Reserving the Right to Vote for the Right People

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It is needed to prevent voter fraud.  That’s how piling on additional identification requirements on top of existing IDs has been justified. In fact, voter fraud is so rare as to be pretty much a fiction. That is for very good reasons. It’s easy to get caught, penalties are harsh, and it doesn’t affect elections. Those who want to steal an election always do it well away from voters. Backroom ballot stuffing, changing voting totals when nobody is looking, that’s how elections are stolen.

Voter-Fraugh-Billboard

For the audio version of this article CLICK HERE.

The only actual effect of photo IDs is to make it harder for some folks to vote. Those folks tend to be those who don’t have a driver’s license. Not surprisingly, that includes people who take the bus to work and don’t drive, or who are retired and don’t drive, or who are going to college and don’t drive. Republicans make it harder to vote for those they think would vote for Democrats.

The efforts to impose a requirement of extra identification on those who don’t drive aren’t the only steps conservatives have taken. Precincts have been closed and combined, with easily accessible voting places moved farther away from minority areas.

In Ohio, the Republican in charge of statewide voting ordered ballots to be disqualified in those combined voting places if voters are directed by election officials to a wrong voting booth. If an election official tells you to vote in a specific voting booth, and gets it wrong, your vote for President, Governor, Senator, any office, would be thrown away. Fortunately, courts stepped in and told Ohio they could not go that far in keeping voters from having their ballots counted.

In Texas, Republicans have gone to court to argue that is okay to discriminate against Hispanic voters by making it harder for them to vote. That is because, so the argument goes, in their hearts politicians have nothing specifically against Latino voters. They are only motivated against voters who will support Democrats.

Let’s dwell on that for another moment. We’re not trying to keep minority voters from voting because we don’t like minorities. We’re trying to keep minority voters from voting because we don’t like who they’ll vote for.

It is an odd argument, but even that strange premise began to crumble.

Those supporting the right to vote in Texas went after emails and other communications sent over official channels. They said the words of the lawmakers themselves would prove that they had deliberately targeted minority voters because they are minority voters. Republican legislators, who insist they were not targeting minority voters for that reason, have been screaming foul. They insist that letters, memos, and messages about why they are targeting minorities are nobody’s business.

Every once in a while, conservatives will slip. They will say out loud, in public, what they they’re telling the courts they want to keep private. Here is the reason a prominent officeholder in Georgia agrees in public with what a fellow angry colleague said in private about Sunday voting at a polling place in a shopping mall:

Per Jim Galloway of the AJC, this location is dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist. Galloway also points out the Democratic Party thinks this is a wonderful idea – what a surprise.

State Senator Fran Millar, (R-GA), September 9, 2014

There you have it. Voting is okay. Keeping polling places open where minority voters shop and worship because those areas are accessible is not okay.

To be fair, Senator Millar later clarified. His comments had nothing to do with race. “I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters.”

Voters who are more educated than the voters conservatives don’t want to see at election time.

About Post Author

Burr Deming

Burr is a husband, father, and computer programmer, who writes and records from St. Louis. On Sundays, he sings in a praise band at the local Methodist Church. On Saturdays, weather permitting, he mows the lawn under the supervision of his wife. He can be found at FairAndUNbalanced.com
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9 years ago

As it is now, less than half the voting population in Britain actually bother to we’re so disenfranchised so, if they restricted it to only those who they consider educated there’d only be about 1% even voting at all.

That would be the Royal Family (who I adore in the main) and the politicians themselves.

Frankly we have either given up entirely on our politicians, vote UKIP or Green or Monster Raving Loony or cling to the Tories or Labour in the forlorn hope they’ll actually listen.

I think a few vote Liberal Democrat too – but every society has its nutters eh? 😉

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