Iowa passes new voter suppression laws.

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https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/08/iowa-governor-kim-reynolds-signs-law-shortening-early-voting-closing-polls-earlier-election-day/6869317002/

Closing the polls earlier is part of that effort. Now what “fraud” is that supposed to stop? That working voters now have a shorter time to dash to the polls after work seems pretty obvious effort to reduce participation. Virtually no fraud was found or proven in 2020. And the main reasons that drove cases to SCOTUS were about changing voting rules by the state. So how is targeting individuals anything more than suppression? The GOP are chicken poop petty tyrants who can’t sell their agenda, so they cheat.

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Published by lenrothman

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49 thoughts on “Iowa passes new voter suppression laws.”

  1. RE: “So how is targeting individuals anything more than suppression?”

    You ask the question wrong. It would be better to ask:

    • How is reducing early voting from 29 to 20 days “suppression”?

    • How is closing the polls at 8:00 p.m. instead of 9:00 p.m. “suppression”?

    • How is requiring mail-in ballots to be received by the time the polls close on election day “suppression”?

    The Constitution gives Iowa the right to implement the election rules it wishes. The changes described in the source for your post seem reasonable.

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    1. Suppression is merely the effort to reduce the number of eligible voters from participating in the election. Cutting back access hours, preventing or discouraging absentee ballots and closing the window for mail in ballots will do that by design.

      Not rocket science, just GOP tactics since “night riders” are so last century.

      Liked by 3 people

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      1. RE: “Cutting back access hours, preventing or discouraging absentee ballots and closing the window for mail in ballots will do that by design.”

        Not necessarily. The changes described in the source for your post seem reasonable.

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        1. “The changes described in the source for your post seem reasonable.”

          Uh, no they do not. They do not address in any way the stated (but obviously phony) goal of making the election more secure.

          For example, is it “reasonable” to make it a crime to distribute water to people stuck for hours in a voting line? Is it “reasonable” to ban early voting on Sundays? Are “souls to the polls” efforts by African-American churches really a threat to election integrity?

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          1. RE: “For example, is it ‘reasonable’ to make it a crime to distribute water to people stuck for hours in a voting line? Is it ‘reasonable’ to ban early voting on Sundays?”

            Neither of those things is mentioned in the source article. The three changes I highlighted are mentioned in the source and seem reasonable to me.

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        1. “ Using this clause, both parties routinely expanded their majorities during the Gilded Age by challenging the minority’s narrow or suspect victories and replacing them with their own or declaring the seat vacant, provoking a time-consuming special election.”

          That is effectively what the last president tried to do. And you had no problem with that. So what’s your beef?

          As far as “finding” votes, you still believe the Big Lie, don’t you?

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          2. You don’t consider a violent attack to force the VP to break the law and overturn an election cheating? This was the plan of your ex-president from day one.

            This last election was done by the book and was the most transparent in history. Republicans changed the election rules, conservative judges ruled there was little fraud and you still accuse Democrats of cheating.

            Typical.

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          3. My problem is the only way Republicans can win is to make laws that make it difficult for voters to participate.

            By the way, the only organized cheating was in NC-09. By the Republican. Remember? Or is that too inconvenient for you.

            They may not cheat, but they change the rules so it doesn’t appear they are cheating by using buzzwords like “election integrity” and “prevention of fraud” (which has been deemed so miniscule as to not even make a dent in ANY election result.)

            Liked by 1 person

          4. “My problem is that Democrats seem to have no problem with cheating.”

            Uh, what “cheating” are you talking about?
            Making “errors” purging hundreds of thousands of voter registrations?
            Closing down voting sites in urban areas?
            Implementing pointless obstacles for REGISTERED voters to overcome?
            Imposing poll taxes instead of complying with the state Constitution?
            Making it a crime to give water to voters stuck in voting line?
            Racial Gerrymandering?
            Violent attempts to stop the final counting of ballots?

            Oh, wait. Those are all Republican tricks. So what is it that you have in mind?

            Liked by 2 people

  3. “Conservatives” hate democracy. Because they cannot accept the fact that the era of unquestioned white male hegemony is fast fading. They can boogie and tap dance until they turn blue, but this is really what it is all about.

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          1. We survived a violent attempt to overthrow the elected government by the right, so for now the republic is still holding.

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          4. “I want a republic and it is slipping away.”

            You mean you did not like the result of the last election? Too bad. Elections have consequences.

            As for the pipeline, there are a variety of laws passed by Congress that give the Executive Branch the authority to review and approve such a project. The same authority used by Trump with his overturning the previous administration’s ruling.

            Liked by 1 person

          7. Your disregard for the very concept of rights is duly noted.

            But there are many more transgressions involved than the 2nd Amendment.

            For a start, the withdrawal of the permit for Keystone robs the owners of their investments made in good faith.

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          8. You are very quick to accuse, but the fact is that I too am a gun owner and I believe that my right to do so is a Constitutional right. Where I differ from you is what I believe to be reasonable regulations that might make this country safer. For example, I would like to see military weapons and oversize magazines – like the ones the would be assassin was caught with outside the VP’s residence yesterday was equipped with – should be banned. I also believe that we absolutely need to control weapons with at least the same care and diligence that we deploy to control who owns and operates automobiles. That means truly universal background checks, training and gun registration.

