Rachel Maddow Decries "The New Poll Tax," Long Lines

MSNBC broke with tradition and had live Sunday-night programming last night, including a special edition of Rachel Maddow's show. Maddow has gotten a lot of attention and praise lately (the latest from this week's New York magazine), but this is what I hope gets a lot of attention: Her invocation against what she's identified as "the new poll tax."

Maddow rightly notes the long wait times at early voting stations — and worries not only about what that bodes for election day, but about who is getting disenfranchised because of it:

This is a poll tax. How much do you get paid for an hour of work? Do you have the kind of job that would be delighted to give you an hour, a half-day, a whole day off work because you were waiting in line at your precinct? Even if it won't cost you your job, can you afford to not work those hours? Are you elderly or disabled, do you not have the physical stamina for this kind of exertion? This is a poll tax... Who is not in those lines — because they can't afford to be?

On Friday, she foreshadowed the piece, writing on MSNBC.com's NewsVine: "What does it cost you to wait eight hours? Is this the way our democracy works now? We're a country where only people who can afford to give up 20 percent of a week's pay are allowed to vote?"

Never mind that there are forces at work trying to deliberately disenfranchise voters — "Democrats vote on November 5th" anyone? — but the fact that this is still going on after the horror shows of 2000 and 2004 says a lot about just how far the election-day process in this country hasn't come. Check out here smart — and important — commentary below:

Comments

[blaharumph]

rachel puts her activism to good use, reaching out to folks in an intelligent, concise and energizing way. what she's doing is more than just punditry...

[darthdarcy]

Any and every impediment to exercise your most inalienable right to vote violates the 1st, 5th, 14th Amendments as well as the 1964 Civil Rights Act...!

Mukasey knows this and could care less, he's gutted The Civil Rights and Voters Rights Bureaus at DOJ...along with Gonzales and Rove who pulled the strings at DOJ while serving in the White House...!

[Aussie1058]

As an outsider i read Huffpo as a way of understanding American politics, you must admit of late it has been quite interesting and im not even an American.

Now i understand that your constitution states you have the right to vote if you want to (or there about, don't quote me) but wouldn't it just be easier if you had a system where by the entire country (18+) is casting a vote. This would ensure that the popular vote is actually the POPULAR VOTE ie:the "majority".

Moving on,...... why have an election on a Tuesday, it just doesn't make sence to have it on a week day, here in Australia they are always on a Saturday.

Last but not least, WTF is going on with computer based ballots, Hell i have 3 computers and they have all had problems at one time or another.

Just think when every person casts a vote you are all responsible for your future if only half the eligable population is voting then only half the popultion that voted actually has a say.

Its your right to vote, so bloody well vote, every one of them counts.

[ladyv]

The Republican party has spent several decades moving itself into control of the way the US votes. Voting is controlled on the local level here. Local "Supervisors of Elections" control voting at the city/county level. Secretaries of State for the different states are the next layer of control above local. Republicans spent a long time putting Republican flunkies in place in SOE and SoS positions around the country for the specific purpose of preventing people from voting. They have it set up so that if you are poor or are not white, it is much more difficult for you to vote. There will be shorter hours to make sure workers have trouble taking the time off - business owners of course won't fire themselves for taking the time. They put more machines in wealthy locations and fewer/old/broken machines in poor locations. They put more complicated voting mechanisms (touch screens, punchcards) in places with poor people and old people. Since if you vote on Election Day you have to vote at your assigned location, you have the poor waiting 10 hours and the rich waiting 15 minutes. They fought tooth and nail to do away with Early Voting. And they have stated outright that their goal is to lower participation because the fewer people who can vote, the more likely the Republicans will win.

[ajax2]

Exactly right, the long waits are an unfair tax or encumbrance to voting, a civil rights violation. Prosecute the county and officers who took part no matter what party.

[KathieKH]

Maybe we can all write our representatives and tell them that we want election day to be a national holiday.

[lolcopter]

This is a brilliant idea. They really should move Election Day to Monday and give everyone the day off. The voting process should be made as streamline and easy as possible. I'm all for states' rights, but we need to standardize the process on the national level.

[KathieKH]

What we have to remember, it is up to each state to setup elections. We should be shouting at the state level, specificly, the Secretary of State, to provide more machines, polling places or whatever it takes to let the people vote!

