EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'
- Cornel West: Obama 'Is a War Criminal'
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
- In 'March Toward Disaster,' World Hits 400 PPM Milestone
- Revealed: How US State Department 'Twists Arms' on Monsanto's Behalf
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Republican 'Voter Fraud' Fraud
All over the US, GOP lawmakers have engineered schemes to make voting more difficult. Well, if you can't win elections fairly…
Presidential candidate and angry white man Newt Gingrich seems nostalgic for the good old Jim Crow poll tax days: he has called for people to have to pass an American historical literacy test before they can vote. His colleagues on the anti-democratic right have not gone quite so far, but 38 states, most of them controlled by Republicans, are concocting all kinds of ingenious ways to suppress the vote. A new report from New York University's Brennan Center for Justice says that more than five million people – enough to swing the 2012 presidential election – could find themselves disenfranchised, especially if they're poor or old or students or black or Latino.
Hyper-conservative governors and legislators, working with templates produced by a shady cabal called the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), have pushed through laws to cut the number of voting days, impede groups registering new voters, demand proof of citizenship and otherwise make it more difficult to cast a ballot. Alec, partly funded by the John Birch-er billionaire Koch brothers and affiliated with Liam Fox's Atlantic Bridge, is on a mission to shrink not just government (which it regards as a cancer on capitalism), but democracy itself. Ion Sancho, elections supervisor of Leon County, Florida, and veteran of Florida's 2000 presidential election fiasco, says: "Every state that has a Republican legislature is doing this, from Maine to Florida. It's a national effort."
In the 2008 election, Barack Obama benefited from extended voting hours and early voting days, as well as rules allowing citizens to register and vote on the same day. It's pretty obvious why: students, the elderly, and hourly-wage workers who can't queue for hours without making the boss angry, tend to favor Democrats. Florida – which became a byword for Banana Republicanism and electoral corruption 11 years ago – has been positively zealous in attempts to restrict voting rights on the grounds that easy voting leads to waste, fraud and abuse. One lawmaker pitched a hissy fit, claiming that dead actors (Paul Newman, for one) constantly turn up on voter rolls and that "Mickey Mouse" had registered to vote in Orlando. State senator Mike Bennett wants to make voting "harder"; after all, he said, "people in Africa literally walk 200 or 300 miles so they can have the opportunity to do what we do, and we want to make it more convenient? How much more convenient do you want to make it?"
Florida Republicans addressed the problem of "convenience" earlier this year by cutting early voting days from 14 to eight, cutting budgets for expanded polling places and eliminating Sunday voting: African American (and some Latino) churches had successfully run a post-sermon"Souls to the Polls" operation, getting out the vote in 2004, 2006 and 2008. Florida has also attacked civic-minded people trying to register new voters. Jill Ciccarelli, a teacher at New Smyrna Beach High School, wanted to foster a sense of citizenship amongst her pupils, so she helped the ones who were old enough register. She didn't know she was breaking the law. Now, all individuals or groups must file a "third party registration organisation" form with the state, and instead of having ten days to deliver the paperwork,they must now do it in 48 hours. Failure to comply could draw felony charges and thousands of dollars in fines.
The nonpartisan League of Women Voters, promoters of civic responsibility since 1920, has now abandoned its Florida voter drives: LWV is suing the state, saying that Florida's clampdown on the franchise violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Florida's response? Governor Rick Scott, a Republican elected in 2010 and steeped in Koch-flavored Tea, wants to largely exempt Florida – a former slave state with as rich a racist history as Alabama or Mississippi – from the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Florida's not out front on this: many states, including those fat with electoral college votes such as Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Indiana, Tennessee and Ohio, have passed harsh restrictions on who can vote and how. More than a dozen states demand that people show an approved photo ID card. Surely, the middle-class reasoning goes, every red-blooded American has a driving license? But hundreds of thousands – many elderly, disabled or just plain poor – do not. Representative Terri Sewell, a member of Congress from Alabama, told the New York Times that her wheelchair-bound father had used his United States social security card as proof of identity when voting. Now that's been outlawed.
In Texas, student ID cards are no longer be valid for voting; neither are ID cards issued by the federal Veterans Administration. All those students and war vets need to do is go buy a gun: concealed weapons permits are acceptable at the polls.
Republicans all sing from the same hymnal on this one: voting must be tightly controlled to prevent fraud. Never mind that there is no fraud. Indeed, the Brennan Center found that voter fraud is so "exceedingly rare" that "one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud." Mickey Mouse was not allowed to register. Paul Newman did not vote from beyond the grave. Hordes of undocumented Mexicans have not stuffed ballot boxes (though a great many new, legal Latino voters have registered in Florida, Texas and other large states).
