Return of the Walking Dead

A couple of weeks ago, I used the example of the head of the DMV (in the previous post) in my class. We were talking about authority and whether someone like Department of Motor Vehicles director Kevin Schwedo would be considered a good authority to make claims about whether dead people were voting. After all, he didn't work for the elections office or the coroner, so what special powers were afforded him to make such an investigation and produce such charges?

Of course, that didn't mean he was wrong. It only meant we should probably be very skeptical of his claims until further investigated.

And now someone with actual authority (the State Elections Commission) has done just that:

In a news release that election agency spokesman Chris Whitmire handed out prior to the hearing, the agency disputed the claim that dead people had voted. One allegedly dead voter on the DMV's list cast an absentee ballot before dying; another was the result of a poll worker mistakenly marking the voter as his deceased father; two were clerical errors resulting from stray marks on voter registration lists detected by a scanner; two others resulted from poll managers incorrectly marking the name of the voter in question instead of the voter above or below on the list.

The attorney general's office had only given the State Election Commission six names off its list of 950 or so names to examine. The agency found every one of them to be alive and otherwise eligible to vote, except for the one who had voted before dying.

During her testimony, Andino confronted the DMV's claim that dead people had voted.

"Characterizing this as an established fact threatens our confidence" in the election process, she said. "This is not a question that needs to linger in the minds of voters ... the truth is out there."

She also said she hasn't been provided the full list of 950 allegedly dead voters. She said she has been communicating with an investigator in the attorney general's office to try and get her hands on it. They are supposed to meet today, she said.

It could, of course, just be a coincidence that the only 6 names they released were *all* proven to be perfectly legal voters. Maybe the next 947 will be golden.

Of course, I was skeptical of his claims in part because I knew that much more rigorous investigations than his have turned up essentially nothing. So, I would have been surprised (and still would be) if his list had panned out.

But I think just looking very carefully at the context told us what that answer was going to be.

Picutred: SCDMV's Kevin Schwedo w/ Bruce Willis

The Walking Dead

Intrepid sleuth Kevin Shwedo (also sometimes director of the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles) apparently "told state legislators on Wednesday that 900 people who were documented as having cast their votes are actually dead."

In conjunction with the state’s new voter identification law — which is currently being investigated by the United States Justice Department — Shwedo poured through the records of over 230,000 residents without a driver’s license or comparable ID.

Although Schwedo did not specify when the dubious votes were cast, his discoveries are disconcerting to a state that is about to host the first southern primary: the Election Commission records included 30,000 people who are dead and over 91,000 people who now reside in different states.

Now, I'm curious exactly why the director of the DMV would be sorting through election records in search of dead people. He is neither an election official, nor is he a coroner. In fact, he would seem to be someone without any more particular credibility to speak about this question than, say, me. All he could tell us, based upon his official capacity, is whether those dead people had licenses.

What Shwedo was attempting to do is answer for legislators the question of what justification exists for the state's new Photo Voter ID law. There is also reason for skepticism about Shwedo's claim. The Bush Administration's Justice Departmment went out of its way to make "voter fraud" a top tier issue for eight years. And the found basically nothing—and certainly nothing at all widespead or systemic enough to change the outcome of elections. What Shwedo is saying, then, is that he, in his non-official capacity, managed to find something that the entire Justice Department had seen no sign of while desperately looking for it for almost a decade. (Leaving aside the fact that his testimony doesn't specifically indicate whether those people were dead when they actually voted. Just a quibble.)

But no matter. Let's assume he's right and that 900 people voted illegally by pretending to be people who were already dead. Fine. Sounds like a serious problem that could shape the course of the election. 900 people.

I wonder, then, what he might think of this:

As is typical, South Carolina’s new law requires either a driver’s license or a non-driver photo ID card issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Mr. Perez’s letter asserted that minority voters in the state were nearly 20 percent more likely than white voters to lack these forms of identification – a “significant racial disparity” that the state “has failed entirely to address.” The state’s own statistics, he said, showed that “there are 81,938 minority citizens who are already registered to vote and who lack DMV-issued identification,” and who thus risk being “effectively disenfranchised” by the new law.

So, 82,000 people lack the necessary means to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right. They can, of course, go get one. But one hinderance keeping these people from obtaining this form of ID is cost. (These photo IDs are not being offered for free or made more easily obtainable.)