            The investors who put money into the Keystone Pipeline did so with the full knowledge that it might not get the permits that it would need in the end. The idea that somehow their losing money on this bet that Trump would – somehow – stay in office was an abrogation of their Constitutional rights is a dog that will not hunt.

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          9. Registration enables confiscation, ans is a non-starter.

            The Keystone investors had the permits, Biden rescinded them, something he may not even have the authority to do which is why 21 states are going to court

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          10. So we go to court, as they certainly can do. Then we generally abide by judicial rulings after appeals as deemed proper.

            See how the rule of law works? It is designed to discourage violence, insurrections and other non-legal attempts to get what someone wants.

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          11. “Registration enables confiscation, and is a non-starter.”

            For you. For those of us without irrational emotions about our firearms, it is simply common sense. The lack of Universal background checks makes almost all of our efforts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and lunatics pointless. And Universal background checks require records of who is supposed to own what.

            Liked by 1 person

          12. “The Keystone investors had the permits”

            Actually, the permits were still be litigated when President Biden restored the original decision.

            Ever heard of the Boy who cried wolf? The lesson applies to these Republican AGs who are suing all the time. They have very narrow ideas about what is Constitutional now that Dear Leader has been kicked out.

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      2. “Any rational person hates democracy.”

        Well, thanks for being so candid about your belief system.

        Was Winston Churchill not a “rational person?”

        “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time . . .”

        As for protecting the rights of the individual, we have a Constitutional system that explicitly does that. If the government infringes on your actual (as opposed to imagined) rights you have recourse in the courts.

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        1. And we know, of course, that if you don’t like the outcomes of the judicial system, it is ok to attempt an overthrow of the government…if you are a conservative.

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          1. Are you whining about your guns again?

            The Democratic Party has been about protecting the rights of all sorts of people in all sorts of ways. The fact that you do not like those people does not change the facts of history.

            Liked by 1 person

          5. The economy is many orders of magnitude more complex than it was in 1789. Your idea of overthrowing the last two hundred years of jurisprudence in favor of some unstated “textual meaning” is pretty much empty words.

            Liked by 1 person

      3. RE: “Any rational person hates democracy.”

        Tyranny of the majority is not the only reason to be skeptical. Political theorists have also identified political ignorance and Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem as problems which make democracy unworkable.

        Since democracy is inherently imperfect, it is best for government to be limited and decentralized. That way, the errors and corruption that democracy invites will be minimized.

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        1. One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, is that our system of representation is too unwieldy.

          Congressional representatives have about 750,000 constituents. The amount of money needed to campaign for office is so high that the average American has no effective voice in his own governance.

          There are a lot of issues other than that, of course, but keeping constituents at arms length unless monied has crippled the balance of power.

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          1. RE: “One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, is that our system of representation is too unwieldy.”

            Jonah Goldberg has made that argument at National Review some years ago. He would like to see the House of Representatives expanded to several thousand members to make each member more directly responsive to (smaller numbers of) constituents.

            But such a fix would make House operations less efficient by a) increasing the number of legislative issues raised, b) making it harder to assemble governing coalitions, and c) increasing turnover rates. Goldberg believes these predictable deficiencies would restore Congress’s institutional role of accomplishing little.

            It would, of course, be simpler and less expensive, if the House just consciously tried to do less.

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  4. “Virtually no fraud was found..” and virtually no one sped on I264 or I64 in the morning and afternoon. Why?? Because no one was looking and the laws weren’t being ENFORCED.

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    1. “Because no one was looking and the laws weren’t being ENFORCED.”

      Laughable nonsense. The Republican Party has spent many, many millions of public money “looking” for election fraud and found nothing of substance anywhere. And, very clearly, the laws WERE being enforced as evidenced by the failure of dozens of challenges in court that said they were not.

      But, let me note you are not alone in believing utter nonsense. . .

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  5. This morning’s PRINT edition VP had two interesting takes on the voting battle currently taking place in the country.

    The first is from one of Mr. Roberts’ really smart religious thinkers, Ross Douthat (who just happens to write opinion pieces at that right wing media giant, The New York Times)

    The other is from hte aforementioned Jonah Goldberg.

    https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/jonah-goldberg-parties-have-taken-wrong-lessons-from-2020-election/

    Both of them seemed quite sensible and took some (OK, most) of the rhetoric from either side and put it away.

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    1. Great links that explore the “panic” over elections. If the stats are correct, turnout was not affected much either way except for the fact that it was a very interesting election.

      And the real reasons for the emphasis?

      “ No, ha-ha, just kidding, we aren’t going to compromise, not when there’s an apocalypse to fund-raise off.”

      Just like the ex-president lining his pockets with funds to pay “legal expenses” challenging the election. (The “lawyers” haven’t even been paid yet, have they?)

      Does this mean we can count on an additional plank in the Republican platform? God, guns, gays and voting rights?

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