Latest Stats on the Republican attempt to Disenfranchise Voters
Posted: July 26, 2012 Filed under: 2012 elections | Tags: poll taxes, voter id, voter supression, voting restrictions, Voting Rights Act 19 CommentsStudies of the impact of the new Voter ID Laws uncover the worse attempt at voter disenfranchisement since the Jim Crow Law Days. A Philadelphia Newspaper finds that 43 percent of Philly voters may 
not have the proper ID for voting. You know, of course, that this would be the part of Pennsylvania most likely to vote Democrat or Green.
The number of Pennsylvanians who might not have the photo identification necessary to vote this November has more than doubled: at least 1,636,168 registered voters, or 20 percent of Pennsylvania voters, may not have valid PennDOT-issued ID, according to new data obtained by City Paper. In Philadelphia, an enormous 437,237 people, or 43 percent of city voters, may not possess the valid PennDOT ID necessary to vote under the state’s controversial new law.
“Those are the numbers we sent,” says Nick Winkler, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, when asked to confirm the data. “If you want to add them together, I think it’s misleading.”
The new data, received and processed by the AFL-CIO, for the first time includes voters who had PennDOT licenses that have (as of Monday) been expired since Nov. 6, 2011 or an earlier date. If those people do not renew their licenses, the licenses will be expired by at least one year on election day and thus invalid under the new law. And because the AFL-CIO’s voter file (which shows the already-publicized large number of voters with no PennDOT record) is seven months old, it could actually represent an undercount since it does not address whether those who have registered as voters since January have valid ID.
Pennsylvania’s voter ID law is facing increasing scrutiny. Today, Commonwealth Court hearings begin on a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups, including the Pennsylvania ACLU, which allege that the law violates the state constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote.
And on Monday, the U.S. Attorney General announced that it was investigating whether the law violated the federal Voting Rights Act. In particular, the Department of Justice wants to know upon what basis Republican Gov. Tom Corbett‘s administration declared that just 1 percent of residents lacked valid identification during the legislative debate over the law.
The number of voters who will lack proper ID is indeed indeed impossible to determine: Some voters without PennDOT ID may be inactive, or have a valid form of federal or student identification, while others without proper ID may not have yet registered to vote.
“The database was never meant to say ‘this is how many people don’t have IDs,’” says Winkler, emphasizing that this office is focused on ensuring that all Pennsylvanians have the proper ID in November. “You guys want specific numbers that don’t exist, and those numbers change on a daily basis.”
While the right wing blog harp on about ‘vote integrity’, Republican politicians continue to let it slip that the law is to try to get Romney to the White House by whatever means possible.
Pennsylvania Republicans, including Gov. Tom Corbett, insist that the new laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud. However, recent developments would seem to contradict that assertion.
In June, Republican House Leader Mike Turzai told a group of voters the real reason Republicans are so anxious to pass the voter ID law is because the statute “is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania” because it disenfranchises two traditionally Democratic constituencies, the poor and ethnic minorities. Also, the state has admitted in court filings that it has not investigated or prosecuted a single vote fraud case.
In response to widespread outcry over the obviousness of the Republicans’ efforts to suppress Democratic voter turnout, the state government has created a backup ID program. Sadly, the individuals tasked with running the outreach and education effort are all Republican operatives with ties to Gov. Corbett and the Romney campaign.
The Pennsylvania law is similar in concept to laws passed by Republicans in other states like Texas, South Carolina, Georgia and Missouri, many of which are also tied up in court. Former President Clinton said the Republican efforts at vote suppression are unlike anything he has ever seen.
“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” he said.
There are next to no problems with voter fraud, yet Republican interests continue to push the meme. If this strategy succeeds, it could establish a worsening situation. Republican policy increasingly appeal to a very narrow and extreme group of people in a very limited and shrinking demographic. This is a systematic way of suppressing the votes of the poor, the young, minorities, and disabled Americans.
Instances of voter fraud are almost nonexistent, but the right-wing media’s harping on the issue has given Republican politicians cover to push these laws through statehouse after statehouse. The laws’ intent, however, is entirely political: By creating restrictions that disproportionately impact minorities, they’re supposed to bolster Republican prospects. Ticking off Republican achievements in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives, their legislative leader, Mike Turzai, extolled in a talk last month that “voter ID . . . is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
How could Turzai be so sure? The Pennsylvania Department of State acknowledges that as many as 759,000 residents lack the proper ID. That’s 9.2 percent of registered voters, but the figure rises to 18 percent in heavily black Philadelphia. The law also requires that the photo IDs have expiration dates, which many student IDs do not.
The pattern is similar in every state that has enacted these restrictions. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that 8 percent of whites in Texas lack the kind of identification required by that state’s law; the percentage among blacks is three times that. The Justice Department has filed suit against Southern states whose election procedures are covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It is also investigating Pennsylvania’s law, though that state is not subject to some provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
If voter suppression goes forward and Romney narrowly prevails, consider the consequences. An overwhelmingly and increasingly white Republican Party, based in the South, will owe its power to discrimination against black and Latino voters, much like the old segregationist Dixiecrats. It’s not that Republicans haven’t run voter suppression operations before, but they’ve been under-the-table dirty tricks, such as calling minority voters with misinformation about polling-place locations and hours. By contrast, this year’s suppression would be the intended outcome of laws that Republicans publicly supported, just as the denial of the franchise to Southern blacks before 1965 was the intended result of laws such as poll taxes. More ominous still, by further estranging minority voters, even as minorities constitute a steadily larger share of the electorate, Republicans will be putting themselves in a position where they increasingly rely on only white voters and where their only path to victory will be the continued suppression of minority votes. A cycle more vicious is hard to imagine.
