The Panic Button
As I am sure you’ve heard, we are going to have Voter ID in Texas. It’s a bad idea from bad men with a bad machine set on bad overdrive running on bad gas with bad breath.
B.A.D. And UnAmerican.
Ector County is out in West Texas in the Midland / Odessa area. There are some tough folks out there. Most of them survive on grit alone because water is in short supply and there ain’t no food.
So, when they get mad, they get mad.
The Ector County Elections Office will soon get panic buttons designed to protect the employees in the office.
Ector County Elections Administrator Mitzi Scheible said a contract approved by commissioners on July 8 with Tyco Integrated Security would install panic buttons and an alarm system for the elections warehouse. The alarm system, Scheible said, was for residents who get too upset when they can’t vote in an election. The camera system was used as a way to better monitor their equipment.
Now, when your state government pisses off people so badly that your local government has to order panic buttons at a cost of $3,154.23 and an annual fee of $515.36, then maybe it’s time for the Texas Democratic Party to stand out front of those polls and remind people whose bad idea this was.
Of course, the cheaper alternative was to just arm election workers with some AK47s and leave them to their own devices.
Thanks to Kyle for the heads up and John for the button.
Jeebus.
1That there is some weird chit. More afraid of voters than guns? The sheriff is right across the street?
2Is this for real?
3Hey, by now JJ you should know that elections are only for white folk with corporate issued IDs.
4Now it all comes clear. The secret movers and shakers behind the new state voter ID laws are the alarm and security companies like ADT, who look forward to selling panic button systems to election boards around the country who are more fearful now of irate voters. Ain’t free enterprise grand?
5The silver lining to the new voter suppression laws is that it is happening in time to allow a response. Getting people registered to vote is a good way to reach out to them. It would be ironic if the outreach were so successful that even more people in targeted groups vote in 2014 than in 2012.
6LynnN, that is exactly what is needed! Tsunami the local voter registration office. When you do, take pictures. Make photocopies of the ID they give you and put it in a safe place. When you do go to vote, make sure there is someone with you to support you if the poll worker decides that even your new, legal voter ID isn’t good enough. There will be such incidents. And, one more thing! Absentee ballots need to be protected from start to finish! This includes the military who have to get them where they are stationed half a world away and get them back to the source. Yah know how Jimmy Carter monitors elections in foriegn countries to make sure they are according to Hoyle? Whaddaya say we hire him to do the same damn thing here!
7Umptydump, ADT isn’t such a hot security alarm company. Their stuff is wired into the phone system. When a helluva storm blew through my area a year ago last June, we lost the phones (no 911) and the ADT. If we had evacuated until the power returned, there was a good chance our property would have been at high risk for looting or worse. I dumped ADT the first chance I could get and opted for a system that was a sibling to OnStar. It costs a little more but I really get my $$ worth. I can just see somebody pressing that panic button and getting no response whatever!
8Good grief. And there’s a grocery store near us where you can do early voting and they have required photo IDs for a couple of years, AND forbid you to carry any kind of electronic device into the voting booth. I vote somewhere else and have reported them but last I heard they are very polite but still required photo IDs at last election. One lady was so mad; she came out griping about wanting to use her cell phone to remind her how to vote but they wouldn’t let her use it. If I’d kept quiet I could have taken a picture but I didn’t keep quiet, went up and down the line saying YOU DON’T NEED A PHOTO ID.
9There is at least one suit filed in Fed. Court in Corpus to try to block the voter id law under section 2. The new bail in decision by the DOJ may help block voter id. If the Texas voter id law is not blocked, the 2014 elections are going to be messy
10The Pennsylvania Voter I.D. law was stayed by the PA courts for 2012, but is currently back in court for a final review. We are hoping Gov. Corbett & Repug pals will be defeated in their attempt to disenfranchise voters.
11“It’s a bad idea from bad men with a bad machine set on bad overdrive running on bad gas with bad breath.”
LOL!
12Great news! The DOJ will be investigating the Texas redistricting fiasco for civil rights violations. Let’s hope that what’s left of the Voting Rights Act will enable them to right some wrongs.
13I really really feel your pain and you will understand why, I’m living in NC, it has been renamed something like ‘The hope state of Koch’ (something like that), I was wondering if you all
14would consider a ‘twinning of the two states we need all the allies we can get to get rid of the idiots who have stolen our states.