Voter ID laws a GOP tactic of cynicism

[babylonsister]

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tucker/stories/2008/10/05/tucked_1005.html

Voter ID laws a GOP tactic of cynicism
CYNTHIA TUCKER
Sunday, October 05, 2008

The base of the Republican Party — a dwindling but still significant group — clings to a handful of pseudo-facts that don’t hold up to serious scrutiny but that still occupy a central place in GOP ideology. Those include the assertion that Saddam Hussein represented a threat to the United States, that affirmative action in lending led to the mortgage crisis and that voter fraud is a serious problem in modern elections.

In campaign seasons such as this, when victory may turn on a handful of votes, none of those claims is more important to Republican activists than overhyped allegations of voter fraud.

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In this election season, the Republican Party has stepped up its efforts to restrict the franchise across the country, intimidating voters, purging voter rolls and filing dubious claims in court. (Occasionally, Democrats also get caught in acts of voter suppression, but that’s rare. Democrats usually win elections when more people vote, not fewer.)

The GOP’s brand is in tatters, dragged down by an incompetent president, an unpopular war and a sickly economy. So the party seems to be pinning its hopes on keeping likely Democrats — people of color, the poor, college students — away from the polls.

But that tactic seems unlikely to be enough to prevent Democrats from gaining seats in Congress, if not the White House. Democrats are registering in record numbers, and the GOP can’t intimidate or eliminate enough of them to make a difference.

The stench of corruption and cynicism emanating from the effort to disenfranchise voters is finally too heavy to ignore. The GOP is just ensuring that the tarnish on its brand becomes permanent.