But why let the facts get in the way of rigging an election? Some conservative sages have let the veil slip long enough for us to see what's really going on. Former Arkansas governor-turned-paid-Murdoch-mediaite Mike Huckabee likes to say that if people have friends who don't plan to vote the rightwing line, "Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date."
Huckabee protests he's just joking. But Matthew Vadum, a Fox News favorite and part of the paranoid right's brain trust, isn't being remotely funny when he says "registering the poor to vote is un-American." Nor was American Legislative Exchange Council co-founder Paul Weyrich back in the 1980s, when he said, "I don't want everybody to vote. Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Obviously, democracy is no fun if just anyone can play.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
26 Comments so far
Show AllThe simple solution to seeing that a majority of voters have a photo ID card is for our government to issue photo ID Social Security card. In effect, it would be a national ID card. As it now stands the Social Security card we all have is pretty much useless and it's not recommended that we even carry it. I'm 74 years old and I've NEVER had anyone ask me for my social security card.
Election fraud we still have but our politicans are unwilling to stop it, for obvious reasons.
The Corporatocracy is waging a winner-take-all war against our Democracy! And our politicians remain silent!!!!!
My fisrt response to Gingrich's suggestion is "good", since most Teabaggers would probably fail such a test. But then, I'm guessing Howard Zinn isn't on the required reading list for the proposed test, if you catch my drift.
This is what ALEC was created many years ago to accomplish ... create rightist legislation for injection at state level across the US.
Why can't there be a progressive equivalent?
The real voter fraud is seen in who counts the votes, and what type of computer software is utilized to come up with these (easily manipulated) quotients.
It's amazing how much $ is being spent on peripheral issues... as if voting really changed anything, as if the pre-vetted candidates (Coke & Pepsi) that we get to "choose" between represent anything that deviates from the Corporate Owners' bottom lines or standard operating principles.
Our elections are the political equivalent of Disneyland... by narrowing who gets to enter the park, The Controllers realize they can deflect attention away from what's really going on, and who's allowed on stage.
Your point is well taken. However, it's important to distinguish between 'voter fraud' (which doesn't exist as a practical matter) and ELECTION FRAUD, which is a huge problem with implications for the entire nation.
...and Dennis Kucinich.
Newt no longer holds elected office. Hasn't for years. Why he still has any credibility is beyond me.
Much of this is perpetrated by the corporate owned media monolith.
For instance, in 2009 the most frequent guest on MTP was.. NEWT GINGRICH!
How superficially ironic it is that it is Republicans in 2011 who want to undo the Jeffersonian Republican Revolution of 1800 when we took the power of selecting our leaders out of the hands of the elite and put it (albeit at the time only partially) in the hands of the people via democracy.
Well said. Spot on.
Yawn. There's an original CD comment.
The GOP really does not exist anymore and is nothing but a group that planned to cause havoc when the President was sworn in. They just blame the Democrats and of course the President for everything.
Actually the majority of citizens have nothing good to say about Congress.
Enough said.
Lets vote the whole lot out in 2012.
I plan on voting for the candidates that raise the least amount of money. The name I don't recognize because they didn't mail out flyers, or mount tv ads. The candidates the press doesn't think are important enough to cover.
Voting Republican or Democratic has got to be seen as an Un-American activity--don't enable the corporatists, vote third party. I will vote for any and all Occupy candidates and only Occupy candidates. Want World War III? Keep voting for war criminals. Want Peace and Justice? Throw every one of the bums in jail. Prosecute war crimes!
I think the comments have missed the point. The Republicans are leading the charge with the complicity of the Democrats. We all get that. But it is the foremost instrument of democracy that they're suppressing. The plutocracy fears the coming day when democracy might force real change.
Much has been said on commondreams about a constitutional amendment denying corporations personhood. But we the people also need a constitutional amendment enshrining the right to an effective vote, i.e. freedom to cast it and that it be counted as intended (see Jamin Raskin's book 'Overruling Democracy: Supreme Court vs. the American People).
""Republicans all sing from the same hymnal on this one: voting must be tightly controlled to prevent fraud. Never mind that there is no fraud. Indeed, the Brennan Center found that voter fraud is so "exceedingly rare" that "one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud."'
********************************************************
And that 'tightly controlled to prevent voter fraud' is euphemistic language that means to orchestrate voter fraud for THEIR BENEFIT.
