Ohio GOP to Pass New "NC-like" Voting Restrictions

[pbrower2a]

Maybe sometime this coming year I will appear in Toledo with a placard with the name Kasich altered with a hammer-and-sickle in view of his support for  totalitarian 'reforms' of voting.

[pbrower2a]

It still amazes me the media continues to let the GOP get away with blatant voter suppression.

The media let Bush get away with starting a war based upon lies.
The media let Bush get away with taxes for the rich that wouldn't take effect for several years sold as "economic stimulus".

The media is the problem.

At the time, it wasn't known yet the war was based on lies. And the latter, while stupid policy, didn't really strike at the core of what it means to be a free citizen. Voter suppression bills go to the core of what it means to be a democracy. Will the GOP have to install an Iranian/Soviet style rigged election system before the media starts to care? By then it would be too late anyway.

And when that happens America will be a source of emigrants who perceive that they have no chance.

The Right wants a government that represents high incomes and great wealth instead of the People. Such has been done. It is called fascism.

[pbrower2a]

Anyway, full steam ahead with these voting restrictions.

Can you provide any practical argument in favor, except that results that are favorable to your (despicable) ideology will become more probable?

Well, that is a very practical argument (why is my ideology despicable ?). But, I guess it reduces the potential for voter fraud, as well as the number of votes that have to be counted on election day, saving time and (potentially) money.

Preventing people who have the right to vote  from voting through some chicanery is itself electoral fraud because the purpose is to distort the vote. With enough such electoral fraud any flawed candidate can win.

Electoral fraud has helped some people with ideologies that you despise gain and hold power. If it is wrong when Commies do it, it is wrong when conservatives do it.

 

[pbrower2a]

I don't care if it costs a trillion dollars for everyone who wants to cast their vote to be able to do so. I'd imagine most people who believe in democracy feel the same way.

When the electoral results are a travesty of public opinion one has no democracy. It is that simple.

The Republican Party simply does not want urban, non-white poor people to vote because such people are the difference between winning and losing.

I support voter-picture ID for all US states, but what the Republicans are trying to do besides that is nuts.

In Michigan one shows a voter registration card with no picture (but one's signature)  and signs a statement that one is the person duly authorized to vote on penalty of perjury in the even of a fraudulent misstatement. Signatures are unique, and they have always been adequate for legal purposes in establishing the genuineness of a document. Such includes wills, checks, passports, prescription pick-ups, delivery receipts, and credit-card purchases. Forgery is prima facie evidence of fraud if one has gotten something out of a falsified signature.

Picture ID is surprisingly not so good. 

[pbrower2a]

Here's what Jon Husted, our Republican Secretary of State, said about 2012 voter fraud in a report earlier this year.

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/mediaCenter/2013/2013-05-23.aspx

Highlights: 625 recorded cases of "voting irregularities", of which also include reports alleging voter suppression. Of these only 135, including those referred by the SoS, were referred to county prosecutors for potential charges.

Then apparently 490 suspected cases are certifiably unprovable. Nothing about them has evidence backing a an indictment. So two people named 'Bill Smith' vote in the same precinct. One is "Bill Smith, Sr.", and the other is "Bill Smith, Jr." -- father and son. Maybe there are two cases of people named "Juanita Garcia" voting in the same precinct. Maybe they are two different people. Someone proved to have died between casting an absentee ballot and the election? It happens all the time.

So some college student from Cleveland is registered both in Cleveland and Columbus and votes in Columbus where he is a student at Ohio State? OK -- that happens, and the question is whether one can prevent him from voting in two places. In most states, a new registration invalidates an earlier registration with no consequences.

Multiple registrations? It's up to election officials to ensure that only one of those registrations is legitimate.

Someone might register before achieving full citizenship on the assumption that citizenship at the time of the election is good enough -- just as it is possible for someone to register at age 17 so long as one turns 18 on or before Election Day. We should all know about that.

Seeming irregularities often prove innocuous or to be understandable errors which probably wash out. Most vote fraud is done by administrators of elections.       

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Lack of evidence mandates acquittal if a charge is made; such is the assumption behind the presumption of innocence that distinguishes the legal system of the US from that of the old Soviet Union.

Voter fraud just isn;t worth the risk.   

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Good enough for me. It's time for Republicans to quit being sore losers about elections that they fail to win in the absence of dirty tricks. Maybe some people want to redefine the electorate to their political advantage. It's been done, as in Apartheid-era South Africa.