{"id":6596,"date":"2011-12-30T00:02:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T08:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=6596"},"modified":"2011-12-30T00:03:34","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T08:03:34","slug":"who-is-behind-the-republican-war-on-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/30\/who-is-behind-the-republican-war-on-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Behind the Republican War on Voting?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may know that I have written several articles on the Republican war on voting, so I shall not go into the details of extreme tactics they use to separate minority, elderly, disabled, labor, and poor Americans from their right to vote.\u00a0 But a recent attempt has exposed\u00a0 a small glimpse at who is financing this effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"30koch-alec\"Last month, Maine voters delivered a major rebuke to Gov. Paul LePage (R) and the Republican-held legislature when they approved<\/a> a referendum restoring election day voting registration rights in the state. Earlier this year, state legislators passed a bill<\/a> repealing the state\u2019s 38 year-old law allowing citizens to register at the polls on election day.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of Mainers responded by petitioning for the matter come to a referendum. Issue 1 was one of the most-anticipated votes on election day this year, with pundits watching closely to see how citizens would react to the Republican-led war on voting<\/a>, which ramped up in states across the country this year.<\/p>\n

Recognizing the referendum\u2019s importance, voting rights opponents poured money into the campaign to repeal election day registration. In fact, just two days after the state\u2019s campaign finance reporting deadline, a secret conservative donor funneled $250,000<\/a> into the race, allowing the No On 1 campaign to make significant TV ad buys in an inexpensive media market.<\/p>\n

Per state law, however, the identity of donors must be revealed within 45 days after the election. In fact, the entire $250,000 worth of late money came from a single source<\/a>: the American Justice Partnership.<\/p>\n

The AJP is a conservative legal organization based not in Maine, but in Michigan. On their website [Koch suckers delinked], the group states they are fighting against \u201cthe scheming George Soros money machine\u201d which is \u201ctrying to sabotage your right to vote,\u201d a claim apparently made without a hint of irony. Though the AJP doesn\u2019t disclose where its funding comes from, the Bangor Daily News notes<\/a> that it has partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past, a group that has been instrumental<\/a> in the proliferation of voter ID laws across the country\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

Now AJP does claim to be bipartisan, but the only officer listed on their website, Dan Pero writes a blog, where he supported Newt Gingrich\u2019s proposal that \u201cactivist\u201d [ones who do not goose step with the Republicans] judges should be jailed.\u00a0 They commonly partner with [work on behalf of] the Heritage Foundation and ALEC.\u00a0 Because this involves curtailing voting rights, ALEC is the most likely candidate, as that is one of their fortes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"30sourcewatch.org\"ALEC<\/a> is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve \u201cmodel\u201d bills.<\/strong> They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) They fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations\u2014without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills<\/strong>. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a \u201cunique,\u201d \u201cunparalleled\u201d and \u201cunmatched\u201d organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. Learn more at ALECexposed.org<\/a>.\u00a0 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Source Watch<\/a>><\/p>\n

Some ALEC legislators include<\/a> John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Lindsey Graham, James Inhofe and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some ALEC Corporations include<\/a> AT&T, Bayer, Coca-cola, ExxonMobil, Glaxo SmithKline, Koch Companies, Wal-Fart and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

This gives you a brief glimpse at the inner workings of the Republican vision for YOUR future.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may know that I have written several articles on the Republican war on voting, so I shall not go into the details of extreme tactics they use to separate minority, elderly, disabled, labor, and poor Americans from their right to vote.\u00a0 But a recent attempt has exposed\u00a0 a small glimpse at who is financing […]<\/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-6596","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\/6596","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=6596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}