God, Florida, is there ANYTHING you do besides oranges, Disneyland and meth that isn’t straight-up freaking god-awful?
In a cascade of cynical ratfuckery that absolutely nobody could have predicted when the SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, Florida has come up with a fun new way to keep Democrats from voting. Now, there’s no need to get all het up about these measures being a naked power grab designed to insure a permanent electoral advantage for the GOP. If people don’t like these laws, they can simply elect a legislature that will repeal them. If they can find an open polling place where they can convince someone that they’re qualified to vote…..and you don’t poop your pants.
Imagine for a minute that you live in a first-world, well-populated county and some of your fellow countrymen express concern that the bathrooms available at your polling places — where people sometimes wait for 8 hours to vote — are not sufficiently accessible to those with disabilities. Do you:
(A) retrofit the existing bathrooms to ensure accessibility?
(B) build new accessible bathrooms?
(C) close ALL the bathrooms at polling places so you don’t have to address the accessibility issue?
If you are Florida you pick (C). The Miami-Dade County Elections Department quietly implemented a policy to close the bathrooms at all polling facilities, according to disability rights lawyer Marc Dubin. Dubin said the policy change was in “direct response” to an inquiry to the Elections Department about whether they had assessed accessibility of polling place bathrooms to those with disabilities. […]
Instead, he received a written response announcing that the county would close all restrooms at polling places “to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not treated unfairly,” a January email stated. “[T]he Department’s policy is not to permit access to restrooms at polling sites on election days,” Assistant County Attorney Shanika Graves said in a Feb. 14 email.
I keep waiting to wake up. It’s not gonna happen, is it? I am as cynical as the next guy, but did I think it would come to this? No, I did not. You made a policy that you will not HAVE BATHROOMS AVAILABLE at polling places? An actual factual policy? That you made some poor assistant county attorney write about? And said assistant county attorney probably went home and guzzled antifreeze, because that is such a bullshit thing to have to tell people?
What’s next, the “no holding a spot in line” for a voter law? No pass-outs, and a velvet rope line with an obnoxious entitled doorman, just like a typical asshole club, but letting white males jump to the front instead of hot girls?
Most people do not typically go eight hours without bathroom breaks, and not everyone is going to suffer the Nugentesque humiliation of pants wetting/pooping, lady astronaut diapers, or the difficulty of a catheter just to cast their fucking vote. We know that you’re trying to make sure the browns and the blahs and the poors and the ladeez and the disabled can’t vote, but christ, do you have to make it so obvious?
Anyone waiting in line for more than an hour to vote is prima faciae evidence of voter suppression. Not letting people in such lines use the rest room is just plain sadistic and should be called out as such. But the FEC is still hog-tied and toothless.
Remember, just because they’ve closed the crappers at your polling place, doesn’t preclude you from bringing your Racing Forum to the polls, rolling it up, and then using it to pee or poop in the pocket of the closest GOP or James O’Keefer poll watcher. And, even innocent rich white Republicans can be accidentally snared in the brave campaign to keep Negroes from voting and poop their pants, too.
You know when you’re a party in decline? When even though you’ve gerrymandered your districts to be a safe as possible for your incumbents- you need to limit the public’s right to vote in order to remain in office.