It shouldn’t be controversial to say that the Republicans are trying to win the presidential election by reducing the size of the electorate. They passed restrictive photo identification laws which were overturned in one court after another. They restricted early voting and weekend voting, in some cases seeing those decisions overturned as well. The Ohio Secretary of State has defied a federal judge and been reprimanded. He continues to defy him, now issuing a new rule about how provisional ballots will be treated that are contrary to a prior consent decree. At Daily Kos, a diarist writes about spending nine hours in line to vote yesterday, all because Governor Rick Scott has reduced early voting hours and hasn’t provided adequate personnel and machines.
The conclusion is unavoidable. The Republicans are trying to make access to the polls so difficult that people will give up and go home. They are going to try to throw out as many provisional ballots as they can, which are really just votes for the president. They aren’t even pretending that they have persuaded the majority of registered voters to support their presidential candidate. But they are trying to win anyway.
This really ought to be the scandal of the year. Yet, rank and file Republicans seem to be perfectly content with these tactics. It’s as if they believe that the Civil Rights Movement never happened, or never should have happened. They are happy to win the election even if they only win by suppressing the vote of working people and students and the elderly and people of color. It’s disgraceful. When Romney talked about the 47% of Americans who won’t support him, he reflected this attitude. It’s an attitude that says that only Americans in certain income brackets and with certain complexions should have a say in our democracy.
But the truth is that the will of the people should decide who wins elections, not the relative effectiveness of voter suppression tactics.
I believe that this is what Obama was referring to when he said voting is the best revenge. Right wingers had their usual hissy fit, but the rest of knew what he meant. Hope the people who are the targets of Repub dirty tricks are even more determined as a result. If people stay in line for 9 hours, it suggests they are.
I wonder if there’s even a remote possibility that a finding of contempt might be brought against the Secretary? Maybe a time-out as a guest of the state is what’s needed to get his undivided attention.
Not to mention the attention of Ohioans. I would guess that most ordinary citizens there aren’t aware of the voting shenanigans going on, and it will take Husted in cuffs for them to understand. The good news is the argument is pretty easy to make this time. It’s not about voter ID. It’s just about early voting, and nobody can make a coherent argument that we need LESS early voting these days.
guest of the state, yes.
Florida Dems are taking the Gov to court to extend early voting hours.
Very good. presumably we’ll have high enough margins that they can’t actually steal it – if it looks like they are, seems to me there will be a Constitutional crisis.
Good Lord, Florida is a mess!
After 2000 and 2004, this is a surprise?
Think Raz’s 49-49 poll is a coincidence? What elections has Raz been the “most accurate” on?
As if???? What do you think the Southern strategy, the appeal to Catholic urban ethnics, school vouchers, and the Religious Right was fundamentally about? It twasn’t about abortion; that was the cover issue.
I agree, and I hope that OFA plans a massive campaign on Wednesday as part of the victory celebration to highlight the different approaches to “poll watching” the two parties are taking.
The GOP plans to challenge voters – they have lists, focused on people who are Democrats or demographically fit the profile. They are literally bussing in groups of people to intimidate voters. One of their favorites is to have people hanging around Latino vote stations with fake INS shirts.
By contrast, Democratic poll watchers have as their #1 instruction never to challenge anyone. There are no challenge lists.
The abuse – throwing out registered ballots, making it harder to vote with various rules, etc – is all from the GOP. The Democrats have consistently tried to get more people to vote.
This has to be a scandal. Alas, one thing Obama’s team has not been able to do effectively is counter the he said-she said reporting. We have 1000s of instances of GOP vote blocking behavior, but I’m sure Chris Todd will balance that with a rumor he got from Drudge that a Democratic poll watcher looked funny at a GOP voter.
I think you mean Chuck Todd, not Chris.
There will be LOTS of legal observers in all the swing states.
they need to throw Husted’s ass in jail.
but, this is who they are, BooMan.
This really ought to be the scandal of the year.
If our so-called “liberal media” were doing their job, it would be.
