Well, I thought I should try and keep you up to date on Voter Suppression 2012. The GOP has been busy, and so have the advocates for voting rights.
State by State.
Bottom line: those states who are subject to the Voting Rights Act, Section 5 – they have not been able to implement their Voter Suppression methods, because the Department of Justice has blocked them using Section 5. This includes Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, Texas. In addition to this, in Florida, the prohibitions on voter registration were thrown out. The shortening of early voting, from 14 to 8 days, was allowed to stand – EXCEPT for the parts of Florida that are under the VRA, Section 5. Their early voting time is the 14 days. I don’t think that’s right – whether or not you can early vote being subject to where you live in a state.
In Ohio, Early Voting was kept in place by judges decree, against the wishes of the Republican Secretary of State, who is appealing that decision.
In Iowa, the purge of voters has been stopped by a judge’s decree.
In Pennsylvania, the onerous Voter ID law that would have disenfranchised up to 750,000+ voters in the state has been put on hold for the November 2012 election.
Now, the flip side to this GOP wicked tale is that the GOP has been committing voter fraud all across the country. They outsourced their voter registration drive to a company with a shady reputation of voter registration. Their reputation was so bad that the GOP told them to CHANGE THEIR NAME before they could get the contract for voter registration for the GOP. The GOP used this company, and of course, they continued in the practices that got them in trouble in the first place. The kind of voter fraud that they repeatedly participated in was the kind of taking people’s voter registration forms, and if they were Democrats, throwing them away. Or, as you can see in this video, this heifer, CLAIMED she worked for a local election board office, and then went around ONLY REGISTERING REPUBLICAN VOTERS. God bless the person who recorded this piece of slime and showed them for who they are.
This company is no under investigation in Colorado, Florida, California, as well as other states. The obviousness of their fraud is so pernicious that the GOP has halted their voter registration. This is what happens when you don’t have a ‘Plan B’ – they put all their eggs in the basket of the company of dubious background – of course, they didn’t care. After all, they’re Republicans, so what do they care if a company is shady as hell.
This is, of course, an underreported story: the Political Party, which has marched across this country, attempting to take away the RIGHT TO VOTE from MILLIONS of Americans this election season, under the guise of bullshyt, non-existent Voter Fraud, is itself, involved in widespread, systematic voter fraud that’s REAL and PROVEABLE.
……………………………………………
If there’s a journalist in print who has been following and reporting on this story for a long time, it’s Ari Berman of The Nation. Follow the link and read some of the knowledge that he has been trying to spread for well over a year on this topic.
From his latest writings about the shenanigans in Florida:
Following the 2010 election, Florida Republicans concluded that it was a little too easy to vote in the state. “I want the people in the State of Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who is willing to walk 200 miles for that opportunity he’s never had before in his life,” said GOP State Senator Michael Bennett. “This should not be easy.”
Upon taking office in 2011, Florida Governor Rick Scott and the Republican legislature drastically changed the state’s election laws by preventing ex-felons from being able to cast a ballot after serving their time, cutting back early voting from fourteen to eight days, and severely restricting voter registration drives.
As I reported in Rolling Stone:
In May [2011], the GOP-controlled legislature in Florida passed a law requiring anyone who signs up new voters to hand in registration forms to the state board of elections within 48 hours of collecting them, and to comply with a barrage of onerous, bureaucratic requirements. Those found to have submitted late forms would face a $1,000 fine, as well as possible felony prosecution.
As a result, the law threatens to turn civic-minded volunteers into inadvertent criminals. Denouncing the legislation as “good old-fashioned voter suppression,” the League of Women Voters announced that it was ending its registration efforts in Florida, where it has been signing up new voters for the past 70 years.
The voter registration restrictions seem particularly ironic in light of the escalating scandal involving Strategic Allied Consulting, the RNC-funded GOP voter registration firm, run by a Republican operative with a history of bad behavior, recently accused of submitting fraudulent voter registration forms in Florida and elsewhere. The scandal makes Republican claims about ACORN sound more than a little ridiculous.
Florida Republicans invoked ACORN as the reason for the voter registration restrictions in 2011, even though ACORN was out of existence by that point. “Can you spell ACORN?” State Representative Dennis Baxley, chief sponsor of the law, told reporters at the time. “Or have you forgot all about that, and some of the problems that we had?”
Yet the law change appeared to be more about political payback than a sincere concern about voter registration fraud. “The first major imposition of restrictions on voter registration drives occurred in 2005, a year after ACORN’s community organizing work resulted in enough signatures to place a citizen initiative on the ballot to increase Florida’s minimum wage,” the Brennan Center for Justice reported. The 2005 law was subsequently blocked in court. But it was taken up again and passed by Republicans in 2011.
hat tip-The Obama Diary:
Maddow Blog: …. The states in yellow are important swing states. The ones with the red X marks are the important swing states where the RNC had hired Nathan Sproul’s firm exclusively to handle their registration drive. With the contract cancelled, and no back-up plan, the RNC misses out on the final push before registration closes in these crucial states.
GOP Caught Training Poll Challengers in Illegal Voter Suppression Tactics
A recording of the September 26th official “Poll Challenger Training” conducted by the Republican Party shows a GOP & Tea Party leader giving false and/or misleading information about voting rights and regulations to the training’s attendees. The training was replete with misinformation about ID requirements, the use of provisional ballots, assistance for Spanish-speaking citizens, change of address requirements, and the rights of the disabled at the polls.
http://youtu.be/jYPH3J0_EaI
Voter Intimidation and Suppression Come to New Mexico
http://huff.to/SNysXf
For over twenty years, as a diplomat in Africa and the Middle East, I worked to bring free and fair elections to emerging democracies, always in the face of entrenched powerful interests. We often called upon the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute to assist us in developing programs to fight voter intimidation and suppression. When and where we found it, I could count on both my Republican and my Democratic colleague for full throated denunciations. Regrettably, that noble goal appears not to hold in our own elections.
Last week, ProgressNow New Mexico released a video showing a Republican Party leader leading a “poll challenger training” replete with false information about New Mexico’s voting laws. The misinformation disseminated by the Republican official – during the training and also in a manual created by the party – could be used to restrict eligible citizens’ voting rights and thus harm the integrity of the upcoming election. For example, the Republican official told trainees they could demand voters show ID at the polls if two precinct board members request it and instructed participants that voters needing interpreters could not use them – claims the Bernalillo County Clerk said was simply “not correct” and could lead these poll challengers to act in a vigilante capacity on Election Day.
Pingback: Casting doubt | Bell Book Candle
Thanks for this post, rikyrah. Well done.
VOTER INTIMIDATION
Scary billboard about voter fraud in poor neighborhood
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/04/14222604-seen-in-ohio-scary-billboard-about-voter-fraud-in-poor-neighborhood?lite
Cleveland City Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland has been asking around today about a new billboard that reads “Voter fraud is a felony. Up to 3 1/2 yrs and $10,000 fine.” The councilwoman says she wonders if billboards like this are only in African-American neighborhoods. This billboard, she says, is across from one subsidized housing development, a few blocks from three other projects, and down the street from Cuyahoga Community College.
From Ohio’s lefty blog Plunderbund:
“This is blatant voter intimidation,” says Councilwoman Cleveland. “A direct attack in the heart of African American community meant to scare people and keep them from exercising their right to vote.”
Love that photo. = GTFOH with that BS fools!