Category Archives: Voting Rights
Aug 24 March Gathering New Energy: Help Us With The Buses!
by Tina Shannon, President
PA 12th CD Chapter, Progressive Democrats of America
July 24, 2013
Friends, You’ve probably all heard about the 50th Anniversary March on Washington by now. At first it seemed the March might be a well-deserved but merely historic commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr’s magnificent I Have a Dream speech.
As time passed though, it became clear that many folks were quite aware of how relevant Dr. King’s words were to our present time. We are having our voting rights curtailed. We need jobs. The important institutions of civil society, such as schools and social services are being cut and even eliminated.
Then the incident in Florida made painfully clear to our entire nation how strongly racism still exists. Trayvon Martin is a black teen-ager cut down before his life was even launched, and he is only one of many with more to come. The whole country now must confront the truth about ALEC, the right wing think tank creating harmful & divisive legislation for corporations to foist upon Republican State lawmakers. We must also face the fact that Stand Your Ground laws are in place throughout the country allowing scared racists to confront those they perceive as different and dangerous and kill them if they feel threatened.
So, on top of all the economic and political problems we face, laws like this are being implemented that destroy the very fabric of our society.
It’s time to say, enough.
Folks all over the country are reserving buses and getting their friends & family to go to Washington to deliver this message.
We have reserved & filled 4 buses in Beaver County already. Enough people are expressing interest that we have reserved a 5th bus. We are currently raising funds to pay for it.
The cost of the 5th bus is $2400. One of you has already very generously donated $500. Only $1900 more to go. Please donate whatever you can. If everyone gives $10 or $20, we’ve got this.
Please sign up to go on the bus also. I think this March shaping up to be a historic event all on it’s own.
I often hear people ask, “When are we in this country going to get fed up & take to the streets?” Good question. It might be August 24th.
Let me know.
Tina Shannon
(724)-683-1925
August 24, 2013: March for Freedom, Jobs and Voting Rights. We Need EVERYONE OUT to Defend the Dream
Our 12th CD PDA Chapter is part of this Committee. We are working to make this an important national event. HELP US FILL THE BUSES!
Contact Tina Shannon if you want to go,
via email or 724-683-1925
"I HAVE A DREAM"
50th Anniversary
March on Washington
Come with the MLK 50th Anniversary Committee
to a March on Washington
August 24th 2013
to continue the fight for jobs and voting rights
Leaving from IBEW Hall, Sassafras Lane in Vanport/Beaver
Departure time : 3am Returning: 11pm
More Arrested as North Carolina Legislature Protests vs. Austerity and Racism Continue
Click photo for video
By CHRIS KARDISH
Beaver County Blue via AP
May 6, 2013 – RALEIGH — More than two dozen members of the NAACP and other activists were arrested Monday as part of continuing protests of Republican policies in the state capital, bringing to dozens the number of nonviolent demonstrators facing charges.
The demonstrators were arrested Monday by Raleigh and General Assembly police. The number of arrests, as well as the size of the crowd that turned out to offer support, grew from last Monday’s demonstrations, when 17 were arrested.
General Assembly Police Chief Jeff Weaver said law enforcement officials decided to admit them despite last week’s arrests while they determine what the law permits. He said those arrested most recently will face the same charges of second-degree trespassing, failure to disperse on command and the displaying of signs or placards, which violates building rules.
The group arrested Monday included Barber’s 20-year-old son, William Joseph Barber III, a student at North Carolina Central University; William Chafe, former dean of Arts and Sciences at Duke University; Robert Korstad, a professor of public policy and history at Duke; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, an historian at the University of North Carolina; Charles van der Horst, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and members of the social justice group Raging Grannies.
“I started in 1954 at the Youth March for Integrated Schools in New York,” said Vicki Ryder of Raging Grannies. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.”
Pennsylvania Republicans To Introduce New Election-Rigging Plan
Republicans in other states are wavering, but not our die-hard right wingers
By Ian Millhiser
ThinkProgress.org
Feb 4, 2013 – Last month, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus called up “states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red” to rig future presidential elections by changing the way electoral votes are allocated.
Under Priebus’ proposal, blue states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would stop awarding electoral votes to the winner of the state as a whole, and instead would award them one-by-one to the winner of each congressional district. Meanwhile, red states would continue to award 100 percent of their electors to the Republican. This plan appears to have lost steam, however, as several top Republicans in key states announced they will not support it.
Even as Republicans in key states such as Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Virginia came out against this election-rigging plan, however, Pennsylvania Republicans have been eerily quite. We now know why. According to the New Castle News a local paper in western Pennsylvania, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) will introduce legislation this month that will effectively give away a large chuck of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to the Republican presidential candidate, regardless of who wins the state as a whole.
How This Election-Rigging Plan Works
Unlike the plan Priebus backs, the New Republican Plan would not tie electoral votes to congressional districts. Instead, it would award the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes proportionally according to the popular vote, with two additional electoral votes going to the winner of the state as a whole. If the New Republican Plan had been in effect in 2012, Mitt Romney would have received 8 of Pennsylvania’ 20 electoral votes, despite losing the state by a substantial margin.
Continue reading Pennsylvania Republicans To Introduce New Election-Rigging Plan
No End to Republican Plans to Rig the Vote
The GOP’s New Electoral College Scheme Includes Pennsylvania
By Reid Wilson
Beaver County Blue via National Journal
Dec 17, 2012 – Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party’s path to the Oval Office.
Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party’s majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.
