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Comment by hyperman1 | Hacker News Reader

This sounds like something that will be punished harshly in the very next local election.

The linked article (the Japolnik blogspam adds nothing but removes plenty -- see the original al.com article) gives a wrong impression, but this is a classic Southern small-town policing tactic of extorting outsiders. The citizens in the town love it because all of this stuff is paid for by everyone who just happens to drive through.

This should be dealt with by higher levels of government -- it is gross, rank corruption -- however higher levels of government are drunk on civil forfeiture.

I'm in Louisiana and during an evacuation, there was a small-to-the-point-of-not-even-being-a-town had its cops pulling everyone over who went above the 25 MPH speed limit. The speed limit elsewhere was 45 to 50.

Yep. If you're looking for a musical explanation, the 1975 Hoyt Axton song "Speed Trap" explains it pretty well. It's been going on forever. The only solution is for the state government to pass laws that force ticket revenue away from the towns that employ the cops.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRnXgcutfz0

Not if the police prevent enough (of certain) people from voting. They could simply give all the residents of certain areas the impression that they will be arrested (or blacklisted/long-term intimidation) if they show up to vote.

Also, in Alabama if you're convicted of one of the following felonies you're not allowed to vote:

"Murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse, sexual torture, enticing a child to enter a vehicle for immoral purposes, soliciting a child by computer, production or possession of obscene matter, parents or guardians permitting children to engage in obscene matter, possesion of child pornography with intent to distribute."

That's going to be the new normal in some states. Florida's governor is setting up a unit of special armed election cops.[1] There's a broad effort in red states to make sure only the Right People get to vote.[2]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/19/politics/ron-desantis-pushes-...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/politics/voter-suppression-re...

So basically just murder and criminal sexual conduct? That seems like a very short and reasonable list considering that damn near everything can be a felony if the prosecutor wants it to be.

Edit: And I would like to point out that nowhere did I say I agreed with or endorsed their enumeration of what sort of sexual conduct isn't ok.

It's not just murder and sexual conduct:

> production or possession of obscene matter

The test for what qualifies as "obscene" is very subjective [1], and represents one of the remaining (and oft-criticized) exceptions to the First Amendment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

I haven't read Alabama's statue or case law but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say guess that run of the mill porn isn't what they have in mind and you're unlikely to be prosecuted in any US state for content that can be lawfully created in any other US state.

The obscene materials law affects the sale of items like vibrators or revealing clothing intended to be of a sexual nature (in addition to all porn). As of 2016 it had survived federal appeals, but hadn't made it to the supreme court yet. My county in GA has a similar law based on similar legal ground, and was blocked for being challenged by the Alabama challenges.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Obscenity_Enforcement_Act

https://patch.com/georgia/sandysprings/sex-toy-ban-upheld-sa...

Wait, doesn't sodomy mean buttfucking? Is that a felony in the US?

Fourteen states still had laws criminalizing it when the laws were ruled unconstitutional in 2003. So no it's not a felony, but the law as written makes it appear to be one. Though Wikipedia says Alabama's law was officially repealed in 2019.

>Wait, doesn't sodomy mean buttfucking? Is that a felony in the US?

IIUC, "sodomy" is penetrative sex that isn't penile/vaginal[0].

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/sodomy

Might take more than that, if the police also control the vote counting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

Yes, that's pretty much the plan in many states: take control of elections away from locals (especially locals who tend to vote for the other party) and give the power to the (gerrymandered) state legislature. People don't want to pay taxes, and if the anti-tax people also want local services, they have the police raise the revenue by preying on out-of-towners and people without connections.

But even without election-fixing, this kind of thing persists in some towns because the cops focus their enforcement on out-of-towners. Locals get a free lunch: services they don't have to pay for.

History and the Constitution provide for a solution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

I go back and forth about whether a lot more stories featuring "...and then the aggrieved raided the National Guard armory..." would be a good or a bad thing, in our modern political climate. I mean, the same thing was attempted in the Tulsa massacre, by people who also thought they were the "good guys", and that whole thing was... less good.

The article was misleading. I don't think they have examples of members of the electorate getting victimized. I believe it's almost entirely out-of-towners.

Doubt the next election will change anything.

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