Are We About to See Another Stolen Presidential Election?

[xchrom]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/gop-vote-suppression-election



From the time I started blogging about a decade ago I've been writing somewhat frantically about the GOP efforts to suppress the vote. This should not be surprising since I started writing online in the aftermath of the most dubious election result in history: the infamous Bush v. Gore.

Vote suppression has been with us for centuries, of course. Jim Crow was built on it. Very famous and important Americans have participated in it, including former Chief Justice William Rehnquist. But according to a 2004 report by the Center for Voting Rights it wasn't until the Jesse Jackson campaign in the 1980s that the Republicans began to organize nationally:

'Democratic activist Donna Brazile, a Jackson worker and Albert Gore's campaign manager in 2000, said "There were all sorts of groups out there doing voter registration. Some time after the '86 election, massive purging started taking place. It was a wicked practice that took place all over the country, especially in the deep South. Democrats retook the Senate in 1986, and [Republican] groups went on a rampage on the premise they were cleaning up the rolls. The campaign then was targeted toward African-Americans." As in the past, Republicans justified the purges in the name of preventing the unregistered from voting. But Democrats charged vote suppression.

They formed a group called the Republican National Lawyers Association for the purpose of manipulating the voting laws in all 50 states to the benefit of the party. Of course, they said it was for the purpose of stopping "voter fraud" but since there was and is no evidence of voter fraud, vote suppression was the obvious intent. They learned the ins and outs of all local and state voting rules and figured out how to use them for their own electoral advantage. And with the help of other conservative groups like ALEC, they set about making it harder to register and harder to vote. They really made their bones in the 2000 recount, when the call went out the morning after the election for their lawyers to descend on Florida. The rest is history. Well, it's deja vu all over again. Here's Ari Berman:

'Back in 2000, 12,000 eligible voters—a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush's 537 vote triumph over Al Gore—were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by 86 points, accounted for 11 percent of the state's electorate but 41 percent of those purged. Jeb Bush attempted a repeat performance in 2004 to help his brother win reelection but was forced to back off in the face of a public outcry.'

***democrats are and have been just sitting back and watch this happen -- why?
i'm not someone who thinks pols do things or don't do things for no reason -- what they do or don't do suits some purpose of theirs -- but it's baffling what this could be.

[RC]

1. To answer you question:

The Democrats are nothing more than the Left side of the Right Wing. Same goals, just a little more laid back about getting there.

Nixon would be way too Left wing, socialistic to be elected as a Democrat now.

[warrior1]

2. have they all ready stolen it?

If enough Democrats get out an vote, they can't

[pnwmom]

3. This is my biggest worry. In a fair election, Obama will win. But the GOP Governors are trying

to prevent millions of Democrats from voting -- and will succeed. The only question is how many votes they will manage to eliminate.

[KamaAina]

4. Don't forget the nine-hour waits in Cleveland in 2004

It doesn't matter whether you're on the rolls or not if you have no way to cast your ballot.

[GeorgeGist]

5. With boy friends like Booker, Ford, Deval and Clinton ...

there may be no need to steal.