The GOP war on voting

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Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008.



Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. "I don't want everybody to vote," the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."



Since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP's effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever.



In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters.



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830
 
In 2008 my wife (democrat) was denied a ballot even though she had been registered in the same precinct (and voted) for over ten years. The next morning at the coffee shop, a fellow told how he, his father and brother, same precinct, also dems, had also been denied.

I too was denied, but showing my driver's license, demanded and received a ballot.

This was in one precinct in one town, in one state.
 
Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote by onerous voter ID requirements, by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.


This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens.



http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779
 
Return of Dune said:
In 2008 my wife (democrat) was denied a ballot even though she had been registered in the same precinct (and voted) for over ten years. The next morning at the coffee shop, a fellow told how he, his father and brother, same precinct, also dems, had also been denied.

I too was denied, but showing my driver's license, demanded and received a ballot.

This was in one precinct in one town, in one state.
Click to expand...

Oh my God, how terrible. You mean you actually had to prove who you were to be able to vote? Holy cow. That is tyrannical and repressive. I've never heard of such a thing. You poor poor sick little fuck. LOL.
 
After taking power, the Bush administration declared war on voter fraud, making it a "top priority" for federal prosecutors.


In 2006, the Justice Department fired two U.S. attorneys who refused to pursue trumped-up cases of voter fraud in New Mexico and Washington, and Karl Rove called illegal voting "an enormous and growing problem."


In parts of America, he told the Republican National Lawyers Association, "we are beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are colonels in mirrored sunglasses."


According to the GOP, community organizers like ACORN were actively recruiting armies of fake voters to misrepresent themselves at the polls and cast illegal ballots for the Democrats.


Even at the time, there was no evidence to back up such outlandish claims.


A major probe by the Justice Department between 2002 and 2007 failed to prosecute a single person for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop.


Out of the 300 million votes cast in that period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud – and many of the cases involved immigrants and former felons who were simply unaware of their ineligibility.


A much-hyped investigation in Wisconsin, meanwhile, led to the prosecution of only .0007 percent of the local electorate for alleged voter fraud.


"Our democracy is under siege from an enemy so small it could be hiding anywhere," joked Stephen Colbert.




http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830#ixzz26aNW3Xqf
 
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