Perhaps I am just being strident, but I think the fact that one of our major political parties -- the one most conspicuously on the rise, if you believe the punditariat -- has been taken over by the completely bugfuck insane is worthy of substantial news coverage.

Allow me the first to offer a hearty "FUCK YOU" to the teabaggers on this issue.

Everytime I turn around, some asshole rethug is trying to stop me from voting. I'm sick of it.

Hmm, what about the millions of Americans who are technically homeowners but who are underwater on their mortgages--i.e., they owe more to the bank than the home is worth? Since they have zero equity, do they count as "real" homeowners? Of course, the exact number of these folks would vary depending on the state of the real estate market.

Seems as though this could get complicated.

they better be careful what they wish for - owning a trailer might not count as the kind of "property" that the Founders were thinking of - and most Tea Partiers would probably end up being disenfranchised

Well the repiglicans have managed to eliminate Acorn , the only organization to help poor voters registere, and to vote. Of course that is a threat to this WHITE PIGS. So, of course, this is the 'logical' next step. And, after that, the return to slavery of any non-white person.

Considering most homeowners don't own their home (the banks do) would they be allotted a fraction of a vote based on their equity?

Perhaps a full definition of what was meant by "property" might be appropriate.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/11/they-have-encouraged-and-assisted-thousands-of-our-slaves/67190/

Hmmm... yeah, a lawyer renting in midtown Manhattan has far less vested in the community than some teabagger toodling around on his lawn tractor over two acres of completely useless Mississippi dirt & pine needles*. Actually, I'd love to see this debated properly-- might take some significant chunks out of the rural = Real Amurkan™ meme.

*FTR, I'm originally from MS and am well acquainted with FHA (big government!) ranch homes built on former pastureland, as well as with lawn tractors.

these comments shouldn't surprise anyone. The GOP TeaParty/Baggers at their core are a party of white people, exclusionary white people. That's why they want to do away with "entitlements" because they often benefit blacks and hispanics.
Naturally they don't want blacks to vote - you might end up with a black president. Notice how frequently it is predominently black voting precincts that are targeted by GOP Voter Fraud scams....no accident at all.

Absolute madness.

But what would stop an enterprising political activist -- a community organizer, perhaps -- from selling off one-square-inch pieces of his or her property to renters at a very low price so that they too could become "property owners" and thus qualify to vote? Or would we need to get into debates about how much property makes one a property holder? Is it one acre or 1/4 acre or 100 acres? How does a condo fit into this? Or if you own your trailer, for example, and are renting the lot? In any case, as a citizen of the United States, don't I share ownership of the land in the National Parks, in Federal facilities, on military bases? Therefore, isn't every taxpayer a property owner?

If Judson Phillips really wants to return to the original Constitution and allow only male land owners to vote, I'm in. No more Sarah Palin presidential talk!

BTW, given Christine O'Donnell's financial problems, does anyone know if she owns a home? But if we repeal the 19th amendment along with others, it wouldn't matter. Huzzah!

The people who own the country should run the country, or some such.

FWIW: Neal Boortz has been pushing the property owner line for years. I think he and many at the top really want it to be One Dollar - One Vote. The more money you have the more your vote should count. Just like Corporate American. You own more stock, you get more votes.

Dear Emily and Carol:

Thank you for your observant questions! We understand there may be some confusion about only property owners getting a vote where a house is subject to a bank mortgage, and particularly where the borrower is underwater. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has made this question easy. In Citizens United, the Court held that corporations get the political rights of citizens. Accordingly for any home-occupant who does not fully own the home, their vote will be assigned to the Bank, who will cast it as the Bank sees fit. After all, it is the Bank that truly invested in the community!

If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

As if Citizens United was not enough of a destruction to what is left of our country, just look what they are gonna do now so as to assure that White/Corporate Amercia controls, and rules, all.....

Supreme Court may kill Arizona’s fair campaign financing law

By Eric W. Dolan

Monday, November 29th, 2010 -- 3:50 pm
The Supreme Court may kill Arizonas fair campaign financing lawLess than a year after the controversial Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court is expected to rule against an Arizona law that seeks to moderate election spending by providing subsidies to candidates who face big-spending opponents.

On Monday, the Supreme court announced it would hear a challenge to the Clean Elections Act, a law adopted by Arizona voters in 1998 that is designed to limit campaign spending by providing public funding to candidates.

