{"id":4950,"date":"2011-05-29T01:26:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-29T08:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4950"},"modified":"2011-05-29T01:26:21","modified_gmt":"2011-05-29T08:26:21","slug":"republicans-work-to-disenfranchise-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/29\/republicans-work-to-disenfranchise-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Work to Disenfranchise Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republicans have a long history of gaining electoral advantage by schemes to deprive people likely to vote for Democrats of the right to vote.  Methods used include caging, choosing challenge based on race, electronic vote theft (ES&S and Diebold), preventing voter registration campaigns, placing too few polling places districts with high concentrations of minority voters, and now, voter ID laws.  Their excuse is the straw man, voter fraud.  The actual problem is virtually nonexistent, and what few cases there have been are mostly Republican fraud.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"29voting\"Less than 18 months before the next presidential election, Republican-controlled statehouses around the country are rewriting voting laws to require photo identification at the polls, reduce the number of days of early voting or tighten registration rules. <\/p>\n

Republican legislators say the new rules, which have advanced in 13 states in the past two months<\/strong>, offer a practical way to weed out fraudulent votes and preserve the integrity of the ballot box. Democrats say the changes have little to do with fraud prevention and more to do with placing obstacles in the way of possible Democratic voters, including young people and minorities<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas signed laws last week that would require each voter to show an official, valid photo ID to cast a ballot, joining Kansas and South Carolina. <\/p>\n

In Florida, which already had a photo law, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill this month to tighten restrictions on third-party voter registration organizations \u2014 prompting the League of Women Voters to say it would cease registering voters in the state<\/strong> \u2014 and to shorten the number of early voting days. Twelve states now require photo identification to vote. <\/p>\n

The battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania are among those moving ahead on voter ID bills, part of a trend that seems likely to intensify the kind of pitched partisan jousting over voting that has cropped up in recent presidential races. <\/p>\n

When voters in predominantly black neighborhoods in Florida saw their votes challenged in the contested Bush-Gore election of 2000, Democrats made charges of disenfranchisement. In 2008 Acorn, a group organizing minority and low-income communities, became a particular target, with Republicans asserting that Acorn was trying to steal the election with large voter-registration drives, some of which were found to be seriously flawed. <\/p>\n

Democrats, who point to scant evidence of voter-impersonation fraud, say the unified Republican push for photo identification cards carries echoes of the Jim Crow laws<\/strong> \u2014 with their poll taxes and literacy tests \u2014 that inhibited black voters in the South from Reconstruction through the 1960s. Election experts say minorities, poor people and students \u2014 who tend to skew Democratic \u2014 are among those least likely to have valid driver\u2019s licenses, the most prevalent form of identification. Older people, another group less likely to have licenses, are swing voters<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Think back to the aftermath of the 2000 elections when Republican operatives, many Congressional Aides from DC, descended on Florida and physically assaulted election workers to prevent them from recounting the votes.  Understand that there is nothing Republicans won\u2019t do to steal an election.  We can expect no large voter registration drives.  The Republicans have managed to scare off that Muslim, Commie, Socialist, Nazi activist organization, the League of Women Voters.  The only way I see to counter this is with thousands of individual voter registration drives.  We can obtain voter registration cards ourselves and talk to everyone we know.  Help them fill out the cards, mail the cards for them.  And tell them that Republicans will NOT represent their interests.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republicans have a long history of gaining electoral advantage by schemes to deprive people likely to vote for Democrats of the right to vote.  Methods used include caging, choosing challenge based on race, electronic vote theft (ES&S and Diebold), preventing voter registration campaigns, placing too few polling places districts with high concentrations of minority voters, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}