Think Your Right to Vote is Secure? Think Again

We've known since at least November 2000 that repugs are all about stopping Democratic voters from voting. They've always pretended they're fighting "voter fraud," which doesn't exist but which gives them a nice cover for actual election fraud.

Now they've dropped the pretense.

From TPM Muckraker:

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "like handing out burglary tools to criminals."

"It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote," Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

"Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor," Vadum writes. "It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers."

Most conservative criticism of voter registration drives aimed at poor and minority communities has been under the guise of worries about voter fraud. Vadum's column is notable because he isn't just pretending to be worried about the nearly non-existent threat of in-person voter fraud -- he just doesn't think poor people should be voting.

Late Update: Responding to what he says are misrepresentations of his view, Vadum writes that of course he thinks poor people have the right to vote, he just doesn't want anybody to help them since their votes "could lead to the destruction of the republic."

Vadum clarifies that it is "destructive to register welfare recipients to vote so that they can vote themselves more government benefits. It is even worse that our tax dollars are used to register welfare recipients at welfare offices. It is a policy that would cause the Founding Fathers to roll over in their graves."
But, he adds: "Of course those who are legally qualified to vote should be allowed to vote but our tax dollars shouldn't be used to underwrite the destruction of the republic."

"Poor people" is just repug-speak for people who vote Democratic: minorities, students and other young people, the disabled, elderly and disadvantaged. And the stop-Democratic-voters program is much, much bigger than you think.

Kevin Drum:

I almost forgot about this, but Ari Berman has a terrific piece in Rolling Stone this week about one of my pet topics: the relentless Republican drive to pass laws designed to reduce voting rates among traditional Democratic constituencies:

All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states — Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia — cut short their early voting periods.

Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures — Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic — including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.

Here's my favorite passage:

After the recount debacle in Florida in 2000, allowing voters to cast their ballots early emerged as a popular bipartisan reform. Early voting not only meant shorter lines on Election Day, it has helped boost turnout in a number of states — the true measure of a successful democracy. "I think it's great," Jeb Bush said in 2004....But Republican support for early voting vanished after Obama utilized it as a key part of his strategy in 2008.

....That may explain why both Florida and Ohio — which now have conservative Republican governors — have dramatically curtailed early voting for 2012. Next year, early voting will be cut from 14 to eight days in Florida and from 35 to 11 days in Ohio, with limited hours on weekends. In addition, both states banned voting on the Sunday before the election — a day when black churches historically mobilize their constituents.

If this weren't so loathsome, you'd almost have to admire it. I mean, would it ever even occur to you to specifically ban voting on the Sunday before election? It wouldn't to me. But that's because I don't have quite the reptilian mind it takes to figure out that this might affect black churches disproportionately compared to white churches, and therefore provide a small advantage for Republicans.

But Republican strategy gurus have exactly that kind of mind. Thus we get laws like this one, plus many, many more designed for exactly the same purpose. Berman runs them all down for you, so read his whole piece. This is revolting far beyond anything we should accept as normal politics, and it's a disgrace that the Supreme Court allows it to continue.

But it isn't happening at the federal level: it's happening in your back yard. Do you know who your Secretary of State is? Is your SoS Democratic or Republican? What kind of voting laws are your state legislators passing right now?

Digby:

There are a lot of scary things going on in our political and economic culture right now. The growing police state, the dysfunctional governing structures, the economic failure and corruption. But this one goes right to the heart of our democracy and attacks it head on.

The movement has been leading up to it for decades, but it's picked up speed in the last 12 years. They impeached a Democratic president and stole an election in a two year time span. They fired US Attorneys for failing to rig elections and dismantled the voting rights section of the DOJ. They've packed the courts with anti-democratic judges and filed cases before them to create a sense of systematic voter fraud that doesn't actually exist. And last November they made their move into state houses all over the country and wasted no time in creating laws to disenfranchise as many liberal voters as possible.

Democrats had better hope that the coming elections aren't close. If they are, there's just no way they can win with these laws that are coming on line. And that's the plan.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) will hold hearings (this) week on state-level voter suppression efforts, i.e., voter ID laws, tighter voting registration requirements, and other "ACORN-inspired" GOP efforts.

Watch those carefully, and take notes. You'll need then for the next time the repugs in your state try to restrict voting to white male property owners.