start right now, doing their damndest to make sure every single person over 18 voter has a photo ID that his or her state accepts.
It’s not rocket science and I am beyond tired of hearing faux outrage but seeing no action. Democrats are like that on way too many things.
What do you mean that “expanding participation in democracy” isn’t just “an interest-group goal”? Of course it is, as is reducing participation.
Obama can start by making sure that the opposition Presidential candidate is not arrested at, or excluded from, the debates!!
In an otherwise excellent diary, David, it should be “FEWER” people.
Sorry. Hurts the sensibilities of this former English teacher.
Oregon has vote by mail also, and the marijuana initiative went down to defeat.
We also voted in a mayor in Portland who legally, it seems, cannot have been on the ballot legally. The contested issue resides on the Secretary of State’s desk. No action.
Vote by mail is no guarantee that elections are properly run, only that the name on the envelope matches yours.
While you’re at it Obama, will you fix the filibuster rule too?
Now why would Obama want to do that? Neither the R’s or D’s want the americn sheeple to even get a hint that there might be different ways of doing things.