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April 5th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
The GOP’s priority is to ensure continued power by reducing the turnout
of demographic groups like students, blacks, Hispanics that
traditionally vote Democrat. ~ David Morris
For its first 200 years the American Republic slowly, sometimes
infuriatingly slowly and at horrific human cost (e.g. the Civil War)
expanded the franchise.
In 1870 the 15th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote.
In 1920,
the 19th Amendment extended the franchise to women.
In 1924 Congress
granted Native Americans citizenship and thus the right to vote.
In
1961 the 23rd Amendment gave the residents of the District of Columbia
the right to vote for President.
In 1971 the 26thAmendment gave l8 year
olds the vote.
In 1986 Congress gave military personnel and other US
citizens living abroad the right to use a federal write-in absentee
ballot for voting for federal offices.
The right to vote, however, did not ensure that one could vote.
Beginning at the end of the 19th century, states began passing
legislation directed at restricting minority voting with often dramatic
effect, especially in the South where turnout fell from 64.2 percent in 1888 to 29.0 percent in 1904.
For 100 years after the Civil War the Supreme Court ruled that even
where state voting rules were discriminatory, the federal government had
no right to intervene.
Then in 1965 Congress finally gave blacks and
other minorities the effective vote by passing the Voting Rights Act,
eliminating most voting qualifications beyond citizenship for state and
federal elections, including literacy tests and poll taxes. In 1966 the
Supreme Court affirmed that law.
Since 1970 federal and state voting reforms have all moved in one
direction: facilitating access. In 1993 the National Voter Registration
Act (NVRA) offered citizens the opportunity to register or re-register
to vote at many public facilities, including Motor Vehicle offices and
post offices.
Between 1973 and 2009 nine states enacted Election
Day registration laws. States made provisions for early voting and
eased the rules on absentee voting.
Some allowed voting by mail.
Between 1997 and 2010 twenty-three states either restored voting rights or eased the restoration process of voting rights for those convicted of felonies.
Virtually all these laws were passed with overwhelming bipartisan
support and signed into law by Republican and Democrat Governors alike.
The Tide Turns…
And then came November 2010. An unprecedented politically tsunami swept the country. Conservative Republicans won a remarkable 675 seats in state legislatures, gaining control of both houses in 27 states and control of both houses and the governor office in 23.
Once in control Republicans once again exposed a fundamental
difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals focus on
process. Republicans focus on outcomes.
The Republicans first priority after gaining power was to ensure
continued power by reducing the turnout of demographic groups like
students, blacks, Hispanics that traditionally vote Democrat.
The groundwork had been laid by a 2008 Supreme Court decision. In
2006 Indiana became the first state to require a government issued photo
ID for voting. The Supreme Court upheld that
law.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the main opinion opined that
the requirement “is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting
the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.”
Amply justified? An Amicus Brief filed by the Brennan Center for
Justice found no justification at all.
After exhaustively examining the
briefs to the Supreme Court, Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center for
Justice concluded, “not one of the sources cited shows proof of a vote
that Indiana’s law could prevent.
That is, not one of the citations
offered by Indiana or its allies refers to a proven example of a single
vote cast at the polls in someone else’s name that could be stopped by a
poll site photo ID rule.”
The Center described the fraud targeted by Indiana’s law “more rare than death by lightning.”
But the lack of a shred of documented evidence of voter fraud was
irrelevant to the Court. The Court decided that Indiana did not have to
demonstrate that a photo ID was needed to prevent fraud.
The burden of
proof was on petitioners to prove not only that a photo ID would be
burdensome, but that it would be extremely burdensome.
With the Court ruling in 2008 conservative Republicans attacked. In 2011 at least thirty-four states introduced bills to require photo ID to vote. Seven enacted them into law.
In 2011 at least twelve states introduced bills
to require proof of citizenship to register or vote. Three states
enacted these into law. Five states restricted early voting. Two states reversed executive actions that had made it easier for citizens with past felony convictions to restore their voting rights.
The 2011 Florida law is perhaps the purest distillation of the
Republican effort to making voting more difficult. Indeed, during
Florida’s legislative debate, State Senator Michael Bennett, the
Chamber’s President Pro-Tempore insisted that voting “is a hard-fought privilege. This is something people died for. Why should we make it easier?”
In 2008 Obama won Florida by just 2.5 percent. Two factors accounted
for his victory. First, Florida opened the polls two weeks early.
Even so, long lines across the state prompted the governor to issue an
emergency order extending the hours for early voting. That enabled waves
of new voters, often minorities and students to vote.
Early voting
also included voting the Sunday before election day. Obama’s “souls to
the polls” drives successfully brought tens of thousands of blacks and
Latinos to vote after church.
According to
the Palm Beach Post “[m]ore than half of the black voters in the
[November 2008] election voted before Election Day and many of them went
on [the] final Sunday.”
The second factor was the success of voter registration drives. In 2008, more than a million new voters were added to Florida’s rolls, 233,000 of them from voter registration drives. Hispanic and African-American voters are approximately twice as likely to register through a voter registration drive as white voters.
The 2011 law reduced early voting from two weeks to one week. Voting
on the Sunday before Election Day was eliminated. Florida eliminated the
longstanding right of voters who moved before an election to update
their new address at the polls on Election Day. The law now requires a
photo ID.
As many as
25% of African-American voters do not possess a current and valid form
of government issued photo ID, compared to 11% of voters of all races.
The 2011 required those who register new voters to turn in completed
forms within 48 hours or risk fines. The New York Times recently reported this
has led the League of Women Voters to abandon its efforts this year.
A
national organization that encourages young people to vote, Rock the
Vote, recently began to register high school students around the
nation. But not in Florida, because of fears that teachers could face
fines.
Prior to 2007, nearly one million Floridians who were convicted of a felony were permanently disenfranchised in
the state; almost a quarter of them were African-American.
In 2007,
Republican Governor Charlie Crist simplified and streamlined the process for
individuals with non-violent convictions to regain their voting rights,
affecting some 150,000 Floridians.
In 2011 Governor Rick Scott
returned Florida to its pre 2007 policy. Some 87,000 persons who were
in the “backlog” of cases waiting for restoration will not have their voting rights restored.
That the Republicans objective in changing the voting rules is to
consolidate power is incontestable. Consider Texas’s new voter ID law.
It doesn’t allow voters to use student ID’s but does permit them to use
concealed weapon licenses. A few weeks ago the US Department of
Justice rejectedthe new law as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Texas is appealing.
Because of their convincing victories in 2010 Republicans might argue
their actions are simply manifesting the people’s will. But it is
difficult to imagine people voted in 2010 to make it more difficult for
them to vote in the future. Some empirical evidence supports that view.
In 2011 a Republican legislature and Governor in Maine eliminated that
state’s 38-year old Election Day registration. Last November Maine’s
citizens went to the ballot box and re-instated the previous law with a convincing 59 percent majority.
Unfortunately this November few if any states will let voters
directly decide whether they want to reverse a 150-year-old trajectory
and make voting more burdensome.
The voters must express their will more
indirectly, by electing legislators who believe voting should be more
rather than less accessible. The new rules make this much more
difficult. But that would only make a victory for democracy that much
sweeter.
David Morris – April 2, 2012 – posted at AlterNet
David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn., and director of its New Rules project.
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