I beg to differ with the Brennan Center findings. The 2000 and 2004 elections are direct incidents of voter fraud. 2000 for a petitioner(w) being the only one petitioning the scotus to stop the recount as it might cause irreparable harm to the petitioner(w) if the recount continued. Why was there only one petitioner? Why was the scotus even involved? And above all, why did the 5 neoconservative members(lucky number for neoconservatives) make the decision to stop the count when they had no business making that kind of decision? That isn't just tantamount to breaking the law, it breaks the law of the constitution! And that doesn't even consider the shenanigans that brother jeb pulled with his sec of state harris in creating fictitious felony lists to keep most blacks and other minorities from voting that day. Without the supreme court's treasonous decision that everybody accepted or at least didn't object enough, w would not have won that election.
There is a whole book describing the treason of the ohio sec of state doing everything imaginable to keep people from the polls which worked to perfections if voter fraud is what a party wants to 'rig' an election. There was the ID obfuscation, the only polls certain people could vote and the placement of voting machines, meaning plenty for the rethuglican party and maybe 4 or 5 in each voting place for the dims. Once again, it worked as very few dims got to vote or had to wait so long to vote that they just gave up or the polls closed. That book is 'What Happened in Ohio?".
One thing is for sure, as of now republicans couldn't win a bag of dog shit in an election so they have to go out and according to this article, BLANTANTLY announce their intentions to change voter requirements and infrastructure for THEIR benefit. And for recent proof, look at the rigged elections and the officers in wisconsin a year or so ago when the one person handling the voting record for some strange reason had them on her computer and 'forgot' to count them or some such rigamarole.
During nixon's terms, joe coors chipped in $250,000.00 for the so called first 'think tanks' which began popping up solely for the purpose of devising plans on taking control of this country by the republicans. That was 35 years ago or so. That time in all those think tanks are what one sees as the republicans attempt to CAPTURE this country. If THAT happens, these 'occupy' movements will cease and/or become the violent revolution this country really needs to get rid of the sociopaths and psychopaths in both parties so this country can function for all in an equitable way and none of this MONEY BUYS CITIZENSHIP AND RIGHTS ANYMORE!!!
.
samosamo wrote:
I beg to differ with the Brennan Center findings. The 2000 and 2004 elections are direct incidents of voter fraud.
* * * * *
My Reply:
I expect that the Brennan Center makes the standard distinction others make between voter fraud (i.e. fraud committed by people trying to vote) and election fraud (i.e. fraud committed by people trying to manipulation election results).
Ho-hum. How much more dems vs repubs BS must we endure before it finally dies out?
Z-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
It does not matter too much about the voters. The rules could be tightened until only those having yearly incomes of a million dollars or more should be allowed to vote, but is that any worse than now?
Other people are slaves whose opinion does not matter. As it is , the only votes that matter are the ones that corporations make with large personal and party donations, and the only opinions that matter, or even consulted, according to the highest justices in the land, are those CEOS getting more than a 10 million bonus each year from the proceeds of corporate crime, and their hired lobbyists. All significant opinion is already fully pre-purchased, with considerable narrowing of options and beneficiaries. The usual major candidates running for election have also been pre-purchased, and the content of their speach and publications is fully vetted, supplied or approved by corporate head quarters, and their paid advisors.
It will continue more so this way, as state and elite legal powers and ownership remain unchallenged, and are more or less identical, until the national economy and currency undergoes complete collapse, accompanied by environmental collapse and frequent extreme weather catastrophes. What is the point of a world empire with military bases, torture and missile power, when the empire cannot properly look after its own people? But it sure looks after its powerful beneficiaries.
The empire is supreme power of corporate and organisational incompetence, with a narrow view of profit, and externalising costs, in the hands of psychopaths, combined with environmental and social denial. Collapse in environmental carrying capacity will bring down the economy, and banks and insurance with it. They will look after their number one. The elite will not have enough anti-pitch fork apparatus ready and may have to flee to Switzerland where their foreign currency trillions have been stashed. Its already far too late. Collapse and game over is "in the pipeline".
Gee, these Republicans sound like bad folks.
The article is laughable.
"When your choice is the lesser of two evils, evil still wins."
-- Jerry Garcia --
General strike for the 2012 election is the strongest statement.
That's not the solution. A general strike? That leaves only the GOP/Teabaggers voting, and it absolutely assures their favorite candidates would win. Were you serious or are you trying to sway those who can't think these things through? Huh?
The Department of Motor Vehicles in NY issues "non-driver photo ID's." I don't know if any other states do this. These ID's would put a crimp in the GOP's current attempt to stifle the vote.
Combine this with Diebold and other sleazy companies who have control of the results of elections, and I wonder who is going to win every single time soon?