Posts tagged Arizona

Supreme Court Watch: Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc.

4
1 month ago
by Michael Weiss in

I’ve writ­ten numer­ous arti­cles about our elec­tions sys­tem, and have many more that I’d like to write over the next year or so, before we get into the heat of midterm elections.

One of the issues we have as a soci­ety is the com­pe­ti­tion between the desire to pre­vent unau­tho­rized votes and the desire to elim­i­nate fric­tion in legit­i­mate vot­ing. It’s some­what akin to the crim­i­nal jus­tice ten­sion between the desire to pun­ish guilty par­ties and the desire to avoid pun­ish­ing inno­cent people.

Lately, Repub­li­cans have pro­moted the meme that sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of peo­ple who are not legally enti­tled to vote are in fact cast­ing bal­lots that are get­ting counted, and this jus­ti­fies mak­ing vot­ers go through addi­tional steps to be able to vote. Democ­rats have coun­tered with the accu­sa­tion that the num­ber of ille­git­i­mate votes is insignif­i­cant, and that the num­ber of legit­i­mate vot­ers who would be pre­vented from vot­ing is greater than the num­ber of ille­git­i­mate votes pre­vented by the addi­tional steps.

It is note­wor­thy that the addi­tional steps Repub­li­cans pro­pose are gen­er­ally assumed to be more likely to pre­vent legit­i­mate Demo­c­ra­tic votes than to pre­vent legit­i­mate Repub­li­can votes. This leads to the cyn­i­cal, though not nec­es­sar­ily unfounded, accu­sa­tion that Repub­li­cans sup­port the addi­tional restric­tions as a means of chang­ing elec­tions’ outcome.

Today, the Supreme Court hears argu­ments in Ari­zona v. The Inter Tribal Coun­cil of Ari­zona, Inc., which seeks to exam­ine one such instance.  (more…)

Shot to the Foot

6
7 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Nathan Sproul

In the face of scares about “voter fraud” lead­ing to restric­tive voter ID laws, a bomb­shell exploded days ago when it was revealed that the com­pany hired by the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee to run voter reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves in vital swing states has been sub­mit­ting fraud­u­lent reg­is­tra­tion forms.

It’s worth look­ing at the back­ground and con­text of what hap­pened, the details of what is hap­pen­ing, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for what might hap­pen. We’ve seen this tale before, but past is not pro­logue. It will turn out dif­fer­ently this time. Per­haps this is what it looks like when a whole national polit­i­cal party shoots itself in its col­lec­tive foot. (more…)

Ballot Watch: West Coast

39
7 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

This is Bal­lot Watch. Today is the sev­enth in the series of arti­cles on the upcom­ing bal­lot ini­tia­tives and some key local elec­tions. Some of these will cover top­ics in com­mon with mul­ti­ple states, while oth­ers will look at a state level.

For today’s Bal­lot Watch, I’m cov­er­ing the West Coast…and Ari­zona and Nevada. Why Ari­zona and Nevada? In try­ing to bal­ance the regions some­what so that all three of Log­a­rchism’s reg­u­lar writ­ers get a fair share of the coun­try, the states touch­ing the Pacific Ocean weren’t quite enough. And so Ari­zona and Nevada are in the mix.

So what do the bal­lots look like in these seven states? Noth­ing of inter­est in Alaska or Hawaii, but the other five have tales to tell.  (more…)

Supreme Court Watch: Arizona v. United States

29
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Fam­ily Feud

On April 29, 2010, Ari­zona Gov­er­nor Jan Brewer signed into law SB 1070, which gave local author­i­ties sweep­ing pow­ers to detain sus­pected ille­gal immigrants.

The legal issue at ques­tion is taken directly from Arti­cle VI,  Para­graph 2 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, com­monly called the Supremacy Clause:

This Con­sti­tu­tion, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pur­suance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Author­ity of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Con­sti­tu­tion or Laws of any state to the Con­trary notwithstanding.

The prin­ci­ple which arises out of this para­graph is called preëmp­tion. Preëmp­tion can be express (i.e. explicit, stated clearly) or implied. The basic ques­tion for the Court, in oral argu­ments today, will be: does SB 1070 run afoul of the Supremacy Clause? (more…)

Your Next Comment Could Be Illegal

20
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

There are times when I won­der what moti­vates Arizona’s leg­is­la­tors. Today is def­i­nitely one of them. H.B. 2549, a bill passed by the state House, states:

It is unlaw­ful for any per­son, with intent to ter­rify, intim­i­date, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any elec­tronic or dig­i­tal device and use any obscene, lewd or pro­fane lan­guage or sug­gest any lewd or las­civ­i­ous act, or threaten to inflict phys­i­cal harm to the per­son or prop­erty of any per­son. It is also unlaw­ful to oth­er­wise dis­turb by repeated anony­mous elec­tronic or dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions the peace, quiet or right of pri­vacy of any per­son at the place where the com­mu­ni­ca­tions were received.

I’ve had to mod­er­ate plenty of com­ments around here, as have my com­pa­tri­ots Monotreme and dcpet­ter­son. While our own mod­er­a­tion rules pro­hibit per­sonal attacks, and we have banned only one per­son for mak­ing a spe­cific threat to inflict phys­i­cal harm, this law goes much fur­ther. (more…)

Today’s Primaries: Arizona and Michigan

53
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Today is a very impor­tant day for both for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney and for­mer Sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum (R-​​PA). Vot­ers in Ari­zona and Michi­gan go to the polls today to express their pref­er­ences for the Repub­li­can can­di­date for President.

Feb­ru­ary started with San­to­rum sweep­ing all three states (Col­orado, Min­nesota, and Mis­souri) in one day. His campaign’s sud­den and unex­pected via­bil­ity quickly devel­oped momen­tum in national polls, a momen­tum reflected in Ari­zona and Michi­gan. This was a sce­nario nobody con­sid­ered in Jan­u­ary, or even last year. Both states should be easy wins for Rom­ney, Ari­zona because of the Mor­mon pop­u­la­tion, and Michi­gan because it’s his home state. (more…)

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