PA judge has second, er, "thoughts" about voter disenfranchisement. Meanwhile, Google slaps the e-cuffs on Think Progress

[Click on either map to enlarge.]

"Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson said elections officials could still ask voters for a photo ID, but could not turn away otherwise qualified voters who had not been able to obtain one."

-- from Robert Barnes's Think Progress report today,
"Pennsylvania voter ID law enforcement halted by judge"

by Ken

As you've probably heard, the Pennsylvania trial judge, Robert Simpson, who had previously decided that the photo-ID voting requirement enacted by the Republicans in the state legislature is constitutionally hunky-dory but was then encouraged by a unanimous vote of the state's Supreme Court to take a closer look, decided today that after all there just may be some possible question of possible voter disenfranchisement. He took pains to note that there's still nothing wrong with asking for photo IDs; the only possible constitutional booboo is this nagging possibility of voter disenfranchisement:

I reject the underlying assertion that the offending activity is the request to produce photo ID; instead, I conclude that the salient offending conduct is voter disenfranchisement. As a result, I will not restrain election officials from asking for photo ID at the polls; rather, I will enjoin enforcement of those parts of Act 18 which directly result in disenfranchisement. . . .

(Um, if the logic of this escapes you, me too. Surely Judge Simpson isn't saying that the issue of voter disenfranchisement wasn't before him when he bungled ruled on the case originally. He isn't, is he? Would you think he's merely covering his butt here, or is he really that stupid?)

Here's Robert Barnes's Think Progress report today. Note: If you follow the link and encounter a Google warning that "Visiting this site may harm your computer," I suggest you just click your way on through to the site. I'll have more to say about this below.

Pennsylvania voter ID law enforcement halted by judge

By Robert Barnes, Updated: Tuesday, October 2, 11:28 AM

A Pennsylvania judge Tuesday ordered state officials not to enforce the commonwealth’s tough new voter ID law in the coming election, saying there was not enough time to ensure that some voters would not be disenfranchised.

Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson said elections officials could still ask voters for a photo ID, but could not turn away otherwise qualified voters who had not been able to obtain one.

Simpson said he was effectively extending a “soft run” of the new law envisioned by the General Assembly. In such cases, Simpson wrote, “an otherwise qualified elector who does not provide proof of identification may cast a ballot that shall be counted without the necessity of casting a provisional ballot.”

Simpson’s decision that those voters do not have to cast a provisional ballot “is what makes this so significant and why we think it’s a real victory,” said Penda Hair of Advancement Project, one of the groups that challenged the new law.

An appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is possible. That court ordered Simpson, who had earlier declared the law constitutional and said it could go into effect this fall, to again review the state’s revamped procedures for providing photo IDs to those who lack them.

“I cannot conclude the proposed changes cure the deficiency in liberal access [to voting] identified by the Supreme Court,” Simpson wrote.

The issue of voter IDs has sharply divided Republicans and Democrats nationally, and the battle was especially intense in Pennsylvania, one of the states most hotly contested in the presidential election campaign.

Republicans, suspicious of alleged illegalities in the Philadelphia area, passed the new law without a single Democratic vote. They said it would ensure the integrity of the electoral process.

Democrats said it was simply an attempt to discourage the vote among the poor and other groups likely to vote Democratic — voters also more likely to lack the kinds of specific, government-issued photo IDs that the law requires.

Early this evening the Think Progress War Room posted a follow-up, "Un-Suppressing the Vote: Victories Against GOP Voter Suppression Efforts," reproducing those maps from the Brennan Center for Justice which I've placed at the top of this post.

The report takes note of today's development in Pennsylvania, and directs us to "a round-up of our other victories in the GOP War on Voting" by The Nation's Ari Berman, broken down into: voter-ID laws, voter registration, early voting, voter purges, student voting, and provisional ballots. The report also takes note of the panicky flight by more state Republican Party organizations, in step with the Republican National Committee, from their former embrace of Strategic Allied Consulting, which has actually been caught engaging in voter-registration fraud.


IS GOOGLE PART OF A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY --
OR MERELY AN UNWITTING CO-CONSPIRATOR?

Now as to that warning that Google seems to be throwing up warning visitors about the allegedly dangerous Think Progress website . . .

Earlier this evening I had read the above-cited Progress Report about the pushback against the GOP vote-suppression campaign but hadn't saved a link. No problem, I figured. It should be easy enough to search for a link to The Progress Report. And it was, but with it came this transparently bogus warning against the whole of the Think Progress website:

My natural assumption was that right-wing sociopaths had successfully targeted Think Progress. It's a natural target for them, since Think Progress is committed to reporting truth, and truth is the natural mortal enemy of the Right. So I followed the link to the grotesquely named "Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for thinkprogress.org," and learned: "Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 4 time(s) over the past 90 days." Which I took to mean that right-wingers only had to lie four times to slap the Google e-cuffs on Think Progress.

On closer inspection, the page claims that "of the 3233 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 11 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent," which sounds ever so vaguely suspicious (but really, 11 out of 3233?), except that the page proceeds to report:

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, thinkprogress.org did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.
Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.
How did this happen?
In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

In other words, as I read it, this supposedly computer-wrecking malware Google is warning us about exists nowhere except in the imagination of, well, somebody. We've known for some time now that there's no one left on the Right except mental defectives and criminal predators. It appears that the criminal class may be larger than I at least suspected. The question in my mind is whether Google thinks of itself as merely an innocent dupe or part of the conspiracy. Personally, I'd like to see everyone involved in this scam, whether outside and inside Google, treated to the death penalty for conspiring to overthrow our (theoretically) democratic government. The sooner the better.

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