The only way to stop these kinds of assaults on American Civil rights and liberties is to send the Republican party to obscurity.
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Wonder if the Republican Committee will address this voting irregularity!?! 😯 My guess is they won’t.
Former Governor Randell said that the cases while he was governor were less than 2 a year and about 10 in all, too many zeros to show for statistical purposes…but yet the Republicans carry on with their campaign.
Republicans only care about voting irregularity when they think it might hurt them.
So, that one man’s FIVE actions of ‘Voting While Dead’ would account for half of all findings in PA while Gov Randell was in office.
The best description I’ve seen of these Voter ID laws is that they are a “Solution looking for a Problem”.
Yup. I’ve thought that was a good description also.
I’m all for voter ID — at caucuses. But that is a different matter.
Funny, someone ran unopposed and NO ONE was bused in for the fix in this primary nor sent senior voters home…etc. I think the cause system needs to go (with all its corruption), it should be by the votes and we know who got the popular vote!
What get me is that there are several quotes from the GOP telling us that, yes the reason for the voter ID laws is so that Romney wins. Which also tells is that no way in hell CAN
Romney win without cheating.
It will be interesting to watch how two proven cheaters wage the campaign battles.
As someone who watched how 0bama cheated in 2008 in the Primary caucus — and the record of cheating including being given delegate he never won — I won’t forget that he is a cheater.
Now he is going against another cheater.
Is this the future of American politics — the cheater with the most money — wins?
Romney is in no way better — he is far worse and he is stupid.
—————-
0bama’s use of drones and new rules of warfare — what happens when the next evil dictator of some forgotten country gets his hands on drones and cyber geeks? 0bama has changed the rules of warfare.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/obama-national-security_n_1701888.html?ref=topbar
I’m not looking forward to the next four years — even if 0bama wins the battle of the cheaters.
A dog and a cat and a lap top — words get jumbled.
What I’m saying is that the message is that Romney can’t win without cheating. So the GOP is pulling out all the stops and are cheating and bragging about cheating.
How many vote counting machines will be rigged in Romney’s favor?? How many registrars are busy rigging the vote on the county level?
I’m glad to learn that the Justice Department is addressing the PA voter ID law. It’s incredibly unfair and could actually end up swinging the state to Romney. That would be a disaster.
Amazing the tricks the GOP comes up with to manipulate the votes.
Well,if they really wanted to upset the apple cart someone could come forth with the documentation of how O stole 18,000,000 votes. Documentation that would take care of Pelosi and the rest of the thugs that mugged Hill and disenfranchised those of us who voted for her.
A big blaaat, just barf it all out and watch the scramble.
Well, that was an inner party election where the rules got changed. This disenfranchisement isn’t just for a party nominee. It is a national election. There’s constitutional issues in the latter that aren’t in the first.
I agree, because I never SAW a box on the voter registration that said, but if party poo bas (Pelosi, Axelrod, Dean, Donna Brazile or Obama) decide their candidate needs to win…YOUR VOTE WILL BE CUT IN HALF, OR NOT COUNTED AT ALL!
After years of doing voter registration that really makes me mad, even more so to see that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to let go of power, because she really doesn’t care about the people, she was born rich, and is even richer now. She could give a darn about the voters in the primary, a disregard that takes people’s dignity away. Now, she is SHOCKED, SHOCKED, to see the Republicans do it.
It is wrong, no matter WHO (Democrats or Republicans) does it, it is WRONG!
It just goes to show you what happens when state election systems are based on party primaries. I knew the Republicans played with the national elections. I had no idea that the democrats could still force their primaries based on the old smoke filed room model. It’s bound to stay corrupt unless we get rid of the two party system. It’s a duopoly. But, if you have parties, they control the primaries. No one should control the general at all. A lot more is at stake.
This is like the chipping away of abortion rights, it’s never going to end and it’s just going to get worse and worse. Every year the laws will be amended with increasingly burdensome stipulations.
It won’t change until we get beyond the 17% of elected women in congress and we need to understand that FeMANists simply don’t care, they don’t die during pregnancy, they don’t die due to complications, their uterus’ don’t rupture, they don’t get bladder tears, they don’t suffer early mortality due to too many pregnancies, they don’t carry the pregnancies, they don’t have to worry about birth control, they don’t episiotomies and don’t go through labor. Family planning is a basic Human Right!
FeMANists do sign President Obama Stupak Executive Orders…anyone seen Oprah so she can give her thoughts on this executive order?
Sorry about the rant…it just irks me, that women’s issues are simply not issues…I haven’t seen ONE Democrat speak about the Stupak Executive Order, nor be honest about why women’s rights are on the table, when many of us worked our tails off to get them a majority in congress and it was pissed away. Nancy Pelosi was rewarded by keeping power, for allowing this to go on, and we need to vote people out of office that aren’t respectful of women, or Women’s Rights.