If you have to stop people from voting to win, your ideas suck.
The Nation‘s Ari Berman — the intrepid soul who helped expose the GOP’s War on Voting to the world — is back documenting the far right’s continued effort to use big government to stop the “little people” from voting.
The front line of this now endless war is now North Carolina. Berman has broken down what the GOP is up to in his post “7 Ways North Carolina Republicans are Trying to Make it Harder to Vote.”
You should read it but here are the bullet points:
- Requiring state-issued photo ID to cast ballot.
- Cutting early voting.
- Ending same day registration during early voting.
- Penalizing parents of students who register to vote where they go to college.
- Disenfranchising ex-felons.
- Banning “incompetent” voters from the polls.
- Ending straight-ticket voting.
The GOP didn’t steal the 2012 election but they sure tried. In North Carolina, they’re displaying the full menu of options they have to try to steal elections. In Michigan, they’re still talking about gaming the electoral college.
Republicans recognize the demographics are against them and they’re unwilling to surrender voter suppression as a means to scratching out wins. Even in their “outreach” autopsy, GOP Chairman Reince Priebus said he still supports voter ID which, even when it’s not as blatantly anti-voter as North Carolina’s law would be, still disproportionately effects poor and minority/Democratic voters.
This is why voter registration drives and Oregon’s breakthrough in automatic registration have to be key Democratic goals. The issues and demographics favor the middle class — we just have to make sure the votes do as well.
[Photo by Philip Pessar via Flickr]
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