Candidates can opt out of the public funding to avoid its pre-set spending limits, but by doing so they may be inadvertently helping their opponent. If a candidate opts out of the public funding, and receives private funding above the pre-set limit, the state provides "matching" public funds to the other candidates.

The court has already signaled its disapproval of the legislation. In June, it blocked the state from providing "matching funds" to candidates running for office.

The law is being challenged by libertarians who claim it unfairly punishes candidates who raise private money by forcing them to cut back their spending in order to avoid their opponent receiving additional public funds.

The court is set to hear arguments for McComish v. Bennett in the spring.

"Public financing has a number of benefits, including reducing the threat of corruption and the appearance of corruption, providing a jump start for new candidates who are not professional politicians, and freeing up candidates and officeholders to have more time to interact with voters," Richard Hasen of the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles said. "The whole point of the extra matching funds in the Arizona plan is to give candidates assurance they won't be vastly outspent in their election."

"While an adverse ruling by the Supreme Court in McComish would not mean that all public financing systems would be unconstitutional, it would eliminate one of the best ways to create effective public financing systems," Hasen added.

Those challenging the Clean Elections Act have an important precedent on their side. In 2008, the Supreme Court struck down the "millionaire's amendment" in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act that allowed candidates to accept larger contributions if they faced an opponent who was spending large sums of private money. The court ruled that the attempt to equalize campaign spending violated the First Amendment.

"We're ecstatic that we have a chance to put an end to the worst features of taxpayer subsidies for politicians," Clint Bolick, a lawyer for the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, said. "The matching-funds system brazenly violates the First Amendment right of candidates to speak without having government put its thumb on the scale for their opponents."

In January of 2010, the Supreme Court struck down another provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act in its ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

I, for one, welcome our new Gileadian overlords.

Can we PLEASE fast-forward a couple of years to the time when jerkoffs like Phillips are forgotten?

andy above is on to something -- in Florida, at least, trailers are licensed as vehicles. Which is "property" of a sort, but then so is a scooter with a scooter license.

It's actually an end run to defund the government. By not allowing renters to vote, you have to exclude them from paying taxes, otherwise you get stuck in that 'taxation without representation' issue. Once all renters are excluded from paying into the government coffers it has no choice but to cut spending.

" Colorado's Tom Tancredo has suggested literacy tests for voters."

I'll second that! (Since all of us here obviously qualify)

I also want an IQ test for all members of congress. (Sorry, Tom; but you can retake the test again, next election cycle. . .)

I suppose it's pointless to offer the observation that the Founders wanted us to be able to make some decisions for ourselves, and not to be bound by their limitations. They were very much aware that they had limitations. In drafting the Constitution, they were not trying to create a monument to themselves. They were trying to create a government that could function effectively. (That's after they'd already created one that could not.)

Historical nitwits! The lot of them! Graduate study for publication anyone? -Ratio of nincompoop American historical perspectives held by Tea partiers, to the amount of Tea partiers who were home-schooled!

Anyway back to the discourse - Has it dawned upon our modern-throw-backs that our founding framers were liberals working against 1000 year family business called monarchy? To reinvent history and project his prejudice upon the historical record is beyond the pale of decent and civil discourse!

For that alone, Judson Phillips should be laughed to the curb and put on the Bozo bus! -Kevo

Well, following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, the more land you own, the more votes you should get. So Ted Turner should have more votes than ANYONE!

Even the word 'disenfranchisement' means something different to Republicans. I was reading our Fairbanks paper at breakfast about Joe Miller's lawsuit going to Juneau instead of Fairbanks. Miller's attorney said "The lawsuit was filed in Fairbanks because voters in the area favored Miller and are the most at risk of disenfranchisement, Van Flein said."

I had to stop a couple minutes and think about that. He wants to invalidate the votes that spelled Murkowski wrong, or added 'Republican' after the name, or had sloppy handwriting, or whatever else they could think of. But it's the people who voted for Joe Miller who stand to be disenfranchised? How does that work exactly? Counting someone else's vote means yours isn't counted? I don't get it it, other than it's just another sign of the alternate Republican universe.

I think it was Ben Franklin who noted that the property owning requirement meant that if a man owned an ass, and accordingly a vote, and then sold the ass to another man, who could then vote, and the first man could not--it meant that the ass had the suffrage, and not the man.

