Adam Cohen Quotes
A key reason that elections are run so badly is that in most states, political partisans are in charge.
Cohen, Adam. "Editorial Observer; The Need to Take Partisanship Out of Elections." The New York Times, 23 Dec. 2008, p. A26.
The Democrats had Gerrymandered Illinois very much the way the Republicans did it in Texas in 2000, thus enabling Stephen A Douglas to defeat Abraham Lincoln for Illinois Senator. However, when Lincoln realizing that he, a relative minor political figure, had come so close despite the gerrymandering, he was emboldened to run for the Presidency.
In the beginning of the 21st century, many republican state legislatures attempted to change the voting laws to eliminate the possibility of voter fraud which was not a serious practical problem in America. However, a consequence—some argue indented and some argue unintended—was that it was harder for certain groups of people to meet the new requirements and therefore was a de facto voter suppression for some people such as the very elderly, the homeless, and the poor. Many of these efforts were declared unconstitutional by the courts.
Ironically, for 100 years after the Civil War, it was the Democrats who tried to keep the Blacks from voting as until Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt began to attract Negro votes, Blacks voted overwhelmingly Republican. In 1964 President Johnson, with bipartisan support overcame the Southern Democratic Filibuster and passed the Civil Rights Act and then the Voting Rights Act. The Republican leadership, sensing the Southern Democratic Anger at the Democratic Party Leadership, implemented their Southern Strategy and embraced the most racist Southern Democrats if they would switch parties. Most did quickly. Soon, almost all the conservatives had abandoned the Democratic Party. This made the Republican Party more conservative and soon liberal Republicans were extinct and by the end or the 20th century, most of the moderates were gone. With almost all of the worst racists in the nation becoming Republicans and being warmly welcomed by the Republican leadership, almost all Blacks became Democratic voters. Then the racist conservatives went back to their time-tested mechanisms for suppressing the Black vote—only this time it was for the benefit of the Republican party. Soon the non-racist Republicans, realizing that minority voter suppression could be an effective mechanism to offset the greater minority fertility rate, the increased voting rate of the young, and the alienation of many unmarried women to the more conservative Republican ideology, got behind voter fraud prevention—a more acceptable purpose for activities that coincidently could make it more difficult for minorities to register and vote. Those activities were what Judge Debevoise was referring to in this quotation.
More than 80 voting machines in Detroit malfunctioned on Election Day resulting in ballot discrepancies in 59% of precincts that raise questions about the reliability of the 2016 Presidential Vote in Michigan. The state of Michigan, like many other states, would not approprate sufficient funds toi keep election equipment properly maintained. What was an irony about the 2016 Election errors in Detroit, the Michican State Law actually forbade doing manual recounts. Polioticans throughout America during that decade had been passing all kinds of legislation to prevent voting by people why were ineligible (a problem which was almsot non existant) and would do very little to get their own election commissions the equipment and personnel that they needed to avoid vote counting errors.
Defending the Sudanese repression of political parties and dissent:
Adam Seth Cohen (born c. 1962) is an American journalist, author, lawyer, and former assistant editorial page editor of The New York Times. He also works in the administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
