GOP Voter Purges Undermine American Democracy

President Obama recently remarked at the National Action Network Convention that "Justice requires the right to vote."
So it behooves us to take a closer look at just one state that has played a pivotal role in the outcome of our national elections.
Of course, for the November 2014 elections, we're only looking at a non-Presidential election. But that election is pivotal to the timeline that our President has available to to implement meaningful change for all Americans. Unless, of course, you're a teabagger who believes that somehow, someway, President Obama will finagle a third term, however cloaked in the specious suggestion, down-low, that it is "political satire." That's Rand Paul's idea of humor: "suggest, mislead, chuckle. You fools." He published thAT red herring on his website. Sure hope his minions recognize they are being played for fools right up front, if they don't read the "fine print" at the bottom of the article.
But I digress. The point of this post is to look at what is happening in just one state, one critical state, in the upcoming "off-election" (meaning non-Presidential election year) and why this upcoming 2014 election is so important. The election results of this state dashed the Gore presidency, plunging our nation into two long wars for oil and an economic catastrophe. Florida 2000.
Under the guise of removing "non-citizens" from the Florida voting rolls, Governor Rick Scott and his appointed Secretary of State Rick Detzner have removed hundreds of voters from the rolls despite the fact that the national database used to cross-check voter identities is "not current enough for accuracy or reliability." Never mind doing it right, just do it, because the GOP doesn't care about accuracy - the GOP's goal is disenfranchising voters.
The targets of voter suppression tactics are those who the GOP calculates will vote Democratic: college students, disabled, people of color, and low-income voters. Indeed, the former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer said: "'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.'"

The GOP is just reading the numbers which show that most early voters vote Democratic. "In 2008 Democrats, especially African-Americans, turned out in unprecedented numbers for President Barack Obama, many of them casting ballots during 14 early voting days. In Palm Beach County, 61.2 percent of all early voting ballots were cast by Democrats that year, compared with 18.7 percent by Republicans."
Among the multiple tactics used to suppress voters are: prosecution for voter fraud (which has been shown to be practically non-existent); registration restrictions; limiting early voting; residency restrictions; and, voting ID laws. Our former first black president, Bill Clinton, noted that putting photos on Social Security cards would represent "a way forward that eliminates error" without having to “paralyze and divide a country with significant challenges.” According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as many as 11% of eligible voters do not have government issued photo ID.
In the vanguard of voter suppression is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), who ghostwrites state legislative bills, then sends them to state legislators for introduction and passage. Here's one example crafted to disenfranchise non-drivers, low-income, minority, elderly and students, for whom the state of Florida is currently blocking the use of a college union as a polling place, according to Senator Bill Nelson.
ALEC is funded through corporations, those very corporations where we spend our money. Using the Color of Change letter, you can tell CEOs to stop funding an organization determined to undermine Americans' voting rights.
As President Obama reminded us in 2012: "As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together — through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That’s what we believe."

President Obama: "Justice Requires the Right to Vote"

We're six months out from the next election, and historically, voter turnout in mid-term, non-presidential elections is low. About 60% of American voters go to the polls in presidential elections, but only 40% show up for mid-term, non-presidential elections. President Obama urged the National Action Network Conference attendees to work hard to help voters register and then get to the polls.

He recognizes that voting rights are under attack by Republican legislators in states across the nation. Quipping about "souls to the polls," the practice in many churches of following worship and potlucks with a bus ride to the polls, he noted that it could be done on Tuesday night, if you had to. But to be fair, the President noted that one Republican State Senator, Dale Schultz of Wisconsin, said that limiting early voting was "fiddling with mechanics rather than ideas...Making it more difficult for people to vote is not a good sign for a party that wants to attract more people."

There doesn't appear to be any shortage of imaginative ways to restrict voting. In Miami-Dade county, with a population of 2.6 million people, the elections department may prohibit all voters from using restrooms at polling places, reasoning that "If no voters could go to the bathroom, the county argued, then it could not be accused of discriminating against only the disabled ones."

“This is a very clear way to suppress the vote,” Marc Dubin of the Center for Independent Living of South Florida said. “Telling people, ‘We have 12-hour lines but you can’t go to the bathroom?’ You can be guaranteed that people won’t come out to vote.” Maybe, but it Depends.

President Obama's message is clear: voting is a fundamental constitutional right that must be used, and defended, because "Justice requires the right to vote." He reminded us that James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Henry Schwerner believed so strongly in the power of the vote that they died for it in Mississippi fifty years ago.

According to the ACLU, "During the 2011 legislative sessions, states across the country passed measures to make it harder for Americans – particularly African-Americans, the elderly, students and people with disabilities – to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot. Over thirty states considered laws that would require voters to present government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Studies suggest that up to 11 percent of American citizens lack such ID, and would be required to navigate the administrative burdens to obtain it or forego the right to vote entirely."

Of course, citizens foregoing the right to vote entirely is exactly what the oligarchic Koch Brothers want to happen. Their paper mill, ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, drafts and distributes boilerplate legislative bills throughout the 50 state legislatures. ALEC's "...bills or resolutions would disenfranchise Americans and give corporations even more power to use their vast financial resources to influence elections in our democracy without full disclosure of that spending. These two focal points of recent ALEC proposals pose twin threats to American democracy, by limiting the right of citizens to vote while expanding the power of for-profit corporations and the shadowy front groups funded by billionaires like the Koch brothers to distort elections through pouring money into expensive attack ads cloaked as 'issue' advertising."

We have six months to organize voter registration drives and ready voters to go to the polls in the upcoming mid-term election. Let's give President Obama a House that will work with him to craft legislation to benefit all of us, instead of a House that wastes time and tax payer dollars obstructing him. And of course, we need the Senate, too.

So when President Obama urges us register and vote, he is also telling us to defend our democracy - because there are those nefarious forces that want to restrict our democratic constitutional rights to suit their corporate interests.

Do You Know When/Where To Register To Vote? Check at: My Time To Vote.com