Under the guise of fighting nonexistent voter fraud, the GOP
is attempting the greatest election-stealing conspiracy in US history
By Alex Slater
In Washington, conventional wisdom is everything. It's the
driver of perceptions, and often of self-fulfilling political prophecies.
That's why you might notice a guarded confidence amongst the Obama campaign
these past few weeks: generally speaking, most realistic experts predict a
victory for the president in this November's election.
This perception is reinforced by current polling, some of
the most recent being published by Quinnipiac University, the New York Times
and CBS News, giving
President Obama an edge over Romney in key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Certainly, it will be
a tight race, but by any realistic standard, the money is on Obama to pull out
a victory, even narrowly.
But it's exactly the likely closeness of the race that may
turn Washington's conventional wisdom on its head on election day. That's
because, until relatively recently, political experts and journalists have been
oblivious to a widespread and pernicious phenomenon occurring in many critical
swing states – one that, unless checked, could erase Obama's electoral edge.
This phenomenon takes the form of a spate
of new voter laws: efforts by Republican governors and
Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass restrictive new voting rules
just in time for election day. As a result, at least 5 million Americans could
essentially lose their right to vote, according to the non-partisan Brennan
Center in New York.
It's no surprise that these laws are almost uniformly
designed to disenfranchise young people and minorities – the very demographics
that make up part of Obama's base. And 5 million votes flagrantly stolen from
the Democrats, especially in the
swing states where Obama currently has the edge, could easily spell a Romney
victory.
The Republican strategy here is simply too blatant to be
believed, hence the relatively muted press coverage on the issue. Indeed, while
Republican lawmakers have been busy undermining the basic rights of Americans
for months now, it was not until recent weeks that the
New York Times and Washington Post started paying attention.
As well they should, because it's no exaggeration to say
that the results of these partisan tactics could make the Floridian
recount of 2000 look like a minor political spat. We're looking at an
election doomsday scenario that could eclipse any political scandal in American
history.
Hyperbole? Not when you examine the new laws more closely.
The legislation being passed by Republicans across the
country takes various forms, all designed to stop likely Obama voters casting
ballots.
The most common tactic is to heavily restrict the types of
identification required at polling stations. In Pennsylvania, for example, that
means requiring all voters to presentvery
limited types of ID only available from the state's department of
transportation. Since many inner-city voters don't drive, or many young voters
have out-of-state driver's licenses, these likely Obama voters will all be
stopped dead in their tracks before they reach the polling booth. The problem
is so severe that the state of Pennsylvania itself has admitted that nearly 10%
of voters do not have the required identification. In Philadelphia, an Obama stronghold,
that figure is closer to 20%. Attorney
General Eric Holder summed it up perfectly when he called these voter
ID measures the equivalent of a "poll tax", at the NAACP summit in
July.
In Florida, where history proves that less than 1,000 votes
can swing a national election, the efforts to stop minorities and the poor from
voting are not just limited to new voter identification laws. In fact, voter
registration drives have been banned, and early voting, thought to favor
Democrats, has been significantly curtailed. Even more worrying is Governor
Rick Scott's attempt simply to remove Obama voters from the election rolls. In
May, Scott ordered a purge of his state's voter lists, based on drivers'
license records, which he acknowledged to be deeply flawed.
As a result, the state's division of elections initially
found a mind-boggling 180,000 "ineligible voters" by performing a
search of a computer database with inaccurate information. Yet, the purge goes
on: the Miami Herald found that 58% of the people in a sample of 2,700
"ineligible" voters were Hispanic, and 14% were black. Whites and
Republicans were least likely to be barred from voting. Even a second world war
veteran was told he was not a citizen and so
to stay away from the voting booth.
Of course, Republicans justify their efforts to suppress the
vote by arguing that they're simply preventing illegal voting. That sounds
entirely fair – until you consider that the proven occurrence of voter fraud is
almost non-existent. In fact, not a single person has ever been prosecuted for
voting illegally. Yet, the public seems ambivalent about voter ID laws, which
is why similar dirty tricks continue, taking various forms in other competitive
states such as Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina.
Luckily, progressive groups and the federal government are
pushing back. In
Pennsylvania, groups like the Advancement Project and the
ACLU have filed suit on behalf of 38 plaintiffs, challenging the
constitutionality of the new laws in state courts. The Advancement Project is
also intervening in Wisconsin, fighting the fact that 78% of young
African-American men lack the appropriate ID to vote, for example. The US
department of justice is also intervening in Pennsylvania and other
states, questioning whether new laws disproportionately discriminate against
minorities. And the Obama campaign is acutely aware of the danger, with dozens
of staffers in the campaign headquarters and out in the field monitoring daily
developments in every critical state.
These counter-efforts are critical, yet the fear among
Democrats is that they may not be sufficient to stop the new laws taking effect
before the election. That is a significant danger, not only to the legitimacy
of the results of the presidential race, but for the very core of America's
democratic process. And, of course, it highlights the need for uniform
standards across the country that guarantee free and fair elections.
That's a battle for a later date. For now, we can only hope
that voters will get wise to the Republican tactics and make every effort to make their voices heard on 6 November.
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