I am writing this from the airport in Atlanta, where I have spent the past five days doing my best to help make sure that the Georgia Senate runoff elections were fair and that all votes were counted. The experience was both inspiring and chilling, so I am going to jot down some thoughts before the press of business and family in the “real world” re-consumes me.
First off, a disclosure: I believe very strongly that the voting process should be as easy as possible. In college (before the internet ruled our lives), I volunteered for a small organization that was trying to get the local city council to adopt a measure that would study, and, hopefully, implement a process by which voters could cast their ballots by telephone. That’s right: pick up the phone, enter your id, cast your vote, and, presto! You are done. No line, no worrying about signatures, no hassle. Despite our best efforts, and many long hours spent gathering signatures in the frigid Colorado winter, the effort failed. (Its leader, a fellow nicknamed “Evan from Heaven,” then went back to busking on the local pedestrian mall.) Continue reading “Opposing Voter Suppression — The Battle for Georgia”
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conduct often have the opportunity to appeal their termination to some type of board or officer. That entity in turn usually has the authority to either rule on their claims or to make a recommendation to a civil service agency regarding whether the termination should be upheld or not. These proceedings hold out the promise of swift justice-a hearing and a decision by an impartial fact-finder in a relatively short amount of time. In practice, however, they rarely result in any type of reinstatement or fairness.