One reason poll taxes were ruled unconstitutional precisely because they placed a burden upon the poor that were simply far easier for the not-poor to meet. It creates a disparity in this case to place an extra burden upon the poor. (Yes, extra. While one might argue, for example, that both rich and poor must pay a cost, the burden of the cost, as well as the likelihood that someone will need to make extra effort to participate, are clearly discriminatory.)

And when it comes down to it, we already know that Voter ID laws have the effect of disenfranchising minority and poor voters. This isn't, like "dead voting," a small and abstract possibility that could be exploited (yet there is no evidence anyone has or could in any meaningful way), but rather a virtual certainty.

To turn this around, imagine if we placed a burden upon elderly Republican voters that said they had to physically show up to the polls and pull the levers themselves in order to legally vote. But we don't. Instead, we allow people to vote absentee, which is conducted in a manner that does not discriminate. In fact, incidences of isolated absentee voter fraud are fairly common (just Google it) and, frankly, far easier than in-person voter fraud. But even so, it is still not very common or widespread.

Why, then, do we suppose that Republican attempts to reduce voter fraud focus on picture IDs rather than absentee ballots? And why do we suppose that it's so urgent to address a problem for which there is relatively little demonstrated abuse in favor of a policy that will clearly result in very *real* (not hypothetical) voter disenfranchisement?

If the threat of voter fraud threatens to negate legitimate votes cast, why does South Carolina seem utterly unconcerned with the negation of these far more numerous legitimate votes, in the interest of addressing what appears to be an almost non-existent problem? Where is their concern about absentee fraud?

South Carolina’s governor, Nikki Haley, called the Justice Department action a “terrible, clearly political decision” and vowed to fight it, presumably in court.

Politics sure does seem to playing a role here, but Haley has it exactly backwards.

What Happens When You Take Ron Paul Seriously?

I doubt he'll be either the nominee or even on the ticket (or in a Republican administration in any capacity), but it's worth taking a moment to talk about some of the aspects of Ron Paul's "philosophy." Here he is on Jon Stewart a few months ago discussing why a laissez faire regulation scheme would work better than a government enforced one:

"The regulations are much tougher in a free market, because you cannot commit fraud, you cannot steal, you cannot hurt people, and the failure has come that government wouldn't enforce this. In the Industrial Revolution there was a collusion and you could pollute and they got away with it. But in a true free market in a libertarian society you can't do that. You have to be responsible. So the regulations would be tougher."

To be as generous as possible to this idea, let's acknowledge the obvious: corporations love to manipulate the power of government to their own ends. That would seem natural and inescapable.

Let me at least point out one fairly obvious flaw in case it is not apparent. Paul religious faith in the market is such that he thinks the market would not sustain "fraud" or "stealing" from corporations. Yet one of the primary means these corporations engage in these practices is through the *avoidance* of regulations. Of course, some of those regulations might still be imposed upon small businesses, thus creating a disadvantage for these smaller businesses. In that circumstance, you have two choices: either create a better regulatory structure or remove regulations entirely.

There's probably a reason these corporations primarily fight first against any regulation at all.

Paul wants to pretend that absent government regulation, the incentive for these companies would be to play by the rules because the market would otherwise punish them. But let's say that you are a corporation and you want to make a lot of money doing something that your consumers would punish you for if they learned about it. So, one possible solution would be for them to not steal or commit fraud. That's Paul's point about the benefits of the free market.

Of course, that would mean wooing customers with better, cheaper and more innovative products and/or better service. But all those things take talent and mean less short term profit. So, the other option is they could just spend much less money than that just trying to prevent people from knowing that they care committing fraud or stealing. They could spend money instead on marketing and PR campaigns. They could hire people to dispute allegations, commission studies to refute negative ones. Even if it costs as much, it's easier and more reliable to do this than compete just on their own merits.

This doesn't make them evil or even require anything more than that we acknowledge human behavior. There are good corporations—even surprisingly moral ones—out there. But there is little reward from shareholders for morality in the end. They may want you to do everything honestly, but if you are moral and lose money, you will still lose. If you make money and no one knows you are being immoral, you win.

Would there be an incentive for these companies to NOT do these things? Sure. Getting caught would be bad publicity. But PR is all about making the best of the bad situation. I could imagine a free market situation where an independent organization springs up, the sole purpose of which is to police these corporations. Then again, such an organization would be subject to all the same rules as any other corporation.

