Voter ID Laws Cause Problem For Married Women
Women in Texas who changed their name when they got married may have trouble voting.
Women in Texas who changed their name when they got married may have trouble voting.
Corpus Christi’s KIII (“Voter ID Law May Cause Problems for Women Using Maiden Names“):
The state’s new voter ID law is meant to prevent voter fraud, but it may be causing some delays at your neighborhood polling place, especially if the name on your driver’s license differs from the name on your voter registration card, even a little bit.
Nueces County election officials say it is often a problem for women who use maiden names or hyphenated names.
The problem came to light Monday, when a local district judge had trouble casting a ballot.
“What I have used for voter registration and for identification for the last 52 years was not sufficient yesterday when I went to vote,” 117th District Court Judge Sandra Watts said.
Watts has voted in every election for the last 49 years. The name on her driver’s license has remained the same for 52 years, and the address on her voter registration card or driver’s license hasn’t changed in more than two decades. So imagine her surprise when she was told by voting officials that she would have to sign a “voters affidavit” affirming she was who she said she was.
“Someone looked at that and said, ‘Well, they’re not the same,'” Watts said.
The difference? On the driver’s license, Judge Watts’ maiden name is her middle name. On her voter registration, it’s her actual middle name. That was enough under the new, more strict voter fraud law, to send up a red flag.
“This is the first time I have ever had a problem voting,” Watts said.
[…]
Judge Watts believes these extra measures to prevent voter fraud will be an even bigger issue in the more popular elections.
“I don’t think most women know that this is going to create a problem,” Watts said. That their maiden name is on their driver’s license, which was mandated in 1964 when I got married, and this. And so why would I want to use a provisional ballot when I’ve been voting regular ballot for the last 49 years?”
This is obviously an unintended consequence, although surely a foreseeable one. When my late wife and I married in 2005, she changed her name from Kimberly Ann Webb to Kimberly Webb Joyner. Aside from being a real hassle to do—shocking given that women changing their name upon marriage has been customary in our society since well before the founding of the Republic and should thus be built into the law—it never completely “took.” Not only were there lingering places where she’d never gotten around to changing the name under which she was registered but quite frequently businesses would inexplicably put her name in as Webb-Joyner and thus alphabetize it under W rather than J.
To be sure, now that this glitch is visible, women can take the trouble to make sure the name on their driver’s license and voter registration card are identical. Surely, that’s not too high a price to pay to stop the massive scourge of people voting under other people’s names.
While on the issue of voter fraud, 3News spoke with District Attorney Mark Skurka about the prevalence of the crime in Nueces County.
“I have never seen an issue of that in Nueces County, in all the years that I’ve been here,” Skurka said.
Well, maybe not in Nueces County, then. But I’m sure it’s a massive problem elsewhere in Texas.
shocking given that women changing their name upon marriage has been customary in our society since well before the founding of the Republic and should thus be built into the law
Not so shocking, really. Women changing their names may be old, but women being involved in matters where they need to establish their identity, and in general getting involved in matters outside raising children isn’t that old at all. For most of that time, women’s identities as anything beyond an extension of their husband was damned rare.
But more to the point — what was the great injustice here?
@Jenos Idanian #13: In some case provisional votes do not end up being counted. And if common Hispanic names trigger the need for an affidavit, and well-known cases of American citizens being deported to Mexico due to such name problems have occured, I can’t blame Hispanic Americans from hesitating to sign such an affidavit.
Considering an illegal attempt to vote can get someone with a green card deported pretty quickly, any citizens living with persons with a green card with substantially the same name as theirs would get pretty nervous about signing an affidavit, too.
The chilling effect can be pretty strong.
I’m sure you are just being facetious here. Right???
If you can’t win elections…because your ideas are old and proven failures…and your ideology is bankrupt…rig the system. Cheat . Jenos approves.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
That’s awfully liberal of you, Jenos.
As James says:
Conservatives worry about unintended consequences. Talk radio parrots……not so much.
@Jenos Idanian #13: Voting is a fundamental right of citizenship enshrined in the Constitution. Buying antihistamines, not so much. But that’s stupid, too.
@LaMont: Actually, no. Whether some advocates of voter ID wish to make it harder for those likely to vote for the other team is debatable. But, no, I don’t think anyone was trying to make it harder for women to vote.
Is it time to demand that Texas succeed from the union yet?
