Voting Is Not a Right. It Is a Duty. 0
Nothing proves that more than efforts by the Republican Party and its fellow travelers to suppress the vote. One must wonder why Republicans fear voters.
Well, not really wonder. It is because their policies are inimical to the polity.
Dick Polman considers some of those efforts over the years. A nugget:
(snip)
Meanwhile, in states where Republican officials run the election process (Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, to cite only two), it’s amazing how often the minority precincts report shortages of voting machines, and an unusually large number of lost or discarded ballots. Currently, the Justice Department is investigating reports that “poll watchers” with ties to a Texas tea party group have intimidated early voters in the Houston area; all the affected polling places are in Latino and black neighborhoods.
TPM discusses the voter fraud fraud:
(snip)
“Poll watchers are good. You have to separate the fact that it’s good for campaigns, it’s good for the body politic to have people there that are watching, I think that’s important,” Orr told TPMMuckraker on Friday. “The only problem comes if people abuse that, and we’ve certainly seen that in the past. We saw it in the last presidential election, we saw it in Michigan.”
“What some people have done — particularly Republicans in the past few years — is challenge people because of their race or ethnicity, and that is clearly illegal,” Orr added.
