It’s concerning that he wants to use the election judge role to “advance progressive causes.”
Election judges should be the most non-partisan role in government.
Election judges should be the most non-partisan role in government.
I think your concern may be a little overblown.
> "This actually will be a great way for me to be more involved in my neighborhood and work actively toward more progressive change," Garcia told The Hill.
Context seems to indicate he was serious about this statement.
His tweets are tongue-in-cheek but that's not a reason to dismiss everything he says in the article.
1 Methods
1.1 Impediments to voter registration
1.2 Photo ID laws
1.3 Purging of voter rolls
1.4 Limitations on early voting
1.5 Felon disenfranchisement
1.6 Transgender disenfranchisement
1.7 Disinformation about voting procedures
1.8 Inequality in Election Day resources
1.9 Closure of DMV offices
1.10 Caging lists
1.11 Gerrymandering
1.12 Jim Crow laws
1.13 Off-year elections
https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/fighting-voter-sup...
In 2017, at least 99 bills that restrict access to registration and voting were introduced in 31 states. Thirty-two states have some form of voter ID law currently in effect. These ID laws don’t affect all people equally: people of color, low-income people, the elderly, students, and people with disabilities disproportionately lack the types of IDs that states deem acceptable.
http://projectcensored.org/the-right-to-vote-a-candid-histor...
In 2012, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) influenced several states to pass restrictive voter ID laws, which particularly impacted low-income voters, people with disabilities, and voters of color. Electoral reform is needed, López reports. Elections and the fight for voting rights are tools to be used to bring about revolutionary change and real democracy for the multiracial working class.
There has not been any corporate media coverage of this story as of March 19, 2012.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/voter-suppression...
...The Ohio law removed voters from eligibility for sitting out three election cycles and failing to respond to a state warning that their eligibility was at risk; this was proof enough, the state said, that the voters had moved elsewhere. Ohio says the law is no more than housekeeping, an effort to tidy up the rolls, not voter suppression. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled last September that it violated federal law protecting registrants who choose not to vote....
(One of several specific measures noted.)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activ...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/29/us_voting_machines_...
Voting machine hacks are wholesale to voter fraud's retail, and can swing far more votes, within or across multiple states. Systemic suppression methods, including role exclusion, gerrymandering, and the like, are also similarly far more efficient.
A high vote count is not an unmitigated good.
Just as the suppression of votes by women, ownership rights of men over wives and children, sale of useless (or harmful) patent medicines, and the wholesale slaughter of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the mentally retarded, and others in Germany in the 1930s-1940s was, in the strict sense, legal.
What is also the case, however, in the specific instance of the voter-suppression methods listed is:
1. That there is record of them being specifically adopted with the goal of dissuading specific elements of the public from voting.
2. That similar methods have previously been found unconstitutional and/or illegal.
A thing being "legal" is not the only test of its goodness. A thing being strictly legal today is not an assurance that it will be legal tomorrow. A thing having a history of strongly resembling tactics used to, and being specifically presented as a way of, disenfranchising voters in ways that have been found specifically unconstitutional also generally bodes poorly for it.
There also a ban on any election material within a certain distance of a poling place though blank colours are allowed for poll watchers.
Reminds me I must see about volunteering for the next election
I'd also imagine the powers of an election judge are pretty limited. It sounds like they're the Philly equivalent of the person who runs an individual polling place in NY. Not much wiggle room for causes of any sort.
"This actually will be a great way for me to be more involved in my neighborhood and work actively toward more progressive change. I actually have a background in community organizing, and while I'm not entirely sure how this position could align with that, it seems like an opportunity to find some ways to at least more deeply connect with my neighbors."
He's talking about becoming more active in his community on a personal level.
He didn't say that.
And the other similar wording doesn't quite match "advance progressive causes", and sounds like commentary by the newspaper itself:
> Garcia is hopeful that the position will allow for pursuing progressive goals for the district through community organizing.
Still, I wonder why you'd think the "work actively toward more progressive change" quote couldn't be paraphrased as “advance progressive causes.”
But my real objection was the preceding bit, "he wants to use the election judge role to..."
The full quote continues "I actually have a background in community organizing, and while I'm not entirely sure how this position could align with that, it seems like an opportunity to find some ways to at least more deeply connect with my neighbors." It seems clear to me that he's talking about being more active in his community on a personal level, not contemplating electoral fraud.
You know what, I'm really tired of this. This idea that a role is "non-partisan" is hogwash and has NEVER reflected reality.
Even worse, the Republicans do NOT believe this, and they utilize every single advantage to a position in order to advance their agenda.
These kinds of false equivalencies that somehow the left is required to take the "high road" and remain hamstrung while the right can punch below the belt all they want must die.
Sometimes you have to punch a bully to get the message through. It's time for the right to meet the fist of the left.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/obamas.first.campaign...
In his first race for office, seeking a state Senate seat on Chicago's gritty South Side in 1996, Obama effectively used election rules to eliminate his Democratic competition.
As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.
The move denied each of them, including incumbent Alice Palmer, a longtime Chicago activist, a place on the ballot. It cleared the way for Obama to run unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district.