You know what is a massive problem with voting in Texas? It’s done by Texans. 😉
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Hmmmm…. Last time I checked, getting antihistamines was not a constitutionally guaranteed right. But then, when did you care about such things?
Two words: Mission accomplished.
@James Pearce:
Methinks it time for you to update your definition of a conservative, JP
@Ron Beasley: Is it time to demand that Texas succeed from the union yet?
Texas is succeeding just fine right now… but I’m sure the Obama administration has plans for that.
@James Joyner:
It’s not debatable. There’s almost no cases of voter fraud, so what would the reason be for Voter ID other than to make sure that groups who predominately vote for Democrats will have trouble voting.
You’ll only have to look at exit polls to find out that women prefer to vote for Democrats.
Mission accomplished indeed.
If you think about the demographics that tend D, you think… minority, poor, female (though particularly young/single female), young. Exactly the sorts of folks more likely to have ID issues.
So, bug or feature? I’m not sure it matters much.
@James Joyner:
Seriously? I’m sure the fact that Rs are losing women by double digits never entered anyone’s mind. Most Republican voters, as opposed to actual operatives, believe this is a high minded crusade to protect the sanctity of voting. This is another demonstration of conservatives believing their own BS.
Where are the Republicans screaming “but Freedom!” If we required ID to buy a gun they’d be up in arms!!! (yes I know we do, and it’s a point of contention with many folks).
Seguing a bit with the post below about why Japanese women don’t get married and have Teh Baybeez: in Japan it’s mandatory that when a woman marries, she changes her name (except for the very, very rare cases where her husband is “adopted” into her family.)
Quite a lot of Japanese women don’t take kindly to the fact that upon marriage, their entire career documentation gets sucked down into a black hole and disappears. I’ve known of at least one female scientist who decided the interruption to her publication record was too much of a risk for her to ever get married.
(I was working at Tokyo University when this all came up. The best we could do is make sure all the married women were also in the database under their maiden names and there was adequate cross-referencing.)
@C. Clavin: ironic that we rarely hear of republicans fixing elections? but at the end of the day all you need to do is sign an affidavit and you’re good. they’ll send you more info to assure that you are who you is! but if it scares one imbecile (read potential democrat voter) away from the polls then it’s “voter suppression”- get real.
Are you intellectually unable to understand that this nationwide effort at voter suppression is in fact a conspiracy to fix elections? I know you are mentally challenged…but even you should be able to grasp this fact.
@LaMont:
“I’m sure you are just being facetious here. Right???”
No, this one will likely be changed very quickly, as it affects white adults. Things which affect minorities or college students will not be fixed for a long time.
@C. Clavin: Don’t overestimate him. He thinks that a couple of gay homeless kids teens more economic advantages than a heterosexual husband and wife.
@bill:
Actually, you just succinctly pointed out the problem with all this Voter ID stuff:
If you do ANY research on this topic, you will find that the vast majority of documented voter fraud is perpetrated via absentee ballots.
Strangely (or perhaps not), most Voter ID and related voting reform efforts never address where the actual problem occurs.
ID laws (not just voter roll IDs) have been strengthed considerably post 9/11. Federal workers now have to acquire chip-identity cards, and they are not issued unless two sets of supporting IDs match perfectly. We had several female employees who had to return to DMV and prove their new name, so it could go on the driver’s license, so they could get the new federal ID.
@James Joyner:
James, do you realize that that sentence all but contradicts itself? I wouldn’t expect a guy to imagine this sort of consequence, but most any married woman? Never bringing this impact up in discussion? That’s harder to buy. Although, this being the TX statehouse, I could totally believe a woman not being allowed within 50 feet of this kind of legislation, just as SOP for them.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Talk radio’s been doing that for a good two decades now. They don’t need my help.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Well, Texas is pretty awesome. (Ah, Amarillo……I spent a month there one night.)
Fun Texas Fact: Texas has the largest rural population in the United States (3.8 million people) but it has the second largest urban population in the United States (21.3 million people). That’s right. Texas has more city slickers than New York state.
@Tony W: That’s the solution! All we need to do is permit voting at gun shows…
This is why they call it “the Republicans’ war on women.”
All this is easily fixed.
Married women should just vote by using absentee ballots, or more precisely, their husbands should vote for them by using absentee ballots.
Unmarried women and widows should either not have the right to vote or their fathers should vote for them.
