Republicans intend to prevent millions from voting

[azmouse]

Quote:http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/c...-intend-pr

It wasn't until the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the many amendments to it over the years that black people in the South and in some places outside the South could actually exercise their right to be full participating citizens in American democracy.

Texas, would now like to get rid of that rule so it can impose a voter ID requirement and more broadly do whatever it damn well pleases as far as restrictions on voting are concerned. And it just so happens that while Texas is pursuing an end to the Reign of Tyranny that is the Voting Rights Act, states around the union under Republican control have been waging an unparalleled assault on access to the voting booth for the poor and marginal.

In Pennsylvania, a recent study found that 750,000 people, or one tenth of the total electorate, don't have ID's that would enable them to vote in November. Alabama now requires voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship... which 7% of Alabama voters... or former voters... do not have.

The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that the total number of voters nationwide imperiled by laws that have been adopted or that will go into effect is more than 5 million. Remember the margin of victory the last time an incumbent president was up for re-election was just over 3 million votes.

When defending these laws, Republicans will cite the odd anecdote of voter impersonation or voter fraud, but any and all serious inquiries into the topic find that the problem is statistically non-existent. Even U.S. attorneys hand picked by the Bush administration and pushed to prosecute voter fraud were unable to find much of any of it.

[jaxx]

Of all the crap from the GOP, this voter suppression is the worst thing they are trying to do. The DOJ has filed against the states who are illegally removing people from the rolls, but they are thumbing their noses at the law.

We know from 2000 what the GOP will do to win and they have to be stopped.

[jaxx]

July 16, 2012 11:11 AM
How the War On Voting Will Affect 2012
By Ed Kilgore

Yesterday Nate Silver made an admirable effort, based mostly on the academic literature, to estimate how new state voter ID laws might affect the 2012 presidential election. You should read the whole thing, but Nate’s main point is that new photo ID laws are not (pending a late judicial decision involving Wisconsin) going into effect in any “battleground” states other than Pennsylvania, and most people don’t really think that state will be in play unless Romney is winning a pretty decisive national victory.

But before expressing any relief, it’s important to remember that what we are all calling (in a term mostly popularized by Ari Berman in his reporting on the subject in The Rolling Stone and The Nation) “the war on voting” has many, many elements, some of which won’t be apparent until just before or even on and after Election Day. There are ex-felon disenfranchisement initiatives, which have already gone into effect in Florida and Iowa. For one thing, voter ID requirements already in place before the 2008-2012 window that Nate is looking at may have a much greater impact under Republican administration. There are restrictions on various forms of “convenience voting,” such as early voting opportunities. As we get closer to Election Day, we will almost certainly see, in jurisdictions controlled by Republicans, shadowy purges of voting rolls to get rid of people whose addresses have changed, and late and poorly advertised alterations in (or restrictions of) traditional polling places. And on Election Day itself, we always see voter intimidation efforts, and my personal favorite, poorly staffed and incompetent balloting administration producing long lines and discouraged voters, with all this chicanery concentrated on areas likely to produce large Democratic votes (i.e., minority neighborhood and college towns). And then there are the vote-counting irregularities Florida made famous in 2000.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/politic...038604.php

We will need to have people monitoring every polling place.