But ask these guys if they wish to apply the same standard to the Selective Service System.

Okay, I have to confess that the thought has crossed my mind more than once that I would be okay with restrictions on who can vote. Scary to think that I have that in common with Judson Phillips.

But there is a difference. Teaparty types would like to restrict the vote to white male landowners. I would like to see voting restricted to people who are capable of critical reasoning, who can learn, who deal with reality, who haven't been pumped full of fear and misinformation by Fox news.

I would like to have a knowledge screen consisting of 3 questions, and you have to get all of them right to vote.

1) Is Sarah Palin qualified to be President? (the correct answer is No.)
2) What is your preferred source of News? ("Not Fox" is the correct answer.)
3) Did the Founding Fathers establish Christianity as the state religion in the Constitution?" (The correct answer is No.)

To paraphrase Judson, I might argue that restricting voting to people who are non-delusional makes sense.

The assumption that "property" equals "real estate" is false. Property is anything one owns -- one's property. That could TVs, iPods, cars, etc., even if one rents. The Constitution also provides for a jury trial in all cases of $20 or more, so it would appear that the Constitutional standard for "property" would be to have 20 bucks, either in cash or "stuff."

There are few people in America who don't have $20 bucks worth of stuff, even if it's only the clothes on their back and their shoes.

So even if we take "property" as a standard for voting, everyone over 18 gets to vote anyway. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

I think Phillips and his colleagues have it backwards. Poor, propertyless people are fully vested in this country. They are too poor to leave, so they're stuck here. In addition, they are dependent on Federal and STate entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, Social Security, etc.

On the other hand, very wealthy people often own houses in other countries, such as the Bahamas, the South of France, etc. They have the means to leave the country and live elsewhere. So, in that sense, they are not as "vested" in the U.S. and, in fact, they might be able to reduce their tax burden by moving outside the country.

Clearly, by Phillips' logic, it's the ultra-wealthy who should be disenfranchised.

How could anyone seriously object to a minimum literacy qualification requirement for voters?

How could anyone seriously object to a minimum literacy qualification requirement for voters?

Well, in addition to the fact that these insidious test have been historically used to disenfranchise all sorts of minority voters (Catholics, Blacks, the Irish, those of lesser education) and the fact that the Supreme Court ruled them illegal AND the fact that such tests are unconstitutional...

...the fact that the only reason they've been brought up again by asswipe Republicans is because they are desperate to once again disenfranchise minority voters on the presumption that wealthy whites will benefit.

Of course, given the political illiteracy of the (99.9% White) Teabaggers, this would be bound to backfire unless implemented in some unfair way as it was in the past (grandfather clauses based on legacy requirements almost exclusively favoring white landowners).

So, what part of the South are you from?

So according to Phillips most young servicemen and servicewomen won't be able to vote for the elected officials who will decide America's military priorities. That should go over well.

If adopted, Phillips' recommendation might stimulate the Tiny House Movement I've been reading about and help rejuvenate the housing market. You can practically put one of those new tiny houses on a credit card.

Methinks that most teabaggers really want to restore the 3/5ths of other persons to relevance...

-Z

Day-um. I remember having a couple of youngsters in my US
Constitutional history survey some years ago, sounded a lot like Brother Phillips. I thought the scorn heaped on their defense of the property franchise idea by their classmates boded well for the Republic. Oh well, like bedbugs, this notion keeps coming back.

I understand that condo owners are a tad incensed at Judson Phillips' comments.

Actually, the founders did consider the idea of allowing only property owners to vote - and rejected it.

How could anyone seriously object to a minimum literacy qualification requirement for voters?

Because it might keep stupid fucks who use non-words like "refudiate" out of the picture???

Um,WTF? Second ammendment solutions, coming to a theater near you!

Steve, I thought you were from Vermont! How could you possibly write this post and not mention our constitution, adopted at Windsor in 1777 when Vermont first declared its independence?

* No property ownership requirement for voting (universal manhood suffrage).
* First constitution to prohibit slavery.
* First constitution to guarantee universal public primary and secondary education.

This state is a wonderful place to live and a large part of that is due to the egalitarian and progressive legacy we inherited.

