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Voter ID Is an Attempt to Suppress Democracy
At this critical time in our nation's history, when wider participation by the American people in their own democracy should be encouraged, Republican politicians are instead suppressing that participation by limiting access to the voting booth.
So-called "voter ID" laws signed into law this year in several states have nothing to do with their purported aim of protecting the sanctity of elections and everything to do with concentrating political power in fewer and fewer hands.
As a former prosecutor of election-law violations in Chicago, I know a little something about election fraud. But what I found in years of pursuing cases of ballot abuse is that it almost never involved ordinary citizens who, say, voted when they weren't eligible, voted under an assumed name, or voted multiple times.
Instead, the fraud was almost exclusively perpetrated by political operatives, who stuffed ballot boxes, "lost" ballots or otherwise manipulated the vote totals in their precincts and wards.
On the unusual occasions when individual voters were involved, they were bribed or intimidated into cooperating with the scheme by a political operative. National and local investigations over the years have confirmed my personal experience.
Since the supposed target of the new laws is a non-existent problem - systematic or widespread fraud by individual voters - these laws, which require citizens to present a photo ID in order to vote, can only be interpreted as an attempt to further politically marginalize already marginalized populations in our country, including the elderly, the disabled, rural residents, low-income citizens and minorities.
These are the groups who are less likely to have government-issued photo identification, and often face financial and logistical hurdles in trying to obtain it.
While many have voted for years at the same polling place and are well-known to the friends and neighbors who serve as precinct election officials there, they may now be discouraged from exercising their franchise by these onerous new requirements.
In New Hampshire, where a voter ID bill is pending in the legislature but some local clerks posted the proposed law's requirements prematurely for a special election recently, voters were seen turning around at the polling-place door.
These laws can even exacerbate the very problem they are purportedly passed to combat. A clerk in South Carolina has noted that since several of the acceptable forms of ID have no address and yet must be accepted as proof of voter eligibility, the traditional duty of elections officials to ensure that people vote once and only once in their correct districts is actually undermined.
These new ID laws are part of a larger Republican program to limit the franchise of people who are more likely to vote for Democrats, an effort that includes: suppression of the youth vote by rejecting student IDs as acceptable identification and shortening the early voting periods young people disproportionably use to exercise their franchise; voter-roll purges that target minority voters; and lifetime bans on voting by ex-felons who have paid their debt to society.
The sanctity of the ballot is in no danger in our republic, but the trust and engagement of the American people in their own political system is.
Even as citizens across the Middle East are basking in newfound opportunities for political expression in the warmth of the Arab Spring, Republican politicians in America are limiting democracy with chilling voter suppression laws. Long ago we should have learned that the problems of democracy are resolved by more democracy, not less.
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24 Comments so far
Show AllWhile I certainly appreciate Mr Means piece here and find it validates what so many others have said regarding the virtual non existance of election fraud, facts make aboslutely no difference or have no imapct on those who propose and enact these laws. Once again the facts have a 'liberal bias'. Lets stop talking about voter fraud and reframe in terms of disenfranchisement lets turn the arugment into 'our brave men and women are dying in Afghanistan to promote free elections there while self serving local politicians are DENYING the right to vote to vulnerable people here". Now I don't believe for one minute that troops are dying to promote democracy at all but it MIGHT be an argument some might understand. On the other hand would they really care?
Since real democracy is dead in the US, I for one don't care anymore. This shit has been going on for a long time. Machines in heavy Democrat areas were scarce and where was the outcry from the dems? People have seen their votes for D turn to R, reported it and where was the outcry?
During the 2000 debacle, how many people complained about their votes? Especially the Black vote? How many Congress members got up and talked about it, pleaded with Gore or anyone who would listen and no one gave a damn?
I won't vote for this sham anyway. A good candidate that wants to bring change will never make it on the ticket.
Or you can get a candidate that promises all kinds of good shit, they turn around and not deliver.
