Don't trivialize voter suppression

[babylonsister]

Posted with permission.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/23/12908287-dont-trivialize-voter-suppression?lite

Don't trivialize voter suppression
By Steve Benen
-
Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:01 PM EDT


Tom Edsall, whose work I've enjoyed for years, made an unfortunate mistake this morning. In a New York Times piece on President Obama's re-election strategy, Edsall makes the case that both sides are trying to "suppress" the 2012 vote -- Democrats are doing it by discouraging likely GOP voters, and Republicans are doing it through voter-ID laws.

Ed Kilgore did a nice job highlighting the deeply flawed false equivalency.

Even if you buy Edsall's assumption that the Obama campaign's anti-Romney ads are designed to convince non-college educated white voters who won't support the incumbent to give Romney a pass as well, it is fundamentally wrong to treat such efforts as equivalent to utilizing the power of government to bar voters from the polls altogether.

Voters hypothetically convinced by the Obama ads to "stay home" in the presidential contest are perfectly free to skip that ballot line and vote their preferences for other offices, just as they are perfectly free to ignore both presidential campaigns' attack ads and make a "hard choice" between two candidates they aren't crazy about. Lumping negative ads together with voter disenfranchisement under the rubric of "vote suppression" legitimizes the latter as a campaign tactic rather than what it actually is: an assault on the exercise of fundamental democratic rights.

Quite right. The Republican tactics of the last year and a half have been the most outrageous assault of voting rights since Jim Crow. It is a systematic effort to rig the election by targeting likely Democratic constituencies and putting new hurdles between them and their democracy. The "war on voting" label is admittedly a trite cliche, but it's also a real phenomenon.

On the other side, we see Democrats ... running attack ads? One party is engaged in voter suppression through legal disenfranchisement, while the other party is carefully shaping its message to maximize the electoral impact?

There is simply no comparison between the two. One is actual voter suppression; the other is a political campaign.

[japa beads jamie]

1. I am still marvelling that anyone nowadays can function without a state ID

I didn't have one for years (didn't drive and no bank account) but once I was working and had a check to deposit, I had to get a State ID.

Even seniors...don't they have to show their IDs at the bank ever? I do on occasion.

[librechik]

3. the point is voting is a RIGHT, not a privilege, like driving a car, or having a bank account

You shouldn't have to prove it or legislate it. It is INALIENABLE. And anyone who is scared that vast numbers of voters (without IDs) will kick him out of office is both foolish and probably doesn't have an agenda worth voting for.

[spanone]

2. k&r...

[surrealAmerican]

4. k & r

There is no comparison. I can only assume that trying to draw some sort of equivalency here is a cynical attempt to cover for the Republicans.

[ieoeja]

5. Amendment XIV. Section 2. Congressional representation shall be decreased for denying voting rights.

Let them suppress. Then let the Census Bureau re-apportion the US Congress and Electoral College.


Amendment XIV (the amendment that Conservatives absolutely hate):

Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.



Excerpt that remains in context: when the right to vote is denied except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced