Shocking?

11.28.2012 Leave a comment

According to a recent report in the Palm Beach Post:

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.

Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.

“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”

No, it is not at all shocking.

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land.

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And try to vote for the lesser evil

10.23.2011 Leave a comment

Making democracy safe for capitalism

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Worse than Jim Crow

10.8.2011 1 Comment

Think Progress‘ Ian Millhiser reported that:

Earlier this week, the state of Tennessee denied Dorothy Cooper, a 96 year-old African-American, the voter ID she is now required to produce in order to vote at her polling place — citing her inability to produce her marriage certificate. Cooper voted in every election but one since she became eligible to vote, including many elections during the Jim Crow Era.

Indeed, in an interview yesterday with MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, Cooper explained that Tennessee’s new voter suppression law did more to keep her from voting than anything she experienced during Jim Crow….

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Wisconsin GOP wants to rig Wisconsin’s recall elections

5.10.2011 Leave a comment

Meanwhile, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:

Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and GOP leaders have launched a push to ram several years’ worth of conservative agenda items through the Legislature this spring before recall elections threaten to end the party’s control of state government.

Their intent is clear: To pass as many of their unwanted policies as they can before their legitimacy-deficit produces a severe electoral defeat.

Naturally, Wisconsin’s Republicans, like the vast majority of the Republicans in the United States, could care a damn about the nature and extent of their popular support. Their apathy in this matter appears in the voter suppression bill they want to push through Wisconsin’s Legislature (among many articles, see this, this, this, this). Fearing a loss of political power, the Republican Party instinctively seeks to disenfranchise members belonging to the base of the Democratic Party.

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