Liberals often fail to take liberal media spin into account.
The tale Blow recounts from Rolling Stone about “100,000 previously eligible ex-felons” is apparently flatly false. Though Governor Crist adopted a policy of “automatically” restoring civil rights to felons who completed their sentences, a application for restoration of rights was still required. Many never took advantage of the opportunity. When Governor Scott revised the policy and implemented a minimum 5-year waiting period for requesting restoration of civil rights, this apparently did not at all affect the voting rights of those whom Crist and his board approved for restoration. Rolling Stone published bad information, so far as I can tell (and I spent a bit of time looking into it), Blow repeated it, and now it gets repeated here.
Blow apparently laments Florida’s attempt to purge noncitizens from its voter rolls. But why? It should only be a problem if it removes legitimate voters from the rolls and ultimately denies them the right to vote (which won’t be the case if they end up getting a provisional ballot counted).
Isn’t it a good thing we have an endless supply of inaccurate articles to post in opposition to voter ID initiatives?
Anybody want to talk about the nuts and ****s (huh? If either of those was going to get censored I’ve have thought it would be the first one!) of the Brennan Center study? It’s the linchpin for many of these popular media stories, after all.
Another fail safe tactic of Republicans, when faced with supporting an unjustifiable stance, is to simply smear or discredit any opposing evidence, every time any is presented. All they need to do is drum up enough doubt so that enough people think that it is a debatable issue,
Evolution? Who knows? Global warming? Who knows? Voter suppression? Who knows?
Even worse, their shenanigans can put an honest voter at risk for being charged with voter fraud because of a fraudulently changed registration. When the GOP hired them, they already KNEW they had a shady voter registration history, which is why they had them change their name! NOW they are training people to ‘challenge’ voter’s right to vote at the polls—-read that ‘preventing probable Democrats from voting’.
Bryan, voter fraud does exist, and it is the Republicans committing it.
Great first step. Now figure out how to keep the evil Republicans from committing voter fraud. I suppose you could just kill them all but I’m more hoping for a proposal that would keep Democrats from committing the same fraud in some possible world where that might happen (obviously it never happens in this one).
This is a much easier problem to solve than the media and the lawyers would have us all believe. You have to register to vote. As part of that process, states should make available a photo id for people that do not already have a valid form of photo id. The individual just shows whatever proof of citizenship and residency that they need to show for registration, and they also get a photo ID at the same time (for free). Problem solved.
The fact that so many states are trying to re-invent the voter id laws is crazy. The fact that we are a month away from the election and this is still unresolved in so many states is ludicrous.
I beleive that photo ID laws for voters are the way to go. However, I’m cynical enough to believe that the only reason Republicans care about the issue is because they believe they can use it to shape the voting block in their favor. That may be why, even though so many states are pushing voter ID laws, they do not all uniformly make it easy to obtain an ID (which would seem like a no-brainer if your goal was to ensure all eligible voters are able to vote).
This is a much easier problem to solve than the media and the lawyers would have us all believe. You have to register to vote. As part of that process, states should make available a photo id for people that do not already have a valid form of photo id. The individual just shows whatever proof of citizenship and residency that they need to show for registration, and they also get a photo ID at the same time (for free). Problem solved.
The fact that so many states are trying to re-invent the voter id laws is crazy. The fact that we are a month away from the election and this is still unresolved in so many states is ludicrous.
I beleive that photo ID laws for voters are the way to go. However, I’m cynical enough to believe that the only reason Republicans care about the issue is because they believe they can use it to shape the voting block in their favor. That may be why, even though so many states are pushing voter ID laws, they do not all uniformly make it easy to obtain an ID (which would seem like a no-brainer if your goal was to ensure all eligible voters are able to vote).
Warren, that they are trying to do it one and two months before the election is insane. I agree that it can be implemented (to solve a nonexistent problem, btw), but it really does appear that this time frame is being used specifically to disenfranchise targeted members of the voting population.
And your solution is far too sane for them to even consider!
I find it interesting that the party that touts itself as the “party for smaller government”, so desperately wants to institute an expensive, intrusive law in order to solve what is demonstrably a non existent problem.
