Now they're stealing our right to vote

This is why people who say the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans are full of sh*t:

Ari Berman, in an August 30 story in Rolling Stone magazine entitled, “The GOP War on Voting,” revealed that conservatives have mounted an orchestrated, systematic, nationwide campaign to impede, turn away, confuse, restrict and otherwise prevent people who want to exercise their right to vote from doing so.

From the article:

In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process. All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting.

Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.

Taken together, such measures could significantly dampen the Democratic turnout next year – perhaps enough to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP.

I also learned that in Pennsylvania, Republican lawmakers and the governor are seeking to change the way the state's Electoral College votes are awarded, proposing to allocate them according to wins in individual congressional districts, rather than giving all 20 votes to whomever wins the state. (Pennsylvania has gone for the Democratic nominees in every presidential election since 1992.)

And in Colorado, there’s a big argument over whether voters who’ve missed recent elections should be mailed a ballot, with the Republican secretary of state insisting on excluding people who skipped an election cycle.

Let’s not forget conservatives’ concerted campaign against ACORN – the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – in 2009 which led directly to the organization’s demise.

ACORN, which organized the poor, disenfranchised and disadvantaged (traditionally Democratic constituencies) on issues like predatory lending and affordable housing, living wage, Katrina relief, gun control and, of course, participation in the electoral process – an agenda which Republicans opposed – was shut down after an ethically-challenged conservative activist named James O’Keefe released selectively-edited videos that made it look like ACORN employees supported prostitution and cheating on taxes.

The ensuing “controversy” – spurred on by the same lazy, irresponsible media that made Sarah Palin a star and more recently cast Occupy Wall Street protestors as bongo-beating hippies defecating in our parks – served to stem the flow of public and private donations going to the organization and cause Congress to pass a “Defund ACORN” resolution. Although it was eventually pointed out that the videos had been doctored, it was too late. ACORN, which had conducted large-scale voter registration drives since the 1980s, was forced to disband. The GOP had achieved its goal.

The next time people try to foist another false equivalency on me about the two parties being equally corrupt – and I’m thinking of one snide little acquaintance in particular here – I’m gonna refute their irresponsible claim by pointing to this post, these facts, this orchestrated campaign by the GOP to take away people’s right to vote.

Say what you will about the Democrats – about them receiving the same campaign contributions from Wall Street as the Republicans, about their greed and sex scandals and inability to get anything done – but at least they register people to vote instead of intentionally, maliciously stymieing ‘em.


Sources: Washington Post, Rolling Stone.