I don’t have a problem with creating a commission to explore ways to make voting easier, but I hope everyone is clear on one essential fact. Every single problem we have with voting has been created intentionally, and had been part of a concerted Republican strategy to limit the franchise. It’s the Republicans who have made it harder to register, who have wrongly purged people off the rolls, who have provided too few voting machines in densely-populated areas, who have limited early voting and voting hours, who have passed Photo ID requirements, who have tried to prevent college students from voting, who have tried to maximize the amount of provisional ballots and make it easier not to count them, who have restricted what organizations can do registration drives, who have demonized organizations that do registration drives, who have fabricated an in-person voter fraud crisis that never existed, and who have opposed all laws that would provide a presumption in the voters’ favor.
And Mitt Romney’s election attorney, Ben Ginsberg, hasn’t exactly opposed these efforts. He advised Bush during the 2000 Florida recount and advised the Swift-Boaters in 2004. So, if he is going to co-chair the committee, then Mark Ambinder is the dumbest man in the world.
You make a good point about Ginsberg. Is he a rethug tool or a reasonable guy? If the latter, as you suggest, how can this commission produce useful results with him co-chairing? (Not that commissions produce useful results, ever!) What’s O’s thinking here?
We don’t need a commission. When you turn 18, you are automatically registered. Done. Europe does it. It’s not complicated.
There you go being logical instead of political. Get that one through this Congress. Heck get all Democrats to vote for that one.
There are some other issues besides registration, such as voting times, means of counting, ensuring an accurate count, ensuring accurate tabulation, and of course gerrymandering.
Plus universal absentee voting.
name me ONE Republican that has stood up to this GOP assault on Voting Rights.
ONE.
MAYBE you could put him on the Commission.
Usually you can find a retired Republican or two to endorse good government measures.
The active ones, on the other hand..
Ginsburg is to protecting the vote what Alan Simpson is to protecting Social Security.
So where is the middle ground that Obama is going to position himself in on this one?
Charles Pierce lays out the gory history of Ginsburg.
Obama might as well have appointed Karl Rove as the co-chair.