And, as noted before, all of the conditions exist RIGHT NOW! Corporations and businesses have a market incentives to avoid fraud and stealing. And we have these private watchdog groups already—as well as corporation sponsored ones that try to negate the negative impact of those things. Additionally, there is also a pretty big stick that comes along with these regulations: the threat of criminal fines and jail. And government, while not perfectly responsive to the needs and desires of the general population, can be made more responsive and open—which is precisely what these big corporations attempt to subvert and control.

So, what Paul is proposing is to remove the government's ability to conduct oversight, ability to regulate—in other words, to provide any kind of check on these previously mentioned incentives—and, according to Paul, everything will miraculously work out for the better.

Sometimes the most devastating critique you can make of someone's position is to take it more seriously than they do. Paul's anti-corporation ideology is the big corporation's wet dream.

Obama, Bush, and Indefinite Detention

I have found the occasions of Obama's previous defense of Presidential power the most depressing aspect of his term in office. Of course, I objected to Bush's own power grab at the time precisely because I didn't have trust in a future president to give back that power, Dem or Repub. As a nation of laws, not men, we shouldn't put that faith in anyone.

So, it was with anxiety that I watched this piece by Rachel Maddow, which has been passed around by various friends on the left and right, purporting to show Obama claiming bold new dictatorial powers to detail U.S. citizens under suspicion of crimes they haven't yet committed.



But I noticed something very interesting in his speech that Maddow and others seem to have entirely skipped over. And it was, contra his critics, quite encouraging. He is clearly talking about "acts of war" and "prisoners of war." He says so explicitly.

This is not merely semantics. It is the entirety of the powers he is claiming for himself. And this is vitally and critically different from how the previous administration went about this—the unitary executive—and it has been Obama's failure to make this distinction that has been the most disappointing. He isn't claiming the power to "arrest" people. He's talking about detaining people who are dangerous because they can pose a military threat.

This kind of system can ALSO be abused, especially in an ongoing "war," the end of which is entirely uncertain. But that's a different kind of problem than the despotic and unchecked power Obama is arguing against. The creation of this kind of framework, if successful, is a positive thing, not a "new power." The opposite, in fact.

Let me be clear: it's entirely unacceptable to create a system where citizens or non-citizens can be randomly detained, indefinitely, with little or no oversight, merely on the weight of secret evidence. That's what was horrifying about Bush's (okay, Cheney's) philosophy. So, the use of clear "war" terminology has significant ramifications legally. This different system can still be abused. But creating a "legal framework" in this case, one that involves Congress, the executive, and the courts, would provide a path to remedy that does not currently exist.

Obama's proposing a limitation on Presidential power, not the opposite.

The Debt Ceiling Is Nothing Like a Credit Limit

Over and over, I see people (in particular, Republican members of Congress and their fans) talking about how we can't raise the debt ceiling because we have to "get ahold of spending." There are some (Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann) who say they won't vote for an increase in the debt ceiling for any reason. Everyone's entitled to their political grandstanding, of course. If they end up being some of the 215 minority members who vote against raising the limit, they'd be no different than most any other politician who's issued a protest vote, Barack Obama included.

But if their votes keep the limit from passing, that's another thing altogether because he debt ceiling is not in any way, shape, or form like a credit card spending limit, and I suspect that's the fundamental problem with the public perception of this issue.

A more accurate way of thinking about the debt ceiling would be like this: You purchase a whole bunch of stuff on a credit card. Then, the credit card company sends you a bill. When you get the bill, you suddenly balk and say, "I'm sorry. But I've placed a cap on how much of the debt I owe that I'm willing to pay."

That's why, even if we massively cut our deficit tomorrow, we still have to raise the debt ceiling. We already owe this money. This isn't new spending. It's payment for past debt incurred.

Now, if we'd prefer to pay down the debt rather than increasing more of it, we'd need to reduce our deficit and, preferably, have revenue exceed expenditures. One way to do that is entirely through cutting spending. I don't agree with that, for lots of reasons, but, hey, whatever.

But by talking about not raising the debt ceiling as analogous to cutting up a credit card, you create an entirely false comparison. This doesn't limit the ability of the government to borrow money, except in the way that defaulting on the debts you own would, by destroying your own credit. (We're not even filing for bankruptcy protecting. We're just no longer paying out bills or answering our phones.)

Our only other choice would be to stop all expenditures, but that's essentially shutting down the government and stopping Medicare, Social Security, and military payments, none of which I suspect people will be very happy about.

*Bonus Update*

Like I said, this is mistake is extremely common. How many fallacies can you spot in this political cartoon? (They've added a new one, too.)



If you misunderstand the fundamental problem, you aren't going to have a clue about the solution.