That’s clearly how God intended for women to vote.
That’s assuming that they’re allowed to do so. In neighboring Oklahoma, there’s a current case of a woman who got legally married in Iowa and has gotten a new Social Security card under her new name (hyphenated, I think), but the state DMV has refused to recognize her name change because her marriage is to another woman.
What is going to backfire is closing early voting. If you demand an ID where none was ever needed before, fine. Have your stupid Papers, Please. That pesky 0.0001% fraud problem will be nipped in the bud, by Circe.
But what has this got to do with early voting? Once you have your vaunted ID, isn’t voting “secure” no matter where or how often it happens?
The removal of early voting in places like NC is going to cause a backlash that will dim any repeat of 2010 in 2014 for conservatives. It’s so ugly and transparent. And it will fail.
As it failed in 2012.
Earn a majority to make the changes you want.
(Yes I said “by Circe”)
@bill: Now absentee voting…which normally trends toward R votes… is strangely left out of Republican “policy” to protect the santity of the vote. I wonder why?
You mean some God-fearing, good conservative woman might be denied her right to vote for a TEA Party hero so that he can take down those damn Liburls in the Gubmint because of something as stupid as proper ID?! Land sake’s! You mean that thing that was supposed to stop Those People from voting means I can’t? But…but…I’m one of the Good Guys(TM), why would this hurt me? Shouldn’t the evil incompetent Gubmint I hate have foreseen and dealt with this issue so I can’t be bothered with it or keeping track of the minutiae of data-keeping of my own identity in a timely fashion?
All kidding aside, if enough conservative women get stopped for this, you WILL see protests and complaints. I would give my laptop to see Cruz and company trying to explain why this law is so necessary and they may just have to suck it up for the good of ‘Murica for this round (and possibly more….)
Well, there you go. Not only is the Republican Party’s “War on Women” about controlling a woman’s reproductive health care choices, evidently it has been expanded to reducing her voting rights.
The rebranding effort continues.
@Pharoah Narim: This, a thousand times this. I believe an excellent way to work around the in-person disenfranchisement attacks would be for my fellow libs to adopt the absentee ballot approach. Another benefit is that unlike regular balloting in many places in the south, absentee ballots leave a paper trail.
@bill:
Of course, you mean except for the 2000 presidential election and the Florida “situation,” right?
The other problem you run into is getting an “unusual spelling” past the DMV (or other) idiots. I’ve given up on trying to get the Illinois DMV to keep the correct spelling of my name in whatever database they have for the yearly registration stuff. (The name on my driver’s license is fine, which is even more confusing.) I correct it, point out they can find adequate proof of my correction on my driver’s license, send the form off to them, and bang they reset it with the old erroneous spelling.
…and it’s not like my name with the correct spelling is all that unusual….
@James Joyner:
This whole quote, seconded.
@Jenos Idanian #13: Oh, c’mon, everybody, that was kind of funny.
What do you want bet that no woman in Texas was ever denied buying a gun because her married name didn’t match her ID.
If this stands, I hope Texas women go full-Bobbit on those prissy little legislators.
When did the white GOP male become such a fearful pack of crybabies? Unintended consequence from the recreational use of a certain little blue pill? These guys do have all the symptoms of a severe hormonal imbalance, after all.
@DrDaveT: Motor-Voter becomes Toter-Voter – I like it!
@Moosebreath:
I agree that this might be overturned quicker than if minorities only were targeted but that is only because woman make up a significant portion of the people that actually vote. It is obvious what their intentions are of this policy. It was not all that long ago in the history of this country that woman were allowed to vote. Woman has had to deal with dscrimination on many levels. This is well known. So it does not surprise me at all that this bill was INTENTIONALLY targeted toward woman (seeing that voter fruad was never a problem). It surprises me less that it comes from a southern state like Texas.
@al-Ameda:
Oh, you mean that election when the official Democratic policy was to try and prevent overseas military ballots from being counted?
Please link to this official Democratic Policy.
@Gavrilo:
Point me to that adopted policy, please.
Also, do you mean to say that ballots that are cast and sent after the voting deadline should be counted? That seems like voting fraud to me.
And…….crickets……
Gavrilo possibly refers to the military ballots voted and mailed after the election.
@ rudderpedals…
Yeah…but…but…but…Benghazi….
@C. Clavin: Votegazi!!!1!
