I’ve posted several items to my Facebook page regarding the new voter I.D. laws sprouting up all over the nation. I do my best to not be blatantly partisan in what I write; which includes a great deal about racism, discrimination, prejudice, and oppression. Lord knows that people of all political persuasions have been guilty of saying and doing racist, discriminatory, prejudicial, oppressive, and downright stupid things (are you listening, Joe Biden?).
Disclaimer: I have voted for Republicans from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. I have voted for Democrats from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama.
Over the past year or so, I have been amazed and disgusted by the tactics being employed by Republicans to restrict voter turnout that disproportionately impacts people of color, the elderly, the young, and the poor; people more likely to vote for Democrats.
According to The Brennan Center for Justice, Voter I.D. laws have been passed in eleven states since 2011. According to a new, exhaustive, nationwide analysis conducted by News21, a program of the Carnegie Corporation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, out of 146 million registered voters in the United States there have been a total of ten (10) cases “of in-person voter impersonation that might have been deterred by polling place Photo ID restrictions.”
Those restrictions “could keep as many as 22 million perfectly legal eligible voters from being able to cast their legal vote.”
Doonesbury copyright GB Trudeau, www.doonesbury.slate.com
Garry Trudeau has highlighted this craziness in a series of strips in Doonesbury dubbed The Jimmy Crow Comeback Tour. Jon Stewart has highlighted this craziness on The Daily Show with stories about voter suppression efforts in Ohio and Pennsylvania. What about the rest of the media? I’m baffled that this isn’t HUGE news.
This literally feels like an episode of the Twilight Zone. I do not know how anyone can justify these actions in the land of so-called democracy. I find it harder and harder to comprehend the world in which I live.
This is not about winning an election. This is about stealing an election.