Already, two states — Maine and Nebraska — award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. The candidate who wins the most votes statewide takes the final two at-large electoral votes. Only once, when President Obama won a congressional district based in Omaha in 2008, has either of those states actually split their vote.
But if more reliably blue states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were to award their electoral votes proportionally, Republicans would be able to eat into what has become a deep Democratic advantage.
Here We Go Again, Get Ready for Round Two
Judge Expects Summer Trial on Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Law
By Karen Langley
Beaver County Blue via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
HARRISBURG, Dec 13, 2012 – The legal battle over the Pennsylvania voter ID law is set to continue for months after a judge this morning said he anticipates a summer trial on a request for a permanent injunction.
The law requiring photo identification at the polls was the subject of an extended courtroom battle that resulted in an order lifting the requirement for the election last month while postponing a decision on permanently stopping the law.
Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, who issued the temporary injunction, said he expects to issue an order in the coming days scheduling a trial for the summer. The schedule would be intended to allow time for the Supreme Court to review the decision before the November 2013 elections.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Patrick Cawley, arguing for the state, suggested holding the trial sooner so the future of the law could be resolved before the May 21 municipal primary. But attorneys for the parties challenging the law argued more time is needed for legal discovery.
The parties referred to the possibility of a hearing in the spring to determine whether the law will be enforced during the May primary election. Karen Langley: klangley@post-gazette.com or 717-787-2141 .
Western PA Labor Lawyer Checks Out Election in Venezuela
Robin Alexander, second from right
In Venezuela for the Election, I Learned a Lesson in Democracy
By Robin Alexander
Beaver County Blue via UE News
I had the opportunity to accompany* the presidential election in Venezuela as part of a delegation of 245 members of government, election commissions, journalists, professors, judges and representatives of women’s, human rights, and other NGOs from across the world.** As our election approaches and I have watched with outrage the efforts by the Republican Party to limit access and the right to vote here in Pennsylvania and a variety of other states, I find myself wishing that our system here in the US was as fair and democratic as that in Venezuela.
Elections are held on Sundays to make it easier for working people to vote. A major outreach effort has resulted in the registration of 96.5% of eligible voters. Although voting is not compulsory, 81% of the population voted in the last election. Sophisticated technology is used to eliminate all possibilities of fraud or manipulation of data. In addition, the voting machines issue a receipt that can be viewed by the voter to confirm that his or her vote has been properly registered. These papers are then placed by the voters in more traditional ballot boxes and, after the polls close, an astounding 54% of those boxes are counted manually to ensure that the final tape from the voting machine is correct.
The election was hard fought, but Hugo Chávez was re-elected with an 11% margin and the process was so unquestionably democratic that the opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles, conceded defeat gracefully, stating “The will of the people is sacred.”
Continue reading Western PA Labor Lawyer Checks Out Election in Venezuela
Deny the GOP It’s Secret Weapon: Progressives Who Are Dispirited and Disengaged
Three Reasons Why The Race Is So Close – Nine Reasons Why Obama Will Win
By Robert Creamer
Progressive America Rising via HuffPost
Oct 21, 2012 – As Election Day grows closer, some pundits seem almost breathless in their prediction that the Presidential election will be close. Well, of course it will be close. It has been obvious from the campaign’s first day that it would be close. But there is overwhelming evidence that President Obama will win.
Why is the race so close?
1). First and foremost, the Republican’s trickledown, let-Wall-Street-run-wild policies sent the economy into a catastrophic recession just as Obama took office. This was not your run of the mill business cycle recession. It was caused by a financial collapse the likes of which American had not seen since the Great Depression.
The historic evidence is very clear that whenever there is a recession induced by a financial collapse, it take years for an economy to recover. American did not fully recover from the Great Depression itself until World War II – almost twelve years after the stock market collapsed.
Had the Republicans remained in office and responded as Republican President Hoover did in 1929, the same fate could have awaited America once again. But instead, the Obama Administration moved immediately to stimulate the economy and shore up the financial system – and especially to rescue the auto industry – using policies that in most cases the GOP opposed.
Those policies have set the economy on a path toward sustained growth. But the Republicans have been hell bent on stalling growth with the expressed purpose of defeating Obama this fall. They have sabotaged the economy by preventing even a vote on the Americans Jobs Act that most economists believe would create another 1.7 million jobs and would have prevented massive layoffs in state and local governments.
Mitt Romney is like an arsonist who complains that the fire department isn’t putting out his fire fast enough – and then tries to convince America to allow him to take over the effort armed with buckets of gasoline – the same failed policies that caused the fire in the first place.
Continue reading Deny the GOP It’s Secret Weapon: Progressives Who Are Dispirited and Disengaged
Get Out the Vote. Especially Women, Youth and Trade Unionists. It Matters…
New Poll Puts Presidential Race As A Dead Heat Between President Obama And Mitt Romney
NBC News calls it a 47-47 tie
By Glenn Blain
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Oct 21, 2012 – The race for the White House is a dead heat.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday showed President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney tied at 47% with barely two weeks to go before election day.
Obama had held a 49-46 lead among likely voters in the most recent previous NBC/WSJ poll, which was conducted before any the presidential debates.
The new poll revealed Obama with a wider lead among all registered voters, 49% to 44% but showed his support weakening in key demographics.
Among women voters, Obama’s lead had slipped to its slimmest margin yet this year, 51% to 43%. Romney leads among men 53%-43%. Mitt Romney lost some ground gained by first debate, according to polls, but still doing strong.
Continue reading Get Out the Vote. Especially Women, Youth and Trade Unionists. It Matters…
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 