Back to the days when Blacks were denied the right to vote..look what is happening (135 hits)

It was a mainstay of Jim Crow segregation: for 100 years after the Civil War, Southern white Democrats kept eligible blacks from voting with poll taxes, literacy tests and property requirements. Starting in the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court declared these assaults on the heart of American democracy unconstitutional.

Now, with the help of a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Crawford vs. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board, white Republicans in some areas will keep eligible blacks from voting by requiring driver's licenses. Not only is this new-fangled discrimination constitutional, it's spreading.

GOP proponents of the move say they are merely trying to reduce voter fraud. But while occasional efforts to stuff ballot boxes through phony absentee voting still surface, the incidence of individual vote fraud—voting when you aren't eligible—is virtually non-existent, as "The Truth About Vote Fraud," a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, clearly shows. In other words, the problem Republicans claim they want to combat with increased ID requirements doesn't exist. Meanwhile, those ID hurdles facing individuals do nothing to stop the organized insiders who still try to game the system.

The motive here is political, not racial. Republicans aren't bigots like the Jim Crow segregationists. But they know that increased turnout in poor, black neighborhoods is good for Democrats. In that sense, the effort to suppress voting still amounts to the practical equivalent of racism.

In Crawford, the court upheld an Indiana law essentially requiring a passport or driver's license in order to vote. But more than two thirds of Indiana adults have no passports and nearly 15 percent have no driver's licenses. These eligible voters, disproportionately African-American, will need to take a bus or catch a ride from a friend down to the motor vehicles bureau to make sure they obtain a nondriver photo ID. Otherwise, they cannot vote in Indiana this year.

To get an idea of how many African-Americans nationwide lack driver's licenses, recall Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when thousands were stranded without transportation. "Crawford Republicans" could make the old "Jim Crow Democrats" look like pikers when it comes to voter suppression.

Consider Wisconsin, a swing state. Republicans officials there are suing to enforce a "no match, no vote" provision in state regulations, where voters must not only show a photo ID, but establish that it matches the name and number in the Department of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration database. (Democrats are resisting the suit.) These lists are riddled with errors in every state, as the Brennan Center has proven in its report, "Restoring the Right to Vote."
Below is a comment from a hiding under "Bush" bigot.

Comment: Most states are moving to requiring Id at the polls. To prevent fraud. I have within the last two years had to request a copy of my birth certificate as well as one for my elderly mother. She has never had a drivers license, and needs the ID to travel, after having lost her previous Id. We called the state she was born in, mailed the check for the Id and received it within two weeks of them having received the check. Hardly difficult. Just so you understand, she was born in 1920, delivered by a midwife. As far as issues like, polling places closing early, lost voter registration sheets, and not being able to vote due to your name being similar to a felons, these issues are issues that need to taken up with the county elections department. To blame everything on the GOP is like blaming the President because it is raining.

I do blame it on them, because it's their friends who are the Election Board Commissioners. Why would the poll sheets have a felons name on them???? Names are purged if you don't vote at least once every 4 years. Not only that, but in New Jersey you cannot call the DMV and send a check and get an ID it amazes me how undercover racists frame their comments. As a matter of fact, after the Homeland Security laws you cannot do that in any state. If that was the case then any terrorist could get an ID. Marta Fernandez

Posted By: MichaelCollins @ 09/14/2008 6:14:40 PM
Comment: This is all they have to stop the most feared weapon in Obama's arsenal - turnout. He proved that he can double that in primaries in the mid Atlantic: specifically Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia (400,000 in the 2004 primary to 930,000 in the 2008 primary). The Republicans don't have a proven strategy for election fraud for this level of turnout. The SCOTUS Voter ID ruling stinks

All the more reason to pay attention and make sure you are registered. You can check your status on his site. I did it and it works!



John McCain pulls ahead in Florida and North Dakota.
Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:06:00 PST
Posted By: Marta Fernandez
Sunday, September 14th 2008 at 9:29PM
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