Agreed, joecool. Voting is a sham, democracy is a lie, and the PTB really don't give a damn what the people want or need. They know that most people are either tuned out or buy into the fake arguments all over the press. Expending energy on the issue of candidates and voting rights has gotten us nowhere. It's a form of denial--if we could just get Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich or whomever to run, all would turn around. No, the problem is systemic. We have a corporatocracy going here, and the minds of the US citizenry have been coopted by propaganda in and out of school.
If voting is a sham, then why did the duopoly work so hard to get rid of ACORN?
"if we could just get Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich or whomever to run, all would turn around."
Are you kidding me? Only if they had the guts to run for President in a third party. Which they won't. They're sold out, too. The just talk purddy.
To illustrate what a fraud these laws perpetrate, when I go to vote I have to show my ID to the people at the poll. So I get my driver's license out and the guy glances at it - no more than a glance - and waves me on. Some of the people at the polls know me (it is a small town), but not everyone. The picture on my driver's license is so bad, it could be anyone. But the fact that I have some sort of an ID makes it legal.
I could vote and then, while leaving the place, give my ID to someone else, and he would be able to pass the "inspection." But it his name is not in the voting book, he will not get to vote. So what does the ID provide?
Unfortunately, the court system in Indiana has upheld the ID law a couple of times. Of course, most of the judges are Republicans. What a suprise,
With electronic voting systems phased in nationwide, the integrity of all elections is now questionable. Numerous experts in the field have shown time after time how easy the vote counts can be manipulated to achieve the ruling elite's desired results. And the corporate oligarchs now finance, own and control both branches of the capitalist war party, so, at the national level, especially with the Citizens United court decision, only those who follow the Wars and Wall Street party line will be financed. Now ponder all those years when we were all taught over and over about the sham elections in the former USSR and other totalitarian systems. Looks like the rulers here took those lessons right to heart and now have a nearly unstoppable system in place. Real change will have to come from people's actions in the streets, strikes, boycotts, body, mind and soul resistance, not from a locked down, and rigged election system.
Let's look at it from the other side.
Say there's a Tea Party candidate and a some kind of a progressive liberal candidate running for election. So some fringe Tea Party members go to the county office, get a list of all the voters that died within the last 3-5 months and go to each one of their voting places and give their names as the name of the deceased person and vote for the Tea Party candidate. Tea Party candidate wind by a really narrow margin.
Surely the evil Tea Party members are capable of such a scheme. Presenting some kind of an ID would have prevented the fraud.
That kind of "fraud" virtually never happens. That is ALWAYS the fallacious argument for voter ID, which is ALWAYS a scheme hatch by the conservative right to keep the poor and disenfranchised just that, poor and disenfranchised.
Good. Then there's not gonna be any complaints in future elections about dead people voting.
I'll take the disenfrachised with the dead if I have to. This is just another crisis manufactured by the right to scare gullible Americans. The kinds of voting fraud IDs might prevent simply does not exist in the numbers that would deem it necessary. The potential disenfranchisement among the poor, the elderly and the infirm, however, is huge. That is the threat to voting integrity.
Are we giving "let's pretend" examples? How about a real life example of election fraud (vs. voter fraud, two very different things) playing out right now in Wisconsin's recall elections. Below is a quote from Charles Schulz of Hudson, Wisconsin:
I received an absentee ballot request form from Americans For Prosperity. It intentionally listed to return up to Aug. 11. The date of the election is Aug. 9. If I followed their instructions, my ballot would not be legal. I think they purposely intended to discount my vote. I understand such activity to be against the law. I believe I was targeted by this group because I am a Democrat and a senior citizen.
And this doesn't even touch on the more horrifying electronic voting machine violations. Paper ballots -- and NO VOTER ID laws is what we need.
Such laws shouldn't (I first wrote "won't" but then thought of the current SC) hold up under challenge, for the same reason poll taxes and literacy tests were ruled illegal: they have a disparate effect against protected groups.
The only way they could hold water is if the ids were free, and transportation were provided to bring people at a time of their choosing to get the id.
