This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. If you're in the U.S. I highly reccomend being a poll worker in a contentious district in a swing state if you ever get the chance. I was in a suburb of Denver last election and saw all kinds of shenanigans, from people pulling fire alarms to clear out the polling places to people walking aaround with laptops "checking voter registration" (actually just lying to people to get them to go home).
The fact is that there is a concerted, coordinated effort to tamper with the vote every single election. I have no way of knowing whether this specific incident was malicious, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if it was.
That's just disturbing. The last time I went to vote I walked to a local school, waited politely in a queue, went and filled in my paper ballot and went home. A couple of people there were monitoring but nobody tried to influence or interrupt or anything. It was very British.
I can attest to similar actions as well in Nashville, IN. We've had a very nasty election cycle, given the (R) Governer has stepped down, and with the shenanigans with Mourlock (misspelled correctly; I am not an eloi).
At the polling place, there were quiet conversations and line chatter, yet was very professional and well, British.
Even when I was a poll worker during the 2000 election, it still was decent and honorable proceedings, even if the campaigning was not.
Not only that, but it is grounds to apply Section 2 of the 14th Amendment. Not many people seem to be aware of the second clause. Basically, it says that any state found to be denying citizens their vote will have their representation in Congress proportionately decreased in accordance with how many people were denied their voting right.
All this nonsense about voter IDs, altering votes, making it difficult for people to vote in contentious areas (e.g., the Florida districts who have already filed suits in the last couple days) and the like should really be handled by applying the 14th Amendment. Or at least by the executive making a clear statement that it will do so.
Any attempt to disenfranchise people should be met with Section 2.
When the election is decided by under 2%, a targeted denial that is enough to swing the election is small enough that very few states would lose any representation at all in Congress.
Besides, it is hard to convince a government to apply section 2 if the party in power is the one that was doing the disenfranchising.
I could be wrong, but the Congress does not and would not execute the amendment's clauses. That is the executive's job. Thus it'd pretty much be the DOJ, I'd think, stepping up to make the threat, calling the states' attention to the fact that there are consequences set forth in the constitution they cannot fight against.
Your representation of that clause makes it seem the clause has it a bit backwards - how does reducing the representation of a state help to counter the reduced representation of the citizens of that state; doesn't the amendment then enforce the goals of those who're trying to remove representation of individuals at the _national_ level?
If Florida is a state of party 2 voters then party 1 gains by preventing voting, not only do party 2 voters get removed from consideration in the state but the state gets weakened and so support of party 2's ends in congress is reduced?
Or am I misunderstanding? It's the first time I've heard of this part of the 14th amendment.
The idea behind it isn't party focused at all. Each state is represented in the House based on population. If, according to the Amendment (and keep in mind when it was written and the reasons behind it), a state acts in a way that denies legal citizens the right to vote, its allocated number of representatives is to be decreased according to the population that was denied the vote. The effect is to then decrease the state's overall say in national governing, with the desired end being that no state would allow voting to be denied, else they lose whatever power they have in the House. This means fewer votes to help push an agenda, to earmark money back to the state, etc.
It's not meant to punish a party, as the House isn't organized to proportionally represent party membership. So, in effect, the amendment wants to ensure that if states deny the vote by N citizens, that they are then recognized as having T citizens (total population) - N citizens (who were denied).
There was also this, a few weeks ago: http://www.nationalmemo.com/man-connected-to-virginia-gop-ar...
The fact is that there is a concerted, coordinated effort to tamper with the vote every single election. I have no way of knowing whether this specific incident was malicious, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if it was.