There are many things I don't understand about the American electorate. Obvious things, like the huge levels of apathy reflected in turnout that often doesn't exceed 50%. The proud no-nothingism that causes them to vote against their best interests time and time again. The team spirit that causes them to vote favor the same party over and over with reckless disregard for the consequences. But what really bakes my noodle is the sheer unwillingness to understand that, in our two party system, exactly one half of the parties is consistently making a mockery of the democratic process.
Voter caging, for example, is a very real, very important issue that nobody seems to care the least bit about. A functional democracy does not, cannot tolerate agents of any party methodically setting out to prevent citizens from voting. Yet it happens time and time again with little or no consequences. Let's not delude ourselves here. We can discuss whether a purge is politically motivated until the cows come home, but it's totally moot. Any purge that does not make a sincere attempt to contact and verify information provided by voters is a mockery. A sham. In Ohio, more than half a million people may lose their right to vote because they failed to respond to a post card. That's all you need to know. Well, almost all you need to know. What you also need to know is that Ohio House Bill 3 was passed in 2005 by the republican state senate, and that House Bill 3 removed requirements to notify voters of their pending removal from the records and revoked voters' right to challenge their removal. You can niggle about the partisanship of such a bill if you want, but if you'd like to defend the point that arbitrarily removing voters from the rolls without informing them is anything other than an attempt to undermine democracy then I'll be happy to have that discussion with you.
Similar purges take place throughout the country. In each case you can argue whether or not the intent is to skew results one way or another, but to do so is irrelevant. In Florida new registrations are being declined on technicalities. Again, anything short of a good faith effort to allow these voters to be registered serves to undermine the democratic system. Discarding incorrectly filled out registration forms may not be illegal, but the mere act of doing so without contacting the registrant and attempting to correct the mistake is all the proof required that the system of registration does not support fair and open elections.
In Virginia, college students are being told by the local registrar of elections that students who register as Virginia voters could lose scholarships and could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns, while South Carolina claims that students who wish to register to vote must demonstrate "a present intention to remain in the community." These statements are, of course, incorrect. They are not the result of a misinterpretation. They are the result of a conscious effort to prevent college students from registering to vote.
Now let me ask you something: When is the last time you heard stories about efforts to prevent residents of senior homes from voting? When is the last time you heard a story about voter caging targeting Beverly Hills? When is the last time you heard about voter registrations in rural Pennsylvania being rejected on a technicality?
The individual tactics must be stopped, I agree, but it is far more important that people are made to consciously understand that there is only one party in this country that does not actively, consciously, and consistently try to undermine the democratic system that they claim to hold so dear. The minutiae of individual instances are complicated and unlikely to rouse much interest from the populace at large, but the broad stroke of the message, that republicans would rather lose a democracy than lose an election, is both compelling and powerful.