Massive cuts in public education, universities and other social programs where among the major items in a $27.15 billion dollar budget passed by the Pennsylvania state legislature and signed into law by Republican Governor Tom Corbett.
The budget contains a series of draconian cuts especially targeting education. Corbett has made it very clear that he wants to cripple education on both the K-12 and university levels.
What use is an uneducated work force? Besides for voting Republican and making unwanted babies?
And of course the very argument from every politician defending these draconian social program cuts at every level is saving our children. It is just so unfair to saddle them with a federal deficit. Better they should be underfed, undereducated, unhealthy, unsafe, and underpaid. Better that than having a few corporate kingpins pay their fair share of taxes to the country they've ransacked. And meanwhile Corbett is giving away PA to the frackers and other corporate interests. But of course he'll be cheered, like Chris Christie and that idiot in Wisconson, by the M$M pundits for showing us the path to deficit reduction without raising "job-crippling" taxes. And congress will point to them as examples of what can be done in Washington to save the American people from what is surely their biggest problem, a big federal deficit.
Somehow I think there is more to this agenda than voting privilege.
First voting doesn't mean much- its an illusion to make us think we have a choice.
Between Diebold and what our choices are to begin with, we're screwed.
I think this is another 'baby step" toward national id cards and then micro-chipping.
No arguments- just my hunch.
Yep, that is the agenda. Even being considered for putting chips in meds to make sure the sheep take their deadly drugs. Soon there will be forced deadly vaccinations too. Already being done in the schools and they sheep come down hard on anyone that doesn't vaccinate.
Voting IS the scam you said. We get to vote. Whoopie. Then our voices are ignored. I hate everything the US does.
Voter ID is perfectly rational from the perspective of those political operatives mentioned. They have to divert attention away from their own illegal activities. So they create a red herring out of ordinary people - with claims that people are in general not to be trusted. We find the same political operatives, or variants of those, are creating red herrings out of ordinary people to divert attention from many other rackets, any and all rackets, they may wish to pursue. For example the "war on drugz" all the way back to alcohol prohibition we find big promotions to quickly fill the role of "bad guy" with innocents so the guilties can evade attention. The lesson from this is very clear: When someone points the finger, place the mirror. Of course we're taught not to do this, which is exactly how they get away with it.
DOH! What else would it be for besides suppression? As far as I know the GOP to this day operates under a consent decree from the 80's that barred them from vote caging - or in which they agreed not to cage voters.
This just a new product rollout.
This is not an issue, which is controversial, except for those who are politically involved. Most folks must be herded and driven to vote. I don't see why we should care that ignorant voters don't care enough to get an ID card. They care much more about their driver's license, health-care card, or even their frequent customer card from Walmart. To ask them to be qualified as a legal voter does not seem like much of a requirement. It certainly isn't a Jim Crowe type of attempt to disenfranchise.
For anyone to say that there is no significant levels of voter fraud, have not seen the effects of the Chicago vote or any place where motor-voter registration is in place. The NAACP and Accorn have turned voter fraud into big business utilizing government grants to mobilize masses of civic drop-outs.
This voter registration is a reaction to blatant attempts to register non-American citizens and criminals. You know it, and so do the people who write the grant applications.
The NAACP and Accorn have turned voter fraud into big business utilizing government grants to mobilize masses of civic drop-outs.
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Evidence, please?
from the article:
~ The sanctity of the ballot is in no danger in our republic, but the trust and engagement of the American people in their own political system is. ~
this isolated sentence is the sinister purpose for this article...it is intended to reinforce the integrity of the electoral processes within the United States within the mind of the voter...an integrity that is false, fraudulent, nonexistent...
this illusion is the most important illusion of all, and one that absolutely must be maintained...none can ever doubt the power of the vote...even when direct observation warrants...
all 'governmental' actions rest on the authority of the vote...
even if those actions be criminal, and that authority be manufactured...
the authority must exist...