The Crime of Voting Democratic

Because it's still all about making sure minorities and poor people don't vote.

TPM:

A coalition of 115 House Democrats have signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling on the Justice Department to vigorously oppose voter ID laws that are sweeping state legislatures across the country.

"Many of these bills only have one true purpose, the disenfranchisement of eligible voters -- especially the elderly, young voters, students, minorities, and low-income voters," they write in the letter.

"Restrictive voter photo identification legislation has the potential to block millions of eligible American voters, and thus suppress the right to vote. We urge you to exercise your authority to examine these laws so that voting rights are not jeopardized," the members write.

SNIP

"The bottom line is that we want every eligible American to be able to cast a ballot and have their ballot counted," Wasserman Schultz said. "Things like voter-ID laws, restrictions on voter-registration drives, rollbacks on early voting and the rest of these Republican-sponsored laws only serve to make it harder for eligible Americans to vote."

The full letter is here.

Katrina van den Heuvel explains that democratic disenfranchisement is not just widespread in states, but getting increasingly blatant:

Even in the face of such overwhelming evidence (that voter fraud occurs less than once in 1 million votes), there are still conservatives who audaciously claim that these restrictive laws are not intended to shrink the electorate. Defenders point to the fact that, in addition to young people and minorities, the elderly, who tend to vote for Republicans, are among the groups likely to lack an ID. True. But rather than exonerate Republicans, this information is even more damning. Take Texas for example: This year Texas passed a voter ID law, but wrote in a provision that explicitly exempts the elderly from complying with the law. The law also considers a concealed handgun license as an acceptable form of ID, but a university ID as insufficient.

The most recent example is Wisconsin, where demanding government-issued IDs wasn't enough for the repugs; they also ensure that getting said IDs would be impossible for non-white, non-wealthy citizens.

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

As if it's not bad enough that Republicans are wrecking what little financial stability we have left with their ridiculous debt-ceiling chicken dance, they're also working hard in the states to disenfranchise voters. In Wisconsin, the preferred method is to require voters to present valid photo identification at the polls. The Voter ID law passed under Scott Walker's watchful eye earlier this year, with all due credit to ALEC for their helpful drafting of the legislation for lazy lawmakers.

One Wisconsin Now explains how that impacts voters:

Wisconsin's population is substantially less likely to have a state-issued identification. Those without state-issued photo identification and who would need to obtain one under the Wisconsin Voter ID bill include:

23 percent of all elderly Wisconsinites over the age of 65
17 percent of white men and women
55 percent of all African American males and 49 percent of African American women
46 percent of Hispanic men and 59% of Hispanic women
78 percent of African American males age 18-24 and 66 percent of African American women age 18-24

Yes, the bill as written does have a provision to provide free identification for some Wisconsinites. Each and every one of these people would have to take the time off (in many cases unpaid) from work or family obligations to flock to Wisconsin DMVs. However, access to the DMV is a problem in Wisconsin; Indiana provides its residents exponentially more access to its Department of Motor Vehicles offices to obtain identification.

That post was written in January. It's now July, and guess what? Governor Scott Walker, citing budget squeezes, is closing 10 DMV offices throughout the state. But these aren't just any old DMV offices, no. They're conveniently located in Democratic districts.

Michael Shatz, a Wisconsin blogger:

This story shows just how stupid neoconservatives think the public really is. Walker and his ilk pass a bill requiring voters to present valid photo identification at the polls. Then, in the same breath, Walker and his ilk propose a bill to close the identification issuing centers (the DMV’s) in the Democratic districts, making ID’s more difficult for low-income voters to obtain.

Brad Friedman has the video:

"This is what voter suppression looks like."

Those are the words on the final title card in the video [embedded below] shot by a Wisconsin woman documenting her experience at the DMV in Madison last week. The video purports to illustrate the ridiculous extra, and invasive efforts many previously-legal voters in the Badger State will now likely face in order to exercise their right to vote in the state since the passage of the GOP majority's newly enacted voter suppression laws.

In this case, the woman was trying to help her son get a free Photo ID at the DMV, as is his right under the new statutes. At first she was told the charge for the supposedly-free ID would be $28, and that was only after she convinced a clerk that there had been enough "activity" in her son's bank account, as used by the clerk to determine whether or not he actually resided in the state.

And that was for an affluent white resident. If you're a homeless person in WI, as the woman's interview with another clerk in the video suggests, you can pretty much just forget about being able to vote at all under the new law.



Zandar sums it up:

Right. More IDs are needed, so in order to meet the demand the state closes DMV offices in primaritly Democratic districts and makes up for it by extending hours in Republican ones. Even better, Wisconsin's law says these offices only have to be open 20 hours a week, meaning if you want a Voter ID in Wisconsin, you'll have to take time off from work to drive further away.

You don't get much more scumbag than that, folks. This is how Republicans play ball: take your right to vote away from you and use the power they get from the people to make it harder, more difficult, more time-consuming and more expensive to have the right to vote at all, just to keep the numbers down and in their favor.

It will never end until they control everything.

Liberals demand that states accommodate every adult citizen's right to vote.