@C. Clavin:
It’s called the Mark Herron memo. Google it, tough guy. It was an official Gore campaign memo sent to Democratic operatives in every Florida county detailing how to challenge and disqualify overseas ballots.
@rudderpedals:
Do you have any evidence that those ballots were mailed after the election?
@Gavrilo:
The date they were mailed was the basis for rejecting them. It would appear you haven’t read the memo you’re so concerned about.
@C. Clavin: awesome, so you think that women and minorities are just too ignorant to vote all by themselves? It’s super clavin to the rescue….what a joke.
Oh, thx grumpy for that double entendre about Texas and success! We r doing just fine without all of you whiners!
@bill:
The GOP keeps passing these laws that somehow manage to inadvertently keep the “wrong” people from voting, in order to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. And yet the GOP voters don’t seem to have a problem with it.
Corpus being primarily Hispanic probably votes too heavily Democratic for the plutocrats.
Voter fraud is nonexistent here.
@Gavrilo: Not to state the bleeding obvious, but wouldn’t the date stamp/postal mark be considered evidence of when it was mailed? Things going through any sort of postal or delivery service have a trail meant for tracking. Verifiable to say the least.
@James Joyner: In addition to what was pointed out above, the whole “we know everything about you” culture in America is very new. Think about this: when we were kids (you are about my age), how many people knew your name? Of those, how many didn’t actually know you.
Nowadays … (young whipper-snappers!)
@mattbernius: This has been concerning me, though at this point I have no solution for it either. My mother has Parkinsonians (med-speak for “it’s not Parkinson’s, but it sure looks like it!”) and really can’t get out to vote. How do they verify that it’s really her voting by absentee ballot — without inhibiting her right to vote?
*shrugs*
@Gavrilo: Do you have any evidence that those ballots were mailed after the election?
I got nothin. Jeb Bush ordered destruction of the ballots in spite of, or more likely because of, reputable offers of free archival storage.
@Tony W: You do need an ID to buy a gun and a NICS…
@ Gavrillo…
If your opinion is based on nosense and mis-information…then your opinion is nonsense…tough guy.
@ bill…
WTF are you talking about????????
@KM:
Possibly, but that’s not the only reason Democrats challenged overseas ballots. Read the memo. Democratic operatives were instructed to challenge all overseas ballots that had illegible postmarks or no postmark at all. They challenged ballots that didn’t have witness signatures or addresses. They challenged ballots in which the signatures weren’t a perfect match for the ones on the county voter lists.
The whole Democrat strategy in Florida in 2000 was to ignore the letter of the law in order to make sure “every vote was counted.” (Hence, manual recounts in certain counties that, by an incredible coincidence, happened to be heavily Democratic.) Yet, when it came to overseas ballots, suddenly the law had to be followed explicitly and any ballot that was the least bit questionable was challenged.
Let’s not pretend that Democrats have any integrity when it comes to ensuring that no one is disenfranchised.
@Rick DeMent: I saw a dude who was denied because the name on his ID didn’t match the name with the SS number listed on the DB for the NICS check. The misspelling was only one letter but he ended up having to leave with no gun. No clue what ended up happening but I guess a lot of effort on his part to get the spelling fixed.
Gavrillo…
You are ignoring that the memo was completely in line with the Katherine Harris policy.
And that the Florida AG…a Democrat reversed the memo.
In other words…you are full of shit.
Quelle suprise!!!!
WTF is it with Texas? A friend of mine just told me a store in Texas wouldn’t sell him beer because he only has a Virginia ID. Crazy.
@Mikey: I have no idea. I live in a college town and even there I would have some issues with my Illinois License. Speaking of Illinois for some reason they refuse to remove me from the voter registration rolls… I even got called up for jury duty recently..
The alcohol sales laws are pretty silly too.
@C. Clavin:
So, Katherine Harris was a stupid, bumbling, too-much-makeup wearing, Republican hack in 2000, but when it came to her policy on overseas ballots, she was on the money. Hahaha. Got it.
@Gavrillo: Ok, last one before work – couldn’t let this go:
Possibly, but that’s not the only reason Democrats challenged overseas ballots. Read the memo. Democratic operatives were instructed to challenge all overseas ballots that had illegible postmarks or no postmark at all. They challenged ballots that didn’t have witness signatures or addresses. They challenged ballots in which the signatures weren’t a perfect match for the ones on the county voter lists.
