NYT Editorial: The Republican Threat to Voting

[Stuart G]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/opinion/27wed1.html?_r=1&hp

Editorial

The Republican Threat to Voting

Published: April 26, 2011

Less than a year before the 2012 presidential voting begins, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are rewriting voting laws to make it much harder for the young, the poor and African-Americans — groups that typically vote Democratic — to cast a ballot.

Spreading fear of a nonexistent flood of voter fraud, they are demanding that citizens be required to show a government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. Republicans have been pushing these changes for years, but now more than two-thirds of the states have adopted or are considering such laws. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights lawyers, correctly describes the push as “the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.”

Anyone who has stood on the long lines at a motor vehicle office knows that it isn’t easy to get such documents. For working people, it could mean giving up a day’s wages.

A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that 11 percent of citizens, 21 million people, do not have a current photo ID. That fraction increases to 15 percent of low-income voting-age citizens, 18 percent of young eligible voters and 25 percent of black eligible voters. Those demographic groups tend to vote Democratic, and Republicans are imposing requirements that they know many will be unable to meet

[OHdem10]

1. Get on this issue and chew like a pit bull, Duers.

This is a threat to Democracy. In many states the GOP
is doing everything it can to make it close to impossible
to register new voters. Kansas requires you have a Birth
Certificate or Passport with you in order to register to vote.
Some places are trying to make it difficult for college students
to vote.

Start chewing and growling. Keep these articles posted.

[bertman]

2. Unfortunately this is just the natural progression from Katherine Harris-style voter

purges/intimidation and computerized, no-receipt voting. The Democrats turned a blind eye to the blatant voter fraud and intimidation in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, and other states in the 2000 and 2004 elections, so the Republicans figured WTF, we'll just keep Democrats from even signing up to vote. They'll just roll over again like beaten dogs.

Put the blame where it belongs--on the DLC-controlled Corporate Democratic party.

I'll be surprised if we don't see Blue Dogs signing on to this type of corruption of our democracy.

[saras]

6. That's what we found locally

The corporate Dems and Repubs "investigated" our voting system before changing to one that gives insiders plenty of unmonitored opportunity to change voting records, claiming they were acting in response to voter fears of voting fraud. When the voters who actually feared voting fraud and raised the issue in the first place asked them how the system would protect against fraud from within, the Dem mouthpiece of the group *literally* smiled and said "you'll just have to trust us."

[Cal33]

3. The degree and viciousness of the Repub.'s non-stop aggression

never ceases to amaze me. It just goes on, and on, and on.....ad infinitum.
Howcome they have so much hate to act out? Where does it all come from?

[Stuart G]

4. They are vicous beyound everything..Correct word..

They will do anything to win, ...hate, destroy, etc..anything.

[MasonJar]

5. The Times is on a roll roday. First the article on the heroes who stood

strong against civil right violations in trials of torture and now this expose of the GOPers. But will we, the people, stop therm in time?