An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.
Right. Because when the corrupt regimes of "emerging democracies" steal elections, they do it by requiring people to identify themselves as residents and legal voters. Boss Tweed and Saddam Hussein loved that ruse.
Although I certainly consider the Left's whining on this subject to be "barely a whimper."
The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place. Some of the new laws, notably those limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.
The "studies" Dionne links are both to "non-partisan" leftyish social-justice policy institutes who claim that voter fraud is absolutely 100% not a problem. I have two words for this argument: Bill Stinson. In 1994, Stinson's Democratic campaign misused absentee ballots in an attempt to steal a Philadelphia State Senate seat from Republican Bruce Marks. A federal judge ordered the election invalidated and the seat given to Marks.
And before you dismiss this as a lone outlier, read the whole NY Times article, in which Stinson's lawyer "noted that five or six state judges had already reviewed Mr. Marks's case and that they had all dismissed it on procedural grounds without considering the merits." In other words, the Courts of Pennsylvania wanted nothing to do with this case and tried to get rid of it so many times that the theif's lawyer lost count. That's how hard it is to undo voter fraud in America.
And then there's the ongoing voter fraud investigations in New Mexico. Now, there may well be fewer than 64,000 actual illegal votes. There may be no more than the 37. But in 2009 a woman was prosecuted for attempting to cast an absentee ballot as her brother. Is it really such a stretch to believe that this goes on more often than we hear about it?
These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.
Because Democrats have no interest in giving one man ONLY one vote?
I love how this honky predicts what African Americans, Latinos, and the young are going to do when faced with the fearsome prospect of showing a Photo ID, and he's the one that gets to make insinuations of Raaaaacism! But I'm repeating myself.
Again, think of what this would look like to a dispassionate observer.Just as soon as you find one, chuckles.
A party wins an election, as the GOP did in 2010. Then it changes the election laws in ways that benefit itself. In a democracy, the electorate is supposed to pick the politicians. With these laws, politicians are shaping their electorates.
A party loses an election, as the Democrats did in 2010. Then it purposelessly rages against needful legislation to cast vague shadows of bigotry on their opponents so as to benefit their chances for the next election. In a democracy, columnists write tiresome parallelisms. But with Dionne, tiresome parallelisms write themselves.
Paradoxically, the rank partisanship of these measures is discouraging the media from reporting plainly on what’s going on.
Now that's the first thing you've said right.
Voter suppression so clearly benefits the Republicans that the media typically report this through a partisan lens, knowing that accounts making clear whom these laws disenfranchise would be labeled as biased by the right. But the media should not fear telling the truth or standing up for the rights of the poor or the young.
Wait, what? Your argument is that the media is ignoring this story because to report it objectively would be dismissed as biased? You seriously think that media companies kill stories because they would gin up the controversial flames of partisanship?
What color is the sky on your planet?
The laws in question include requiring voter identification cards at the polls, limiting the time of early voting, ending same-day registration and making it difficult for groups to register new voters.
According to Wikipedia, same-day voter registration requires showing a valid ID to register. When will Dionne stand against this crime that requires some voters to show ID, but not others?
Sometimes the partisan motivation is so clear that if Stephen Colbert reported on what’s transpiring, his audience would assume he was making it up.
Sometimes the desperation for relevancy of a beltway journalist is so desperate that he'll reference Cable TV comedy, so that their audience will assume they're reading Maureen Dowd.
In Texas, for example, the law allows concealed handgun licenses as identification but not student IDs. And guess what? Nationwide exit polls show that John McCain carried households in which someone owned a gun by 25 percentage points but lost voters in households without a gun by 32 points.
The horror! The Horror! Except that in Texas, concealed handgun licenses require the following:
- Social Security Number
- Valid Texas Drivers License or Identity Card
- Current demographic, address, and contact, information
- Residential and employment information for the last five years
- Any psychatric, drug, alcohol, or criminal history
- Valid email address
- Valid credit card
Besides Texas, states that enacted voter ID laws this year include Kansas, Wisconsin, South Carolina and Tennessee. Indiana and Georgia already had such requirements. The Maine Legislature voted to end same-day voter registration. Florida seems determined to go back to the chaos of the 2000 election. It shortened the early voting period, effectively ended the ability of registered voters to correct their address at the polls and imposed onerous restrictions on organized voter-registration drives.
Golly, it's almost as though these things are becoming increasingly popular!
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, by 6 to 3, upheld Indiana’s voter ID statute. So seeking judicial relief may be difficult.
That's one way of putting it. Another way might be that the Supreme Court already shot the stuffing out of your entire argument.
Nonetheless, the Justice Department should vigorously challenge these laws, particularly in states covered by the Voting Rights Act. And the court should be asked to review the issue again in light of new evidence that these laws have a real impact in restricting the rights of particular voter groups.
For commentary on how well that will work, I turn to the the Supreme Court majority opinion of scurrilous right-winger, John-Paul Stevens, as quoted in the wingnut New York Times:
But, as Justice Stevens noted, there have been flagrant examples of voter fraud in American history. He cited the 1868 New York City elections, in which a local tough who worked for Tammany’s William (Boss) Tweed explained why he liked voters to have whiskers: “When you’ve voted ’em with their whiskers on, you take ’em to a barber and scrape off the chin fringe. Then you vote ’em again with the side lilacs and a mustache. Then to a barber again, off comes the sides and you vote ’em a third time with the mustache. If that ain’t enough and the box can stand a few more ballots, clean off the mustache and vote ’em plain face.”
In 2004, Justice Stevens noted in a footnote, the hotly contested gubernatorial election in Washington State produced an investigation that turned up 19 “ghost voters” and at least one confirmed instance of voter fraud. And while Justice Stevens did not mention the elections in the career of Lyndon B. Johnson, biographers of the late president have suggested that he won at least one election in Texas in the 1940’s through ballot box-stuffing — and lost at least one the same way.
But never mind, electoral fraud isn't an issue. It's NOT.
“This requirement is just a poll tax by another name,” state Sen. Wendy Davis declared when Texas was debating its ID law early this year. In the bad old days, poll taxes, now outlawed by the 24th Amendment, were used to keep African Americans from voting. Even if the Supreme Court didn’t see things her way, Davis is right. This is the civil rights issue of our moment.
If, and only if, the cost of ID's had been specifically raised to prevent the lower classes from acquiring them, the analogy would be apt. But since they haven't, it's not.
In part because of a surge of voters who had not cast ballots before, the United States elected its first African American president in 2008. Are we now going to witness a subtle return of Jim Crow voting laws?
No. See above.
Whether or not these laws can be rolled back, their existence should unleash a great civic campaign akin to the voter-registration drives of the civil rights years. The poor, the young and people of color should get their IDs, flock to the polls and insist on their right to vote in 2012.
And what prevents them from doing that? Oh, Nothing? Nothing in the law? Nothing in the world? NOTHING?
If voter suppression is to occur, let it happen for all to see. The whole world, which watched us with admiration and respect in 2008, will be watching again.
And if they don't like what they see, what happens? Oh, nothing? Again?
So the point of all this maudlin drivel is what, exactly?
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