WTF?? That’s what they should do to verify authenticity!!
Really?! You, of the party that demands voter ID to prevent fraud, is complaining steps were taken to prevent fraud? “Every vote counts” doesn’t mean “every attempt is a legitimate one”, or at least, that’s what cons have been preaching for years now. If the ballot is good, fine. If not, then what’s your problem? As pointed out, absentee ballots are THE way to cheat the system. As you say, the law is the law and these were lawfully WRONG.
I’m not defending Democrats here. I’m just pointing out your blatant hypocrisy. If you are truly pro-checking every vote and voter, then this was a win for you that erroneous ballots were caught.
The only reasons I can think of that a pro-ID person such as yourself would object is (1) you know there’s something hinky there and are protesting getting caught or (2) abandoning your moral stance of voter integrity to whine about how “not fair” life is that someone followed your precious law when it didn’t benefit you.
Gavrillo…
Your original comment said it was Democratic policy.
It was also Republican policy.
And that policy was to disallow ballots whose source and timeliness could not be verified.
And you have a problem with that???
WTF???
Are you really that stupid??? Is it possible to be that stupid????
@Gavrilo: Eh. I adhere to Napoleon’s axiom: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
@Mikey: I’ve got an even better one: a store refusing to admit as ID a valid US passport.
@bill:
Low hanging fruit and all that, and I am sure SOMEBODY already said this but JUST IN CASE….
GW Bush, 2000. Fwuck you
@grumpy realist: Grumpy, you do realize that the state of Illinois is run by, and largely for, its huge democrat majority? And they set the rules for the state’s employees? and “enforce” them? and protect the union employees who seem to be unable to do the simplest things? Most of the employees I come in contact with are quite competent and interested in serving well. But if management is supposed to “own” poor performance, you should look to your party.
@Matt: Mike, you’ve been voting democrat all this time, but since you are alive, you are allowed to vote only once. Illinois and purge rolls of the dead and emigrated? Not a chance!
Doesn’t anybody here think that the reason republicans in Texas are making it difficult for women to vote is that Wendy Davis is going to run for governor in 2014?
@David M: will you please try to explain how showing an id to vote is a bad thing. without telling us that minorities are just too dumb to know how to vote and all that…and need special treatment to exercise that right? really, it’s lame- it defies logic but that never seems to matter to some people.
i was asked for id a few years back- i forgot to register with my new address and i couldn’t vote, my bad. end of the day, i didn’t feel “disenfranchised” by my failure to register- and didn’t scream like i was being discriminated against.
@bill: I’ve had to show my ID to vote since I moved down here (Texas) including well before this current law.
@bill:
There is no reason to show ID, there is no in person voter fraud problem. And if there is no actual problem, it’s fairly obvious the actual attempt is to disenfranchise the “wrong” voters.
Minorities are less likely to have the ID to start with, and are more likely to live in a county without a DMV office (Texas Lawsuit). Again, there is no voter fraud problem, so just what are the GOP trying to accomplish?
@bill:
Really? A single google search tells me otherwise:
Gingrich campaign worker pleads guilty to election fraud. Okay, but that was a Republican primary, maybe it doesn’t count if it’s fraud against your own team?
Oh, Florida found Republicans committing voter fraud. Funny, this is absolutely identical to the kind of “voter fraud” that ACORN was accused of. Actually, this is voter registration fraud, but most Republicans I talked to couldn’t seem to understand the difference. Maybe it’s easier to grasp the distinction when a Republican does it.
But here it comes up again in Massachusetts and wouldn’t you know, it involves absentee ballots.
Indiana‘s secretary of state, a Republican, found guilty of voter fraud.
Really, before you make a claim like that, spend a few minutes with Google. You’ll avoid embarrassment.
@bill:
My comment is moderation, and I’m guessing it’s because I provided too many links to instances of Republicans being accused or convicted of voter fraud. It happens.
@ David M, @bill:
Of course it is. After all, look at the complaints on this thread. Absentee ballots, where you don’t physically see the person vote and thus have the easiest time being faked/manipulated, are not considered to be a priority and Democrats are castigated for following proper verification procedures. In-person voting, where you can see and judge the person, gets the most attention. They can’t really tell you’re a ______________ on paper (filling in with appropriate despised group of the day).
See, why take the easy route and fake hundreds of votes when you can gather people up and put them in a line and trust you’ll get the same result? Why spend all that time, effort and money when you don’t have to?
