Of Course, the Answer is to Shut Down eBay

Yet another instance of someone doing something incredibly stupid by trying to sell something inappropriate on eBay:

A Minnesota college student looking to profit off his political indifference has been charged with a felony for trying to sell his vote on the auction Web site eBay.

The student, Max P. Sanders, 19, of Edina, was charged Thursday with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting, a felony under an 1893 Minnesota law that criminalizes the sale and purchase of votes.

In May Mr. Sanders set a minimum bid of $10 for his vote this November and offered to provide photographic documentation inside the booth.

Mr. Sanders, whose auction was halted before anyone bid, declined to comment. He is studying liberal arts at the University of Minnesota.

The state law was actively enforced during Prohibition, when “people would go into bars and dig out drunks and give them a $20 and try to buy their vote,” said Mike Freeman, the Hennepin County attorney, who said he did not know of any other modern abuses.

“We’re not humorless in the county attorney’s office and we’re not in the horse-and-buggy age,” Mr. Freeman said, “but we decided it’s something we just couldn’t blow off. Sometimes in this business we need to make statements.”

We don't need to enforce Prohibition-era laws--we have Republicans to suppress votes and claim voter fraud where there is none. With all of the fraud that occurs on eBay, and with the regular stories in the media about someone selling their baby, their soul, or their kidneys on eBay, isn't it time to shut it down? Or would that destroy the John McCain economy that doesn't exist? Between Craigslist and eBay and mySpace, is there any relief from the ridiculous stories about people who abuse the system and ruin it for everyone else? I'm being sarcastic--of course, you cannot just 'shut down' these sites. But that doesn't mean we can't be sick of the bullshit stories that are cranked out on a regular basis about them and the inability of people to use them properly.

--WS

Sebelius Wields the Veto Pen

Via Think Progress, there's word out of Kansas that voter ID is unacceptable:

A bill requiring Kansas voters to show photo identification in 2010 elections was vetoed today by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The measure — HB 2019 — was similar to a measure she threatened to veto during last year’s legislative session. Last year’s measure failed, but this year’s version passed through the efforts of the Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Sebelius is a Democrat.

In her veto message, the governor said the bill created a roadblock that prevents citizens from voting.

“Additionally, no elected official should support enacting new laws discouraging or disenfranchising any American who has been legally voting for years,” she wrote.

During debate, the bill’s advocates said the measure would help prevent voter fraud. The governor said Kansas already has secure, fair elections.

“HB 2019 seeks to solve a problem of voter fraud which does not exist in our state due to the tireless efforts of our local election officials,” the governor added.

Or virtually anywhere else, for that matter. Voter fraud is a Republican invention, not a reality.

Turns out it was about voter disenfranchisement after all

I live in one of those states that went insane and passed a super-restrictive voter I.D. bill. It was tossed by a judge, and tossing it held up on appeal.

Matt Blunt acted crushed, like the very fabric of our democracy was at stake. Why, no Missouri election would have the confidence of the electorate ever again if we did not pass a restrictive voter-ID law.

Yet it turns out that not only was the issue of voter fraud a tempest in a tea-pot in our state, a government panel, the United States Election Assistance Commission, commissioned under the Help America Vote Act not only found that there was no there there...The government panel spun their results by using selective wording in an attempt to help the Republican party line on the issue.

You read that right...Even after the panel found there was no evidence of malfeasance, they used selective wording to imply that fraud was being tolerated, issuing a report that said the pervasiveness of voter fraud was "open to debate. "

The original report stated that consensus opinion among experts was that there is little polling-place fraud, yet the final version of the report, the version that was released to the public, maintained that “there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.”

The researchers whose work was altered are speaking out about it.

A number of election law experts, based on their own research, have concluded that the accusations regarding widespread fraud are unjustified. And in this case, one of the two experts hired to do the report was Job Serebrov, a Republican elections lawyers from Arkansas, who defended his research in an e-mail message obtained by The Times that was sent last October to Margaret Sims, a commission staff member.

“Tova and I worked hard to produce a correct, accurate and truthful report,” Mr. Serebrov wrote, referring to Tova Wang, a voting expert with liberal leanings from the Century Foundation and co-author of the report. “I could care less that the results are not what the more conservative members of my party wanted.”

He added: “Neither one of us was willing to conform results for political expediency.”

Both Ms. Wang and Mr. Serebrov are under contract and are therefore not at liberty to comment in detail on the discrepancies between the report they produced and the edited, doctored version that was released to the public.

The original report found that instances of intimidation and vote suppression (areas of election fraud that Democrats have been screaming about for years) were prevalent, especially on Indian reservations. Yet the final report watered down that finding, stating only that voter “intimidation is also a topic of some debate because there is little agreement concerning what constitutes actionable voter intimidation.”

So let's recap - the areas of election fraud that the Republicans have been bitching about were found to be much ado about nothing...Yet the report vaguely asserted that the problem was possibly pervasive and open to debate. And the concerns that Democrats have been pointing out - intimidation and disenfranchisement - were found to be pervasive, but were discounted and played down, because after all, who can really define intimidation...Such a slippery, nebulous concept.

This is all of a piece. The Republicans wanted a permanent majority, and they were willing to do whatever it took to achieve their political ends. Wrongful imprisonment, specious indictment, smear campaigns, slander, voter intimidation, voter disenfranchisement...

I, for one, have seen quite enough. I want my fucking country back.

The things that have transpired over the last six years have brought our nation to the brink of fascism. These things can not be allowed to stand. The future of our Republic demands that right now...today...every last one of us vows to see justice restored and the sanctity of the American ballot box restored.

If the sanctity of the ballot box is not restored, the die is cast and we are headed for the ammo box.

Just in case, I'm keeping my powder dry.