Saturday, November 10, 2018
representation needed
To gaurd against electoral meltdown, provisional votes matter. Indiana's voter ID scheme was upheld in part by the plurality because in theory provisional votes provide a failsafe backstop for those who can't or won't show an ID. In practice, though, the rule has been no ID, no vote. So I've been making little videos of me or my friends declining to show ID, and being refused the vote.
For many years I've been resisting the push for voter ID, socal security number abuse, and other examples of security theater that actually introduce new vulnerabilities into the system. I am inept at both the lawyering end and the journalism end. I know enough to be able to be able to file a potentially winnable lawsuit, but not enough to see it through to the end and get paid. My few past successes have usually been when I've been able to team up with a more confident competent lawyer or legal team. I'm in that situation now, where I am reasonably confident that I am right on the law, and have the evidence to prove my case, but the other team has more lawyers guns and money.
Following crawford v marion county election board, precinct workers think that one must have id to vote.
In practice that means the $20 driver's license, obtained with a $12 birth certificate and an average three trips to the bmv for more paperwork.
I see this as violating the letter and spirit of Eisenhower's 24th amendment, so I am unwilling to comply. The cases actually get won or lost on First Amendment and equal protection grounds; the 24th is considered a vestigial appendix like the 3rd or, until recently, the 2nd.
I'm an old conservative white would-be Trump voter suing a younger black woman liberal democrat, but I see myself as carrying on Thurgood Marshall's struggle for the right to vote. I do not see voting as a partisan issue.
Currently, the county election staff understands provisonal ballots, and they know me by name and try to get it right, but 1000 poll workers have been mistrained, so the results are hit and miss, and the process is capricous and arbitrary. Meanwhile their lawyers in federal court keep asserting that there is no right to a provisonal ballot. I wonder about the ethics of that.
I need counsel. Mine is a small case. I'm trying to get my vote counted or get paid, in order to put a first dent in indiana's system, rather than any grand facial challenge to the whole scheme right now. where are these thousands of election protection lawyer we hear about? I can't find a single one. This cycle I documented three times I was told no ID, no vote.
In one case the guy denied to his supervisor that it had happened, but I'd gotten it on video. This time I'd been denied press credentials, so I had to be careful where and when and how I videoed, since I've been threatened with arrest if I videoed at a polling place without credentials. The denial might be a new case in itself, and there's a separate likely case about censorship of political signs.
I am currently pro se, which is not an optimum litigation strategy. I need counsel. I've been turned down by the aclu and the usual suspects, and have no funds of my own. I hope to hear from someone.
gtbear at gmail.
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