This whole thing smacks of anti-Americanism in its truest sense – the desire to stop someone from engaging in the most basic of civil duties solely because you don’t like them. Whine about illegals all you want but if you don’t give a crap what is the obviously and systemically weakest part of the chain in favor of the more visible but less forageable aspects, you are in essence admitting to stealing people votes. You don’t want to stop fraud, you want to stop THEM. That’s why no one believes you and why the public doesn’t by that crap. Admit it, own it and move on.
Oh and be careful who you disenfranchise – it might end up being the voters you were trying to keep….
@Craig Davis: What surprises me is that on the whole, my experience with the Illinois has been very efficient and pleasant. It’s just in this one area that they’re falling down.
Oops, A GOP precinct chairman in North Carolina let the cat out of the bag.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nc-goper-fired-for-making-racist-comments-on-daily-show-video
@Gavrilo:
So if the votes are cast after the election and mailed to the States after the election, they should be counted?
@bill:
There is virtually no in-person voter fraud, yet Republicans across the country are moving to enact laws to solve this non-existent problem, primarily because it potentially causes a diminished voter turn out for Democratic Party voters. Yet, the probability of ACTUAL voter fraud lies in the absentee voter ballot process. So what’s the GOP solution there? None, because a majority of absentee ballots cast are Republican voters.
@al-Ameda:
Reading is fundamental. If overseas ballots postmarked after the election were the only ones that the Democrats were challenging, then you might have a point. They were not. The type of ballots you refer to were only a small fraction of the overseas ballots challenged by the Democrats. Democrats were challenging ballots that had no postmark or had illegible postmarks. They challenged ballots that didn’t have signatures on the envelopes or didn’t have witness signatures. Please explain how a soldier stationed overseas has any control over whether or not the APO postmarks his mail. Tell me why his vote shouldn’t count because he didn’t know he had to sign and date his envelope or get a witness to sign his envelope when the Democrats were arguing that people who didn’t know that they needed to punch a hole completely through the ballot should have their votes counted.
@Gavrilo:
Neither a soldier nor any of us controls the post marking of any document. Democrats were well within their rights to question ballots coming from those bases, and why not? In elections dates and deadlines matter.
It does not matter now, it’s moot. Justice Scalia delivered the election to Bush and the rest is history.
@al-Ameda:
You’re full of shite. Democrats were perfectly willing to disenfranchise certain voters if it would help them win. Own it, and stop pretending to be on the side of the angels now.
@Gavrilo: So you’re saying that people who are too stupid to read instructions and return a ballot correctly should have their votes counted as long as they are probably Republicans, but if they’re “too stupid” to have an ID, then they shouldn’t have their votes counted as long as they’re probably Democrats?
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I figured.
@Gavrilo:
I do not accept your implication that deadlines and dates are irrelevant when it comes to voting, especially when it pertains to presidential elections.
By the way, how does counting illegal ballots – that is, ballots cast or dated after the stated deadlines – disenfranchise “certain voters”?
@Kari Q: been there, done that- if you googled it you saw how much was there already. but if you had to go all the way back to newt, wow.
@al-Ameda: yes, the sour grapes make for bad whine. even the nyt admitted bush had more votes. just imagine if we had a president gore….yikes.
@Mikey: they must have thought he was a minority or a woman- better safe than sorry!
@David M: so once again- why is it so hard for people to get an id? and why does everyone in here seem to think that minorities and women are too stupid to figure out how to vote? it’s very condescending.
You’re confused, you poor thing…it’s not that most people here think that minorities and women are too stupid to figure out to vote, but rather, most people here think that Republicans are doing everything they can to make it as hard as possible for minorities and women to vote because everyone knows that when those two groups vote in large numbers, Republicans lose…
@bill:
You do realize that nationwide, Gore had over 500,000 more votes than did Bush?
Gore won the popular vote.
In retrospect, I don’t see how we could have ended up in a worse place with Gore than with Bush.
@al-Ameda: the electoral college is good when it goes your way- he lost fla., that was the deal-gore would have been a 4 and out, obama would still be a state senator.
@An Interested Party: if i’m confused why isn’t someone trying to make it easier for me to vote? nice try, still doesn’t wash away the “we need to protect the stupid voters” diatribe.
Oh pardon me, your problem is worse than simply being confused…you’re delusional…