Once again, an American election was unnecessarily thwarted by long lines and not enough ballots. To say there’s no excuse for such nonsense, especially in a nation that prides itself on its representative democracy and, yes, its exceptionalism, is understating the problem. This time around, it happened during the Arizona primary where countless voters were forced to stand in lines for hours, while others were told they weren’t registered in the first place.
In Maricopa County alone, election officials infuriatingly reduced the number of polling places by 70 percent. Such a drastic reduction meant there was only one polling placeper 21,000 residents of the highly populated Phoenix metroplex. Officials includingCounty Recorder Helen Purcell (a Republican) said the cutbacks were due to budgetary concerns. Uh-huh. Of course, I doubt members of either party who were forced to wait in five-hour lines would’ve minded the additional expense to facilitate our most basic right as Americans. Elsewhere, independent voters who switched their registration to the Democratic Party were allegedly told they hadn’t registered at all, forcing them to sit out the closed primary.
It’s yet another example of why the federal government should take over the election process. Local and state officials are clearly in too far over their heads to handle a task of this magnitude, as evidenced by the reality that every time we hold an election in this country, one numbskull or another flummoxes the whole thing — intentionally or not.
“Intentionally” is an appropriate word here since many of the electoral shenanigans at the state level are, indeed, intentional.
Voter ID laws and punitive voter purges have been the centerpieces of a Republican strategy to rig modern elections. Republicans in nearly half of all states have managed to pass laws that make it more difficult for lower-income Democratic voters to cast ballots, forcing former Attorney General Eric Holder to compare such measures to the poll taxesused in the Jim Crow-era South in order to suppress the Black vote.. This is absolutely by design, even if some Republicans are caught in the meat grinder, too. The lower the turnout, the better Republicans fare in elections, so while voter ID laws tend to disenfranchise Democrats, the intention is more specifically to elect Republicans.
Thirty-three states boast one form of voter ID or another. Texas has perhaps the most ridiculous such law. If you don’t have one of the required forms of identification in the Lone Star State, you’ll have to apply for an Election Identification Certificate (EIC). But in order to get an EIC, you have to present your proof of citizenship and a second form of identification. Yes, that’s right, you’ll need to get an ID in order to get an ID — one of many reasons why this law is so completely absurd. And all of this on top of the normal voter registration process (which only requires a Social Security Number). If you don’t have a mandatory ID issued by the TxDPS (Texas Department of Public Safety), it might be because 70 counties don’t have a TxDPS office.
The GOP excuse for these laws? It’s voter fraud, they say. But how often do voters attempt to scam the system? Among all federal elections between 2002 and 2005, the rate of voter fraud was 0.00000013 percent. This according to a five-year probe by George W. Bush’s Justice Department. Put another way, around 26 people out of 197 million were convicted of attempting to vote illegally during all of those elections. And yet the Republicans continue to screech about voter fraud anyway. (They’re willing to believe that voter fraud exists, even though it doesn’t, and yet the climate crisis, with its 97 percent scientific consensus, is clearly fiction.)
Elsewhere, in Ohio, the Republican Secretary of State uncovered a possible 20 cases of voter fraud during the 2012 election out of 5.6 million votes cast. That’s 0.00035 percent of the vote. In Iowa, the Republican Secretary of State found a possible eight cases out of 1.5 million votes cast. That’s 0.00053 percent of the vote. In Wisconsin, possible fraud amounted to 0.00023 percent of the vote. But up to nine percent of voters will be disenfranchised by voter ID laws. That’s like using a nuclear missile to kill a gnat — and then entirely missing the gnat because, it turns out, voter IDs wouldn’t have prevented the possible fraud cases in the first place.
"Whether or not the use of the term was accidental, it still reinforces a pernicious Republican frame that’s built upon total fiction."
ReplyDeleteIn the 2002 midterm elections there were 3 GOP representatives who each won their respective districts by 16,181 votes. Apparently Salon didn't get the memo over a decade ago because they were busy supporting corporate imperialism in the name of 'fighting terrorism' back in the day. Apparently hundreds of reports complaining about electronic machines flipping people's votes in the primaries this year doesn't count either.
If you had any doubts that Salon is a butt-wiping rag for the fascist establishment, let this put them to rest...
The terms are interchangeable in the greater population, but of course there is a difference when parsed. The text of the petition is quite clear. My only gripe is that "request" (rather than "demand") was chosen as the active verb.
ReplyDelete