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Even here on DU. The thing is, the people at the top are making voting as irrelevant as possible. Manufacturing consent, as it were.

As long as they can have very few people vote and still have the illusion of a "democracy," they've won.

Chomsky and Hermann, from Edward Bernays "Engineering of Consent."

http://gromitinc.com/lego/Library/Engineering_of_consent.pdf

And when they can't stop people from voting they steal votes or otherwise mess with the counting machinery.

IMO, they have been very successful at stealing votes. Half of them actually were never elected, just like Bush was never elected.

They are criminal and those that work to suppress the vote should be in jail.

..

Everyone should receive a voter ID card at 18..registered as independent.

Their first primary , they choose a party..after that it;s up to them to opt out..

Registering and voting is not a game... its a right.

You've already got a system that deals with half the population as soon as they turn 18. It shouldn't be that hard to increase their funding and scope and let them deal with the other half by handing out voter IDs to all of them.

They know this and this is the reason they have always made every effort to keep every group but old white men from voting. And their fight continues anew with the latest round of voter restriction laws around the land.

This time they have enough votes on SCOTUS to protect their efforts.

Don't vote you get fined. Kinda on the same concept re: ACA - no healthcare insurance pay a fine. Ya'know the gopers would cry like tiny little babies that they are. Do it my way or else is one of their motto's.

Most minorities won't vote for gopers and thats why they a fucking with voting. The less people vote the more gopers get into office.

Amazing, and they have been getting away with it.. We all knew how crucial 2010 was because it was the year of redistricting.. and we knew damage was going to be done.. but they did such a job of it.. that the even the most extreme cretins can hold on to their districts..

It is not that they don't want people to vote, they just don't want Democrats to vote. So they look at the demographics and see what the trends are with large blocs and then they try to keep those that oppose them from the polls.

Of course none of this is news or in any way new. It is in fact what the Voting Rights Act was all about and why it was so hated in Republican circles.

Otherwise, they cannot compete. Their ideas suck. They are all for the 1% and everybody else be damned.

Republicans know most people don't believe them.

It is an honest bet that if you can throw enough dollars into the problem, the will of the people is insignificant.

you know, the sub-people, them, you know, ....

“The demographics race we’re losing badly,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

They have gerrymandered the voting in the statehouses is as to artificially create their imaginery majority.

They want to limit the voter pool as much as possible.

They think if they make it more difficult to vote then their voters - old white people, will be able to vote because they craft the voter requirements that correspond to what they think the old white farts will have.

They are terrified of the demographic changes because they know that their policies will be soundly rejected by the new population.

There are countless more Democrats in the US than there are Republicans. It's unfortunately true that Dems tend to be more apathetic and lazy than the Repubs. Our brethren will often find something else to do on election day.

On the other hand, Republicans are taught at a young age by their conservative fathers to show up at the polls even if only the dog catcher is on the ballot. ...and they're trained to vote for only the Republican dog catcher.

On edit:
Statistics do indeed show that when election day turnout is light, Republicans win overwhelmingly.

We will have to win by larger margins to make it more difficult for them to steal elections.

They ALL know the changing demographics spell their doom, yet there's still just enough to win the brass ring IF the Left is disenfranchised at the polls. Oppressive voting laws are just one way - another is demoralizing the Left, and the Left is currently helping them out in ways the GOP never dreamed possible.

If they manage to pull this off, and it looks like a very real possibility, then all Hell is going to break loose. What they'll do in the first two years will set us back at least a decade.

With gerrymandering, redistricting, and cheating. If the majority of the American people vote, they're toast.