[boddhisatva66]

she is quite brilliant

[LisaMarieC]

Well, if we get a democratic majority, they should *do* something about this. Let's see if they do.

[MysticInd]

One of the few brave people out there to say it as it is!

Thanks Rachel!

[transparent]

Absolutely agree. Haven't heard it expressed this way, but you are so right on.

[jcorrington]

We should make Election Day a national holiday ev 4 yrs. That would surely help with this problem.

[Nonamnesiac]

Rachel is the only pundit giving this story the intensity and breadth it deserves.

Theft of Presidential elections from the Democrats has been going on for 8 years. Obviously neither Congress nor the States really wanted to fix this problem, because both want a controlled outcome. They've certainly known about it since 2000. The only thing rank and file Democrats can hope is that those who control the machines would rather see Obama win than someone as stupid as McCain. It's really possible. Despite the rhetoric, Obama supported the Unconstitutional FISA, voted for the war budgets, intends to continue the Iraq occupation and supported giving nearly $1 trillion to those who caused the financial collapse without reregulating them or even regulating how they spend the money. Maybe he's more their guy than stupid old "crash the plane" McCain (who graduated with a class rank of 894 out of 899 graduates, below the bottom 1% of his class and crashed several planes as a naval aviator) and Crazy Secessionist Sarah, who tried to illegally fire a librarian for not banning books that Sarah doesn't like from the librarian's library and believes that a mom who terminates a pregnancy that resulted from her being raped or even molested by a relative should go to jail.

Obama, Biden and McCain are all acceptable to the voting machine owners. Crazy, Secessionist Sarah may not be.

[boddhisatva66]

diebold is still controlling most ballot machines per cnn, they just changed their name. we must get out and vote in overwhelming numbers and to ensure that they cannot steal another

GO VOTE OBAMA/BIDEN 08

[kayweb]

Oh, I voted! And, thankfully, all of my three children cast the right vote--Obama. My daughter,married to rabid Republican family, actually did some research on the net last night and voted for Obama. I am so proud of her. The majority of the younger women in this area just vote for whom their husbands tell them to vote. Here in Georgia, it's a tough fight. I bet McCain wishes he had the "community organizer" on his side. I have been called more than once offering me a ride to the polls to early vote. It is just amazing.

Speaking of the Diebold machines--I hate them. That is what I had to vote on today--no receipt, no proof that I voted for Obama.It makes me uneasy. I can only hope that that crook, Chambliss, who won by voting machine fraud, is defeated!

[projectgirl]

Thank you Rachel. Clear and Elegant. Beautifully stated.
It is frightening that here we are 8 years later in the SAME BOAT.

[MHamlen]

How is this possible that the "greatest democracy" can't even organize voting? If there were no early voting, only a small fraction of eligible voters would have the time to vote.

Shameful.

[vippy]

If we would have acceptable and unified voting standards Bush would not have won the last
two elections. I remember in 2000 when I checked the major Ohio Newspapers and their polls
and it showed 90% for Kerry and then Bush won. I have lost all faith in our voting process.
Why not have one ballot for the whole country and keep the paper ballots for their paper trail.

[TRichards]

CORRECTION: In an earlier note -- discussing how felons who served their time should have the right to vote -- I argued that 50% of black males were imprisoned at some point or another. That figure should be 32.2%. We cannot deny 1/3rd of black males the vote and say we're a democracy -- not with a straight face.

[PuppaX]

I'm curious...what's the rationale for denying felons the vote? I can understand to some extent the rationale for denying those still in prison. After all, being put in prison seems to be, by design, a "removal" from society to some extent. You can certainly argue about which of their rights should be lost by this removal (because they certainly do retain some rights while incarcerated), but why after they are released?

[Olav-NL]

Because society does not really want to rehabilitate people who have done their time in prison. It wants to kick them in the mud.

[ladyv]

Only two states permanently disenfranchise felons. It's just that states have made the process and pain of restoring voting rights to former felons pretty bad in some places. Some states very rationally and reasonably automatically restore rights. In some places the former felon has to go through a lot of trouble and often *cost* to get their case *reviewed* and restored. The Republicans who put these laws into place assume that many people will be too busy trying to put their lives back together to go through the pain of spending six months trying to get their right to vote restored. It's all part of the Republican plan to get as close as possible to a situation in which basically only landed gentry can vote.