Saturday, November 3, 2012

One Party - - The GOP - - Is Monkey-Wrenching The Voting Process

Remember when civic engagement meant "get out the vote?"

Now the Republican Party has decided its goal is "stop the vote" - - and Wisconsin was right in that Right mix with its freshly-narrowed registration and early-voting period, failed effort to stunt the turnout through mandated display of ID's for all eligible and already-registered voters and recently-discovered inaccurate election-day instructions to poll watchers.

And, by the way, who is limiting early voting in Florida - - a practice favored by many Democrats and minority voters who traditionally vote after Sunday church two days before the election?

Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott.

Who is up to even more restrictive turnout mischief in Ohio?

Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted. Today he acknowledged he'd 'lost 33,000 registrations. This after all his efforts to cut early voting.

Oopsie!

And who is seriously messing with the process in Virginia?

Contractors tied to the Republican Party, including one arrested in an expanding probe of discarded voter registrations:

The investigation following the arrest of a man on charges of dumping voter-registration forms last month in Harrisonburg, Va., has widened, with state officials probing whether a company tied to top Republican leaders had engaged in voter-registration fraud in the key battleground state, according to two people close to the case.

A former employee of Strategic Allied Consulting, a contractor for the Republican Party of Virginia, had been scheduled to appear Tuesday of this week before a grand jury after he was charged with tossing completed registration forms into a recycling bin.

Why does the Right have so much trouble with the right to vote, and why are so many Republicans in official positions where power is wielded using that power to take away a basic right.

Surely it can't be over the phantom menace of 'voter fraud' - - which voter ID did not address - - though the Virginia example should be a bi-partisan outrage.

Originally posted at Purple Wisconsin.

5 comments:

kjbe said...

I'm sorry, but I really hate these people...for all their talk of freedom and reliance on the Founding Fathers, they can all take a jump in the lake.

Anonymous said...

Gee, the Political Environment is so in tune with the times... Why are you people so middle-of-the-road?
Wow, you're really going out on a limb for the Democratic Party cause by declaring--just days before the election--that the GOP is Monkey-Wrenching the Voting Process. Awesome news!
Please don't make tomorrow's blog about the chances we find out about where Amelia Earhart "really" disappeared.
Get a clue, folks, and start trying to help the Democratic Party cause... Hopefully this comment won't be deleted through the "mediation" process.

James Rowen said...

To Anon: 8:36 p.m. I believe the word you are looking for is "moderation."

Boxer said...

The GOPers wouldn't need to keep pulling these dirty tricks out of their dirty trick bag--golf bag?--if the disparate 'majority' they cobbled together in the '70s** wasn't fast losing influence and 'majority' to the rest of the country. See your subsequent post.

**Consisting of evangelicals, Main street moderates, Wall Street money-mongers, and tax-hating Libertarians lost in the wilderness since John Birch.

Anthony Hopper said...

Interesting blog post.