Citizens Can't Be Kept From Voting

A woman named Donna Brazile has had a piece published in USA Today - in Forum, which is I assume a blog rather than an actual news page - how the Republicans are going to keep blacks and the poor from voting.

Here's here first point:

GOP legislators are on the move, from a sweeping rewrite of Florida's election laws to new rules for photo identification in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and more than 20 other states.

As a result, 11% of Americans —21 million citizens of voting age who lack proper photo identification — could be turned away on Election Day. And these people tend to be most highly concentrated among people of color, the poor, the young and the old.

Well - I'd like this question answered. Why do they lack proper photo identification? Everyone in any state gets either a driver's license or an identificaton card. It's not hard to get if you're actually a citizen. (And too esay if you're not.)

The Florida Legislature recently sent an overhaul of the state's election code to Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Among other things, this bill would slash early voting from 14 days down to eight. And it would, according to the non-partisan League of Women Voters, impose fines on voter registration drives for all completed voter registration forms that are not returned to the state within 48 hours — a big reduction from the current 10-day deadline.

And how does this prevent blacks and the poor from voting? 8 days of extra time to vote - why is that not enough time?

In the largest disconnect from their campaign rhetoric, Republicans ignore the high cost of these laws. In the four years since Indiana passed the nation's first such requirement, it has spent more than $10 million to provide free state ID cards. The Institute for Southern Studies estimated that a similar ID law in North Carolina would cost $18 million to $25 million over three years — money that could be used to keep cops on the street or teachers in the classroom.

Simple solution. People have to pay for their driver's licenses. Why don't they have to pay for their ID cards? [Pop quiz. If someone is too poor to be able to afford $10 for an ID card, shouldn't they be too poor to vote? Frankly, if people are too stupid to get an education such that they can get a job that will earn them enough money to pay for a photo ID card, we don't want them choosing who our president or other politicians are going to be.

President Obama was swept into office with overwhelming support from newly registered voters, minority voters and youth voters. I suppose it's not a surprise, then, that heading into the 2012 election, these are the groups who will be most affected by these restrictions.

President Obama was hardly "swept" into office. And of course he won against John McCain who ran one of the poorest campaigns in modern American political history.


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