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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Republican Approach to Voter Fraud: Lie
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That was the point. Demoralize people. Strip away their voting rights. Debase their citizenship. Dilute the diversity of voters until the electorate becomes homogeneous. Lie and say its because of voter fraud. But most important, do all of this in the name of saving democracy. Rampant voter fraud does not exist. There is no epidemic of illegal voting. But the lie is so mesmerizing, it takes off like a wildfire, so that the irrational fear that someone might vote who shouldnt means that hundreds of thousands who should cant cast ballots, in part because of the increase in voter ID laws across the country in recent years. The best way to understand the lie is to understand how it began: on Election Day in 2000. What happened then affects who will show up to vote in less than two months, and how confident theyll feel when they get to the polls.
Floridas electoral malfeasance in the 2000 vote is infamous. But that election in St. Louis was also a disaster, and it taught the Republicans an important lesson: Block people of color from polling places by any means necessary. And it showed them, point by point, how to create a voter suppression road map that is paying dividends today. The St. Louis Board of Elections had purged some 50,000 names from the voter rolls, primarily in key Democratic precincts. And it had failed to notify the people who had just been stripped of their vote, as the law required. So when those voters showed up to cast their ballots, they were told they were no longer registered. Besieged precinct workers couldnt get through on the jammed phone lines to check much of anything. Some opted to send frustrated would-be voters downtown to the Board of Elections office to resolve the issue there.
This combination of poor record keeping and ill-prepared officials meant that hours and hours dissolved as the clock on Election Day wound down. When the polls were about to close, the lobby was still packed with people waiting to cast their ballots. Democrats filed for an injunction to keep precincts open to accommodate voters who had been caught in the Board of Elections runaround. A circuit court judge agreed and ordered the polls to stay open for a few more hours.
Republicans were not having it. Senator Christopher Bond said the voting extension represents the biggest fraud on the voters in this state and nation that we have ever seen. Others made the case that this was just a Democratic maneuver that would result in hundreds of fraudulent votes. Republicans filed an appeal to close the polls. A state appeals court obliged. Shortly after the circuit courts decision, the doors slammed shut on hundreds of people waiting in lines to vote.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/opinion/sunday/voter-fraud-lie-missouri.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
bigbrother05
(5,995 posts)They would deny thousands their rights to avoid the chance that one got through.
In the justice system, better 10 got off on a technicality than an innocent person goes to the gallows.
The GOP represents fear and anger, neither of which were the cornerstones of our Nation.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,036 posts)unitedwethrive
(1,997 posts)'Of course that wasn't meant as racist.'
"We would never take away your medicare.'
'We are the party of fiscal responsibility.'
'Our tax cuts are for everyone.'
'And, when we do cut taxes more for the wealthy, it's only because it will trickle down to the middle class and help everyone.'
It would be harder to come up with times they are being honest.
niyad
(113,550 posts)guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)they will do all that they can to suppress the vote.
Recommended.
uponit7771
(90,359 posts)niyad
(113,550 posts)calimary
(81,454 posts)Because THAT is where this evil first takes root. At the state level - with majority CONS in place in the state legislatures, and a CON as the state attorney general and/or in the governors mansion.
We HAVE TO vote Democrats in there. HAVE TO! Democrats want to expand the access to voting. The GOP wants the opposite.
And dont kid yourself that theyd stop there. I knew this the fateful moment when I heard that male caller to the Limbaugh show who complained that this country started going downhill when women got the right to vote. Ive learned enough about crowd dynamics and group-think to know that if one persons saying that, it often means others are thinking that. And that should be a red alert moment.
Just think of it in terms of that Rabbi Niemöller poem...
First they came for the black voters and I didnt say anything because I wasnt black.
Then they came for the Latino voters and I didnt say anything because I wasnt a Latino.
Then they came for the women voters and I didnt say anything because Im not a woman...
And who will be next? Oh, Id say anyone who doesnt strictly believe and pray and hate and hold grudges and vote the way they do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
niyad
(113,550 posts)commission for over 40 years. very few Dem city council members, either.