We have launched a petition at the White House site, it asks President Obama to press the Department of Justice to aggressively investigate and fight voter laws that suppress the Constitutional right of Americans to vote.

We’ve seen a coordinated effort by Republican legislators and governors in a number of states, in concert with The American Legislative Council (ALEC), a corporate entity that conceives of and writes laws for the GOP to pass that benefit corporate wealth and power.

Here is the text of the Petition:

We petition the Obama Administration to press the Department of Justice to aggressively investigate and fight state laws that restrict voting rights.

A number of states have recently passed laws under the guise of preventing voter fraud which actually restrict the Constitutional right of Americans to vote.

There are no studies showing voter fraud to be a meaningful issue yet Republican legislatures and Republican Governors in many states have been frantically passing such laws before the 2012 Presidential elections.

These laws restrict voting rights for people in a number of groups most likely to vote Democratic including students, minorities and the poor. This is partisan politics at its worst.

We ask President Obama to press Attorney General Eric Holder and the Dept. of Justice to aggressively fight these anti-democratic laws and in doing so, protect our democracy and the Constitutional rights of millions of Americans to vote.

We invite our members and readers to sign the petition and help us qualify it for official consideration by The White House. A petition requires 5,000 signatures to be officially considered so we ask for your help in circulating it around Twitter, Facebook and through emails until we reach that threshold.

Here are links to the petition, you can read it in full, sign it and Tweet and Facebook it all on the same page:

Short link: http://wh.gov/4gY

Long Link: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/press-department-justice-aggressively-investigate-and-fight-state-laws-restrict-voting-rights/4gdnThDZ

Thank you so much for your help and support on this!

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bito
Member

“White House grapples with a flood of online petitions”

The true test of We the People, the Obama administration’s online petition site, won’t be how many petitions are launched through the Web page, but how well the White House is able to respond to them, experts told Nextgov this week.

If it looks as if federal officials are ignoring the site or only issuing pro forma responses, that could undermine the operation, they said, and make people feel more alienated from their government.

The White House initially promised to respond formally to any We the People petition that received more than 5,000 signatures, but after nearly three dozen petitions crossed that mark in the site’s first week, the administration raised the bar to 25,000 signatures within 30 days.

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20111004_9006.php

bito
Member

Oh the good old days of voting!

Rep. Steve King Daydreams About The Good Ol’ Days When Only Property Owners Voted

KING: As I roll this thing back and I think of American history, there was a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote. The reason for that was, because they wanted the people who voted — that set the public policy, that decided on the taxes and the spending — to have some skin in the game.

[…]

Now I don’t think they’re paying taxes. But many of them are voting. And when they vote, they vote for more government benefits.

http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201110040015

bito
Member

As a courtesy to a twitter follower of PPOV here is a petition for you to review.
Enforce all Labor Laws & Protect All Whistleblowers in Government & all other US Workplaces from Unlawful Retaliation!

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/enforce-all-labor-laws-protect-all-whistleblowers-government-all-other-us-workplaces-unlawful/lMc1DlHn?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl

To everyone that has signed our petition, Thank You, and to anyone that hasn’t, PLEASE DO!

We need to spread the word on our petition so if you can, Tweet it, post it on FaceBook and any other sites you can.

bito
Member

Maine Elections Chief Uses GOP List To Intimidate Student Voters And Encourage Them To Re-Register In Another State

>The letter explained that Maine Secretary of State Charles Summers was writing because he “was presented with a list of 206 University of Maine students with out-of-state home addresses and asked to investigate allegations of election law violations.” That list was provided to him not by an uninterested citizen, but rather the Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster, who has accused these students of voter fraud.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/29/331788/maine-student-voter-intimidation/

Emerald1943
Member

Adlib, we’ve got a little problem…only 49 signatures in 3 days. Either something is wrong with the WH site, or we need to get going and spread the word. We also need to make sure the link to the site is available in the Twitter feed.

http://t.co/yUXuNyzk

Perhaps we can ask Bito to fix it??

foodchain
Member
foodchain

The short link never loaded for me. I had to re-enter the site to vote after creating a password–but that was on an ipad. Glad to vote

bito
Member

The short link(s) works for me and I have tweeted the petition probably close to 100+ times and others have retweeted it and signed.

