Meet Ken Blackwell, former Secretary Of State for the State of Ohio and a Black man. In the 2004 election Mr. Blackwell was "De-Blackified" for having the AUDACITY to ENFORCE THE VOTER REGISTRATION LAWS for the state of Ohio as he is constitutionally charged to do.
Mr Blackwell discarded several voter registration forms that failed the standards that were set before him. He also rejected a batch of registration forms that were submitted by an activist group on paper that was not in line with the standard that EVERYONE ELSE HAD TO ABIDE BY. For Mr. Blackwell's failure to NOT follow the letter of the law he was "tagged" as depicted above.
Now meet Jan Brewer, Secretary of State for Arizona.
In full disclosure - Ms Brewer is a Republican. But - THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT JAN BREWER. This post is about the REACTIONS to the two Secretaries of State with respect to their enforcement of the laws for voter verification.
As I watched a representative from the National Organization For Women the other day she indicated that her organization would be insuring that EVERY SINGLE SIGNATURE on the ballot initiative is VALID. For this she will NOT be called out as a person seeking to "suppress the voices of the voters who disagree with her". Indeed when an "Evil Republican operative" seeks to do the very same scrutiny of the verification process - the usual suspects call them the standard names.
Can someone tell me why one group who scrutinizes the validation process are called "Guardians Of Democracy" while another group who seeks the same verification are called "Supressors Of Voting Rights"?
Funny how that works, isn't it?
ARIZONA: Anti-affirmative action fails, shy valid signatures for ballot
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.22.2008
PHOENIX — A proposal to outlaw race- and sex-based preferences in government failed to collect enough valid signatures to be on the November ballot, Secretary of State Jan Brewer said Thursday.
Brewer said the group, known as the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, filed nearly 335,000 signatures. But Brewer first threw out petitions with more than 9,000 names as being invalid.
And then county recorders, checking a random sample of 5 percent, determined that 40 percent of the names remaining could not be counted because they did not belong to registered voters or there were other problems.
Brewer said all that, left Proposition 104 with just 194,961 valid signatures — short of the 230,047 necessary on petitions seeking to amend the state constitution.
Ward Connerly, architect of the measure, said he is not giving up.
"We're not throwing in the towel," he said, promising to have workers gathering evidence through the weekend to get some signatures restored.
The initiative seeks a constitutional change making it illegal to give preferential treatment in government employment, education and contracting on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity and other factors.
Connerly pushed through the first version of his measure in California in 1996 in the wake of court rulings which allowed state universities to admit minority students ahead of non-minority students with higher qualifications.
If Connerly goes to court he will face more than Brewer and the county recorders. Even before Brewer's decision Thursday, two groups filed their own lawsuits contending there are insufficient valid signatures on petitions for Proposition 104 to allow it to appear on the ballot.
One of those groups, Michigan-based By Any Means Necessary, also claims that many signers — mostly minority voters — were fraudulently persuaded to sign by being told the measure promotes civil rights.
Connerly said there is nothing misleading about that, as the measure, if approved, would put all races and sexes on an equal legal footing.
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