It's the SOTV effort, stupid! (Snuff Out The Vote)

[merwin]

The main problem we have with voting in our country is NOT the voting machines (although it would be nice if those were fixed). The main problem is the GOP's SOTV effort. For those less informed individuals, SOTV is an acronym for 'Snuff Out The Vote'. This is the term I use to refer to the efforts by the GOP this election year (and many more before it) to make the votes of certain individuals disappear.

For example, each election cycle, tens of thousands of people are purged from the voter rolls. These people just happen to consist mainly of minorities, immigrants, college students, and the working class. They do this by hiring companies to purge their voter rolls (which is a legitimate process). However, they put the extreme loosest parameters on this process possible. For example, if your driver's license address is on 32nd Pl SE and your voter registration address is 32nd Pl NE, you could be purged. This time around, it was done after the primaries, so people thought that they were all set up and ready to vote come general election time. However, when they got to their polling place, they were told they were not registered and were handed a provisional ballot. For those who don't know what a provisional ballot is, you can consider it a placebo ballot... because there's no chance in hell that they're going to actually count it. Why? Simple... you were purged from the voting rolls, so you aren't able to vote.

This also applies to college students, as they may be registered to vote at their home, but they changed their driver's license to show their dorm address. Suddenly they no longer exist.

Then there's the age old scam of calling people up (or sending letters) telling them that their polling places have changed. Well, you know how that one goes.

And my favorite from this year... sending letters to people with certain foreign sounding last names, telling them they will be imprisoned if they show up to vote, even though they are legally able to vote in the United States.

The list goes on and on. To sum it up, it's easier for them to ask forgiveness then to ask permission. There's many Republicans who are perfectly willing to lay down on their own sword and end up in jail if it will help gain them a seat in congress.

PS/Disclaimer - I am in no way saying that E-Voting is not a problem. I'm just saying that it's not the biggest of our problems.

[acmavm]

1. Well then, it's up to the dems to see that they get what they want.

They get caught, they do jail time.

[merwin]

2. Absolutely!

They deserve at least that much respect :-)