Judson Phillips, the "Tea Party" and the GOP would turn America into a banana republic if the rest of the country is foolish enough to give them half a chance. Unfortunately, based on the recent election, it looks like Vermont is marching in one direction and the rest of the US is happily riding along in a handbasket headed in the opposite direction.

Every Republican ought to be made to respond to these types of comments. Democrats should go on TV and say: "Prominent conservatives are calling for voting rights restrictions" at every opportunity and force the Republican leadership to address these types of comments.

So, what part of the South are you from?

Tom Tancredo (the politician who advocated this position) is from Colorado. What part of the South is that?

"So according to Phillips most young servicemen and servicewomen won't be able to vote for the elected officials who will decide America's military priorities. That should go over well."

There's a solution to that problem. The early Romans used the ownership of property as a requirement for both voting AND military service. Landless men and slaves were not drafted, since they had little at stake and were therefore considered poor soldier material. The property owners were the folks most motivated to preserve the state, and were expected to fight to defend it.

I think it's important to remember on this point that property restrictions on voting were never part of the Constitution. The Constitution says that electors for representatives shall have the qualifications of electors for the most numerous legislative body in the state. So, until the civil war amendments expanded the right to vote to all men, voter qualifications were entirely determined at the state level. The point being that we don't need to posit a non-textual change in our understanding of the constitution to accept that it is no longer ok to have property restrictions on voting.

Well Trex-

The Supreme Court doesn't always get it right- Eisenhower said that the worst decision he ever made was appointing the far left kook, Earl Warren, to the Supreme Court where he proceeded to concoct new "rights" out of whole cloth.

Every voter should be able to prove they are literate and able to understand our system of government.

As for your ignorant use of the word "teabagger" and disparaging the education of Tea Partiers - all surveys indicate that Tea Partiers have higher educational levels and earn more than their left-wing contemporaries. And are more politically astute.

The Supreme Court doesn't always get it right

That is irrelevant, however, in this case they did get it right. Literacy tests are pernicious and have only ever been used by assholes like you to try and deprive your fellow American citizens of voting because you don't like something about their race or culture.

Every voter should be able to prove they are literate and able to understand our system of government.

Absolutely wrong. There is nothing in the Constitution that demands this. There is nothing in logic that demands it either: you don't have to "understand the system" of government to vote for candidates or issues that are important to you. To say otherwise is the height of -- dare I say it -- elitism.

As for your ignorant use of the word "teabagger"

Teabaggers coined this word for themselves originally and made clever little signs identifying themselves as such. Being an originalist and strict constructionist in these matters myself, I am forced to use the term they themselves coined to spawn the movement.

all surveys indicate that Tea Partiers have higher educational levels and earn more than their left-wing contemporaries. And are more politically astute.

No, that's not true at all. First, here have been no surveys comparing Teabaggers with "left-wing contemporaries," only surveys comparing Teabaggers to Americans in general, which includes moderates and Republicans. Second, it is no surprise to me at all that moneyed interests don't want to pay their fair share of taxes. Duh.

Lastly, the education finding in the poll is revealing in that there has probably never been a more pointed finding in casual polling illustrating the disconnect between education and intelligence. Far from being astute, the Teabaggers have shown that while calling for an end to entitlements they can't even identify a government entitlement they themselves use, as shown in the rallying cry "tell government to keep its hands off my Medicare!"

These slavering Fox watchers can't wrap their heads around even fundamental concepts of economics and law. It's clear from their own statements they have no idea about the relation of spending to economic stimulus or conversely the impact of austerity measures on economic growth. They are economically illiterate and driven not by empiricism but ideology.

Nor is there is a coherent Teabagger philosophy or policy platform: it's just a mishmash of reactionary and contradicting ideas like low taxes and deficit reduction, birtherism, anti-immigration, global warming denial, and beliefs in some alternate Bircher history of the U.S. that wished had happened but didn't.

In a word, the Teabaggers are the modern incarnation of the nativist Know-Nothing movement of the early 19th century, long on identity and short on brains or concern for the common good.

In fact, I fully expect that faction to advocate for the repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment next, or at least to attempt to artfully construe it to apply only to women married to property owners. This in no way bars women from running for office, however, and doubtless an electorate of property-owning mean white males could be relied on to huff and puff on the trail of little Sara's moose-grease-ridden sticky pantyliners.