Voter ID laws are an important distraction in this year’s Presidential election: without demonstrating a single example of voter fraud, the GOP (whose members are pressing for Voter ID laws in several states) uses Voter ID as a way to suppress votes from the opposition. I cannot think of a tactic that is any more un-American than this.
If one actually looks for the evidence, voter fraud from someone claiming to be someone else or a non-registered voter entering a voting booth is nearly non-existent. Since 2000, there have only been 10 cases of in-person voter identity fraud out of a total population of 311 million Americans. Less than 1 vote a year is an insignificant number of bad votes, and not worth spending millions of dollars to implement.
http://www.google.com/...
However, many examples of Republican-sponsored voter suppression and election fraud have occurred, affecting a much larger number of people. The end result of this is greater voter disenfranchisement, making citizens feel that their vote doesn’t count, and discouraging them from participating in our democracy. Sure, the Democrats do some bad things, but generally speaking, they encourage all eligible citizens to register to vote, and to take pride in doing so. I realize this is a long and incomplete list, but we must understand how important it is to encourage everyone to participate in our democracy. Fulfilling our social contract requires this participation.
1) Early-voting cutbacks admittedly due to racial motivations, says Ohio GOP
http://www.thenation.com/...
2) Aides to former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich were indicted for making misleading phone calls to discourage voters from going to the polls
http://thinkprogress.org/...
3) Ballot stuffing by the North Carolina GOP
http://www.dailymail.com/...
4) Ballot destruction by the Washington GOP
http://www.politicususa.com/...
5) GOP blocked phone lines from working at democratic call center providing rides to the polls, New Hampshire
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
6) Break-ins at Democratic HQ in Pennsylvania where laptops containing voter information were stolen
http://blogs.mcall.com/...
7) Police roadblocks in Florida 2000 requested by GOP governor made it difficult for low-income citizens to reach their polling station
http://www.usccr.gov/...
8) Polling places changed without informing people in low income neighborhoods
http://www.usccr.gov/...
9) Fewer voting machines in poorer precincts mean a longer wait to vote, sometimes many hours in line 2012
http://www.dailykos.com/...
10) The voter ID push from GOP plays against minorities' fear of the police. I have never been arrested for driving while black, but my friends have.
11) The Voter ID push from GOP harms the poor & elderly who are often unable to afford ID or easily get to an ID registration center
http://www.propublica.org/...
12) New voter registration cards destroyed by company GOP governor hired in Ohio 2004
http://www.freepress.org/...
and Virginia 2012
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
13) Legal voters purged from system by company GOP governor hired in Florida
http://www.nytimes.com/...
14) Robocalls from the Arizona GOP purposefully mislead voters, tell them to vote at wrong location
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
15) Ex-felons are kept off the rosters of eligible voters even after they have served their time. This prevents them from voting in national elections, which should not be overridden by state legislation.
http://www.advancementproject.org/...
16) Gerrymandering to keep minority populations small enough that they're outnumbered by whites in the Arizona GOP
http://seeingredaz.wordpress.com/...
With all these problems, it’s also worth noting that the CEO of the Diebold corporation that makes electronic voting equipment promised to deliver Ohio to George Bush in 2004 – which happened. Then when states were alerted to the fact that Diebold voting machines are easy to hack
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
and often show different tallies than the number of actual voters,
http://www.csmonitor.com/...
their company spun off their electronic voting machines to a new entity, named Premier Election Solutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
As the Roman satirist Juvenal pointed out, when the guardians of the republic are on the take, who will guard us from the guards?
Here in America, we’re lucky to live in a country that believes in free and open elections. But with all the chicanery that has been going on this past decade, it’s a wonder that anyone in America puts any faith into our own elections, because there are so many people in the Republican party working hard to make it fail.
Thank you for reading my this screed. I love America, and want desperately for our country to have a successful economy and a bright future for our children. But things will only get better if we start moving beyond partisan hackery like the movement for voter ID laws, so we can put an end to voter suppression and REAL vote fraud.