I am guessing that you can look up every bill related to voting introduced by a Republican in every legislature in the entire country and you will not find one bill that makes voting easier or that encourages more people to vote. All of the bills will be aimed at reducing early voting, making it harder to vote by absentee ballot, requiring identification that many people (non-drivers, students, married women, the elderly) do not have, or making it easier to challenge and discard provisional ballots. With the possible exception of active-duty military serving overseas, you will not see anyone benefitting from a Republican-sponsored voting bill.
Their entire aim is to reduce the number of votes cast, and to do it in a way that assures that more Democratic votes will be lost than Republican. It’s that simple. It’s a version of cheating.
Now, the Republicans and much of the press respond that this is just of flip side of the Democrats’ push for vote-by-mail, early voting, etc. But this is a representative democracy, and encouraging citizen participation is not the flip-side of discouraging citizen participation. They are not equally partisan exercises. One act is legitimate, and the other is illegitimate. One act helps people exercise their rights, and the other seeks to take away their rights.
You can argue about the merits of any particular bill, but taken in their totality, the Republicans intent is clear. From sea to shining sea, they are trying to suppress the vote. You will not find any exceptions.
This is so well said. Republican ideology has gone beyond the bounds of the founding principles of the country. Their efforts at non-compromising stonewalling is in the same vein. We are not a parlimentarian based government. Our system depends on cooperation among Congress members to get anything done. Overuse of filibusters and secret holds and taking the government to the brink of default is way outside the lines of how our system was intended to function.
Yes, excellent post. This is the most crucial democratic issue of the day.
But the corporate media is worse than AWOL, it participates in spreading the braindead false equivalence. Which shouldn’t surprise, as our plutocrat masters obviously oppose democracy and have for some time. An actual independent corps of professional journalists might have influence here, but our failed nation doesn’t possess such people or a platform for them.
And also don’t forget that a huge assist to Repub vote suppression has been given by the 5 conservative male activists masquerading as “justices”. With much more to come in a few short weeks with their gutting of the Voting Rights Act. If only they had half the regard for voting rights as they do for gun “rights”, ha-ha.
In any event, these are crucial signs of a paralyzed and failing republic. “Conservative” Repubs are now implacably opposed to the very foundations of the American democratic constitutional republic, just as the Hitler party was to the Weimar Republic. And that is indeed our current path, all thanks to the plutocrat class, its Boss Rushbo cheerleaders and the “conservative” white (mostly male) imbeciles that enable it to their own destruction.
this is who they are.
Let’s see, in recent years the Republicans have used the Supreme Court, rioting capitol interns in brooks Brothers suits, busloads of out-of-state poor people, the whole Tea Party lunatic brigade, GovTech Solutions (planes fall from the sky), design “flaws in electronic voting machines, 3 lonely aged Black panthers in full costume, insufficient number of voting machines in urban and “liberal” college towns, Fox Network, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse, hanging chads,,,.
Nothing seems to work well enough ’cause all the ballots aren’t Republican.
Maybe just stopping us from casting ballots in the first place will work.ballots
Republicans attempted to slip this through the Indiana General Assembly in an election matters bill earlier this year. After public outcry, the language was removed from the final version, but I’m betting we haven’t seen the last of it.
It illustrates the importance of having people who will read the fine print in everything they propose.
public outcry?
it is straight up unconstitutional
Yep, that too. It was part of the outcry, but unconstitutional doesn’t seem to be high on the GOP priority list unless its 2nd Amendment. Love that cherry-picking.
Sorry, this post rings more than a bit hollow/hypocritical, because of what happened in FLORIDA.
After the scam POTUS election in 2000, where thousands of black votes were suppressed in Florida, when congress convened early in 2001, several members of the black democratic caucus stood up in the house and vigorously protested what had just happened in Florida.
NOT ONE white democratic congressperson joined them in protest, NO outrage from these “democrats”. They sat there in silence.
This is hideous.
I guess progressive Bloggo world has already forgotten all about this?? UNREAL.
I’m still looking for an answer to this one: Last fall it was revealed there are TWO million unregistered Hispanic voters in Texas– what exactly is the democratic party doing to get these voters registered and flip Texas to a blue state?
The implication of the post is the “democratic” party is soooooo much better at encouraging voters to vote. OK, prove it to me in Texas.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/florida-how-quickly-we-forget/
I think Plouffe or someone else from the 2012 is setting up shop in Texas to register voters and build the state party so that they can make it a viable swing state. I believe they have already raised a bunch of money or have pledges for a bunch of money.
I can’t quite remember all the details though, so you may want to Google that up.
I appreciate your take– but I won’t hold my breath regarding how far/fast the democratic party will make progress in Texas.
The source of my cynicism?
1.) the lack of sense of urgency with the democrats regarding numerous crucial issues.
2.) the total status-quo supporting behavior of the democratic party when it come to politics and running campaigns. they work with the same boring old sock pollsters, advertisers, etc. decade after decade. the three year long POTUS campaign– as if that bullcrap is normal.
I think the fact there someone is setting up shop from the Democratic party in TX should be enough to take it seriously since I’ve never heard of Democrats even considering that before.
To paraphrase a remark of Booman’s from a while back, it’s increasingly difficult to pretend that we’re all on the same side.
There was a time when one could disagree(even very bitterly) with Conservatives while still feeling assured that were at least operating within (more or less) civilized bounds. I think that time is past. They’ve become a disgraceful mob of retrograde, Neo-Confederate savages who don’t even deserve to live in a free society, let alone govern one, and they should be shunned and feared by civilized people everywhere.