bito
Member
jjgravitas
Member
jjgravitas

Thanks, Adlib, for bringing this to my attention. I’ve signed the petition and I hope the WH and DOJ do aggressively fight voter suppression. They will need to in the coming election. The GOP gets more crooked every year and the 2012 election promises to be a truly nasty one. I’d like them to go one step further: get the media involved! When perpetrators of voter suppression are discovered, the names and faces of those involved should be published on the TV news, in the paper, and on the web. Perhaps someone should start a website that tracks those who try to suppress the American voter, the same way we have done with sex criminals. The more public we make them, the more difficult it will be for them to pull their nasty tricks in the future.

Emerald1943
Member

Hi jjgravitas! Thanks for your comment and your signature! Please spread this around to your friends and ask them to sign. We need some help to reach our 5,000 goal.

I was glad to see Rachel Maddow do a segment tonight on this subject. I hope she will keep it up. Sen. Sherrod Brown was on as her guest and he said he’d never seen anything like this radical bunch that is trying to take away everything we hold dear! This is a nasty uphill battle for sure!

bito
Member

In the words of Brads Blog, read this before it’s gone from the Fox site!!

Voter ID Laws Target Rarely Occurring Voter Fraud

Several states adopted new laws last year requiring that people show a photo ID when they come to vote even though the kind of election fraud that the laws are intended to stamp out is rare.

Even supporters of the new laws are hard pressed to come up with large numbers of cases in which someone tried to vote under a false identify.

“I’ve compared this to the snake oil salesman. You got a cold? I got snake oil. Your foot aches? I got snake oil,” said election law expert Justin Levitt, who wrote “The Truth About Voter Fraud” for The Brennan Center for Justice. “It doesn’t seem to matter what the problem is, (voter) ID is being sold as the solution to a whole bunch of things it can’t possibly solve.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/24/voter-id-laws-target-rarely-occurring-voter-fraud/#ixzz1Z7YtEMZF

I do see that it is an AP story but how, who allowed it to posted on Fox, I find amazing! Will this be discussed on Fux and Fiends in the morning? 😉

kesmarn
Admin

Signed at last! Like others, I hit a few bumps in the road in getting the account set up and being able to add my name to petitions. But with persistence all went well and the signature appeared. Thanks, AdLib, for getting the ball rolling!

SueInCa
Member

Adlib
Always happy to help, signed it.

foodchain
Member
foodchain

AdLib, I so glad I could stop in but this isn’t loading. I’ll keep on it though. A lot of sad things, but voter suppression just says too much.

Emerald1943
Member

http://t.co/yUXuNyzk

We have to make sure the link is showing up in the Twitter feed. I have posted it to a couple of other blogs today, like “The People’s View”. Also, I’ve sent it to my email contacts. We only have 26 signatures so far…we need a lot of help!

choicelady
Member

I’m having LOTS of trouble signing in – that just grinds away barring me from signing!

I will keep trying – afternoons are the worst times I understand.

bito
Member

It is a bit tricky C’lady. They sent me an email checking to make sure it was a human/working email and I had to click the link in the email. Of course you are a known “trouble maker.” 😆

KillgoreTrout
Member

I just signed, and am #30. It seems to be going rather slow.

escribacat
Member

Maybe others are having the same browser-hell problems I’m having. I thought I already had an account there (but I guess this is separate from the regular whitehouse.gov account?) Anyway, I created a new account, verified it, and signed in, but I still can’t click the SIGN PETITION button. It’s greyed out.

bito
Member

A little progress on the state front?

WI DA looking at voter bribery accusations against “pro-life” group: Subpoenas distributed “like candy.”

http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2011/09/26/wi-da-looking-at-voter-bribery-accusations-against-pro-life-group-subpoenas-distributed-like-candy/

Those who signed up 15 “pro-life/pro-family voters” by July 5 would get a $25 gift or gas card as a reward. The person signing up the most people in each Senate district would win a $75 gift or gas card.

This is the kind of thing that needs to be done to get the attention of the Federal district attorney’s attention, that and the petition!

Sabreen60
Member
Sabreen60

I really like this idea of petitions connected to WH.gov. I signed and tweeted your petition and a few others. This needs to go viral.