Miami-Dade to allow voters to request and cast absentee ballots in person Sunday
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/04/3081614/florida-democratic-party-files.html#storylink=cpy#stor
ylink=cpy
Husted is an Enemy of the People.
BOGUS ALERT: CNN was talking about the bias of MSNBC vs Fox with references to the new Pew Study showing MSNBC reported more negative stories against Romney than Fox did against Obama.
This story is typical of how one has to be deaf, dumb & blind and Republican to fail to ask how you can equate a candidate that Steve Bennen has documented with close to a 1,000 lies vs Obama’s record.
And yet, the story is discussed without anyone asking that basic question.
watched about 10 mins of a Romney speech from yesterday in CO, although I know about his lies, have seen clips and watched the debates, seeing a 10 minutes sequence of lies I was astounded at the even flow of lie after lie seamlessly woven together. Pretty terrifying actually, some serious personality disorder or something there.
Rick Perlstein decodes the rightwing GOP lie system in The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism. It offer the only logical and rational reasoning for why the more often and the more obvious the lies Romney’s support increased.
Oh dear. I’ve been wondering about Pew for a while and now I’m going to wonder even louder. We’ve seen over the years how non-partisan organizations can be slowly taken over by the GOP … think about NPR in the government or Nature Conservancy in the private sector. They maintain an aura designed to appeal to their base audience but gently tip the scales for their new “owners”. Based on the limited time I’ve seen Fox and MSNBC I extremely suspect their counting methodology.
It wasn’t that long ago that Pew published a study showing Fox was given the highest ratings for accuracy based on viewer’s assessment.
what’s the story with Nature Conservancy. I’ve heard grumblings from friends, but haven’t followed it.
Quiety ran some candidates for the board and got them elected. Since then NC has “traded” land they own for other land that coincidentally has favored the sponsors of those board members. Their mission isn’t dead, just compromised.
Did any of you read the Sunday Times’ lead editorial ? I don’t believe I have ever seen such a flat out condemnation of the GOP in all my years of reading the Times, a paper not exactly known for telling it like it is. I take it as good tidings that even the establishment” wants everyone to know what slime the GOP are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/opinion/sunday/voting-rights-upholding-democracy.html?ref=todayspa
per&_r=0
Also the WaPo endorsed Obama last week. Will wonders never cease?
://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/washington-post-endorsement-four-more-years-for-president-obama/2
012/10/25/6ca309a2-1965-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html
This really ought to be the scandal of the year. Yet, rank and file Republicans seem to be perfectly content with these tactics. It’s as if they believe that the Civil Rights Movement never happened, or never should have happened. They are happy to win the election even if they only win by suppressing the vote of working people and students and the elderly and people of color.
Fascists want power. They don’t care how they get it.
These places especially should have UN monitors. But of course, most American can’t take ANY criticism of how they do anything from someone not American.
… given democracy, sure. Given plutocracy, not so much.
The trick is to keep the pesky little people from gumming up the levers of wealth. That’s why the job creators have a better set of rules.
Is anyone else worried about the voting machines?
There is now a developing story about an evening Romney rally in PA. Romney was over an hour late, it was cold, people tried to leave … and the Romney getstapo wouldn’t let them. Children crying, a man collapsed in hypothermia. All over twitter. Please, please, please let this get into media headlines tomorrow.
Once the dems started winning in 2006, liberals stopped worrying about voting machine fraud. A mistake. This dog didn’t bark in 06 or 08, and probably won’t bark in landslide elections. And it may be that this election is moving back out of too close to steal territory. But I’m not sure of this, especially given the voter suppression also going on, of which polls seem to take no account.
Here is a study suggesting that there was vote-flipping in several states in Romney’s favor during the primaries this year:
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Republican-Primary-Election-Results-Ama
zing-Statistical-Anomalies_V2.0.pdf
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2008_2012_ElectionsResultsAnomaliesAndA
nalysis_V1.51.pdf
If the vote looks strange, analyze it instantly.
meant close enough to steal obviously.